Yesterday I received my copy of Vincent R. Locascio’s “Special Priviledge: How the Monetary Elite Benefit…At Your Expense“. It was published in 2001 by the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME) and I hope they don’t mind my quoting vast tracts of it here.

This book predates Locascio’s “The Monetary Elite vs.…

We have all heard of “moral hazard”.  It is something that was said to have kept Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson awake at night when he was agonizing over how to thaw out the frozen inter-bank credit system in mid-late 2008.  Moral hazard is defined as the risk that the monetary powers that be take when they create “money” out of thin air for the express purpose of bailing out banks and corporations whose failure would drag the entire economy down with them. …

Some people like, to make all the rules and tell others what to do.
They make it their way, so they always win, and the others always lose.
Street gangs and madmen How they wage their private wars
In bankers clothes their hearts are froze and
Their wives hold hands with whores

— Airbourne: Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast

There is a lot of “empirical data” coming out in reputable information channels (like Facebook and Twitter) that the 1% are over-represented in the corridors of power, have more than their fair share of wealth and are basically to blame to for mess the world is in right now.…

Mr Geithner wants his European counterparts to help him maintain the facade that “liquidity” equals  creating “money” out of thin air through the issuance of new debt paper and that the financial markets can  be kept happy by covering their bets.  The financial markets have literally bet the house on the promise  that what they are “investing” in is too big to fail – or even go down in price on a long-term basis. …

When I was a child, I was proud of my heritage and the fact that I counted among my distant relations none other than Otto Von Bismarck, the inventor of the modern welfare state as we know it today. As I matured and learned more about things like economics, math and the works of Charles Ponzi, I began to downplay my roots to Herr Bismarck.…

Mark was nice enough to let me post about my venture, Capitalist Collective:

I am looking to hire a senior and junior analyst for my NYC-based hedge fund, Fertilemind Capital.

I have decided to do away with the usual resume game and instead I am hosting  a stock-picking contest @http://www.capitalistcollective.com…