Peteris Kalniņs et al.,
“Otherwise you end up with a discussion that sounds like Gilda Radner’s “Emily Litella” character on SNL. “

Exactly.

Visu labu

Speculation for all its connection to finance or whether the sun will rise on Johns Day, the day following the Johns Eve bash has been dealt with in numerous ways in the past.
In the past, speculation over Sunrise was put to a stop with a human sacrifice, some of the more gory ways of doing this pictured in Aztec temple illustrations. A reminder of this ritual was shown a few days ago in a travelogue program in Latvia. A group of men traveling in the Mongol territory east of Lake Baikal, were welcomed by the tribesmen, who killed one of their sheep to welcome these Latvian tourists. The method of good will on the part of these natives was to stretch a sheep (an ewe) belly up on the ground. One of the men then makes a slit in the ewe’s belly about the area of the bladder. As other men hold the legs of the sheep stretched out, the butcher reaches with his hand up the innards of the ewe until the hand reaches the heart, at which point he tears away from the heart the main artery. Now the Latvian tourists will eat, and the Sun will rise on Johns Day morning. No further speculation about the outcome is needed.
We may as well imagine Johns Day morning as the day the Referendum over the use of the Latvian language prevails over Russian (the Sun rises), this sometime in April 2012. If the speculative anticipation is on mark, this will happen, because many Latvians today prefer to speculate-believe themselves to be in the majority.
The anticipation of victory by Vienotība, ZRP, and other politicianss is based on the speculation that Latvians are unlikely to vote FOR Russian—even if their Sun has long gone down with regard to Johns Day. This latter fact, can be deduced from numerous facts with regard to the Latvian language. One fact is the demographic catastrophy caused by the Latvian governsment’s failure to come up with a successful economic program (cutting down Latvia’s forests to satisfy bank debt is hardly a reflection of economic success; rather, it is an introduction to what will happen to the Latvian population in the course of speculative time in the process of making its arrival felt.) Two, inspite of the rhetoric by Latvian government about Latvian being of such primary importance to the survival of Latvians, Latvian books and other printed matter are not let reach the publicē TAX FREE. Just this past week the court shut down an operation by some young adult Latvians who were taking their concern about Latvian up the next logical step by creating an internet site, where people could read just about anything written in Latvian FREE. In typical self-righteous fashion the evening news program Panorama did a clip on this matter just a few evenings ago. Three, the very real problems of the Latvian language caused by the neglect of Latvian economy and culture by the government are NEVER discussed on such programs as 100.pants, the latter typically presumptuous program that presumes itself to be discussing important „news”. Only the usual run of politicians appear on the program, which continues the exclusionary tradition established by one Janis Domburs, a typical anti-populist Latvian media personality of years past. His present-day incarnation is one named Reders.  At this point, anything that is critical of the Latvian government is presumed to be populist, which is indicative of government control of the media. We may return to the article that is at the topic of this discussion, in which Michael Hudson points out that the time of the DEFEAT of POPULISTS occurs in the days of Sparta, when the local oligarchs invited the Romans to come defeat and kill the democratic leaders of Sparta. I am inclined to believe that Professor Hudson is not making a speculative statement, because not all statements are speculative as some here tend to erroneously think.
What is of speculative nature in the Latvian and Russian language debate is whether Latvian will prevail. My perspective is to say NOT SO FAST to jump to such conclusions. The Latvian leadership, the media including, has consistently speculated with no success whatsoever. The failure is due mostly because it does not take into account the importance of the economy and jobs that a successful economy generates. As a consequence, there are hundreds of Latvian parents today anxious to find their children jobs in the far abroad. This is no speculation, but a statement of fact, because the yoke of debt slavery already lies heavy upon Latvia.
Incidentally, Krugman hyperlinked the “No People No Problem” article to his NYTimes’ blog today.

A POST SCRIPT to the Paul Krugman link: “No Latvians, no Problems” is one way to describe the Domestic and Foreign policies of the Latvian government.

Its good to see you venturing outside your self-imposed ghetto threads, Jandz. Not sure I understood your latest point.
Since there seems to be some confusion as to what it was I originally wrote. All markets are speculative to a degree and should be. Its hard to set intrinsic value to things. The markets work best when they find a way to bridge the gap between intrinsic value and speculative value. In today’s markets intrinsic value no longer seems to play any role. The speculative value is the intrinsic value and the markets speculate on the speculation. Real value no longer plays a role so when the speculation stretches so far from reality that it can no longer do anything other than collapse there is no underlying value to recover any semblance of cost.
And since I am venturing way over my skis anyway let me go off on a Jandzenesque rant. I am sick and tired of hearing about the credit crisis. I get the point that business needs credit to operate. I have a great idea, but not the cash. I borrow $10 from you since I know I can make $20 off that $10. You loan me the ten, I do what I have to do, I pay you back $15 and I pocket $5. We both walk away happy. But isn’t the whole point of a credit crisis to point out the fact that everyone might be overleveraged? I need the $10, you only have $3, so you borrow the $7 from someone who only has $4, but who borrows the other $3 from… okay, my head is starting to hurt.
Rather than perhaps scale down the leveraging the solution is to just keep pouring in money to keep the machinery humming. To completely mix methaphors, its like the canary in coal mine. When the canary dies you know that something is wrong and you might want to vent some of those noxious fumes. Instead the solution is to buy more canaries. Eventually you will run out of canaries and the volume of those noxious fumes just keeps increasing. Somewhere someone has to fix what’s killing the canary.

Andrejs

Fixed typo.

Andrejs!

That was a “pricelessly” true and entirely unspeculative post. You speak the truth.

Regards,

Alberts

Andrejs, latviešu kosmopolits et al.,
“I borrow $10 for you since I know I can make $20 off that $10.”

But what is your collateral ?  I will take your watch.  The main problem with Krajbanka was that money was lent and went out of the country against dubious or non existant collateral.  When the principal came due ( to be returned), the borrowers essentially said , we do not have it.  What also complicates the issue is the owner—management relationship.  Kargin said, I am just a humble majority stockholder of Parex, I had nothing to do with running the bank.  Exept, the bank managers feel that their job depends on the good graces of the owners. 

Visu labu,

But that’s just it Bruno. The collateral in most cases is no longer the watch. It might have been at one point, but it has changed hands so many times and each time it changed hands someone took a bet of what the value of the watch was + each exchange. You can have the watch back if you’d like, but if that watch was originally worth 10 bucks its speculative value is now $100 and if you want it back you’d better come up with the $90. Which more than likely you’d have to borrow, so you’ll hock your grandfather clock which is worth $90 to get it back and the speculative value of that clock will be $900 by the time everything is said and done… and so on.

Andrejs, speculatively

Andrejs, latviešu kosmopolits et al.,
“But that’s just it Bruno. The collateral in most cases is no longer the watch. It might have been at one point, but it has changed hands so many times and each time ,,,,,,,:

That is the problem of the borrowers.  There is no problem for me ,as long as I posses the collateral, in this case the watch.

Visu labu,

Andrejs, I will perhaps write a longer tome later, but I think that changing the discussion topic from „No People, No Problem” to „Speculation” continues the evasion tactics that some government shills are in the habit of introducing to then bounce and keep the ball to themselves.

For now, let it suffice that as I said in the rant yesterday, the Latvian media plays a large role in the supression of news to the Latvian people. Last night, the Panorama News program’s talking head, Arnis Krauze, took the government line for all it was worth. Specifically, he was interviewing the European Commissions representative in Latvia, Inna Shteinbuka, who was happy to play the role of speaker for the long suffering masochistic Latvians. Of course, the word masochism was not used, because it is too complicated and too well known to mean sickening acceptance of suffering by the reading publicē. The line pressed by the shameless Krauze and Shteinbuka was that the Latvian people were only too happy to suffer, though yes, it was not easy, but no one said that there are probably thousands of Latvian children and elderly suffering and ruining their health for the resto f their lives, not to say, dying as a result of the policies of the present extreme right wing governsment (democracy of oligarchs). No mention was made of the protests in Riga yesterday of the medical personnel of several hospitals in Latvia, who got the same „vase filled with pimpish airs” lecture from the Health Minister.

Another specific of the wimp role played by the Latvian media is ilustrated by the fact that the Lithuanian „Delphi” internet site put the article which is the topic of this discussion (“No People, No Problem” ) line in full translation and first place this morning. It has had more than 400 responses to this time. The Latvian Press is completely absorbed by its role „vase filled with pimpish airs”. Both the Latvian government and the media it controls take the unmistakable line „No Latvian people; No Latvian problem”. –Jaņdžs, aka Antons Benjamiņš.

The following is a quick translation of a letter, which I received this morning.

“My sincere apologies for troubling you. My name is I.O, and I am from Jelgava novads. I am using your address, which I found in the May 20th issue of “Majas Viesis”. I am far from artistic circles, but the fotographs in that issue of the rooms in your house were interesting and original. May you have further successes!

“30. November, 2011. My story is about something entirely different. This is a time for hope and reflection. You, no doubt, already sense what this letter is about. In Latvia such stories are not unusual. I will not, on this occasion, complain about our state. You probably have your own views about it.”

“I wish to tell you more about my family. Rather, it is a story about families, because I have four children and three grandchildren. I married young (18 years old). I come from a simple farming family. Both of my parents died young of age. None of us has a high school education. I learned to be a zoo-technologist (zootehniķe) and worked in that capacity until the sovhoz was liquidated. At the time, I lived in the Dobele region. I cannot complain about this time period. As with every job, there were high moments, also low ones. Thereafter, I was (tossed around) unemployed. Gradually everything started falling apart, including my family. The loss of employment was a huge shock to me! I had no other skills. I became ill from worry about the situation of my children. My oldest son (now 40), unmarried, works for Rigas tilts. He lives in our old countryside home in the Dobele region and helpf my oldest daughter (36), who has three children, my grandchildren. Also her family fell apart. Her friend works as a construction worker in Sweden. My granddaughter (20) does not know what she wants to do with her life. She has attended high school. Presently she wants to acquire a profession and find work in another country. We talk about work abroad often, but always come up against the question of insufficient funds. My grandson (14), is a student in the 9th grade. My third granddaughter, we adopted. My youngest daughter (31) has the hardest time of all. She lives in Riga in a one room apartment. She counts as a ‘renter’, but the owner will not sign a lease with her, because she receives social help from the municipal government. This situation is a great disadvantage to my daughter. She receives only Ls 8 (~$16) for her child. I am unable to help her, because all that I have extra is from selling the vegetables from what I can raise in my small garden during the summer.

“My youngest son, 26) works in England. This is the second year. We do not hear from him often, and we are very concerned over him.

“I live in Jelgava. I met a good man; he is 72 years old. In Soviet times, his family was among the deported.

“I work at the local elementary school as an overseer (dežurante), before this, I worked at a sleep-in (internāta) school. Because of reforms, it is now a kindergarten and only five classes. There is no longer a sleep-in, because the children are being bussed. I receive the minimum salary. We live in a two room apartment. We began to renovate it, but have no resources to complete it. We need newwindows a new floor. The bathroom and toilet are a catastrophe. But we are happy to have a roof over our head. We have never in our lives had a vacation, but have for the most part been at the bottom rung. Long ago, I wished to for a small house with a sauna. Well, that is for the next life now. Our old car (Polo, 20 years). Such is our life, Our clothes, too, are old, and about buying new clothes we have given up thinking. Once in a while, we take something from so-called ‘humanitarian help’ agency. Lately, I pray to God for help.”

“This is my story. I earnestly pray that if something of the story catches your heart (ieķeras sirdī), as this is also Christmas time, we will be most grateful to you. Perhaps this sounds laughable and silly, but I will make you Godfather of (?) my grandson. He has not been christened yet. How happy that would make us. Perhaps you have a job for my son-in-law.”

The letter concludes with address and bank acct. #, and name. I have thought for some time of how to help this person. A trusted friend has agreed to give her home address in Riga and will forward. I will either pay the remailing costs or deliver personally. Re: Inguna Daniels, Marijas iela19-16, Riga, LV-1011.

Commenting on the turbulence in the eurozone, Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Michael Hudson wrote, “The kind of warfare now engulfing Europe is thus more than just economic in scope. It threatens to become a historic dividing line between the past half-century’s epoch of hope and technological potential to a new era of polarization as a financial oligarchy replaces democratic governments and reduces populations to debt peonage.
“For so bold an asset and power grab to succeed, it needs a crisis to suspend the normal political and democratic legislative processes that would oppose it. Political panic and anarchy create a vacuum into which grabbers can move quickly, using the rhetoric of financial deception and a junk economics to rationalize self-serving solutions by a false view of economic history – and in the case of today’s ECB, German history in particular.

“Governments do not need to borrow from commercial bankers or other lenders. Ever since the Bank of England was founded in 1694, central banks have printed money to finance public spending. Bankers also create credit freely – when they make a loan and credit the customer’s account, in exchange for a promissory note bearing interest. Today, these banks can borrow reserves from the government’s central bank at a low annual interest rate (0.25% in the United States) and lend it out at a higher rate. So banks are glad to see the government’s central bank create credit to lend to them. But when it comes to governments creating money to finance their budget deficits for spending in the rest of the economy, banks would prefer to have this market and its interest return for themselves.

“European commercial banks are especially adamant that the European Central Bank should not finance government budget deficits. But private credit creation is not necessarily less inflationary than governments monetizing their deficits (simply by printing the money needed)...

“It is mainly government that spends credit on the ‘real’ economy, to the extent that public budget deficits employ labor or are spent on goods and services. Governments avoid paying interest by having their central banks printing money on their own computer keyboards rather than borrowing from banks that do the same thing on their own keyboards…
“If the euro breaks up, it is because of the obligation of governments to pay bankers in money that must be borrowed rather than created through their own central bank. Unlike the United States and Britain which can create central bank credit on their own computer keyboards to keep their economy from shrinking or becoming insolvent, the German constitution and the Lisbon Treaty prevent the central bank from doing this.

“The effect is to oblige governments to borrow from commercial banks at interest. This gives bankers the ability to create a crisis – threatening to drive economies out of the Eurozone if they do not submit to ‘conditionalities’ being imposed in what quickly is becoming a new class war of finance against labor…

“Today’s economic crisis is a matter of policy choice, not necessity. As President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel quipped: ‘A crisis is too good an opportunity to let go to waste.’ In such cases the most logical explanation is that some special interest must be benefiting. Depressions increase unemployment, helping to break the power of unionized as well as non-union labor. The United States is seeing a state and local budget squeeze (as bankruptcies begin to be announced), with the first cutbacks coming in the sphere of pension defaults. High finance is being paid – by not paying the working population for savings and promises made as part of labor contracts and employee retirement plans. Big fish are eating little fish.” (Europe’s Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy)

Heading into next week, Phil wrote in Income Portfolio – Year End (Almost) Review: “Next month will be busy, with plenty of adjustments to make. A Santa Claus rally would be nice but we’re not counting on it. Less than half of our VIRTUAL $1M buying power is in use. We’re not looking to add many new trades until we take others off the table. No matter what the market does, we’re going to want hedges over the holidays, but then we’ll see how things shake out in January.”
RE: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/stock-world-weekly-anti-crisis-bazooka-other-bedtime-stories