Government at work......

Sending in the "new" required forms for a business license this year was a total waste of time.   They were "LOST" either at the post office or in the Milton City offices.  Tax dollars at work!

Richard W. Johnson, San Diego

One of the finest insurance agents on earth for sure.  Are you still in possession of that gold you bought in the early 80's?

Give NOW, only 2 days left!!!!!!

The Cultures of Giving competition ends TOMORROW (April 26) at First Nations Development Institute, so please give online TODAY to help us meet their matching grant. If you donate online now, your gift will be matched dollar for dollar by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. That makes your positive impact on American Indian communities TWICE as significant! By giving online during this challenge, your donation will be DOUBLED.

After tomorrow, there is NO match. That’s why we are urging you to give now. Even the minimum gift of $10 is greatly appreciated and will go a very long way toward building and revitalizing the economies of many Native American communities that need your help, and the help of First Nations.

In order to be matched, all donations must be made online through a special website. The secure website – hosted by Razoo.com – can be reached through this link or the button below: www.firstnations.org/cog .

THANK YOU FOR YOUR URGENT RESPONSE AND FOR YOUR GENEROSITY! And, of course, your gift is tax-deductible!

	First Nations Development Institute
	351 Coffman St. • Suite 200 • Longmont, CO 80501 Phone: (303) 774-7836 • Fax: (303) 774-7841

And the SEC does absolutely nothing.....

Okay, maybe they have had a couple of meetings with HFT firms and lobbyists and exchange officials and whoever else is raking in millions but from where I sit nothing is getting done.

Let me break it down for you in a simple manner.     When another investor gets to go inside the market and take a look at my order and front-run it to the detriment of our clients that is wrong.

I think the SEC calls it "providing liquidity".    I call it theft.

Liberal wishful thinking............

I wish I could eat dog, publish the experience in a book, become President, and still manage to have PETA supporting me.

PRIME TIME takin a hit...........

I have a hard time believing anything about Deion Sanders but one thing was certain.  There was never a collision on a pro field that he wanted any part of.   When he was "jumped" the other day by his "wife" and started tweeting prior to law enforcement carting her off to the jail it must have been a wild scene.  Do stars get their publicity in Texas a little different  than in other states?   

Atlanta Braves

They are still doing the "CHOP" at Turner Field.  How 90's.  The problem with the "CHOP" is that its mechanical recitation and dysfunctional cadence has NO connection to any Native American tribe,  dance or language. 

Like Ted Turner, the "CHOP" marches to its own drum and beat.

In 2012 it is still disgusting to hear.   

A novel kind of Grecian formula

Greeks top penis extension surgery

 More Greek men had penis extension surgery in 2010, in proportion to the population, than their counterparts in 25 countries in the developed world examined in a survey by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

The report, which compared data from other European Union countries including Italy, France, Spain and Germany, as well as the USA, Britain, Russia, China and Japan, found that South Koreans underwent the most aesthetic surgery, proportional to the country’s population, than any other of the 25 countries, with most opting for eyelid surgery to acquire a more “western look.”

Greece was second in the chart overall and first as regards to penis extensions.

Where's Sharpton, Jackson and CNN today?

MOBILE, Alabama — Mobile police need your help to catch a mob that beat Matthew Owens so badly that he’s in critical condition.According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.

Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.

Owens’ sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. “It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.” Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using “brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.”  Police will only say “multiple people” are involved.

What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.” Trayvon Martin is the unarmed teenager police say was shot and killed February 26 by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Samford, Florida.

Pam Martens on Corzine...........

"Only on Wall Street can you bankrupt a company; misplace $1.6 billion of customers’ money; lose 75 percent of shareholders’ money in two weeks; speed dial a high priced criminal attorney and get a court to authorize the payment of your multi-million dollar legal tab from the failed company’s insurance policies; have regulators waive your requirements to take licensing exams required to work in the securities and commodities industry; have your Board of Directors waive your loyalty to the firm; run a bucket shop out of the UK; and still have the word “Honorable” affixed to your name in a Congressional investigations hearing."

COMPLETE HALT today

The Russian stock exchange has ground to a halt today.

Hackers, lack of good vodka for the IT workers,  meteor showers, you name it, they will get the blame.

Anyone else think HFT, dark-pools and co-located servers would spread beyone American shores? 

Not a chance you say?  I'm sure Obama will get right on it for a quick fix.  Just ask Putin.

Just the facts please.........

The Distance to the Center of the Earth from the Equator is 3963 Miles -- From the North & South Pole 3,950 Miles.

Please President Obama .............

Your record thus far into your presidency is horrorific.   Do America a big favor.  Please straighten out Bush's mess of 4.6% unemployment and gas at $1.83 a gallon.  The sooner the better.

Food Stamps in America

There are 46.5 million Americans in the program as of the most recent information available (January 2012), comprising 22.2 million households. That’s 15% of the entire population, and just over 20% of all households. Moreover, despite the end of the official “Great Recession” in June 2009, over 10 million more Americans have been accepted into the program since that month, and the year-over-year growth rate for the program is still +5%. The USDA’s report is, not surprisingly, very upbeat on the utility of the program. Fair enough. But what does it mean when 20% of all households cannot afford to buy the food they need for their families? 

Pondering what it all means.........

Apparently, I'm supposed to be more angry about what Mitt Romney does with his money than what Barack Obama does with mine.

Home..............Milton, Georgia

Incorporated on Dec. 1, 2006, the City of Milton has been recognized for having the highest quality of life in the state of Georgia and ninth-highest in the southern United States by the Business Journals' "On Numbers" survey. It is a distinctive community that embraces small-town life and heritage while preserving and enhancing the city's rural character.

She has a GREAT future either in Congress or at the FED

The comptroller of Dixon was arrested and charged Tuesday for allegedly stealing more than $30 million in city funds since 2006 to furnish her lavish lifestyle, which included a horse farm, seven tractor-trailer trucks and a $2.1 motor home, according to a federal complaint.
Since last fall, it is believed that Crundwell embezzled more than $3.2 million, the complaint said. She used only $74,274 of the funds for city operations. The rest was used for her own expenses, including approximately $450,000 for her horse farm, $600,000 in online credit card payments, and $67,000 to by a 2012 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.

Seeking employment?

If you like the good life, love to party and enjoy beautiful women you might want to apply for a Secret Service position or something with the GSA.

2012 Montana Bull Elk Tag......

drum roll please............goes to my son, Hunter Parisian!

I hope he downs a bull bigger than what his Dad dreams about!

Dick Clark

I met Dick Clark once in Morris, Minnesota of all places.

It was on evening of the Christmas holidays.   I won't go into the reason he was in Morris, suffice to say it was a wife's relative but it was rather exciting to be at the check-out counter with him.

You had a great run Dick.   May your eternal life be as good.

Liberal logic..........

The Left tried to pull their usual with Ann Romney.     The undertones of a "Pissed-Off" Momma bear emerged from late spring hibernation and it wasn't pretty.   The Lame Stream media hacks went silent fairly fast.

If you are ever in conversation with a liberal and they are in the midst of an Ann Romney discussion that focuses on jobs, business or the economy please educate them and tell them that Ann has as much experience as does the current President.   

Worst government office in Georgia........

Office of the Jury Clerk
Justice Center Tower
185 Central Avenue, SW
Suite T-7100
Atlanta, GA 30303
Tel. 404-612-4600
Fax 404-730-7178

Tried for hours last week to get thru to this Office.   Day after day. 

Sad state of affairs down there.

Pine Ridge Reservation

I was thinking about Pine Ridge last night.   Maybe they have a lot of alcohol consumption which is the cause of their poverty instead of alot of poverty which is the cause of their alcohol consumption.

Maybe the disease of alcoholism is so pervasive among the population in Pine Ridge and the tribe and BIA won't do what is needed to effect change.  The status quo continues.   The govermental welfare state continues on its merry way.   Generations of warriors lost on a million acres of despair.  

July, 2007

"This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime," is how U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently described the current global boom.

Oglala Sioux Tribe

“We have poverty and therefore a lot of alcohol consumption,” says John Yellow Bird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux tribe.

John, you need to look a bit deeper.  Get your tribe to look in the mirror.   When I lived in Pine Ridge about 40 some years ago and went to high school at Oglala Community High School it was as sad then as it is today.   Then, about 90% of new-borns were born to parents who were married.  Today, that number on the reservation is far less than half that.  Kids galore and no family structure in sight.  Where are the warriors who want to man up and take responsibility for their own DNA?  Where are the dads to teach these children to fish, to hunt, to ride, to rope, to dance, to work, to play football and basketball to be the future great Thorpes?

Mopping up in Columbia..........

Those Secret Service agents were having a grand time until reality hit.

Ouch.

JW Blue Label...........

I made a bet with my old pal, Maurice Altshuler, a broker with Morgan Stanley in LaJolla, that the rocket launched by North Korea would never come close to making it to target.

If you are in the neighborhood, stop in for a shot.

SHTF, Zero Hedge calling it straight

Regular readers know that since the beginning, Zero Hedge has been vehemently opposed to the official SEC explanation of the chain of events that brought upon the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1000 points in a span of seconds, and during which billions were lost when stop loss orders were triggered catching hapless victims unaware (unless of course, one had a stop loss well beyond a reasonable interval of 20%, in which case the trades were simply DKed). It is no secret that one of the main reasons why the retail investor has since declared a boycott of capital markets, which lasts to this day, and manifests itself in hundreds of billions pulled out of equities and deposited into bonds and hard assets, has been precisely the SEC's unwillingness to probe into this still open issue, and not only come up with a reasonable and accurate explanation for what truly happened, but hold anyone responsible for the biggest market crash in history in absolute terms. Instead, the SEC, naively has been pushing forth a ridiculous story that the entire market crash was the doing of one small mutual fund: Waddell and Reed, and its 75,000 E-mini trade, which initially was opposed to being scapegoated, but subsequently went oddly radio silent. Well, if they didn't mind shouldering the blame, the SEC was likely right, most would say. However, as virtually always happens, most would be wrong. Over the past few days, Nanex has one again, without any assistance from the regulators or any third parties, managed to unravel a critical component of the entire 104 page SEC "findings" which as is now known, indemnified all forms of high frequency trading (even as subsequently it was found, again by Nanex, that it was precisely HFT quote churning that was the primary, if not sole, reason for the catastrophic chain of events) with a finding so profound which in turn discredits the entire analytical framework of the SEC report, and makes it null and void.... The only open question is whether the SEC, which certainly co-opted the authors of the paper to reach the desired conclusion, real facts be damned, acted out of malice and purposefully fabricated the data knowing very well the evidence does not support the conclusion, or, just as bad, was the entire supporting cast and crew so glaringly incompetent they did not understand what they were looking at in the first place.

The United States of America

A nation of totally self-centered special interest groups that terrorize our politicians.

Air Force One @ $179,750/hour

American taxpayers foot the bill for every hour of operation. 

When you write that check to the U.S. Treasury for your 2011 tax bill I hope you smile.

The only time I feel good about paying taxes, I mean feel really good, is when I watch a Blue Angels practice or show and but for a few moments, feel the sound and fury of American military men and women doing their jobs.

A simple explanation...........

Osama Bin Laden was living with 3 wives in one compound, and never left the house for 5 years.

Evidence now indicates that he called the US Navy Seals himself.

With Santorum on the couch..........

What an exciting presidential election this is shaping up to be!

It's looking like we'll get to choose either:

A guy from Harvard funded by Goldman Sachs

vs.

A guy from Harvard funded by Goldman Sachs!

President Liar

is down in Palm Beach today.    I can't remember the last time I heard a truthful statement come from his teleprompter, can you?

Ignore David Rosenberg at your peril..........

There is no free-lunch - especially if that lunch is liquidity-fueled - is how Gluskin-Sheff's David Rosenberg reminds us of the reality facing US markets this year and next. As (former Fed governor) Kevin Warsh noted in the WSJ "The 'fiscal cliff' in early 2013 - when government stimulus spending and tax relief are set to fall - is not misfortune. It is the inevitable result of policies that kick the can down the road." Between the jobs data and three months in a row of declining ISM orders/inventories it seems the key manufacturing sector of support for the economy may be quaking and add to that the deleveraging that is now recurring (consumer credit) and Rosenberg sees six rather sizable stumbling-blocks facing markets as we move forward. On this basis, the market as a whole is overpriced by more than 20%.

It never ceases to amaze me..........

If the Teleprompter in Chief had a son, would  he look like Tyrone Woodfork?

It's okay, you can GOOGLE the name TyroneWoodfork.  See what he has been up to lately.

California Dreamin ............

In the news this week a southern California man was put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns and had (by rough estimate) 1-million rounds of ammunition stored in his home.

The house also has a secret escape tunnel. The television reporter said: "Wow! He has about a million machine gun bullets" and the headline referred to it as a "massive weapons cache".

By California standards someone even owning 100,000 rounds would be called "mentally unstable."

If he lived elsewhere, such as Arizona he'd be called "an avid gun collector".
In Nebraska , he'd be called "a novice gun collector".
In Utah , he'd be called "moderately well prepared", but they'd probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food. In Montana , he'd be called "The neighborhood 'Go-To' guy".
In Idaho , he'd be called "a likely gubernatorial candidate".
In Wyoming , he'd be called "an eligible bachelor" and..........in Texas , he'd be called "A huntin' buddy

The criminals at work! The playing field is NOT level.

Here is a one-minute bar chart of the stock market.  Looks rather normal doesn't it?

Here is the "real" market over a period of 9.5 SECONDS showing what really happens with colocated servers running algo's at nearly the speed of light.

Welfare addiction in your town?

I attended 4 high schools in 3 different states.  Yes, a bit unusual.  Not ordinary by any stretch.  All of the small villages or towns that my family lived in were on Indian Reservations.  All of these little hamlets were basically welfare addicted society's.  In so many ways they still are today.

What is up with that?

Too good not to share.........

The past seven brutal days will go down as one of the worst weeks in history for a sitting president. It certainly has been, without any doubt, the worst week yet for President Obama.

Somehow, Mr. Obama managed to embarrass himself abroad, humiliate himself here at home, see his credentials for being elected so severely undermined that it raises startling questions about whether he should have been elected in the first place — let alone be re-elected later this year.

Consider:

• Last Friday, Mr. Obama wandered into the killing of Trayvon Martin. Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager was killed into a full-blown hot race fight.  Americans, he admonished, need to do some “soul-searching.” And then, utterly inexplicably, he veered off into this bizarre tangent about how he and the poor dead kid look so much alike they could be father and son. It was election-year race-pandering gone horribly wrong.

• By the start of this week, Mr. Obama had fled town and was racing to the other side of the planet just as the Supreme Court was taking up the potentially-embarrassing matter of Obamacare. While in South Korea he was caught on a hidden mic negotiating with the president of our longest-standing rival on how to sell America and her allies down the river once he gets past the next election.

• Meanwhile, back at home, the Supreme Court took up the single most important achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency and, boy, was it embarrassing. The great constitutional law professor, it turns out, may not quite be the wizard he told us he was.

By most accounts, Mr. Obama and his stuttering lawyers were all but laughed out of the courthouse. They were even stumbling over softball questions lobbed by Mr. Obama’s own hand-picked justices.

• Mr. Obama closed his week pulling off a nearly unimaginable feat: He managed to totally and completely unify the nastily-fighting Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Late Wednesday night, they unanimously voted — 414 to zip — to reject the budget Mr. Obama had presented, leaving him not even a thin lily’s blade to hide behind.

So, in one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it.  It was as if you lumped Hurricane Katrina and the Abu Ghraib abuses into one week for George W. Bush. And added on top of that the time he oddly groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel and got caught cursing on a hot mic.

Even then, it wouldn’t be as bad as Mr. Obama’s week. You would probably also have to toss in the time Mr. Bush’s father threw up into the lap of Japan’s prime minister. Only then might we be approaching how bad a week it was for Mr. Obama.  Not that you will see any trace of embarrassment in the face of Mr. Obama. He has mastered the high political art of shamelessness, wearing it smugly and cockily. Kind of like a hoodie.

Grazing in India

As a cowboy at heart it is hard to understand this typical scene in India.

Eating plastic and paper day in and day out can't be good for any animal.

The fact that we all live downstream from this quagmire of humanity scares me.

Is shovel-ready a verb or bankruptcy term?

Solyndra was just the appetizer. Earlier today, in what will come as a surprise only to members of the administration, the company which proudly held the rights to the world's largest solar power project, the hilariously named Solar Trust of America ("STA"), filed for bankruptcy. And while one could say that the company's epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy, incidentally the second largest loan ever handed out by the DOE's Stephen Chu. That amount was supposed to fund the expansion of the company's 1000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside, California. From the funding press release, "This project construction is expected to create over 1,000 direct jobs in Southern California, 7,500 indirect jobs in related industries throughout the United States, and more than 200 long-term operational jobs at the facility itself. It will play a key role in stimulating the American economy,” said Uwe T. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Solar Trust of America and Executive Chairman of project development subsidiary Solar Millennium, LLC." Instead, what Solar Trust will do is create lots of billable hours for bankruptcy attorneys (at $1,000/hour), and a good old equity extraction for the $22 million DIP lender, which just happens to be NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, another "alternative energy" company which last year received a $935 million loan courtesy of the very same (and now $2.1 billion poorer) Department of Energy, which is also a subsidiary of public NextEra Energy (NEE), in the process ultimately resulting in yet another transfer of taxpayer cash to NEE's private shareholders.

This is NOT an April Fools Joke.............

While we do not know if foodstamp usage is seasonally adjusted, we do know that in January it was virtually unchanged at 46.5 million recipients. And while the actual number of recipients declined by a whisper, the number of households actually receiving benefits increased to a new record of 22.2 million. Lastly, the average monthly benefit per household slide to a multi-year low of $277.27. First the quality of jobs gets diluted, next the poverty benefits. All in line with the continued dilution of real wealth, simply so nominal indexes can hit fresh 5 year highs - today the S&P hit an intraday high not seen since December 31, 2007. Luckily, soon everyone will be rich and can retire.

Lies from Obama confirm the following............

Watching pompous politicians, egotistical economists, arrogant investment geniuses, clueless media pundits, and self- proclaimed experts on the Great Depression predict an economic recovery and a return to normalcy would be amusing if it wasn’t so pathetic. Their lack of historical perspective does a huge disservice to the American people, as their failure to grasp the cyclical nature of history results in a broad misunderstanding of the Crisis the country is facing. The ruling class and opinion leaders are dominated by linear thinkers that believe the world progresses in a straight line. Despite all evidence of history clearly moving through cycles that repeat every eighty to one hundred years (a long human life), the present generations are always surprised by these turnings in history. I can guarantee you this country will not truly experience an economic recovery or progress for another fifteen to twenty years. If you think the last four years have been bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Hope is not an option. There is too much debt, too little cash-flow, too many promises, too many lies, too little common sense, too much mass delusion, too much corruption, too little trust, too much hate, too many weapons in the hands of too many crazies, and too few visionary leaders to not create an epic worldwide implosion. Too bad. We stand here in the year 2012 with no good options, only less worse options. Decades of foolishness, debt accumulation, and a materialistic feeding frenzy of delusion have left the world broke and out of options. And still our leaders accelerate the debt accumulation, while encouraging the masses to carry-on as if nothing has changed since 2008.

The worst tragedy for retirees.........

is the artificially driven low yields on bonds.   The yields are not even close to the rate of inflation of the goods and services they consume.

One would think the seniors in America would be heard on this matter but then again, most of them probably still believe Congress is looking out for their best interests.

It is a real hoot to bump into all of the fixed income investments, structured products and to hear the stories told to older Americans by slick stockbroker-salesmen.  I can laugh because we hear the stories and see the carnage all too often.   I just wish it weren't so.   Good people getting creamed.  Year after year.  It just never ends with investors who rely on salesmen with their serious money.