Not good

"We had the experience, but missed the meaning" - T. S. Eliot in "The Dry Salvages".

That applies to the US ruling classes. The Panic of 2008 should have led to real change in how people invest and how the financial system is structured. But almost nothing has changed.

Too much money is in trading hedge funds ... in hedge funds, period. All that money is unproductive for economic growth. Of all those funds of the rich man, only venture capital helps the world get better. The rest are simply parasitical creatures seeking to suck a bit of the vig from markets.

Short selling has not been forced to be "real" - namely, selling only what one has borrowed and applying to all, including market makers.

Computer trading is uncontrolled. Trading pauses and "circuit breakers" are set so wide that they become irrelevant.

The public had become afraid of investing in stocks. That's a colossal change from the 1980s and 1990s.

All the Street seems to want to do is trade. Where is their primary function as financial intermediaries being done ? The same for the big banks. The big banks suck deposits from America and use the money to ... trade securities. They don't try to make loans anymore. Why bother ? They can make more money trading.

Derivatives still interconnect the major financial intermediaries, thus making them wired for another blow-up. Credit default swaps are still permitted as weapons for financial vikings to raid & pillage.

Every week we see another 400,000+ people laid off from work. Unemployment is close to 10%. Underemployment probably is over 15%.

And what does the ruling class do ? Nothing. They fight with each other seeking more power.

Thus, that quote from T. S. Eliot might be the epigram for the old order.

Let's hope the people start to act. The people must stop waiting for government to act, and take action themselves - the people need to restore their own communities, their own economic lives and their own human capital. The tools ? The mind and what exists now. The people need to focus their minds on what they can do now to help themselves with what they have.

This writer is taking actions to help motivate and aid the people to strive to help themselves.

As for the ruling classes ... just push them aside.

Actions

Krypto wants to sell some real estate fund and gold. The proceeds are to go into cash and/or bonds. I'll post actions in the comments, IF I do it.

Word of the Day

"Supervention" - noun [$10]; from "Supervene" - verb, intransitive [$10]
Supervene means to occur as an interruption in or a change from some states.
Supervention means an action or occurrence of supervening.
Sentence: (A) [from The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot, pg 46.] "The individual parts of any collection [of poems, etc.] are affected by the supervention of a wholly novel element ..." (B) Will history see the actions of the people in 2010 as a critical supervention in history and in the path of the US economy?