This is like the preface to a Sci-Fi movie

Before I get into my rhetoric about a recent article I read in the IHT I would like just to thank Diana from Rouse & Co. for saving my week from eminent disaster.

And now my rhetoric. This morning I was doing my usual scan of international news and the Bear Stearns saga and how JPM will be upping their offer to $10 per share to quell the cries of the Bear Stearns shareholders (obviously the American homeowners don't scream loud enough for the Fed to bail them out) and I saw an article at the bottom of the IHT page entitled "Star Spanish bull to be cloned in bid to preserve fighting genes". I couldn't resist so I clicked and found this:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/23/europe/journal.php

So let me summarize this in laymen terms. They are cloning a bull that dies spectacularly. The article goes on to describe "The bull allows the matador to create a work of art, a beautiful dance," said Lázaro Carmona, a veedor, or inspector, who visits ranches on the matador's behalf and helps select animals for the fight. "It's a joint performance."A strong, aggressive bull that runs at the matador's cape allows him to shine, he said. "I think the bull should take 90 percent of the credit for a matador's triumph," Carmona said.

I don't know about you but I find that creepy. Not only does bullfighting itself seem stupid but then copying a losing bull is like Dante's hell meets groundhog day. No matter how many times you kill it. It comes back the next day with no memory of dying, fully healed as if yesterday never happened. Except the matador continues to age. Day by day this endless onslaught of identical bulls are killed and weathers down the matador until one fine day......the bull wins. The matador (aged 50) is gored by the seemingly indestructible horn. The matador vision starts to blur as the blood loss causes his body to shiver. The sound of the screaming fans fade to silence and the blue sky above fades to white as his eyes close for what he thinks will be the last time.

The screen goes black and there is silence for a moment. Then suddenly, the sound of the crowd jolts open the matador's eyes and there he is standing upright in the middle of the arena again. Cape in one hand and sword in the other. Disoriented for a second, he realizes that he is facing the bull again. But this time his strength and his youth has returned. He too has been cloned to preserve the spectacular fight between man and beast.

The next scene is 3 men in thick spectacles and lab coats sitting in a room with no windows counting the money from the ticket sales of this gladiator style event......

Like I said creepy.

President Bush Fire? Congratulation on your success.

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War 2.0 I feel compelled to comment on the current state of affairs regarding Iraq.

First of all I'd like to commend the Bush strategy's "War on Terror". The more I think about it the more it makes perfect sense. Terrorism is like a bushfire that has raged out of control. Bushfires are good things. They rejuvenate the foliage and make way for seeds to grow into the trees of the future. It's Mother Nature's way of saying "We're Gonna Have a Revolution...". So lets consider this forest that is burning the the Middle East.

But when the fire catches a gust of wind and spreads to your million dollar home in the Hollywood Hills, something must be done. You can't douse a bushfire. The only way to stop it is to back burn. To, in essence, fight fire with fire!

And there is the logic genius in the "Fight Fire with Fire" attitude of the Bush administration. When you back burn to control a fire that is out of control you burn parts of the bush (no pun intended) in a controlled manner so that the uncontrolled fire has nothing left to burn and burns out. (in case you haven't worked out the metaphor here yet FIRE = TERROR) By creating manageable terror in the US over the last 8 years, it have taken the edge off anything Osama and his troop of roving bombers can throw at the US Empire. Think about it. If you are scared of the CHANCE that your next door neighbor is a terrorist, then real terrorist might not bother to scare someone who is already scared and if you're already scared chances are that you have a 12 gage next to your front door so why risk serious injury.

Brilliant! huh?

But why stop there. Osama is probably in Afganistan or Pakistan. So lets carpet bomb Bagdad! Scare the f@#k out of the Iraqi's. Genius! Back burn even before the fire get close to the Hollywood Hills. In fact let's back burn before there's actually a bush fire.

Even Saddam tried it. Lets pretend to have weapons of Mass Destruction (by his own admission on death row) to scare the US. Although his attempt didn't work exactly as planned.

Chinese Toys, Mexican Immigrants, Dangers of Pesticides, Cancer from cigarettes, Speed Limits. All strategic ploys by the Bush Administration to create controlled terror in the hearts and minds of US citizens to make them immune if not completely prepared for any potential evils that lurk in the shadows of international diplomacy.

At the end of your second successful term as leader of the free world, I applaud your foresight. If only the incumbent will have the same wisdom as you to keep this back burning going to protect the free from the tyranny of real terror.

PS. I know, lets characterize the Chinese as a suppressive regime. It will be like the cold war all over again. You bring the popcorn, I'll bring the beer!

The opinions expressed in this blog entry do not reflect that of Blogger.com or any other associated company or organization or even in fact the Author of this blog who, as the blog suggests, is sometimes ignorant and often misinformed.

Stay tuned for our next article "Am I the only person who thinks Obama sounds too much like Osama?"

Religious Olympics

I guess Hollywood got it wrong. Monk's are not bulletproof. (I know, I know, it's in bad taste to write about something like this when people are being oppressed. It would be like writing "if you don't want to be run over by a tank...don't stand in front of them". Doctor, Doctor my arm hurts when I raise it. What can I do? Don't raise it!)

So first Myanmar, now Tibet. It seems that Buddhists have caught the "putting themselves in harms way" bug. Honestly though I can't blame them. Buddhists for centuries have been the Steve Wozniak of religions. The Hindu culture was thought to be linked to Buddhist origins, There is speculation that Jesus even spent time with Buddhists during his biblically absent years. (Turning water to wine -----Absent----- trashing the synagogue). But where is Buddhism today?

Gold - Christianity
Silver - Islam
Bronze - Hindu

And the wooden spoon goes to....

The pope has his own piece of land in Rome. Gets to go through the diplomatic lane at the airport, and he's a religious leader. Why can't the Dalai Llama get a passport with his own logo on it?

The fact of the matter is, in this day and age, there is no separation of powers. This seems to be the trend. Gone are the days when God, Queen & State were separate. Henry the VIII would be rolling in his grave now. You can't teach religion in US schools but the US banknote has "In God We Trust" written on it. (Really it should be "In <<insert your deity here>> We Trust"). Anglican is just another way of saying "Church of England". Islamic moral ethics are law on Islamic states in Saudi, Iran, Afghanistan and even Malaysia. So why not a Buddhist Independent State. Why should Buddhism be the only non-hypocritical religion?

I am sure that if this violence keeps up, the number of Buddhists around the world will increase to the point where Hindu's will be knocked out of third place in the Religious triathlon. (Individual events being self mutilation, waging war and oppressing sexuality.) Because we all know what all religion is about. REAL ESTATE.

And let me say to all the Hindu's out there today... You only have Gandhi to blame. (Yah yah, I know Gandhi is not strictly Hindu but I am writing to the ignorant. Gimme some poetic license here.)

P.S. Whoops forgot the Jews. But that's an article for another day. "God and Network-centric warfare"

SUB PRIME is code for Stu-Pid

Bear with me but my high school economics is a bit rusty.

The Sub Prime Crisis (SPC)... I'm going to digress here and marvel at wonders of the English Language. My wife has asked me a couple of times what the Sub Prime "thing" is and I don't blame her. The name "Sub Prime" suggests something financially technical but in essence it is a
way to describe people with shit credit. It just made it easier to refer to them in business. Can you imagine people in the mortgage industry saying "Hey Bob, well done on last months results. How many of those contracts were WORTH SHIT?"

The way I understand it (and I welcome your corrections...of course no one reads this so I will forever remain oblivious) The SPC and subsequent downfall of Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and other investment banks is the result of relaxing lending standards to boost the economy.
Mortgage brokers who in essence are Sales people working on a commission. They don't actually care if the person who is borrowing the money has the capacity to pay because they get paid at the commencement of the mortgage. The payoff for having shit credit, is the mortgage has
a higher interest rate attached to it. ....

Ok, here's where you lose me. If you are lending to someone with bad credit. Why would you create a product that makes it hard for them pay it back?? Isn't that just inviting them to default on their loan? But anyway, it was what it was and nobody thought it was a BAD idea to lend to people without the capacity to pay back and the brokers went on a free for all.

Of course on the other side of the coin, If you have bad credit and someone offers you a loan, regardless of the interest rate you're gonna take it. Why? because your bad credit rating exists BECAUSE you have a history of borrowing money that you don't have the capacity to pay back!

ANYWAY, The mortgage originators therefore throw all this money at the folk who won't pay it back and of course the money ran out. So they take all these worthless high interest sub prime contracts, securitize them and sell them to the investment banks. High risk, High return right. So
the mortgage originator offloads the risk to the investment banks who in turn give them more cash to lend out. (Simplistic I know but I am a simple soul)

So this goes on for a couple of years, China becomes a threat, taking away heartland American manufacturing jobs. Mortgages are defaulted, the Mortgage Backed Securities turn to shit. And Bear Stearns gets bought out by JPMorgan. - Then we discover that throughout all this time of
loose lending the US was actually in a Recession. Thats like buying a vacant block of land, planning to build your own house and realising you have an advanced case of cancer.

Hmmm. So you artificially stimulated spending and you still went into recession you might think to leave the economy alone right? Let it heal a bit. Find that mythical equalibrium. I also realise that there are may other factors in play here, and my summary could probably be better illustrated in cartoon form but I ask the question now. What is lowering interest rates going to do?

Mr. Moore my High School Economics teacher taught me to memorise the effect certain monetary policy initiatives would have on the economy and if I recall correctly, lowering interest rates will reduce savings, increase lending, increase spending, boost the economy, lower the value
of the dollar and pretty much make the US economy think that it is an end of season sale..... Sounds like a happy ending except that relaxing lending criteria was also a policy to stimulate spending too, and look where that landed them.

This is where my economic understanding gets a bit blurry. If by artificially stimulating spending through relaxed lending criteria nobody foresaw that the MBS would default, what will the unforeseen ramifications of artificially lowering interest rates in a time when the greenback is experiencing already all time lows. Back in the 90's Australia in the PM Paul Keating years experienced the "Recession they had to had" when they relaxed controls of things like exchange rate to make the Australian economy more lean and reactive. Recent actions by the Fed & US Treasury seem in the opposite spirit. Years of economic over-management is going to cause the machine to break eventually and the recession that the US is now will pale in comparison to the
Depression that they will have in the future.

The only light at the end of tunnel though is that over the past 7 or so years, the Government has dumped billions into the war, creating employment & stimulating certain sectors of the economy. If that ends, then the US is going to really be SUB PRIME.

Good Luck Y'all, I'm off to buy some Gold.