Ok, for the past few months I have surfed what must be thousands of financial news and information websites.

I tracked, cross-referenced, and followed every trail of breadcrumbs I could to find out what is at the heart of the so-called ‘crisis’.

The financial companies made a bad bet. Of course, if you ask me, betting on paper is bad. These companies DON’T produce any true value or wealth so the value is a figment of people’s imaginations.

Well, what about the recent shock doctrine they are using to railroad the legislature into bailing them out?

Basically, it’s a hold up. Instead of “If you don’t give us the bailout money, the economy will fail”, they should just tell the truth: “If you don’t give us this money, we’re going to make YOUR economy fail.”

I tracked it all through a hundred news articles and it all led to THIS ONE NEWS REPORT. The main point states:

“There’s plenty of liquidity in the system. The problem is no one is lending to one another, and that’s fear, basically. Until we implement policies to reduce and eliminate fear, the fear problem is going to grow and there will be more bank failures and other failures,” Wang said. “There is no end in sight for this crisis until the psychology has been changed.”

“THERE’S PLENTY OF LIQUIDITY IN THE SYSTEM. THE PROBLEM IS NO ONE IS LENDING TO ONE ANOTHER…….

…….AND THAT’S FEAR, BASICALLY.”

Yeah…right!! Who’s to say these institutions aren’t holding this credit FOR RANSOM!!!!

“THERE IS PLENTY OF LIQUIDITY IN THE SYSTEM.”

Fear isn’t used to control the powerful…it’s used to control the poor!

Maybe we should be calling and writing our legislators demanding that they enact a law demanding these banks to extend credit or we’ll vote ‘em out. How ’bout that for fear tactics!

These institutions should die. That’s how the free market works…bad ideas fail and good ideas make it stronger. Letting the markets work as they should is putting our trust into the natural evolution of society.

That’s all I’m gonna say for now. I hope that you find these ideas stimulating. If you have any more information or clues…PLEASE COMMENT! I look forward to hearing from my readers about this. I’m sure you’re an intelligent bunch!

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My Dear Readers,

Well…I have started a new blog. And it is AWESOME.

As you know, I don’t write much on BtS. I don’t like commentary very much because you’re forced to take sides or have an opinion and honestly - having an opinion irritates me. Or, maybe it makes me irritated.

Anyway, what that means is I don’t worry about right and wrong, I’m just fascinated by what is. Call me an Existentialist!

Ok, so my new blog isn’t commentary or news, so WHAT IS IT?

Anyway, The Transhuman Chronicles is a new way to explore the Singularity…in bite-sized fictional chunks.

So please, go and read The Transhuman Chronicles. Leave a comment and let me know what you think or add to the ideas. I want to interact with the readers there…so by all means introduce yourself!!

Sincerely,
Chris Williamson
Blogging the Singularity

Click on the image to be transported into the future…

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Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.

Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as ‘uncanny valley’ - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a ‘control system’. more>>>

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The Open Cognition Project

OpenCog aims to provide research scientists and software developers with a common platform to build and share artificial intelligence programs. The long-term goal of OpenCog is acceleration of the development of beneficial AGI, a goal which includes developing tools and protocols for AGI safety.

The OpenCog Wiki is used to coordinate development, and to provide a repository for documentation and other technical information. The wiki is divided into sections for: more>>>

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When can I go get one of these at Best Buy?

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This video has definitely opened my eyes to the situation. I think that users should pay for their volume, just as those who drive the most pay the most in gas taxes. If the content providers are made to pay for the large bandwidth then it can and probably will lead to abuse.

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Only a week and a half after turning the beam on, the Large Hadron Collider has sprung a leak
By Stuart Fox Posted 09.22.2008 at 3:56 pm

Nine days after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) turned on its proton beam for the first time, the LHC needed to be turned off. Over the weekend the agency running the Collider announced that an accident damaged the magnets that guide the beam, putting the LHC out of commission for at least two months as scientists work to repair the equipment.

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By KATHY GRAHAM - Waikato Times | Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Hamilton’s LIC, the country’s largest genetic company, made their first collection and insemination of DNA-proven semen last week from technology billed as the biggest advance in bovine genetics for more than 50 years.

Using science, LIC has determined how to look at a bull’s DNA to enable them to identify animals with positive traits and eliminate those with less desirable traits.

Traditionally farmers have had to wait at least three years until daughters of selected bulls had proven their worth. more>>>

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2008) — Using a lump of graphite, a piece of Scotch tape and a silicon wafer, Cornell researchers have created a balloonlike membrane that is just one atom thick — but strong enough to contain gases under several atmospheres of pressure without popping. more>>>

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Does the disparity between the rich an poor widen at an exponential rate?

And how does that affect the course of the Singularity?

What happens if later on down the road technology eliminates scarcity?

Could it potentially bring the entire system down, a revolution? Is the Singularity a revolution?

If so, will it be a violent overthrow type revolution or a peaceful one?

Basically, I’m concerned because the time between booms and busts is lessening. Could we be entering a time when we can just expect chaos all the time?

I’d like my fellow readers and blogging friends to offer any answers or insights. If you blog on one of these topics please email me and let me know! Thanks!

Income Distribution:

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Personally, I’m excited about the Nanotech bubble! With any luck, it’ll be the one to never burst and lead us into the Singularity.

Don’t these Billionaires employ teams of rocket-scientists types to make sure these types of things don’t happen? NO! They employ them to CREATE THE BUBBLES. Why? Because they PROFIT from it, and they know the government will bail them out.

Jeez, I wish I could just go down to the casino and make a stupid bet and have the government cover my a$$!!!! I blame us, the lowly taxpaper takes it in the rear year after year without standing up for what is right and voting in people who’s politics are obviously against our interests. We’re too busy working our butts off for a dollar that isn’t worth anything to take the time out and raise hell.

Ok, done ranting…here’s a list of some of the big economic bubles beginning with the very first one in the recorded history of Capitalism, the Tulip Mania!

Interesting…over half of them have occurred in the last 40 years!

Examples of economic bubbles include:

* Tulip mania (top 1637)
* The South Sea Company (1720)
* Mississippi Company (1720)
* Railroads Bubble
* Florida speculative building bubble (1926)
* The Nifty Fifty American stocks of the late 1960s and early 1970s
* Poseidon bubble (1970)
* Sports cards and comic books in the 1980s and early 1990s
* TY Beanie Babies (1996)
* The Dot-com bubble (circa 1995–2001)
* Japanese asset price bubble (1980s)
* 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (1997)
* Real estate bubble
o British property bubble (as of 2006)
o Irish property bubble (as of 2006)
o United States housing bubble (as of 2007)
+ (The former Florida swampland real estate bubble)
o Spanish property bubble (as of 2006)
o Romanian property bubble (as of 2008)

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008 3:29 PM

By: Tim Collie

Rumors the U.S. military has created a secret weapon that can decimate al-Qaida insurgents in Iraq and be used to hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan have been heating up military/technology blogs in the week since Bob Woodward began conducting interviews for his latest book, “The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008.”

In the book and subsequent “60 Minutes” interview, Woodward hints that the military’s success in creating a death ray resulted partly from a technology breakthrough that the famed Watergate reporter likens to the creation of the tank or the first atomic bomb. more>>>

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Financial news. It hasn’t even gotten bad yet. Just wait until the huge credit default swap market goes down. It’s gonna take EVERYONE with it. Read this and bear in mind that the entire credit swap market is over $60 trillion.

From Wikipedia:

Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

The market for credit derivatives is now so large, in many instances the amount of credit derivatives outstanding for an individual name are vastly greater than the bonds outstanding. For instance, company X may have $1 billion of outstanding debt and $10 billion of CDS contracts outstanding. If such a company were to default, and recovery is 40 cents on the dollar, then the loss to investors holding the bonds would be $600 million. However the loss to credit default swap sellers would be $6 billion.

This an excerpt of an Op-Ed published in the New York Times on September 15, 2008:

Nobody knows this market’s real size, or who owes what to whom, because there is no central clearinghouse or regulator for it. Credit default swaps are a type of credit insurance contract in which one party pays another party to protect it from the risk of default on a particular debt instrument. If that debt instrument (a bond, a bank loan, a mortgage) defaults, the insurer compensates the insured for his loss. The insurer (which could be a bank, an investment bank or a hedge fund) is required to post collateral to support its payment obligation, but in the insane credit environment that preceded the credit crisis, this collateral deposit was generally too small.

As a result, the credit default market is best described as an insurance market where many of the individual trades are undercapitalized. But even worse, many of the insurers are grossly undercapitalized. In one case in the New York courts, the Swiss banking giant UBS is suing a hedge fund that said it would insure nearly $1.5 billion in bonds but was unable to do so. No wonder — the hedge fund had only $200 million in assets.

If A.I.G. collapsed, its hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-related assets would be added to those being sold by other financial institutions. This would just depress values further. The counterparties around the world to A.I.G.’s credit default swaps may be unable to collect on their trades. As a large hedge-fund investor, A.I.G. would suddenly become a large redeemer from hedge funds, forcing fund managers to sell positions and probably driving down prices in the world’s financial markets. More failures, particularly of hedge funds, could follow.

Regulators knew that if Lehman went down, the world wouldn’t end. But Wall Street isn’t remotely prepared for the inestimable damage the financial system would suffer if A.I.G. collapsed.

While Gov. David A. Paterson of New York on Monday allowed A.I.G. to borrow $20 billion from its subsidiaries, that move will only postpone the day of reckoning. The Federal Reserve was also trying to arrange at least $70 billion in loans from investment banks, but it’s hard to see how Wall Street could come up with that much money.

More promisingly, A.I.G. asked the Federal Reserve for a bridge loan. True, there is no precedent for the central bank to extend assistance to an insurance company. But these are unprecedented times, and the Federal Reserve should provide A.I.G. with some form of financial support while the company liquidates its mortgage-related assets in an orderly manner.

The Fed cannot afford to stand on principle. The myth of free markets ended with the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Actually, it ended with their creation.

Michael Lewitt is the president of a money management firm.

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