Worse than the Dow Crash of 1929?

The S&P 500 bear market, now nearly 17 months old, finished the week slightly above its current low. It continues to dominate our saga of the Four Bad Bears. In nominal terms, the decline in the S&P 500 matches the Dow Crash of 1929 over the equivalent time frame. In real (inflation adjusted) terms, it has surpassed the Dow decline.

The accompanying chart is intended not as a forecast but rather as a way to study the current decline in relation to three familiar bears from history.

(Via dshort.com)

How'd They Do That?

It's very cool, but I don't get it....

Check it out here.

Gotta Love India

"Audacity" of Hope

I found paragraph on a website I frequently read.

"I have always been a strong advocate of willing your desires into existence. Many of my successes in life have begun with an element of arrogance — or “audacity,” as some would put it — which I carried with me into tasks I was entirely unqualified to undertake, but that I completed with bravado regardless. Uncountable failures stem directly from underconfidence. By pretending an unappealing situation does not exist, we condition those who constitute it to accept the change we wish to create."

To me this makes a lot of sense, it's basically a philosophy I've followed most of my life. Most of the time I'm entirely unqualified for what I undertake, but I do it anyway.

But what gets me, is that we all have a vision, this "audacity", of how we want to live our lives and make choices accordingly, and we expect our choices to be the "best" and we expect other's to recognize our choices are the "best". Okay, I'm not sure if I'm making sense or not, but the bottom line is we REALLY don't know if "our choices" are the "best". Yes, I've been watching a little too much of "The Wire" and it's seeping into my head. It seems like the best any of us can do it to recognize we don't know, and go from there. I'm off to a film conference this weekend to practice this "audacity".

Late to the Party, I know

I just started watching the entire HBO series of "The Wire".

It's five seasons.
780 minute per season
3900 minutes total
65 hours
A week and a half of "watching"..... dang!

But it's good. It's about justice, and unlike most Western theme shows, there are no heros. All the characters, rich or poor, black or white, educated or uneducated, are all a little good and a little bad. Everybody is doing their "job" to survive. And everybody thinks they're doing the "right thing", but their own "right thing" is making other people miserable. The prosecuting attorney is making the defendant's life miserable. The cop is making the drug dealer's life miserable. The chief of police is making the cop's life miserable. The drug dealer is making the junkie's life miserable. The junkie is making the drug dealer's life miserable by becoming an informant. The cop is making the chief-of-police's life miserable by not doing his job. Its a total cat and mouse chase, and everybody is a little "dirty", except in their own eyes.

1 in 100 Adults are in Prison

Something is wrong. 230 million adult Americans are in jail, with a disproportionately higher number of hispanic and black men.

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

And based on the stats below, violent crimes have fallen over the past 20 years, but spending has increased.

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violent crime rates fell by 25 percent, to 464 for every 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation.

The prison system industry appears to be extremely profitable. If I didn't know better, I'd think the predominately white-owned prison industry and predominately white-run law system were working together to maximize profits.

Market Bottom or Bomb Shelter?

How Cute?

Getting soft in my old age. ...

Republicans Want Obama To Fail

This stuff is a little weird. Republicans, being lead by Rush Limbaugh, want Obama's policies to fail, because they believe Republican supported policies are better.

What? The Republican policies of deregulation, promoting greed, and under taxing the rich are the ones that failed and got us into the current financial/economic crisis.

Obama has only been in office what 40 days?

Hope