Incapp.org

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that with the economy in shambles and the banking sector a ruin, the SEC would at least have the common sense to come out and reassure the American people that the investment sector is healthy and the Madoff issue is an aberration.

But I haven’t heard a single word of reassurance from the SEC. They are big on excuses but they haven’t said that there are not more like Madoff out there. Every investor in the USA and the world that is invested in the USA now has better reason to fear. How many more $54,000,000,000.00 ponzy schemes are waiting to be discovered?

A political philosopher once said, what makes a king a king is simply public opinion. In other words if the world was to wake up and forget the king is the king he would no longer be king. The apparatus of the crown would evaporate. So another way to look at it is that what makes a recession is simply public opinion. The means to fully employ the workforce is at hand. The minerals are still in the ground. The people are still in need of employment and goods. The machinery of civilization is still functional and the knowledge base is still available to run it. The only thing in the way is public opinion.

What affects public opinion better than an old fashioned scandal? This new slap in the face of the investor only serves to further diminish public opinion. Leading to a deepening of the recession. It is the job of the SEC not only to find and punish this behavior but to assure the investing public that the system is fair and safe.

It appears that the SEC has dropped the ball on all three fronts. If a private firm were to be guilty or simply look this guilty, the hew and cry for heads to roll would be deafening. Lets listen to the roar of indignation leading to heads at the SEC rolling. Hopefully the crickets won’t be too loud to hear it.

By the way, I have yet to hear about anyone in the unbiased media asking about the House Banking and Finance Oversight Committee’s dropping the ball in the banking scandal. Let alone anyone asking for an investigation. (Other than I). I guess the crickets cacophony drowned out that roar…

Dear Reader,

It seems to me that if we want to really mitigate the carbon dioxide output of coal fired power plants we would use the carbon dioxide to make oil. This way we could actually re-burn the coal… With a little help.

Bubbling the carbon dioxide through algae filled water, using the proper strain of algae, we could then process the algae into oil. Oil that could be burned in diesel engines. Remember, scientists think the oil we have is the remnants of vast algal mats that spread for miles, millions of years ago. They died, fell to the bottom, were covered, became rock, and voila!

Algae factories could revolutionize the energy paradigm. Factories could be built near power plants. The business plan is most promising to find an old dirty plant that is vital. Charge them through the teeth to process the smoke and then sell your output (oil) at the market price.

The idea of sequestering carbon dioxide underground, to me, is quite scary. Talk about potential unintended consequences. What potential aquifers are we potentially turning into carbonic acid? Or the plot of a mediocre horror flick, millions of cubic yards of pure carbon dioxide is suddenly released in an urban setting. They told them, but they didn’t listen and blasted for the new subway, thousands are suffocated, a few try to get away, this is their story…

Of course, the whole presupposition that global warming or potentially global cooling, is man made is foolish. Not that, I don’t think that it is possible, in the future, with due diligence, to terraform another planet. But that is another blog…

Dear Readers,

It seems to me that if the terror attacks in Mumbai were not done by the insurgents in western Pakistan (Taliban) it should have been. They are the principle beneficiaries.

The tensions between Pakistan and India over the terror attacks has drawn attention from the terrorists in western Pakistan to the terrorists in Kashmir. With the world’s attention turned on the new crisis the Taliban can rest and refit.

If India does indeed go onto a war footing with Pakistan it would necessitate the removal of all Pakistani troops from western Pakistan. The Taliban would greatly benefit under this scenario. The facing off of two nuclear powers would rivet the world’s attention. The war on terror would be pushed to the back.

The one thing that always rivets the attention of the people in a nation is an outside threat. People instinctively come together when there is a valid menace at the gate else they are often all killed. It’s bred into us. This would put the moderates and even agnostics into the extremist camp in Pakistan.

At the least we can expect India to expand it’s operations in Afghanistan. Antagonizing Pakistan. Afghanistan is the elephant in the room. Although it is on the other side of Pakistan it’s shadow darkens the entire mess. Anything that happens on the Indian boarder with Pakistan has a greater effect on the Afghani side. The fulcrum is Pakistan…in more ways than one.

Dear Readers,

It seems to me that if the terror attacks in Mumbai were not done by the insurgents in western Pakistan (Taliban) it should have been. They are the principle beneficiaries.

The tensions between Pakistan and India over the terror attacks has drawn attention from the terrorists in western Pakistan to the terrorists in Kashmir. With the world’s attention turned on the new crisis the Taliban can rest and refit.

If India does indeed go onto a war footing with Pakistan it would necessitate the removal of all Pakistani troops from western Pakistan. The Taliban would greatly benefit under this scenario. The facing off of two nuclear powers would rivet the world’s attention. The war on terror would be pushed to the back.

The one thing that always rivets the attention of the people in a nation is an outside threat. People instinctively come together when there is a valid menace at the gate else they are often all killed. It’s bred into us. This would put the moderates and even agnostics into the extremist camp in Pakistan.

At the least we can expect India to expand it’s operations in Afghanistan. Antagonizing Pakistan. Afghanistan is the elephant in the room. Although it is on the other side of Pakistan it’s shadow darkens the entire mess. Anything that happens on the Indian boarder with Pakistan has a greater effect on the Afghani side. The fulcrum is Pakistan…in more ways than one.

Dear Reader,

It seems to me that that we have paid off the corrupt cronies of the government, and low and behold, it didn’t fix the economy. The Banks, still, are not lending. Now we hear that consumer credit is drying up. I hear the genius that is spending our money claims he is doing a bang up job.

The problem is still the reticence of banks to loan money when they don’t know the ground on which they stand has stopped moving. Unless they are lending someone else’s money. Had the treasury been given the money to buy new loans the credit lines wouldn’t have been locked up. Banks would have been happy to lend our money back to us. (Lend government money to the people and businesses).

As yet the government of the USA has done nothing but destabilize the markets. First with regulation now with telegraphed punches. The government should not be buying banks. That is a way certain to stifle economic growth.

Government is nothing but bureaucracy, in banking, it would reach it’s culmination. Imagine the friction to the economy if the people in charge of the money supply were paid hourly, with his paper clips counted but with no accountability to the public. What should take hours or minuets will stretch to days or months. Our economy would grind to a halt. Or the market would find a way around the bottleneck. Regardless the friction would lower the lot of generations.

I have finally heard someone else call for an investigation into the government’s involvement in the financial mess. I called for a special prosecutor to look into the governments duplicity in the way of; regulation that led to this outcome, the role of the oversight committee in failing to recognize the situation and take effective action to stem the problem before it exploded in our faces, Investigate the Executives role in policing the markets, Investigate links to and from the regulators to those that are regulated and investigate why didn’t Freddy Mac and Fannie May and the department that oversees them come clean sooner and with a plan to fix the problem? Hopefully more people will start calling for an impartial look into the role of the government in this fiasco.

Once again, the government should stop propping up unstable institutions (although it is too late), stop “bailing out” companies, and start buying newly originated loans (presumably, to those companies that claim to need a “bail out”). Buying newly originated loans at the market rate in competition with the market would stimulate the market to compete for the business. Instead of focusing inward and destroying their nerve it would strengthen the industry and invigorate it to beat the government.

Unfortunately money that should be used to keep the “general glut” from becoming a depression is being given to the corrupt people who visited this mess on us in the first place.

Dear Reader,

It seems to me that we have entered into a new age. The synchronistic events that have witnessed are historic. The International Capitalist Party welcomes the fact that a man of African descent has entered into the halls of power in the United States. President Elect Obama now has the most difficult presidency of any man to date, save one.

With his party in such total control of both the Senate and the House he will be tempted by the Devil himself. The Ruling Party has the ability to call a constitutional convention. With only a few members of the Minor Party’s defecting to the Ruling Party’s Cause. That is how much power the Ruling Party has at this time.

The only other time this much power was given to one Party, at the beginning of a recession, our grandparents and great grandparents experienced the Great Depression, culminating in the Second World War. The similarities are amazing.

We are at the beginning of a recession, caused in part, by a disruption in the Banking Sector. We have a recently beaten enemy..? We have a historic President. The “unbiased” media is largely on the side of the Party in power. And Power is focused in the hands of a few individuals with no one else having any real constitutional power to check it.

President elect Obama will have to try to reign in his temptations to change what has worked for two hundred years. Else he risks things going wildly astray. (As they always have… historically). Innovations in government should be well thought out. But more importantly they must stand the test of generations.

An idea will have real merit if it can stand the test of being believed in for three or more generations. If an idea has a life of one generation, and only a few of them believe it, it cannot be said to be of real merit. However if an idea can stand the test, of a majority, of three or more generations believing in the idea, the idea in question is clearly of merit and should be put into use… prudently.

To date the best means to this end is a weak government. A strong government can implement any whim it sees fit to thrust on society. Innovation after innovation. Chaos that freezes up markets. A blanket of snow under which nothing can grow. The snow must melt before spring can come. The innovations are the snow. The craziest of which must be rolled back. Then the shock must be let to set in. The market will adjust but it needs time for the thaw.

When government is weak, it must have the majority of the people, for an extended period, to make innovations. When this is the case, the innovations are planned for in advance and the market can adapt before the innovation is implemented. The markets are not disrupted and the economy continues to grow.

President Elect Obama will be at the helm of the most powerful government in three generations. Lets pray he takes the prudent course of action and history is not repeated…