Over the next three days, we are publishing a triumvirate of posts relating to that financial fallacy, the free market.
In this first offering, we focus on the very concept of a free market and we link these atmospherics to International Financial Markets (IFMs).
Tomorrow, we address the non-regulated global football betting markets.
On Monday, we will compare the demise of the shareholder capitalist model to the equivalent non-sustainability of a sport that may soon find itself totally dependent on a psychopathic marketplace.
Although, not if we have anything to do with it, it won't...
In each of these posts, we will be paying particular attention to the clichéd façade of the mainstream media, and their role in supporting these inappropriate structures.
Exciting eh...?
"True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
The only strategies available to us in order that we might truly understand the machinations of the marketplace are self-generated. All publicly available information is 'in the price' and private inside information is not allowed to reach market or regulatory daylight, such knowledge being gamed for proprietary benefit on the private markets instead.
Market Analysts outside the corrupt inner cores of these allegedly free markets need to tool up in order to balance the playing field.
Aside from the Analytics, our kit must include #################################
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Such big picture approaches must possess the ability to adjust to new hyperrealities in real-time, both holistically and specifically.
Okay so, fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the concept of a free market. All bartering processes and swaps are essentially free, in that they do not have the hand of the state involved in their operation and completion. Such social exchanges are dependent simply on the goodwill of the participants in the deal.
This is, effectively, a social contract.
These micro-free markets are a thing of beauty.
Macro-free markets are something else entirely, however.
A good friend of mine is the Philosopher, John Shand.
We do not agree with one another politically - he upholds the Austrian School of Economics (Hayek etc), the Chicago School and Milton Friedman, and, being a good man, he honestly believes that macro-free markets will always be the most efficient structure for economic growth.
Leaving aside issues of climatic change and the non-inclusion of externalities in price, his optimistic view of human nature does not stand up to scrutiny.
Right wing libertarians like Hayek and Friedman believed that unfettered markets with no regulatory or government obstructions would be self-sustaining.
Not so.
If one allows such a systemic template, the most psychopathic of individuals will be attracted to such marketplaces, precisely because of the complete lack of regulatory oversight.
We were warned when Long Term Capital Management went bankrupt in the late nineties; Enron and WorldCom were further prompts as to the infeasibility of this macro-free market. The current banking and insurance crises are just the icing on the cake.
If there is no social component to a market, individuals with Psychopathic Personality Disorder/Style (PPDs) and Antisocial Personality Disorder/Style (ASPDs) will always come to dominate the markets.
Worse still, the short-termism that is one of the foundations of such psychologies will become the timescale that defines market robustness.
Focus is always on the current market price, the quarterly figures, the annual reports, the annual bonuses, and never on the longer term impacts of the decisions that maximise such short-termist profits.
Our global economy is dominated by the psychopathy of the rapscallions.
We have repeatedly pointed out the various ways that Hank Paulson is seemingly gaming the Recession/Depression on behalf of his 'former' colleagues at Goldman Sachs.
It should not be forgotten that his original proposal for the bailout of the banking sector filled just three sides of A4, and didn't even mention the term "housing crisis".
Money for the Moneyheads was all the man desired...
And, furthermore, he grabbed the money under false pretences.
The $700 billion was primarily supposed to be utilised for buying up the toxic assets that were preventing the fuel of finance from flowing.
But then Hank changed his mind.
Why are unelected officials being allowed to act in this manner with our existences?
As Jim Sarni of Payden & Rygel Investment Management stated: "For the Treasury to come out and now say that they are not going to do what they originally planned, is a real credibility problem."
As was letting Lehman Brothers go under...
As was the banning of short-selling...
As was the rampant targeting of hedge funds...
As was saving AIG with firstly $75 billion, then a further $37.5 billion, and recently a further $150 billion.
Consequently, for just one company, this bailout has cost the equivalent of five years of universal health cover for all residents of the US.
The current chief executive at Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, can hardly believe his good fortune - the market is being repeatedly primed in positive correlation with Goldmans' hidden agendas.
Blankfein stated this week that, although Goldman may post its first ever quarterly loss on November 30th, he saw "historical opportunities for growth".
While all about them have been losing their heads, Goldman have added a further 100 top tier clients to their roster this year.
As Kevin Warsh, a governor of the Federal Reserve, stated: "We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of every asset everywhere in the world."
The fact that one bank is, in effect, making the decisions that drive these reassessments is, apparently, an example of the free market model.
One might wish to believe that global regulation could protect us from such gaming of the system, but, unfortunately, this is not the case.
Any regulatory template is simply a new format to be psychopathically gamed.
Find the loopholes, corner the markets, trade your inappropriate edge...
So when Mr Paulson was muscling our money off us, claiming that it would be used to bolster the banking system, with its toxic assets, he was lying.
And, furthermore, at the same time that shareholder capitalism was begging with the left hand, they were already planning the next abusive template with the right hand in the form of Dark Pools.
These non-regulated private markets for institutional traders would completely eliminate the possibilities of normal individuals monitoring individual trading activity.
Which brings us on to the global football markets and the lead-in to tomorrow's post.
The football world is full of Dark Pools - private markets where insiders trade their knowledge of rigged matches and markets.
Except in football, there isn't even lip service given to any regulatory framework.
All regulation is weak and, where it does exist, national.
There is currently no obstacle to psychopathic gaming of matches to suit the betting strategies of industry insiders.
Absolutely none...
But, the atmosphere is changing.
When we started the Football Is Fixed blog two years ago, there were only a few individuals from outside the loop who believed our assessment of the state of the game.
No longer is this the case.
And, moreover, there is a broad consensus developing.
If we aren't able to trust bankers, hedge funds, private equity firms, governmental regulators, trading exchanges, investment banks, insurance companies and pensions providers, then why on earth would anybody choose to trust bookmakers and the gambling sector?
The global economy has, in Reality, been in Recession throughout this year.
Only the corporate media has sustained the myth of a different hyperreality.
The same has been true of the media's reporting of the state of football.
No longer is this the case.
As John Pilger states in reference to the legendary Texan journalist mentioned at the beginning of this post: "This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose 'professionalism' and 'objectivity' carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth."
With regard to football, we repeat...
...No longer is this the case.
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