Gum-Flapping Troglodyte returns to his spot under rock

At least, that's my reading of the headline.

Wish he'd done it sooner...Come to think of it, that Liberal idiot can't die quickly enough for me.

Bah!

Another year.

For what it's worth, I was listening to one of my second cousins 'round the table yesterday complaining about his 5K time at a race on Thursday morning. He's 21 or 22, so I have...considerable age on him, and I can safely say that at 39, I could easily have put a whole mile on him for the same time.

Maybe I'm not aging like wine, but I'm not exactly turning to vinegar, either.

Father Time can bite me!

Call it what you will

I don't care for the name you give it, it's all the same to me: Socialism, Communism, Corporate-Fascism, Cronyism, or any other title or moniker you can conceive of.

And Ann Barnhardt has come to terms with why it is that she is closing the doors on her commodities business...

Ah, just read the whole damned thing, post, in both parts;

"BCM Has Ceased Operations (Part 1) Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm."

And Part II;

"BCM Has Ceased Operations (Part 2)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 17, AD 2011 10:26 AM MST
. . . . Continued
Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.
As for me, I can only echo the words of David:
“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”
With Best Regards- Ann Barnhardt"

I'd highlight the relevant parts, but that would just be me giving the whole bit the bold-button.

Pay attention to what is currently happening around you and in the news. This whole thing could just about go to complete shit at any time.

How is this guy a millionaire?

Quickly scanning this story, I see this;

"(Producer and Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength member Charlie) Fink, who lives in Washington, D.C., said if the Bush tax cuts do not expire, the country 'is digging itself a big hole by foregoing revenue.'"

Which begs my original question; how does someone become wealthy enough to get into this stupid group with such complete misunderstanding of how basic economics works?

HOW?

Here's a brainer for the moron; whatever it is that you think you don't need or want of your pay, please go ahead and make a donation to the U.S. Treasury Department. They will gladly accept your check...but leave ME out of whatever grand scheme you have for attempting to "fix" whatever it is that you perceive to be the problem.

Whatta Dolt.

Me, I'm looking at methods for insulating myself and my meager wealth from the likes of these poseurs, including all of the usual tricks, and up until the recent exposure of confidential client information and identification, was considering doing some banking in Switzerland.

There must now be talk of doing this all off of the official record, including using unconventional terms and goods, and from what I've been reading in my usual haunts these days, this type of thing is quickly being adopted by more folks every day.

The Tax Man can cometh, but can not take away what he doesn't know exists, and best to keep it that way.

Great, can't wait

I mean, I know how this is going to play out, and the bootlickers will be plenty satisfied with the outcome, but I'm really wanting to see what happens afterward.

I'm really hoping for a bloodbath.

Why do I say that?

Read this snippet, from Ann Barnhardt, We the Whipped, Pt.1, Nov.12;

"...Some people have said, “I have children. What do you expect me to do?” Well, I suppose I expect you to do exactly what Thomas Jefferson did. Jefferson wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 when he was 33 years old. Writing and signing the Declaration made Jefferson, along with all of the signers, traitors and seditionists against King George III and the British Empire. This was a capital offense and pushed Jefferson and the rest of the Founding Fathers into the corner of either winning independence or dying at the end of a rope as a war trophy. At the time, his daughter Patsy was three years old. Not only did Jefferson sign the Declaration, he threw himself into the Revolutionary War and became Governor of Virginia. And while all of this was going on, Jefferson had five more children. Jane was born in 1774. A son was born and died within hours in 1777. Mary was born in 1778. Lucy was born in 1780 and died soon thereafter. Lucy Elizabeth was born in 1782. Jefferson’s home, Monticello, was a target of the British, and was in fact captured in 1781 by Cornwallis. Jefferson and his family managed to escape with only minutes to spare after being warned by a young Virginia militiaman. The British then destroyed everything except the main house. All of the crops, livestock and outbuildings were burned or seized.

Questions? The decadent freedom that you enjoy and are getting ready to piss away was largely made possible by a young man who was already financially established and the father of young children, pushing it all in and putting an enormous target on his own back. Heaven forbid that we should LEARN ANYTHING from history or FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE of those that came before us"

Look at how far we've fallen.

That Tree of Liberty is badly in need of a watering.

Not my cup of tea

I've never cared for the idea of living in or around an active fault line, so I suppose I'm going to have to move soon.

Pathetic grasping

Everyone should be laughing at this circus.

Nose this fucker over.

One.

Two.

Three.

Delicious.

I have more comments, but just can't afford the time to truly comment on the whole mess.

Eyes need to be kept wide open.