CFO

BULL MARKET

BEAR MARKET

VALUE INVESTING

P/E RATIO

BROKER

STANDARD & POOR

STOCK ANALYST

STOCK SPLIT

FINANCIAL PLANNER

MARKET CORRECTION

CASH FLOW

YAHOO

WINDOWS

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

.This is how the Tampa Bay fans feel after last night haha... or the Cubs... or the White Sox...

Matthew 24:27-31 / Mateo 24:27-31

Jesus willingly poured out His blood for us on the cross at Calvary. That blood was poured out for us. Por voluntad propia, Jesus derramo su sangre preciosa para nosotros a la cruz de Calvario. Para nosotros.

And He rose in victory and now we await the sound of the trumpet, for we have been set free of our sin, we have been forgiven.We no longer need a mediator, a high priest between us and God for confession. The veil has been torn. We can enter that Holy Place, but we have to want to.

Y El se levanto en Victoria y ahora, esperamos el sonida del trompeta porque ya somos libres de pecado, somos perdonados. Yo no necesitamos un sacerdate en el medio para confesarnos. El velo El se rompio. Podemos entrar el lugar santisimo, pero tenemos que querer.

Exodus 40:34-35

Revelation 4:1-11

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty Who Was and is and is to come.

Santo, santo, santo el Senor Dios Poderoso quien era, quien es, y quien vendra.

He alone is worthy and we must worship Him and exalt His name for touching our lives with His Spirit and washing us in His blood. We don’t always have it all together, but in Him, everything is perfected.

So, how scary can the American recession get for the Indian? Reality check: This evening's rumor was that ICICI is going to be no more. Imagine shutting down all together. So fearful were public reactions that all long distance phone calls suggested people take out all their money from ICICI. Forget minimum deposit; forget accrued charges because of your impulsive actions because what good is maintenance of bank deposits if there's going to be no bank at all. So, for a moment you fear.

Then you try to rationalize with those who fear. Your common sense prompts a thought. Can a bank you first heard of in your economics book in 1996 really shut down? Then it was about learning full forms to score so you mugged it, ICICI: Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India. Over the years I don't know about industrial but it certainly serves as a brilliant personal bank. You pay your internet connection bills, pay your phone recharge vouchers, ask anyone for cash on broke days, send money to people, parents included, shop, watch movies, everything you can think of, ICICI does for me. So now if it just disappeared, I'd go back to the ice age.

People are cautious, the share markets spelling doom. ICICI share prices of 900 rupees, quoted 350 rupees today. Are you scared? Depositors rushed into endless queues to withdraw their hard earned money. The RBI issued a security statement and notices were posted outside all ICICI ATM's stating that ICICI has enough funds to return all depositors funds. I believe ICICI will not liquidate; it's just a passing tide. Obviously I need to believe because else all my NEFT transactions would come to a standstill. I also believe because since young I believed in everything red, my sports house, favorite clothes, football teams, my car colors, the red heart, everything. Today, I understand the consequence of my choices, Ferrari, Manchester United, Hastings House, and ICICI to name a few.

What started out as a red debit card with an understanding with HP, even though I don't own a vehicle, it has come a long way. When the market is bleeding, hold your own, the market will turn. It's a war between the bull and the bear, and when the bear sees red, you know what happens.

Someone has given the bull on Wall Street a case of blue balls--literally.  Maybe I should mention that world-renown graffiti artist Banksy, has been in NYC lately putting up big installations...coincidental?  I think not...it seems like his kind of defiance...

As you've might heard, Wall Street is in tatters, if you've been under a rock this past few weeks, you can get up to speed here .

Million Dollar Question, Why are we here?

In layman terms, Wall Street f*cked up, i've been saying this for years, the complexity and of lack transparency of most financial instruments in this day and age is the catalyst for everything that's happening. I wont go into details, but the information can be found here

Now, we got 159,000 unemployed individuals in the US, i haven't found global unemployment numbers as yet but i'm expecting it to be huge.

We can't blame Wall Street totally, the greed in us, fed the whole process.

So yeah but still...

Screw Wall Street...

Lets Save Main Street.

-Yasser

Eftersom mitt liv just nu är så tråkigt tänkte jag liva upp det lite. Har därför sökt Tv 4:s ny produktion av "Robinson" men även Kanal5:s nya storsatsning "WipeOut". Jag tänkte eftersom jag konstant får höra vilken apa och djungelpojke jag är, tänkte då kan jag väl lika gärna göra en avstickare till mitt naturliga habitat. Jag menar jag kallas inte Mowgli & Fredag för inget... Men vi får väl se hur det går med det, det är ju tusentals som söker...

Ordinarily, brokers rarely advise you 'not to buy', not because they are losing commissions , but morely because it is our decisions to do so. But when a broker whispers about bear market, it is clear that 'the last bull' also has lost confidence in the market.

So, what will happen next? The valuations of all companies become zero? They will become bankrupt? Civilisation will extinct?

The answer is, after all these 'Fear Factors' , things will become normal- people will again find valuations attractive in the same companies for which there were no buyers in the days of panics.- Again some people will buy selected scripts- again they will become optimistic about the growth of economy- and they will buy some more- and that will increase stock prices- that will alert some other investors about the rising prices of shares, so they will try to get into the market expecting good return- that will also cause rise in prices of shares- by now Televisions and newspapers will take notice and make headlines about unusual price rise of share prices- which will create 'Greed Factors' among the mass.... and you know what will happen next.

It is correctly said that we have learnt from history that men never learn from history. So, till the human beings are there with there primitive emotions of fear and greed, bull and bear market will survive.

Raging Bull (1980)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/

Regi: Martin Scorsese

Manus: Paul Schrader og Mardik Martin (basert på selvbiografi)

Med: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci og Frank Vincent.

Spilletid: 129 min

Martin Scorsese er en annen av favorittregissørene mine. Han brukte Robert De Niro i et utall filmer, inkludert Goodfellas, Taxi Driver og Casino. Scorsese har laget utrolig mange bra filmer, og vant en æresoscar noen år tilbake. Han regnes som en av regissørene som skapte en kvalitetsendring i Hollywood på 70-tallet, sammen med for eksempel Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather). I nyere tid har han slått seg sammen med Leonardo Di Caprio noen ganger, med vellykkede resultat.

De Niro regnes som en av de beste skuespillerne noensinne, og det med rette. Det var som sagt samarbeidet med Scorsese gjennom 8 filmer at han ble kjent og anerkjent. Han fikk et gjennombrudd i Mean Streets, før han spilte den unge Vito Corleone i The Godfather Part II, og karrieren var i gang. Joe Pesci er også en kjent gjenganger i gangsterfilmene til Scorsese, i tillegg til mer koselige ting som My Cousin Vinny eller Home Alone.

Raging Bull forteller oss den sanne livshistorien til bokseren Jake La Motta. Sinnet og temperamentet hans hjelper han til en fantastisk boksekarriere, og han er den første som klarer å slå legendariske Sugar Ray Robinson. Men om den rasende oksen fungerer godt som bokser, så fungerer han ikke like godt som familiemann.

Dette er etter min mening De Niro's aller beste prestasjon. Han spiller La Motta på en fullstendig overbevisende måte, både på veien opp og kanskje spesielt på veien ned igjen. Han la på seg det som da var rekordmye vekt (ca 30 kg) for å spille La Motta på sine eldre dager. Rekorden ble senere slått av Vincent D'Onofrio på Full Metal Jacket, men det bli ikke mindre imponerende av den grunn.

Filmen er i svart-hvitt, og benytter det på en veldig god måte. Den ser fantastisk bra ut, og boksekampene har hver sin egen stil og tone. Størrelsen på ringen det blir bokset i blir endret fra kamp til kamp, for å reflektere stemningen i kampen. Kampene er for øvrig også veldig bra koreografert og filmet. I tillegg må jeg trekke fram en helt genial kameraføring, der kameraet på kran følger La Motta helt inne fra garderoben, ut gangen og inn på stadion, hvor det løftes opp og gir oversikten. Her kan du se åpningssekvensen, som også er veldig bra.

Jeg liker det faktum at filmen ikke er den typiske heltehistorien der alt går bra. Sånne type filmer fungerer ofte godt, og kanskje spesielt innen denne sjangeren, men Raging Bull er realistisk og dyster, og tjener mye på det. Kanskje den aller beste framvisningen av "medaljens bakside" jeg har sett.

Lydeffektene er også veldig bra, blant annet brukte de pistolskudd til å lydlegge blitsene som gikk av under kamper. Etter at filmen var ferdig, ødela lydteknikerne opptakene, sånn at de ikke skulle bli brukt igjen. Andre litt morsomme ting er at de brukte sjokolade som blod, for at det skulle vise bedre på svart-hvit film, og at De Niro deltok i tre ekte boksekamper i Brooklyn som forberedelse, og vant to av dem.

Filmen vant 2 Oscar, Beste mannlige hovedrolle (De Niro) og Beste klipp, og ble i tillegg nominert til 6 Oscar til; Beste mannlige birolle (Pesci), Beste kvinnelige birolle (Moriarty), Beste Kinematografi, Beste lyd, Beste Regissør og Beste film. På IMDb har den en rating på 8.4/10 med 67 618 stemmer, og er dermed på 71. plass på top 250. Se traileren nedenfor, og få sett denne klassikeren så fort som mulig!

Har du sett Raging Bull? Legg igjen en kommentar med din mening om den!

At first blush, it's middle class "Annie" with her subprime mortgage, too ignorant or materialistic to admit that she can't afford the McMansion she lives in.

At second glance, it is the greedy, not-my-problem mortgage broker who knows banks routinely sell off homeowners' loans to Wall Street investors who will be left holding the bag when homeowners default.

Looking at it from another perspective, deregulation of the telecommunications, energy and financial markets — under the premise that free markets are self-policing and never irrational —  has been blamed for everything from the collapse of WorldCom and Enron, to the subprime mortgage crisis that has spiraled into the credit crunch we see today. And the chief instigator, critics point out, is none other than Sen. Phil Gramm, Sen. John McCain's economic adviser. Is it possible that an adviser who perceives no harm in unchecked deregulation may be at a loss for words, leaving McCain's presidential campaign with little choice but to run distraction — personal attacks — at a time when the rest of the nation is galvanized around the economic harm striking ever closer to home?

Flashing back to September 11, 2001, a few may trace the problem to President Bush's not so subtle suggestion to grow the economy in support of the War on Terror. The President admonished consumers to go on spending, and thanks to what amounted to an eight-year Wall Street "stimulus" consisting of interest rate cuts and easy credit presided over by presidential appointee and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Wall Street enjoyed what some economists have described as a once-in-a-generation bull market. The bear had to make his appearance eventually.

Tracing the issue back a step further, another camp of blame-gamers pinpoints the Clinton Administration, which in 1999 "openly urged the Federal National Mortgage Association (aka "Fannie Mae") to reduce down payment and credit requirements for subprime or 'at risk' borrowers in an attempt to increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers," the Visalia-Times Delta reports.

To watch "IOUSA", a recent documentary film following former Comptroller General David Walker, who in 2005 launched a "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour", our present problems are tied not so much to who occupies office — for both parties suffer from what Walker calls a "leadership deficit" — but to a financial system that is leveraged as much as 30 to 1. Simply put, that means that for every dollar a bank has in reserve, it can borrow 30 more. Artificial money props up an artificial bubble. And to these Perfect Economic Storm clouds, we add Walker's dire warning that the U.S. is headed toward bankruptcy. Unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security, not to mention a deficit approaching $11 trillion, threaten to sink our Ship of State as it is.

Will the recently passed $700 billion bailout help?

The Dow average was already on its way to an 80-year low on September 29, when the original bailout package failed. All the while, the media elite insisted that without a bailout the hurt would hit Main Street. Yet when Friday, October 3rd's second bailout passed the House, NASDAQ and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell even as bank-to-bank lending rates hit new highs. Why would Wall Street react as if the bail out were bad news when virtually everything we've heard in the mainstream media holds otherwise?

For one, $700+ billion — which if dollar bills were laid end-to-end would reach the moon and back 138 times over — simply isn't enough. Speculative figures run as a high as $1 trillion. For another, it came too late. The subprime crisis started over a year ago, yet only in recent weeks has President Bush acknowledged that Wall Street is grappling with a "house of cards". Unemployment rates, meanwhile, have surged to 6.1 percent nationally. Make no mistake, however: The hurt at home doesn't mean taxpayers won't be called upon to write Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yet another blank check. Worse, the bailout plan might just make the problem worse, critics allege, by heaping inflation on an already shaky financial services sector.

In the midst of all the madness, perhaps there is a greater lesson here that we risk missing. That picture begins to emerge when we contemplate the notion "too big to fail".

What does that have to do with the human body, you ask?

Everything.

Call it nature or God, but every living creature is a multiple-cell organism. In fact, we have billions of tiny cells, each working in tandem to make our bodies function.

In bygone days, economies were less like machines and more akin to living organisms. Geographically rooted, they grew their own food, lent money to their own community members, put out their own fires and built their own homes with supplies they sourced within the region.

Planes, trains and automobiles have changed all that.

Today we have multinational corporations, increasingly, whose failures threaten to resonate throughout the global economy not like a handful of harmless 3.0 earthquakes on the Richter scale, but more akin to a life-altering 10.0 "Big One".

When globetrotting Gulliver begins to teeter as the ground beneath him sways, the little people won't pillage him, they'll be called upon to prop him up.

That's the New World Economy for you. This bailout isn't the first and it will hardly be the last.

What's wrong with this picture?

Globalism produces unprecedented potential for gain, but it also puts us at proportional risk. Socialist or Capitalist, the role governments undeniably play is this: underwriters of corporate risk. We need to stop right there and think long and hard about whether this is the road we want to go down.

One of the core problems, which is so taken for granted that it hasn't even received a second look in the mainstream media, is that an efficient market rests upon a surprisingly delicate underpinning. Sure there are trillions of dollars trading hands, and when all goes well it is a sight to behold. But what happens when the economic body gets sick? Can 10,000 or so massive cells do the work of millions that preceded them?

Probably not.

If our bodies were designed or evolved in the manner modern economies are structured, a simple cold, let alone heart disease or cancer, could take us out. A couple of sick cells would be sufficient to bring the entire body to its knees, a far cry from a massive, systemic infection attacking billions of cellular citizens.

Precisely the problem with conventional thinking is that it operates on the assumption that the Titanic is impossible to sink. But what if we spin the question around and ask ourselves what we can do to protect ourselves should the unthinkable take place?

What we need, the so-called tree huggers have, without realizing it, been calling for for years: Sustainability. Only this time, we're not just talking ecosystems. We're talking financial systems.

There's a lot of buzz about "going Green". But greening our economy isn't just about clean energy. It's about local control. Self sufficiency. The type of accountability no regulatory system can substitute for: neighbors, coworkers, bankers and business owners who know each other by name, who rely on each other. When you see the consequences of your actions played out not on some abstract global financial stage but in your own backyard, that's what economists call an incentive: an incentive not to play poker with your neighbor's money.

You might call this concept a CELL-BASED ECONOMY. It's modeled after the only sustainable concept evolution has taught us: A cosmos filled not with a few thousand Jupiter-sized bodies with a disproportionate gravitational pull, but blanketed as far into the depths of space as an astrophysicist can see. The human and animal organism, likewise, populated not by the few and irreplaceable but the many and regenerative, whose power lies in numbers, not size. Until economies restore a sense of "place" within the larger economic body, markets will again and again prove in need of oversight (regulation) to reign in the faceless masterminds of greed taking advantage of nameless victims, which the current globalized modus operandi all but encourages.

We'll know we've become active stake holders in this Cell-Based Economy the day we refer to economic participants as people, not too-big-to-fail multinational "entities" that can make or break economies in a few short months or years. Under this scenario, loan originators would not abdicate responsibility. For only when risk is no longer another investor's problem, will much of the temptation to approve hasty, house-of-cards loans fall by the wayside.

Going back to a Main Street economy might just save us from ourselves. Why? Because the more impenetrable the global economy grows, the more difficult it becomes for would-be entrepreneurs to elbow their way in to the feeding trough otherwise known as the American Dream. President Woodrow Wilson, as far back as 1913 in a book titled "The New Freedom", bemoaned the fact that we have a "system of credit" that all but precludes the little guy. We pay more taxes yet become, essentially, debtors, producing very little. Indeed, that is what the United States has become: Not the proud productivity-based economy of yesteryear, but a Middle Class-squeezing, downwardly mobile "consumer economy" whose very survival is dependent on the goodwill of global benefactors (investors). So when former Comptroller General David Walker talks about an $800 billion annual trade deficit with China in the chilling financial exposé "IOUSA", this is the kind of leverage we're giving away. Equally disturbing, it all but hog ties us where foreign policy is concerned. We can ill afford to anger nations who prop us up financially by opposing the actions of their Axis of Evil allies, be it saber-rattling nationalists in Iran or Russia.

The fact that so many Americans have poor credit, little or no rainy day fund to speak of, and are defaulting in such vast numbers paints an unsustainable economic picture. But it isn't just the little guy who is struggling. If nothing more, this debacle has proven that Big Business is more vulnerable than we thought. Looking back a year or so ago when the first rumblings on Wall Street were shaping up, sovereign Mid East wealth funds came to the rescue. Yet NASDAQ Chief Executive Bob Greifeld praised the 20 percent stake Arabs stood to gain in the exchange as "a good transaction for the U.S. capital markets system … it will make sure that NASDAQ is a key player in the global consolidation." If "global consolidation", arguably a euphemism for economic contraction, is what market bellwethers foresee, what does that say about the long-term solvency of the US economy?

"Last week, just by coincidence, our national debt exceeded the $10 trillion mark, and a lot of that money is owed to foreigners. The tide of money that washed away any sense of proportion or ethics on Wall Street also came in part from overseas. When critics of the $700 billion bailout complain that it was passed just to keep foreign banks happy, there’s some truth to that. It’s a chilling sign of just how much national sovereignty we’ve signed away in return for overseas capital," writes Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman.

From a foreign investment standpoint, American assets may resemble a smorgasbord — fodder for a fire sale in the event the meltdown continues despite the bailout. In one possible scenario, financial assets may go the way the U.S. steel and auto industries did in the 1980s and '90s — outsourcing investments the way steel and automobile companies outsourced production. Do those of us who call Main Street USA home wish to owe Asia and the Mid East our mortgages and 401Ks? When the dust settles, will the U.S. financial services sector have an American face?

If you bring the issue out of the abstract and closer to home, the global business model has brought us to a point where critical vaccines and medications may be manufactured by a single source. A pandemic, economic, political or natural disaster threaten to precipitate mass shortages or an over-reliance upon risky, untested foreign sources. One day, what if those shortages included food? What if a severe economic crisis combined with even higher fuel prices means that truckers are temporarily, even, unable to receive a paycheck? Will every grocery chain and retail store from one end of the country to the other face the prospect of bare shelves because the handful of transportation companies to survive globalization's push toward consolidation are idling down due to strike or disaster, manmade or otherwise?

In an efficient, mechanistic economic system there are fewer and fewer redundancies. This leaves fewer players in place to go on conducting "business as usual" in the event of a crisis. The result is that problems that formerly hit one community — not unlike the recent gasoline shortages in the Southeast following Hurricane Ike — may transform from regional problems, to national shortages, to global crisis.

There is something to be said for the idea that local communities should be self sustaining to whatever degree possible. This means that each region of the country should develop or retain capacity to produce food and energy using locally sourced suppliers, and to maintain manufacturing capacity. That community model may seem unrealistic for now, but it should be a long-term national security priority.

It was once believed with near religious devotion that the world was flat. And later, infamously, that the Titanic was too sophisticated to sink. If there's one thing this economic crisis has taught us, it's never say never.

It would be foolhardy to manufacture a rope with only one thread, for at best it could be described as a string. Yet with each multinational merger, each death of a competitor, each transformation of a local economy into a consumer economy, we're taking a rope of many threads and reducing it, cut by cut, to just one cord. That sort of efficiency may reduce waste and redundancy, but it's also the source of our global economy's potential unraveling.

Perhaps it's time to rethink basic assumptions.

The prospect of global recession is an inevitable byproduct of an economy that has become overly enmeshed. Like a pair of young lovers joined at the hip, this is a relationship that might look ideal at first glance, but is psychologically dysfunctional. None of this is to say that international business ought to become a thing of the past. National and international trade brings commodities that are overabundant in one region to areas of the world where they are in great demand. That form of commerce cannot and should not be stopped. Rather, it is a long-overdue reminder that global business should not come at the expense of local productiveness (sustainability).

Reviving an economic system that promotes multiple supply chains with emphasis on local distribution and long-term sustainability as a hedge against instability elsewhere in the world flies in the face of what started out as a giddy 20th Century globalization experiment.

But if and when the Titanic sinks, nobody will be laughing — except, perhaps, the World Federalists.

###

SOURCES

Duck and Cover: It's the New Survivalism

Learn how your elected representatives voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

The moon, Mars and bailouts: wrapping our minds around what $700+ billion looks like

U.S. stocks fall as recession signs outweigh bank bailout plan

Effects of Wall Street crisis will be felt for years

IMF says U.S. recession will slow global growth
Calls shock to world economy biggest ‘since the Great Depression’

Journalist critiques coverage: Media haven't deigned to cover bailout dissent

Billions in earmarks in Senate's bailout bill

Economists say bailout necessary, but every option has drawbacks

A curious coalition opposed bailout bill

Chicago area economists lead opposition to bailout

Protest letter from 200 economists, including three Nobel Prize Laureates

The Bailout Bill's Foreign Aid Program
Commentary: Foreign banks should not be allowed to participate

Historic Bailout Vote: House, Senate vote on bailout plan to 'rescue' financial markets — Can it?

Can the U.S. learn any lessons from Sweden's banking rescue?

A bailout that wouldn't cost you a dime

Congressman Peter DeFazio Introduces the No Bailouts Act

No Bailouts Act supporter, Congresswomen Marcy Kaptur, on the Record

Why bailouts do not work

Crisis exposes flaws in U.S. economy, tarnishes image

Wall Street meltdown primer

Fixing up the cracks

Nice bailout. Now what else you got?

Why the bailout stinks

Wall Street's stock has dropped in world's eyes

Now Wall Street may shun $700bn bail-out

Feeling Wall Street's pain, from Manila to Paris

Wall Street follows the Middle East trade route

Sleepless Nights : Mideast sovereign wealth fund investments on Wall Street

Chrysler Building on the block: sovereign mid east wealth fund to pay $800M

Lost Sovereignty: Oil-rich fund eyeing U.S. homes

Peter J. Cooper's Weblog: Glodman Sachs sets up funds to invest bank money in the Middle East

Ron Paul’s Texas straight talk on the bailout

Ron Paul rails on $700 billion Wall Street bailout

Long-term capital: It's a short-term memory: former Fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan's role

McCain's scary economic advisor

The subprime mess and Phil Gramm: An experiment in deregulation

Foreclosure Phil

The real legacy of the 'Reagan Revolution'

Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron's Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans

The coming collapse of the middle class

Does the free market erode moral character?

A New American Dream: From subprime crisis to liveable communities

And some are elaborately ornate (and posturing!), like this guy:

But the ones I've really been enjoying are the slightly angular, stylised stone carvings that appear all over the place, many on Amsterdam School (c. 1915 - 1940) style brick & stone buildings and bridges. If it creeps, crawls, swims, springs, swoops or swings, gallops, lopes or flies you'll find it looking down at you from some or other building's facade or bridge's brick support.

Despite my googling efforts I haven't been able to find any specific information about these beasties (just vague mentions like "... the multifarious vocabulary of the Amsterdam School, enriched by references to organic and animal shapes", from this book). But they're such a charming bunch I think they deserve so much more - I'd love to see them all gathered together in a book full of sumptuous photographs and information about the artists and craftsmen who made them. They give new meaning to the term 'urban jungle'!

If anyone knows of a resource that discusses these decorative stone creatures in any depth I'd love to hear about it (perhaps there's something in Dutch that my second-rate Dutch language googling didn't unearth?).

The heart-warming stone sculpture below (which I call the 'bunny whisperer', and which always makes me think of kozyndan's great series of bunny drawings) adorns the Muzenplein bridge in Oud Zuid. Apparently it's by the sculptor and ceramicist Hildo Krop, who was Amsterdam's official city sculptor for many years (until c. 1967). He started out as a pastry chef, and I can definitely imagine the below sculpture as a great big pile of chocolate smothered profiteroles!

On Wednesday, October 1st, Activists with Rainforest Action Network hung an enormous American flag with “FORECLOSED?” emblazoned on it right behind the iconic Wall Street bull. I saw the police trying to take it down on my way to work. About 30 protesters gathered around with signs saying “families before finances” and “our money, our planet, our future.”

While Congress is on the verge of a bailout, it’s clear that many people want to hold Wall Street accountable for its own economic downfall. This could be a rare occasion when the commies and some Republicans agree: let Wall Street fail. Those on the far left are eager to see what happens when Capitalism is left to its own devices and those on the far right want to keep the free market intact.

Let’s give it a shot and please ‘em both.

He's in there somewhere.. but it's a long way to run, so we didn't chance it!

We went down the lane by the farm instead.. we're not supposed to go down there, but it's safer! We had to go on the walk up past Hill Barn two days in a row because Mummy lost her phone on Tuesday night.. again, yes it was the second time, she lost the first one in Blandford but managed to get one just the same on eBay for 99p. So, last night we walked a long way because when she realised we turned round and walked back the way we'd come, but didn't find it. I sniffed and sniffed  but couldn't smell it.

Anyway, this morning we did the walk again and took daddy's phone to ring mummy's phone.. and we found it! It was near Hill Barn just past where we'd stopped when we met a chocolate labrador called Barney out on his walk with his mum - we had great fun running around together, he was almost as much fun as Shelby and Maja.

La competición se celebrará en la gran Carpa de Marina d’Or, en la que participarán más de 5.000 personas procedentes de toda España.
El Cricket es una variante del juego de los dardos que consiste en “cerrar” una serie de seis números más la diana acertando tres veces con los dardos a cada uno. Los números con los que se juega más frecuentemente son el 20, 19, 18, 17, 16 y 15, más la diana (también llamada bull). De este juego existen multitud de variantes, según se aumente la dificultad, eligiendo opciones como por ejemplo llevar una puntuación, a favor (cricket “normal”) o en contra (cricket cut throat o a degüello), o no llevarla (no score), que condicionará que se pueda ganar la partida una vez cerrados los siete números.

Sobre Marina d'Or
Marina d'Or es un grupo empresarial español que cuenta con más de 25 años de experiencia en el mundo de la construcción, promoción inmobiliaria y turismo.

La definitiva consolidación de sus operaciones en España, donde el Grupo ha vendido más de 15.000 viviendas, ha llevado a Marina d'Or a afrontar un proceso de diversificación internacional -iniciado en 2005- a través de la creación, puesta en marcha y comercialización de proyectos urbanísticos bajo la política de sostenibilidad y máximo respeto por la conservación del medio ambiente. El Grupo cuenta ya con de 110 oficinas de venta propias en 22 países.

This morning I read a story on foxnews.com.  It seems that choice of Gwen Ifill, who by the way is black, to fill the role of moderator in Thursday night’s Vice Presidential debate is being questioned.  She has written a book (The Breakthrough), and its premise is that ‘the civil rights movement has cleared the way for post-racial politicians to ascend to new heights.’  In layman’s terms, it is a book that chronicles the rise of African Americans in American politics since the civil right’s movement began.  Obama’s success, among that of others, is discussed in the book.

The point made by Foxnews and the National Review is that her appropriateness as an unbiased debate moderator is now being called into question because of this.  While I can understand why a person would be given pause when presented with the basic facts of the issue, I do not believe that it is fair to assume that because she is black, and wants to write a book that spotlights the recent political successes of African American, then she must be pro-Obama, and as a consequence is not professional enough to moderate a VP candidate debate.  Considering the subject of the book, it has to include Obama, just as it has to include Clarence Thomas (I am just assuming that it does).  At this point, I do not think it is realistic to think a person could find an intelligent person in the media who is not already leaning one way or another (Personally, I am convinced that 95% of media personalities wear ankle weights on their right legs to keep them from toppling over).

When Sarah was chosen as the VP candidate, some were questioning the vetting process in the McCain camp.  I think they would vet the moderator of the VP debate with almost the same scrutiny as they did the actual VP, considering the weight that the VP choice has been given in this campaign.  As a result, I am now beginning to question the McCain camp’s vetting process also.  I am less concerned with the book than I am that Ifill is an anchor for PBS, the home of Bill Moyers.  If they did not vet Ifill well enough to determine that she is ‘pro-Obama,’ then that is their problem.  I’m sure that it would have been easy enough to discover that she was publishing a book!  In the end, I still do not think that there is enough evidence of her perceived ‘bias’ to recuse her from consideration as a moderator, and I will even give her credit for not pushing her book to press before the election.  She could obviously make more money, and hedge her bets in the case of an Obama loss, if she were to release the book during the election.

In truth, I believe that this, unfortunately, is an example of the newest strategy regarding Palin to come out of the McCain camp.  They have observed the fact that the public has risen to her defense in the wake of the flood of unwarranted attacks on her coming from the left.  This has been good for her, up to this point, but as it begins to look like a strategy, it will quickly wear thin.

The current cry coming from the National Review and other conservative publications that Ifill cannot be objective, begins to ring hollow in the light of all of this.  It looks like a preemptive strike to make Ifill look bad if she asks Palin any tough questions, calls het to the carpet on an answer, or lets Biden savage her.  I believe this is being floated to force Ifill to water-down her approach to Palin in the hope that she will not want to even give the appearance of any bias.  Mark my words, the McCain campaign will not ask her to recuse herself from the debate.  They want her there, and they want her (Ifill) on the defensive.

I believe the McCain strategy of making Palin look like a victim is a mistake.  I do not have a lot of faith in the American public to be able to understand what is going on in general, but at this point they have been conditioned by recent events to be aware of unfair attacks on Palin.  If Ifill is an unfair moderator, and if Biden attempts to savage Palin, it will be readily apparent.  The McCain camp and the National Review do not need to do the attempt to set the stage for it.

I have a friend (www.exploded.wordpress.net) who has called on the McCain camp to let Sarah be herself, and take her off the leash.  He is absolutely right.  She needs to be allowed to go back to the Sarah we saw bowing-up to Charlie Gibson. 

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling about this debate.  I am afraid that she is going to be given a list of talking points and a script by her McCain handlers in the hope that she will be able to stay on message while Biden makes an ass of himself.  If this is the case, she will look off-balance, and she will indeed be savaged by Biden.  You cannot be a ‘pit bull’ and a victim at the same time, and remember by definition victims are losers.  My greatest fear is that she breaks down and we will have a Ferarro incident.  If that happens we all might as well vote Obama because it will be over.

The idea behind this graph is to implement "contrarian investing" or betting against the crowd. The markets, being an expression of investor emotions, have a tendency to overshoot the underlying economics that they are supposed to represent.

However, especially with the markets roiling nowadays on large bank failures and market uncertainty, very rarely do we see stock prices reflect the smooth S-curve depicted above. In reality, the curves are choppy and unpredictable.

Here's a modified curve, based on more realistic market movements, and the sentiments of bullish and bearish players in any given market:

The emotions at play depend on which part of the curve the market is perceived to be, and what kind of player is involved:

So, imagine conversation between a bull and bear at various points across the curve, just to confirm why markets encourage bi-polar behaviour amongst its participants:

1. Market Rallies
Bull: Everything's fine!
Bear: How high can it go?

2. Uptrend Accelerates
Bull: What a Market!
Bear: Irrational! Things are so expensive!

3. Market High
Bull: I'm gonna be rich!
Bear: I gotta get out now!

4. Correction
Bull: We're now in a bull market.
Bear: How could I have been so wrong?!

5. New High/Test of High
Bull: This market's unstoppable.
Bear: Market? Feh!

6. Break
Bull: It will come back.
Bear: Thing's are just beginning.

7. Crash
Bull: How low can it go?
Bear: Everything's going to hell.

8. Downtrend accelerates
Bull: Irrational! Things are so cheap!
Bear: What a market!

9. Market Low
Bull: I gotta get out now!
Bear: I'm gonna be rich!

10. Bounce
Bull: How could I have been so wrong?!
Bear: We're now in a bear market!

11. New Low/Test of Low
Bull: There's no hope!
Bear: This market's unstoppable!

12. Breakout
Bull: A light at the end of the tunnel!
Bear: It will come back.

A friend of ours is having a baby shower, she is from Spain. So I decided to make a onesie with a bull. I printed it at home, it turned out ok I think.

Here is the sketch, then the colored version and finally the onesie.