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OzRant: OPen Up and Say AAAAaargh!!

Well, the weekend has come and gone, and I am only very slightly closer to having the new USRant finished. I have managed to cough up about eight kilos of thick green snot, courtesy of a chest infection I got while in a French detention centre in November... just when I think that the damn thing is licked, it rears its head again.

Either that, or I am allergic to something - and I am trying like blazes to avoid taking antibiotics to 'clear it up' (i.e., to help the underling bacteria to develop new and treatment-resistant strains). 

I look forward to the day when we can all be converted to a bitstream and shuffle off these stupid meatbags that we use for transport. Although I am rather fond of my projection into 'meatspace' (and the chicks can't get enough of me... they think they can, but they're kidding themselves), it seems to me that our meatbags are really rather a shit design: prone to decomposition, decay and other things that start with 'de' that are, on the whole, unpleasant. If I had set about creating Man in my own image, I would have given him a carbon fibre chassis and some racing stripes... and less on the snot-producing side of the ledger.

However I have done some other stuff to make the RantCharts (the little link boxes over in the right column) a bit sexier - for the moment I've only put the new sexiness in the Stocks chart thingo (which produces a fairly rudimentary chart in its 'free' version). Today I will port the new logic across to the other charting sections.

What can one say about the state of the markets? Well, apart from gloating at the inability of the world's political classes to continue their shell game, not a lot. The current decline is overdue, and is nowhere near overdone. For markets to return to a situation where they contain anything other than speculative merit, they would have to fall another 40% overall.

That is not to say that there are not good stocks about - but when major stocks have dividend yields which are lower than the B-rated debt of the same company, then you know that the stock is still massively overvalued (I'm looking at you, News Corpse - but it applies to others as well).

I mentioned this for the first time in 2000 - that since bonds have a senior claim over cash flow than stocks do, their inherent risk is a fortiori lower than stocks. As such, stocks ought to have higher expected returns - by which I do not mean a higher probability of finding a bigger idiot than you. If you consider that at some point stocks must fall into like with a sensible valuation (as in discounted cash flows) then you can understand that a situation in which a senior debt trades at a discount to its underlying stock, is absurd.

Speaking of News Corpse, what a coincidence that News Corpse's stock has tanked pretty badly following their Soviet-style exclusion of Ron Paul from the New Hampshire candidate's debate (yeah). Faux Noise (owned by News Corpse) initially claimed that it excluded Paul because he didn't poll in the double digits... but then he did (in the Iowa caucuses)... at which point they changed their story to something I have not even bothered to read. Funnily enough, the backlash amongst Paul supporters reached all the way to the state Republican party machine in New Hampshire, which declared it was no longer prepared to sponsor the debate on Faux. 

As I mentioned at the time, if News Corpse stock got downward momentum, then every leveraged punter in the world would jump on its neck. Given that fair value for the stock (basis NWS) is about $5, it's still got massive potential downside.

Citibank stopped people from withdrawing their full whack from its ATMs recently... explaining that some ATMs had been hacked. 

Yeah, right... why only Citi? I smell a corpse in their accounts, and a need to retain cash to keep within regulatory guidelines.

Major Market Indices

The broad market - the All Ordinaries (XAO) - had its worst day in quite a while, posting a loss of 145 points (2.27%), finishing at 6240.4 points. The intraday high of 6356.2 was at 10:00 am (i.e., when 90% of stocks were not open, and therefore not contributing - negatively - to the index). The Strayan market got the pain over with quickly (like ripping off a sticking plaster), with the low for the day set just under 90 minutes into the session (the low was 6229 - set at 11:25 am). After a feeble attempt to rally of the low, the market thought better of it and bumped along the bottom for the rest of the session.

Total volume traded on the ASX was 1.51 billion units, 8% above the market's 10-day average. The ASX's daily listing of all stocks included 1401 different 3-letter FPO's which traded (i.e., had non-zero trade volume). Of these, 240 issues rose, with volume in rising issues totalling 506.2 million units. Advancing issues were swamped almost 4:1 by the 932 stocks that fell: the advance-decline volume stats were not as bad, since aggregate declining volume traded was 938.9 million shares (less than twice the amount of advancing volume). But that volume tilt must have been the result of stocks outside the All Ords, because within the All Ords the volume tilts were much worse.

Of the 480 All Ordinaries components, just 49 rose while 391 fell. Volume was tilted in favour of the losers by a margin of 25.7:1, with 22.86 million shares traded in gainers while 586.5 million shares traded in the day's losers.

The Index that forms the cash basis for the SFE's Share Price Index Futures - the S&P/ASX 200 (XJO) - got a kicking which was exactly in line with the ALL Ords: the XJO shed 145.2 points (2.3%), closing out the session at 6161.6 points.

The "heavy hitters" of the Australian market - the ASX 20 Leaders (XTL) - were taken to the woodshed somewhat, sliding 71 points (2.05%), closing out the session at 3395.4 points. The internals of the index were utterly dismal: not a single stock registered a gain for the session. The 21 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 103.12 million units; all of it to the downside.

The following stocks were the worst-performed within the index:

• Stockland (SGP), -$0.3 (3.59%) to $8.05 on volume of 4.5 million shares;
• CSL Limited (CSL), -$0.99 (2.79%) to $34.50 on volume of 960.7 thousand shares;
• National Australia Bank Limited (NAB), -$1 (2.68%) to $36.33 on volume of 4.5 million shares;
• Westfield Group (WDC), -$0.51 (2.57%) to $19.30 on volume of 12.1 million shares; and
• AMP Limited (AMP), -$0.25 (2.53%) to $9.64 on volume of 2.8 million shares.

At the shallow end of the market-cap pool, lie the denizens of the ASX Small Ordinaries (XSO) still found it impossible to get their heads above water. The small end of the market fell a teensy bit harder than its large-cap counterpart, sliding 91.3 points (2.37%) to finish a horrible session at 3753.7 points.

Among the stocks that make up the Small Caps index, 17 index components finished to the upside, and of the rest, 168 closed lower for the session.

The 193 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 144.47 million units: volume in the 17 gainers totalling 14.18 million shares, with trade totalling 127.92 million units in the index's 168 declining components. The major percentage gainers within the index were

• Lynas Corporation Limited (LYC), +$0.08 (7.21%) to $1.19 on volume of 7.1 million shares;
• Super Cheap Auto Group Limited (SUL), +$0.14 (3.27%) to $4.42 on volume of 25.5 thousand shares;
• Platinum Australia Limited (PLA), +$0.08 (3.1%) to $2.66 on volume of 583.1 thousand shares;
• Customers Limited (CUS), +$0.01 (3.03%) to $0.17 on volume of 208.5 thousand shares; and
• Resolute Mining Limited (RSG), +$0.06 (2.93%) to $1.93 on volume of 652.6 thousand shares.

In the red-zone of the little-stock index, the following list represents the biggest downers (in terms of percentage decline):

• Independence Group NL (IGO), -$0.87 (9.68%) to $8.12 on volume of 460.3 thousand shares;
• Housewares International Limited (HWI), -$0.19 (8.56%) to $2.03 on volume of 13.4 thousand shares;
• Challenger Diversified Property Group (CDI), -$0.08 (7.58%) to $0.92 on volume of 362.2 thousand shares;
• Commander Communications Limited (CDR), -$0.02 (7.55%) to $0.25 on volume of 2.1 million shares; and
• Reckson New York Property Trust (RNY), -$0.05 (7.35%) to $0.63 on volume of 22.1 thousand shares.

Index Changes

Code	Name	Close	+/-	%	Volume
XAO	All Ordinaries	6240.4	-145	-2.27	615.3m
XTL	ASX 20	3395.4	-71	-2.05	103.1m
XFL	ASX 50	5972.3	-129.2	-2.12	254.8m
XTO	ASX 100	4979.1	-116	-2.28	423.9m
XJO	ASX 200	6161.6	-145.2	-2.3	523.2m
XKO	ASX 300	6178.9	-144.7	-2.29	568.4m
XMD	ASX Mid-Cap 50	6357.7	-206.3	-3.14	169.1m
XSO	ASX Small Ordinaries	3753.7	-91.3	-2.37	144.5m

Market Breadth

	ASX20	XTO	XJO	XAO	XSO	Market
Advances	0	2	2	49	17	240
Declines	21	98	99	391	168	932
Advancing Volume	0m	5.1m	5.1m	22.9m	14.2m	506.2 million
Declining Volume	103.1m	418.8m	420.1m	586.5m	127.9m	938.9 million

GICS Industry Indices

Among the 11 industry indices, the news was universally negative: not a single sector managed to break into the "Win" column.

Since none of the industry sectors registered a gain for the session, there is no point in burdening ourselves with the internal behaviour of advancing sectors... on to the losers.

The worst-performed index for the session was Information Technology (XIJ), which dipped 19 points (3.35%) to 548 points. There are only 2 stocks in the index, which has been going silly recently based on the acquisition of a large stake in IRESS by the Commonwealth Bank. But even that was not enough to help today - both stocks fell, volume traded totalling 1.1 million units.

• Computershare Limited (CPU), -$0.29 (2.99%) to $9.40 on volume of 825.8 thousand shares; and
• Iress Market Technology Limited (IRE), -$0.23 (2.88%) to $7.77 on volume of 271.7 thousand shares.

Just missing out on the wooden spoon was Property Trusts (XPJ), which slid 66.9 points (3.27%) to 1976.2 points. The 20 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 181.24 million units; there was not a single index component that wasspared from the carnage, Centro - which had been touted as being able to withstand recent bad publicity - capitulated in a fairly newsworthy way, but it had some company...

• Centro Properties Group (CNP), -$0.09 (7%) to $1.20 on volume of 63.9 million shares;
• DB RREEF Trust (DRT), -$0.12 (5.99%) to $1.81 on volume of 12.8 million shares;
• Valad Property Group (VPG), -$0.07 (5.22%) to $1.18 on volume of 11.8 million shares;
• Centro Retail (CER), -$0.05 (5.1%) to $0.93 on volume of 14.4 million shares; and
• APN/UKA European Retail Property Group (AEZ), -$0.04 (4.17%) to $0.92 on volume of 2.4 million shares.

Third-to-last amongst the sector indices was Materials (XMJ), which slid 390.4 points (2.56%) to 14873.9 points. The 43 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 78.73 million units; this is the first of the major declining indices that actually had a rising index component. The 41 decliners had volume traded totalling 71.62 million units, and volume in the lone rising index component was 7.11 million shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were

• Independence Group NL (IGO), -$0.87 (9.68%) to $8.12 on volume of 460.3 thousand shares;
• Zinifex Limited (ZFX), -$0.82 (6.73%) to $11.36 on volume of 6.3 million shares;
• Mount Gibson Iron (MGX), -$0.17 (6.09%) to $2.62 on volume of 1.8 million shares;
• Pan Australian Resources Limited (PNA), -$0.06 (5.74%) to $0.99 on volume of 2.8 million shares; and
• Compass Resources NL (CMR), -$0.16 (5.52%) to $2.74 on volume of 687.7 thousand shares.

Sector Indices

Code	GICS Sector	Close	+/-	%	Volume
XTJ	Telecommunications	1647.9	-21.6	-1.29	47m
XSJ	Consumer Staples	8749.6	-126.8	-1.43	15m
XUJ	Utilities	6442.7	-130.9	-1.99	9m
XHJ	Healthcare	9292.9	-193.5	-2.04	8m
XNJ	Industrials	6328.6	-137.7	-2.13	50m
XXJ	ASX200 Financials ex Property Trusts	6882.2	-157.9	-2.24	46m
XDJ	Consumer Discretionary	2617.8	-59.9	-2.24	62m
XEJ	Energy	15571.8	-408.2	-2.55	24m
XMJ	Materials	14873.9	-390.4	-2.56	79m
XPJ	Property Trusts	1976.2	-66.9	-3.27	181m
XIJ	Information Technology	548	-19	-3.35	1m

All Ordinaries Major Movers

All Ords Volume Leaders

Code	Name	Close	+/-	%	Volume
CNP	Centro Properties Group	1.20	-0.09	-7	63.9m
CMJ	Consolidated Media Holdings Limited	4.16	-0.13	-3.03	31.9m
TLS	Telstra Corporation Limited.	4.63	-0.06	-1.28	24.2m
TLSCA	Telstra (Installment Receipts)	3.09	-0.06	-1.9	18.2m
CER	Centro Retail	0.93	-0.05	-5.1	14.4m

All Ords Percentage Gainers

Code	Name	Close	+/-	%	Volume
SHV	Select Harvests Limited	8.48	0.64	8.16	14k
LYC	Lynas Corporation Limited	1.19	0.08	7.21	7.1m
PRT	Prime Media Group Limited	3.78	0.23	6.48	0.2k
CFU	Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited	0.59	0.04	6.36	59.3k
RKN	Reckon Limited	1.62	0.08	4.87	125.2k

All Ords Percentage Losers

Code	Name	Close	+/-	%	Volume
PFG	Prime Financial Group Limited	0.65	-0.08	-10.96	24.4k
IGO	Independence Group NL	8.12	-0.87	-9.68	460.3k
BDG	Bendigo Mining Limited	0.38	-0.04	-9.52	3.4m
HWI	Housewares International Limited	2.03	-0.19	-8.56	13.4k
MMN	Macmin Silver Ltd	0.22	-0.02	-8.51	536.8k

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Coming Up - Screwed Up Presentation

Over the next little while I am going to be buggerising around with the layout of this blog, the better ot re-format MarketRant without trashing its layout in the interim.

I have already designed what I want MarketRant to look like, but I did it in a format that uses a HTML table structure instead of DIV statements. I prefer to use DIVs instead of tables unless the actual content is a table; it is better coding practice, but also I just like it that way.

I also really dislike the following two things (which are not a problem in the table layout, but are a pain in the DIV based one:

1. having to have nested DIVs in order to have sexy border graphics; and
2. using pre-defined background images to get around the issue above. 

You will see what I mean eventually.

Corny, But True...

Now normally, it's my inclination to think that anyone who spouts American-style New Age bollocks should be stabbed (preferably in the eye, but anywhere sensitive would do).

But - to paraphrase one of the most over-rated blind black men in history - "Lately I have had the stragest feeling..."

I saw something, somewhere (n'importe ou, as my Froggish mates say) that has - like the subject of flying sheep - "bin on my mind quite a lot, recent times" (you need a good cockney accent to get the full Python effect).

Anyhow... what I heard (and fuck me drunk, I can NOT remember where) was this:

What have you done today to make your life better?

That hit me pretty hard. Truth be told, I am not exactly shrinking violet. I don't under-rate myself - in fact I reckon i am one of the smartest eight people you will ever meet.

And lots of days, I do stuff that makes my life better - but, it has to be said, that is not my primary aim when I do whatever it is that I do.

Until now, that is.

Now, I am almost consumed by the idea that tomorrow when I get up, the first thing that I ought to do should be something that is specifically focussed on making some aspect of my life better.

Sounds cheesy - and also sounds like a violation of wu-wei... but it's not. Wu-wei simply means "making no effort" in some abstract sense - letting something become second nature.

Drugs, Sex and Politicians...

Sometimes it pains me when I read the output of people who are struggling to come to terms with the screamingly obvious; the struggle is noble, but the entire paradigm within which the struggle occurs is nobly misplaced.

There were two pieces on Strike the Root (an excellent site) today, both of which miss the mark. There's absolutely no sin in missing the mark, but the mark was missed, in my opinion.

The first piece rejoices in the removal of the ban on Ephedra (or Ma Huang as it has been known in Chinese traditional medicine for centuries). The ban was illogical from its inception, and was based on the notion that there had been 155 deaths "linked" to Ephedra.

Those of you who have read my previous stuff, know that I consistently rage about the ban in Ephedrine (which is the active ingredient in Ephedra anyway), so I am not in any way saying that the removal of the ban is wrong of unjustified.

The 155 deaths, as the writer properly points out, is the total of the deaths of all time where Ephedra was a possible contributor. In many cases, the people who died had pre-existing cardiac conditions which were exacerbated (perhaps) by taking Ephedra.

The writer then compares that, to the number of deaths caused each year by things like peanuts (death toll: plenty) and cannabis (death toll: zero). That's well and good on the face of it - there's certainly good logic behind it.

After all, if Ephedra was as "risky" as peanuts - which kill between 100 and 200 people per year - then why should peanuts get off scot-free when Ephedra was put in the regulatory doghouse?

Sounds logical - and I hasten that the writer was not advocating a ban on peanuts; he was asking why the ban on Ephedra got through in the first place.

To this chap - and people who similarly scratch their heads in teh face of informaiton like that - I yell WAKE UP.

The reason peanuts were never at risk is because nobody has a patent medicine for which peanuts are a competitor. Ehpedra (and Ephedrine) are both "generic" - meaning that no pharmaceutical company has a patent over them (and therefore, the prospect of reaping monopoly profits during the patent period).

And that is why it got banned - note also that the ban was imposed just as Big Pharma released its first-generation of sympathomimetics that do not suffer from beta-2 receptor desensitivity. Beta-2 sensitivity is why Ephedrine give a user a "headspin" and mild hypertension for the first couple of days; it is thought - erroneously, in my view - that the diminution of sensitivity in beta-2 receptors leads to a lack of efficacy of Ephedrine with prolonged use.

Of course those new drugs are under patent, and are therefore a monopolistc revenue stream. You might remember all the "talk to your pharmacist" ads on the TV where the fat woggy looking woman loses weight for her wedding, but isn't allowed to tell you what she used.

So don't look for logic - look for corruption. Big Pharma funds a lobby group (usually with some catchy name - "Americans Against Killing Children" or some heartstring-tugging crap like that), then gets someone to tell a sob story abut how Jimmy would be alive but for the nasty Ephedra he was given by that gook doctor down the road. (Never mind that "gook" is slang for Vietnamese... they all look the same in Redneck Wonderland).

The same goes for Cannabis - it was made illegal under persistent, well-funded pressure by du Pont, whose (patented) Nylon was facing competition from "Indian Hemp" in the market for ropes and textiles. Since "Indian Hemp" wasn't a scary enough name for the propaganda machine , the echo chamber was encouraged to call it "Marijuana", because that's a mexican word, and US householders have been suspicious of "wetbacks" for generations.

The rest, as they say, is history. Don't ever ask yourself why tobacco is not banned when marijuana is; tobacco is a big campaign donor, and marijuana can be grown at home (and thereby is a competitor for tobacco, as well as for 'basic' analgesics like Aspirin, Paracetamol, Codeine and Ibuprofen).

Think of the "natural" analgesics that any Afghan goat-herd or Colombian banana-grower can generate by the tonne - Cocaine, Opium, Heroin. They're not illegal because of the harm they cause - they are illegal because of the fact that in a genuinely free market, Big Pharma would have to compete against them, and a vast amount of the profit on their anagesics would disappear. Why would you pay $5 for a packet of Panadol when you could grow your own Coca leaves?

So Bayer, du Pont, Schering, Glaxo - all of these crowds are still big contributors to various organisations that lobby to keep consumers "safe" from natural anagesics. And they in turn sell (at massively inflated prices)... Xanax, Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Oxycontin... and Ritalin and the other child-depressors.

What is the annual death toll from those fuckers? Tens of thousands.

---

The second story on STR was about the fact that government (particularly the Bush administration) seems not to be subject to the same criminal sanctions as us normal shitheads. Excuse my Saxon, but isn't that stating the fucking obvious?

The writer in this case talks about Reagan's "wit and charm" as being the primary reason why he was called "The Teflon President".

How about the fact that his media handlers invented a system whereby no journalist got to ask a question? The entire "sweep down the corridor to the set-piece lectern" was invented by Reagan's men, and it meant that if any difficult question made its way past the velvet rope, the President turned and waved and smiled... and fucked off back inside.

Control the images on the news, and you control public perception. Control public perception and you will never get a big enough "push" to call politicians to account. Over time, the major media learned that to continue to get access to these things, you had to have a compliant journalist (the sole exception being Helen Thomas, who is jewel).

Apart from that, the reason Bush is not being impeached (while Clinton was for nothing apart from perverting the course of justice... at least the death toll there was only 2 o 3)... that he and his family have at least as much dirt on senior Democrats, as they have on him. It's Mutually Assured Destruction - the Cold War in microcosm.

Everybody - on both sides of the aisle - knows that the photos taken during the Reagan years, of senior politicians engaged in sex with young boys - some under the age of consent - are in somebody's possession. And they know for a fact, that the "somebody" in question has therefore got the entire Congress by the short hairs. Why do you think that nobody cares about the Palestinians? Because there's a risk that Mossad has managed to acquire copies.

There are some politicians around the place who are prepared to talk about this - mostly in "Axis of Evil" countries. The unofficial spokesman for North Korea refers constantly to the "Transatlantic Homosexual Clique" by which he means Bush. Blair and their coterie.

So why would I believe someone who is hand-in-glove with a dictator? Simple - because dicatorships are freer than most democracies... under Pharoah (probably the most oppressive dictator of all time if you got on his wrong side), tax rates were 20%. (It's in the Bible). I would much rather pay 20c in the dollar and know thatthe bloke in charge would shoot me traight in the head if I said anything bad about him, than pay 50c in the dollar and have the bloke in charge smile sweetly and organise for me to be grabbed up and sent to Gitmo.

With dictators, you know where you stand, and only agitators face oppression. it's the bastards who pretend to give a fuck about you, that you ought to be really worried about.

PunditRant: The Rude One is a MUST SEE...

I'm being a bit of a busybody today, writing volumes of crap that have little to do with the markets. I'm procrastinating a bit, trying to find things to do apart from a rather tedious and nasty database-tidying job.

The primary purpose of this missive is to heap praise on Rude Pundit; the man is as clear-eyed an analyst as ever drew breath. He uses far more colourful language than I do (although I swear like all get-out in actual speech). If political journalists were prepared to confront political bullshit the way that Rude One does, "Meet the Press" would be less like "Press the Meat" and more politicians would have red welts on their faces from being slapped hard every time the bullshit meter hit the red zone.

So seriously - check out the Rude One. People who know me personally will probably think I write it, but I swear don't.

Still'n'all, I think that it's time to ante up - for everyone who's not a brain-dead zombie. If you choose to sit in the warm bath of mainstream liquid fertisliser that passes for "news and current affairs", that's OK. Just don't be surprised when the sick bastards who want to run the world, come to force you children to go to foreign lands and kill other folk's kids (or be killed by them).

Just so's you know - there has never been a war that had public support before the State started the propaganda machine. In every major conflict of the 20th century, there was a requirement for the State to whip the masses into a martial fervour - and that's true on both sides.

In WWI, a simple territorial dispute between two Empires became a World War. Australian and American public opinion strongly favoured neutrality... then the government started the bullshit-taps. Huns were bayonetting nuns and babies in Belgium (so the story went at the time... it was entirely fabricated)... and off we went. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was elected on the specific promise not to involve the US... until he realised that if the Germans won, the US would stand to lose the debts that the Allies had accrued. So the Lusitania (a civilian ship carrying munitions - explicity rendering it a target) was used as the catalyst for US entry. And off they went, to the tune of almost half a million US dead.

WWII: similar... Roosevelt's blockade of Japan was explicitly designed to piss off the Japanese, who needed oil imports. The Japanese attacked right where the Pacific Fleet's (former) Admiral had said they would (before he got the sack). Agai, the Lend Lease debts that had been accrued by the Poms and the rest of Western Europe would have gone unpaid if the Krauts had won.

Vietnam: Bay of Tonkin... a bald-faced lie that Johnson knew was bullshit within 24 hours: 58000 US dead.

Gulf War I: babies thrown out of incubators; Iraqi forces amassed on the Saudi border (both bullshit)...

Gulf War II: mushroom clouds over Manhattan...

Imagine if nobody in the government had had a vested interest in war? (That is, if they had no ties - through political donors or personal stockholdings - in the military armaments industry, the oil industry, or the finance industry). If government was completely open - no secrets from its people or from the rest of the world? No capacity for subterfuge... no ability to say "I know stuff, but I cant tell you..."

Why do governments have such a penchant for secrecy? It can only be because they are doing stuff that most people would find unpalatable. What possible other reason could there be?

Of course, if there's stuff that they can pretend they know, but that they "have" to keep secret, then they can bullshit their populations and get away with it for long enough... then when all the lies unravel they simply say "Well it's too late to do anything now - we've all moved on from there."

Not good enough. It's the one instance where I strongly advocate the death penalty; if a decision by a government results in a death caused by a government agent or operative that would not have happened otherwise, the government minister responsible ought to be killed. (The exception here is deaths caused by the military and police forces while defending property or persons from acts of aggression within the national border).

Let's see how many party apparatchiks line up for ministerial jobs then.

 

So how come people are ever willing to believe anything that a government official tells them? Do you have any idea how long it took to get the US government to admit to all the US casualites in VietNam?

Governments have been shown thoughout modern history to be perfectly willing to lie their asses off even when the issue was one of war and peace (arguably the most important decision a government makes). How big a step is it from there (lying to get invovled in a war of choice) to actually causing or permitting to be caused the 'catalysing act' that 'drags' a country into war?

Roosevelt's foreknowledge of Pearl Harbour is now a matter of historical record, as is his deliberate ploy of attempting to get the Japanese to launch an attack. In some sense, it's no different to the Reichstag Fire or the incident at the Polish border (the probably-faked attack on a German radio post act that 'justified' German incursion into Poland).

What possible "benefit of the doubt" does the US government deserve when it comes to 911? Have they ever shown the least compunciotn about sending their kiddies off to die? Nup. Have they ever drawn the line at any subterfuge in their international relations? Wel, they've shown they're comfortable with invasion on false premises, swiftly followed by targetting civilians and civilian infrastructure, then moving on to mass imprisonment without due process, then to torture and rape. (And I'm not talking about stuff post - Sept 11 here... all of those things happened in the Phillipines in 1895...)

If you were confronted with that sort of track record, why on God's green earth would you look outside the borders for the culprits (not necessarily the perpetrators, but certainly the brainpower)

And the really disgusting thing: there's more airtime and political argument devoted to Janet Jackson's tit than to the inherent wrongness of the gobal war.

People who will permit their government to drop hellfire on children, but bridle at the word "fuck" or the sight of a middle-aged negress's boob, are not even worth calling a "civilised nation"... they're a psychotic rabble (more to the point, their leadership is the psychotic rabble... the American people are just too Sovietized to get rid of their leaders).

I've used the "f-bomb" a couple of times today, but the geopolitical situation really does warrant it. If John Howard sends troops to Iran when the US(or Israel) takes us abother step toward sgobal conflagration, he ought to be impeached. Does the Australian Constitution have a recall provision? If it does, we should "Gray Davis" his ass and force another election.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off down the shops to get some more tinfoil to make my hat thicker...

But seriously.. .as Cicero said: when looking for the likely guilty party, always ask Cui bono and cui malo; who benefits and who gets hurt?

GovRant: Letting Down the Poor...

Y'all will know and understand that I am no socialist (nor unionist, nor pro-labour type). I am an arch-freemarketeer; someone who believes that there are precious few things that can be justifiably provided by government (and none should be produced by government).

Thati s not to say that I think there are no such things as public goods. Many things for which there are good "public goods" arguments (vaccinations, basic education) still cannot be done by government, on the basis that the inefficiency of government provision more than dissipates the likely benefit to society of correcting the inherent under-expansion under market provision. The one likely area where government can meddle to its heart's content and still (probably) add to aggregate welfare, is a basic progressive-taxation welfare system.

And yet on observable criteria, the system as practiced by America is actually getting things arse-about (as usual), as the excerpt below (from this story) points out. The poor are going backwards (their incomes are growing slower than the cost of living) while the welathy are making out like bandits.

Why would this be? I don't believe for a second that it's entirely due to superior investment (although that is a factor that comes ito play; the new wealthy don't get wealthy by accident, but rather through exploiting their human capital).

It's what happens once one becomes wealthy that makes the difference, I believe. That is, whether you then go about trying to "skew" the existing system towards your end of town - lobbying for preferential treatment as far as taxes are concerned.

I am no pal of the tax-man (and he is certainly not my friend), but I understand the reason for progressivity in taxation (in dollar terms if not in rate terms).

The entire basis of the progressive-tax system is predicated on the (sensible) idea of decreasing marginal utility of money - that a dollar taken from a billionaire is worth less in utility terms to the billionaire, because it cannot provide him with a significant increase in his overall utility.

Giving that dollar to someone who only has a dollar to begin with, provides a genuine improvement to overall social welfare - because the marginal utility of the purchases it enables to the $1 man more than offsets the decrease in utility suffered by the $1b man. It's one of the most intuitively plausible hypotheses in economics.

Once you get your head around that, the deeper question is "how fast does the marginal utility of money decline?" - because at the end of the day, you ought to betrying to equalise the utility of each marginal dollar taken from each income bracket.

So the question becomes "Does a billionaire suffer as much when he loses 10% of his income as a person on $40k?". If not, then the billionaire should be taxed more of his income (or the $40k should be taxed less), until the two are equilibrated. Obviously, the various income categories are populated with a range of people with differing marginal utilities of money, but the logic remains the same.

Equally important, is the fact that politicians are entrusted with the responsibility of "safeguarding" the progressivity element in the system - that they will not permit spurious arguments to undermine progressivity in order to generate a transfer of wealth upwards through the income deciles, when the underlying aim is supposed to be to create a transfer of income, downwards.

Let's get one thing straight - I don't think that all wealthy folks are prone to attempting to corrupt the process; it's just that the ones who are prepared to, have sufficient clout to get their agenda through (there's nothing a politican loves more than kissing a wealthy donor's arse). The remainder of the wealthy simply get a 'windfall gain'. (I believe that most wealthy people have a genuine desire to do good stuff - they are quite large providers of private charity, in both absolute dollar terms and in terms of the proportions of their incomes).

So the distorted system operating in the US is the progeny of just a few genuinely, psychopathically greedy arseholes (let's refer to them as "Cheney" or "deLay" psychotype, for whom the next dollar is as important as the first, and must be had even if it involves criminal corruption).

They are responsible for all the corruption, and the genuinely entrepreneurial (and philanthropic) wealthy - like Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffet and others - simply ride the coat-tails (and in all likelihood, this results in them increaing their private philanthropy).

It still doesn't make it right, and it's yet another obvious reason why the "democratic" system needs to be changed; politicians can always get the middle class (who aspire to wealth but retire poor) to vote for tax cuts for the wealthy, simply because the middle class hope to be wealthy in the future, and thus see the tax cut as a future benefit to themselves.

Furthermore, the middle class will always vote themselves "welfare increases" - more expenditure on schools, hospitals, and so forth - as if government-provided things have no attendant "cost" simply because there's no expicit cheque written for them by the householder.

So you get a double-pinch on the budget (which, remember, should be about income transfers and the provision of public goods, and nothing more), which results in higher deficits, higher debt, and greater pressure on interest rates. And who suffers most when rates rise?

The poor (because their debt is overwhelmingly short-term high-rate debt - personal loans, credit cards and so on).

And now - after my little novel... the relevant excerpt. (from Stroke The Rich)

In 1970, the poorest third of Americans had more than 10 times as much income as the super rich, the top 1/100th of one percent. Back then the poor had more than 10 percent of all income and the super rich had one percent.

By 2000 the two groups were equal -- the 28,000 Americans at the top had as much income as the 96 million at the bottom. The poor's share of income fell by half while the super rich's share rose to more than 5 percent of all income.

Not only did the poorest third's share of income shrink, they actually had less money. The average 25-year-old man in 1970 made $2 per hour more, adjusted for inflation, than in 2000.

Over those three decades the bottom 99 percent of Americans had an average increase in total income of $2,710. That is an annual raise of less than $100 per year, the equivalent of a nickel an hour raise each year for 30 years. The super rich did fabulously better, their average incomes rising $20.3 million to an average of $24 million each.

Plot these figures on a chart and the results astound. If the increase for 99 percent of Americans is a bar 1-inch high, the bar for the super rich soars heavenward 625 feet.

DrugRant: Someone Wants Hanging...

Oh - while I'm here...

Anyone who watched Four Corners last night, should now be on the same page as me regarding both "capture theory" (whereby bureaucracies wind up being the bee-yatch of whoever has the most clout in the industry they supposedly regulate), and the corruption between major pharma companies and the second rate arseholes who call themselves "the government".

The fact that the FDA dropped the ball is no surprise - it has been Pharma's bitch since Donald Rumsfeld (then-CEO of GD Searle) used his Beltway connections to get Aspartame approved (despite the FDA panel rejecting it as unsafe). He simply got the head of the FDA replaced.

Next time some smarmy shit-head mentions the 11th of September, remind them that Cox-2 inhibitors have killed (at a rough estimate) fifty times as many folks as died the day US foreign policy returned home.

Fifty 9-11's in less than five years. bin Laden should just buy up shares in the major pharmaceutical companies - with the corrupt nexus between them and their supposed "safety and efficacy" regulators at the FDA (and the TGA here), al-Qaeda's body-count is pathetic by comparison.

The TGA will stop folks from using ephedrine which is one of the best things around for low-cost weight-loss, relatively free from side effects (some minor increase in pulse for a couple of days). Yet they will permit - and in fact help promote - the distribution of Celebrex and Vioxx (in fact, even permitting them to be subsidised via the PBS), despite heir efficacy being hypothetical!!!

Now, ephedrine is banned because once in a blue moon, a truckie would take too much in order to stay awake. The dose would wear off prematurely, and there would be a highway "incident".

But if you totalled up every death caused by ephedrine in its entire history, you don't get close to the number of deaths caused by Celebrex since 2001.

More people have been killed by the FDA/Pharma corrupt nexus than heroin, cocaine, MDMA, ecstasy, amyl nitrite and ephedrine combined (and that includes the deaths that resulted from the criminal subculture, not just from consumption of the drugs). The same is true here in Australia.

Excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but that is a fucking disgrace.

And so long as we have vermin in politics, this sort of shit will continue; the only solution is to impose a system where there can be no corruption of the government and regulators by big business... namely, by simply picking people at random from the population and putting them in charge of government departments.

Think about that: could things possibly be run worse than they are now? What difference would it make if the Minister for Health was a mechanic from Dubbo rather than a shill for the AMA? (The Minister at the time of the rapid approval of Celebrex, was Wooldridge - I hope his mother was on Celebrex).

We have got to get away from a system where some second-rate shithead lawyer can become Prime Minister - and does so as a result of decades of commitment to THE PARTY, and a continued commitment to lying his shiny little simian head off whenever he sees fit.

If each Prime Minister of Australia (and all the other hangers-on that suck at the taxpayers teat) since Federation had been randomly selected for a 2-year terms with no chance of re-selection, there is no way we would have been involved in a single 20th Century war. We would not have yet another silly experiment at prohibition (when they outlawed booze, consumption rose... which was the whole idea, since it enriched a bunch of people with political connections - like the Kennedies). We would in all likelihood not have stupid "one size fits all" speed limits, and the law would mostly be about preventing violence against property and persons.

It's the only genuinely bullet-proof system - which is why it worked so well in ancient Athens. The corrupt had to find a way to obtain and then entrench power, so they perverted the Athenian system. It's past time we went back... like I have said for a decade - how much worse would things be if we did?

I call it Randomocracy. It has no utopian vision - it relies on "designed gridlock" by disenfranchising everyone, not just those without money to bribe politicians. it also relies on the idea that a group of 200 people who have no political party affiliation will generate superior outcomes than those who need to keep an eye on their preselection.

There is no need for a gun-totin' revolution to get this into place, either... of which more later. (Basically if you get enough money together you can bribe a politician to do anything, including signing the death warrant on his entire "class"... not physical death - the death of party politics, but not of government).