BLOGGING DAWG STYLE
THIS IS MY BLOG!
The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash
Update first on my blogs. Now all 4 blogs hosted at this host company are down! Also includes the host company’s own website. No emails or calls yet from them, so have no idea of what is going on and when all will be right again. Got me thinking, once I can get those 4 blogs running correctly on that host? I will make backups and move to another web host!
###
First published online by Ian Stewart.
It was the holy grail of investors. The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run. It was like buying or selling a bet on a horse, halfway through the race. It opened up a new world of ever more complex investments, blossoming into a gigantic global industry. But when the sub-prime mortgage market turned sour, the darling of the financial markets became the Black Hole equation, sucking money out of the universe in an unending stream.
Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.
The equation itself wasn’t the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren’t appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.
Read it all HERE.
(what is wrong today. computers doing the trading, the trading not in money or goods but in paper that is really worthless)
###
FORTUNE — In 2009 a writer named Jon Meyers was hired to furnish a screenplay for what soon became the strangest movie project of his life. The film was to star a number of well-known actors — James Caan, Talia Shire, Mark Hamill, Ving Rhames — and it would chronicle the life of Barry Minkow.
Minkow (rhymes with Kinko) was the boy-wonder business phenom of the 1980s. In 1982, at age 16, he started ZZZZ Best, a carpet-cleaning company, from his parents’ garage in Reseda, Calif., in the San Fernando Valley. The business expanded rapidly and went public in 1986, making Minkow, at age 20, worth more than $100 million on paper. But it was a giant Ponzi scheme and collapsed in May 1987. Minkow was convicted of 57 federal felonies, sentenced to 25 years, and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution.
Though raised as a Jew, Minkow then became an evangelical Christian. In prison he also began giving seminars and shooting videos designed to help detectives and accountants catch fraudsters of the type he had been. Paroled in 1995, he became the pastor of a San Diego church, where membership would more than quintuple under his charismatic leadership. In 2001 he founded the Fraud Discovery Institute (FDI), which assisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and others in shutting down at least 20 serious Ponzi schemes, including one that had swept up $500 million in investor money, and another whose ringleader was sentenced to 30 years.
MORE.
###
FEMEN Protests Gazprom Moscow (NSFW as nudity)
###
WASHINGTON – The United States and Europe are considering unprecedented punishment against Iran that could immediately cripple the country’s financial lifeline. But it’s an extreme option in the banking world that would come with its own costs.
The Obama administration wants Iran evicted from SWIFT, an independent financial clearinghouse that is crucial to the country’s overseas oil sales. That would leapfrog the current slow-pressure campaign of sanctions aimed at persuading Iran to drop what the U.S. and its allies contend is a drive toward developing and building nuclear weapons. It also perhaps would buy time for the U.S. to persuade Israel not to launch a pre-emptive military strike on Iran this spring.
The last-resort financial effort suggests the U.S. and Europe are grasping for ways to show immediate results because economic sanctions have so far failed to force Iran back to nuclear talks.
Read MORE.
###
President Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, former Pentagon consultant claims
Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimed.
The 34th President of the United States met the extra terrestrials at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954, according to lecturer and author Timothy Good.
Eisenhower and other FBI officials are said to have organised the showdown with the space creatures by sending out ‘telepathic messages’.
Bizarre: Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimedBizarre: Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimed
The two parties finally met up on three separate occasions at the Holloman Air Force base and there were ‘many witnesses’.
Conspiracy theorists have circulated increased rumours in recent months that the meeting between the Commander-in-Chief and people from another planet took place.
But the claims from Mr Good, a former U.S. Congress and Pentagon consultant, are the first to be made publicly by a prominent academic.
Speaking on Frank Skinner’s BBC2 current affairs show Opinionated, he said that governments around the world have been in regular contact with aliens for many decades.
Read HERE.
(wow, talk about some nut jobs! but then, it could explain how obama came about?)
###
CALGARY – TransCanada Corp.’s schedule for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline slipped further Tuesday, as the Calgary pipeline company said it now expects a start-up date in early 2015 rather than its previous expectation of 2014.
Earlier this year, the Obama Administration refused to grant the line a permit to cross the U.S. border, though the White House invited TransCanada to apply again. TransCanada executives say they still expect the line -envisioned to transport crude from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast – to be approved eventually.
On Monday, TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said the delay into 2015 is partly because the company is “still waiting for some answers” from the U.S. government about the process to refile its application.
The company needs to know how much material it will be allowed to refile from the previous application that was rejected by the Obama Administration early this year, Howard said. TransCanada is also continuing to gather information about a planned 100-mile re-route around an environmentally sensitive area in Nebraska, he said.
Late last year, the Obama Administration postponed a decision on the line until early 2013. U.S. Republicans then passed legislation forcing the State Department to make a decision on the line by the end of February. The White House, saying that deadline didn’t give it enough time to review the project, rejected it, but invited TransCanada to reapply.
Despite the setback, TransCanada believes it will be successful with its second application for the US$7.6 billion, 1,700-mile project that would send up to 830,000 barrels a day from Canada and the western U.S. to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Earlier Tuesday, TransCanada posted C$422 million in earnings in its fourth quarter, a 33% increase from a year earlier. It also boosted its dividend by 5%.
###
###
Now this is freaking hilarious. Our DHS highlighting just how they protect us! By stopping hair dryers from entering the country. Geesh, how about doing your real job and stop damn illegals from entering our company?
Washington (Monday, February 13, 2012) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized thousands of hair dryers recently that were determined to constitute a “substantial product hazard” under U.S. law, for failing to have adequate immersion protection. The potentially dangerous hair dryers were identified through a nationwide targeting operation by the CBP Import Safety Commercial Targeting and Analysis Center (CTAC).
As a result of the targeting operation, CBP officers in the port of Los Angeles seized an entire shipment of 9,768 hair dryers that lacked shock protection for consumers. Lack of proper shock protection could lead to an electrocution if contact is made with a water source. The port of Miami had a notable seizure of 3,614 hair dryers that also lacked proper shock protection for consumers. These two shipments, containing a total of 13,382 hair dryers, had an estimated domestic value of approximately $229,998 with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $2,506,517.
“Ensuring the safety of imported merchandise is a top priority for CBP,” said Allen Gina, CBP’s assistant commissioner for international trade. “The concerted targeting efforts of CTAC and the vigilance of CBP officers at our ports of entry will help ensure that products like hair dryers are safe for consumers and that substandard product from overseas does not reach store shelves.”
###
With $2.4 billion going to companies that Energy Department official Sanjay Wagle’s venture capital firm invested in prior to government funding.
(WaPo) — Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.
Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.
Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.
He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.
During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.
(talk about breaking the law here! our congress has got to stop this damn asshole we have as president from doing shit like this! and arrest and throw in jail all his cronies involved in this)
###
(The Hill) — Rick Santorum continued to lambaste President Obama’s healthcare policy during a Tuesday night campaign stop in Boise, Idaho, labeling members of the administration as “elite snobs.”
“They don’t believe you can make these decisions,” Sanatorium said to a packed high school auditorium. “They need to makes these decisions for you because if you were left to make decisions you will obviously jump off a cliff. Don’t you see how they see you? How they look down their nose at the average American — these elite snobs.”
Now a front-runner in the GOP race for the nomination, Santorum has turned to healthcare as a rallying cry, as he campaigns through Idaho, painting himself as the only conservative candidate who can take on President Obama in the main election.
Speaking to a crowd of nearly 4,000, the former Pennsylvania senator targeted Obama’s Affordable Care Act set to take hold in 2014 as a pompous snub to the American people. Santorum instead praised Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) healthcare blueprint as the better alternative.
(see, he speaks the truth. you and I know that obama and his entire regime think and believe we are all idiots and they know it all)
###
President Obama wants tighter gun control laws, but he does appreciate that armed Secret Service agents protect his daughters every day on their way to school.
“It might come in handy to have these super locks,” Obama joked at Master Lock in Wisconsin, noting that he will soon have two teenage daughters. “For now, I’m just counting on the fact that when they go to school there are men with guns with them.”
(have you all noticed that those who want to take away our guns got to have men with guns to protect them? bloomberg in nyc has armed security 24/7 and he wants all guns removed from all people in nyc. same with those liberals in lala land)
###
Sebelius says she didn’t talk to bishops prior to mandate
Obama Pushes Global Minimum Tax In Milwaukee ( see, this nutcase wants ONE WORLD ORDER! with of course, islamics ruling the rest)
Obama Spends $47B on Fast Train to Nowhere Again, just wasting our tax dollars on his schemes!
We are ALL Militia Extemists Now
A recently published “lexicon” distributed to thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) targets citizens concerned about their Second Amendment rights and the steady encroachment of the federal government, categorizing such as “militia extremists.”
The “lexicon,” marked Unclassified/For Official Use Only (FOUO), is dated November 10, 2011, and was sent out by email to law enforcement and homeland security agencies on November 14 by LaJuan E. Washington of the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
We have exclusively posted the DHS “lexicon” here.
Its definition of “militia extremists” states:
(U//FOUO) Groups or individuals who facilitate or engage in acts of violence directed at federal, state, or local government officials or infrastructure in response to their belief that the government deliberately is stripping Americans of their freedoms and is attempting to establish a totalitarian regime. These individuals consequently oppose many federal and state authorities’ laws and regulations, (particularly those related to firearms ownership), and often belong to armed paramilitary groups. They often conduct paramilitary training designed to violently resist perceived government oppression or to violently overthrow the US Government. (Page 2 of 3, emphasis added)
So what drives militia extremism according to DHS now is “belief that the government deliberately is stripping Americans of their freedoms.” It is demonstrated by opposing “many federal and state authorities’ laws and regulations, (particularly those related to firearms ownership).” Would writing about those topics (as I am now) fall under “facilitation”? On its face, it’s hard to see how it could be excluded under DHS’s broad definition.
Read it all HERE.
(this is the DHS that won’t say that islam is a factor when it comes to terrorism. okay to go after the white guys, but leave the ragheads alone)
###
If you are new to this website, you might not know there is a destructive propaganda war being waged in our nation’s classrooms. More and more, we are seeing extensive lessons on Islam in the public schools, extolling the virtues of Islamic misogyny and waxing poetic about sharia. One of the worst ideas is inviting Muslim leaders and/or clerics into the schools in the interest of multicultural ‘tolerance’ and ‘awareness.’
Religious studies are generally unwelcome in public schools, with the exception of the study of Islam. Perhaps there are people in the education system who think that a broader understanding of Islam will make it easier to understand barbaric acts of mass murder, such as we saw on September 11, 2001. But there is another more likely goal: making all religions morally equivalent, so that no specific religion is considered superior to any other.
The word “Islam” means “submission”. All Mohammedans are commended to wage war against the unbelievers until they submit to Islam and the entire world becomes Islamic.
Inviting Muslims to speak to students is not education, it is proselytizing for Islam that whitewashes the real history of Islam – the 270 million victims of a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations and ethnic cleansing wherever Muslims are the majority (and some place where they are not), cultural annihilations, and historical and modern day enslavement of black Africans. Public schools in America are allowing representatives of terror-linked CAIR to give lectures to students on Islam (something they never do for representatives of other religions). Yet these lectures never mention the systematic dehumanization of women: honor killings, limb amputations, homosexual hangings, female genital mutilation, forced child marriage, wife beating, and more that are all inherently part of Islam .
Public schools, almost exclusively run by left wingers, abhor any kind of religious symbolism or discussions in the classroom…except when it comes to Islam.
If you have school age children, they are probably being indoctrinated by Islamic propaganda without even realizing it. Many schools today use Saudi-funded textbooks with revisionist history that praises Islam and condemns Christianity. Some of the history books even say Muslims discovered America and have been a part of American history for over 400 years. You need to read your children’s textbooks and ask them what they are being taught about Islam.
Read the article here.
(can’t teach or talk about christianity, but okay to talk about islam and their false religion?)
###
Many of us who are biblical scholars have watched Mr. Obama’s use, or should I say abuse, of the Bible with dismay. [snip]
The president quoted the Bible to justify punishing those who have worked hard, and most of whom are very generous givers, in order to take their money and give it to many of his constituencies who are always standing outside the doors of the White House with out-stretched hands.
Mr. Obama, in justifying his misguided policy, quoted Jesus in Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
No, you do not have to have a seminary degree to know that Jesus is talking about individual stewardship in an individual’s relationship with God.
Read the article here.
(I just wonder, some time back on cable was a program about the anti-christ and what he would be like, act like and want from the world. does obama come close?)
###
Gingrich Tells NBC’s Gregory ‘You Just Managed to Precisely Repeat the Obama Administration’s Line’
6 Real People With Mind-Blowing Mutant Superpowers.
Ridiculous Gov’t. Spending List Grows Longer Read some of the ridiculous studies our tax dollars fund!
Syria On Brink Of Full-Scale Civil War Wonder how far Russia and/or China will go to support the Assad regime?
Two Visions: Reagan vs. Obama I actually think this goes to the core of what Obama is about.
###
Obama bemoans wife being dragged into politics…
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says one of the toughest parts about being president is that his wife has been dragged into the “political realm.”
Obama was responding to a question about how he felt when Michelle Obama said she has been inaccurately portrayed as an “angry black woman.” While the president did not address that comment specifically, he says his wife is as good a first lady as anyone could imagine, and says he believes Americans have a positive impression of her.
Obama also says the first lady is ready for another four years in the White House, despite her initial reservations about coming to Washington.
SOURCE
(truth is, the queen injected herself into the politics and into American lives on her own. plus she likes that she can spend, spend, spend and it does not come out of her pocket)
###
We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway — an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.
The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia — and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia” — a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.
But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity — and ultimately of all religious minorities — in the Islamic world is at stake.
From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear. In Nigeria many have suffered all of these forms of persecution. The nation has the largest Christian minority (40 percent) in proportion to its population (160 million) of any majority-Muslim country. For years, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria have lived on the edge of civil war. Islamist radicals provoke much if not most of the tension. The newest such organization is an outfit that calls itself Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege.” Its aim is to establish Sharia in Nigeria. To this end it has stated that it will kill all Christians in the country.
In the month of January 2012 alone, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011 its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They use guns, gasoline bombs, and even machetes, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) while launching attacks on unsuspecting citizens. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, policemen, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication.