Just In - No Taper!

[Woodsman]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

Just to make sure, we are talking about this guy right

Easy there, friend. I'm not endorsing anyone here or any method. Call it whatever you care, but I'm trying to understand Armstrong on rational and objective terms. It hasn't been easy and I don't intend to present myself as an authority on the man.

It's all on the public record and you'll have to judge for yourself. There are literally thousands of pages available for any and all to read, analyze, and with plenty of data to check and backtest. You're welcome to have at it and come to your own conclusions, but expect to take some time.

Skepticism is the order of the day, but the man has quite a record and his personal story is indeed compelling. His POV is entirely compatible with and complementary to iTulip in my uninformed newbie opinion. I had a mind to put an "ask EJ" on Armstrong, but in reading his scant few comments on the man it seems he shares your skepticism and likely has bigger fish to fry anyway. Still, EJ if you ever run out of ideas for the next article...

For what it's worth, Armstrong disputes the Wikipedia article. You can go to his site if you have any interest in the details. Just be prepared to slog through an ocean of writings.

[Woodsman]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

If by "connected intellectuals" you include EJ, I'd respectfully suggest that it is far better for our purposes as members that EJ be as connected possible. Besides, one does not need to be an iTuliper for half as long as you vino to understand that EJ is far too diplomatic and prudent to wave the bloody shirt. There's plenty of that already and anyway like the man says...

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

[Woodsman]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

Armstrong agrees with you.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/is-the-end-near/


Unfortunately, all the hype and usurpation of the Maya discovery of cycles converting their calendar into a doomsday clock, has brought a road block to any investigation of the Maya. The first thing that comes to mind among reasonable people is that the Maya calendar is just nonsense. It is simply a cycle and its length is by no means the time span of the beginning and end of society. This cycle has come and gone before without the end of the world. It does seem to be more of a change in an era which seems to be on target for a sea-change in civilization as a new cycle begin. The 16th ruler of Copan died at the end of the 10th Baktun and the city collapsed. The city of Copan was born with the cycle and because of this beginning of a new cycle the city was built. The Maya used this turning point to begin anew. The Copan dynasty lasted for about the full cycle of 400 years. This was simply one Baktun. Scholars have known for decades that the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan “Long Count” system of timekeeping was set to end precisely on a winter solstice, and that this system was put in place some 2300 years ago.

The Maya were students of TIME. This amazing fact that the ancient Maya were sky watchers and were able to pinpoint a winter solstice far off into the future demonstrates that their discovery was indeed important. The Mayan Long Count and the precession of the equinoxes are the key.
The Maya Classic Period is thought to have lasted from 200 – 900AD, but recent archeological findings are pushing back the dawn of Mayan civilization. Large ruin sites indicating high culture with distinctly Mayan antecedents are being found in the jungles of Guatemala dating back to before 200AD and may even have existed before the Olmec civilization. But this is not yet confirmed.

The early Maya adopted two different time keeping systems, the “Short Count” and the “Long Count”. The Short Count derives from combining the tzolkin cycle of 260 days with the solar year and the Venus cycle of 584 days. In this way, “short” periods of 13, 52 and 104 years are generated. It is the meshing of these cycles that is fascinating so that there is no day that actually repeats with the same combination for 52 years. The Long Count system is somewhat more abstract, yet is also related to certain astronomical cycles. It is based upon key cycles of days multiplied at each level by that key Mayan number, twenty illustrated here.

Notice that the only exception to multiplying by twenty is at the tun level, where the uinal period is instead multiplied by 18 to make the 360-day tun. The Maya employed this counting system to track an unbroken sequence of days from the time it was created. It is not fully understood why the Maya felt so compelled to comprehend TIME in such a great span. The oldest Long Count date as yet found corresponds to 32 BC so it is hard to fathom why they were obsessed with the past and future.
We find Long Count dates in the archeological record beginning with the baktun place value and separated by dots. For example a baktun has 144000 days, each katun has 7200 days, and so on.The Maya system is a scalar type system with a zero date from which things begin. We read the date inscription 10.10.5.0.0 equals 10 baktuns, 10 katuns, 0 tuns, 0 uinals and 0 days. If we add up all the values we find that 10.10.5.0.0 indicates a total of 1,512,000 days have elapsed since the date Zero. The much discussed 13-baktun cycle is completed 1,872,000 days (13 baktuns) after the ZERO date. This period of time is the so called Mayan “Great Cycle” of the Long Count and equals 5,125.36 years. Obviously, both the history of man and the earth are much older than 5,125.6 years so this cycle cannot possibly indicate the end of the world.

[Raz]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

Not intellectual, but moral bankruptcy:



Bill Black got it right seven years ago. No changes will come until the top 100 most aggregious leaders of this criminal cohort are eating off of metal plates and earning 35 cents an hour at their UNICOR job. The only way to fix America is to stop running it like it is Nigeria or Venezuela. But good luck with that.

+1.

[GRG55]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

And here comes "damage control" central, just as we saw in the May and June backpedalling from the Fed. Maybe the Fed should be sent on a loooong holiday, let's say a year. They would do less damage that way, and I am not sure they would be missed...


...I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But I'm running behind...

Jackson Browne, "Running on Empty", 1977

Bullard Says Fed Decision Not to Taper Was ‘Borderline’ Call

Sep 20, 2013 6:15 AM MT

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, a voter on policy this year who has backed record stimulus, said the decision not to slow bond buying was a close call and “small” tapering is possible next month.

“That was a borderline decision” after “weaker data came in,” Bullard said today on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene. “The committee came down on the side of, ‘Let’s wait.’”

Bullard called October a “live meeting,” because “it’s possible you could get some data that change the complexion of the outlook and could make the committee be comfortable with a small taper in October.”...

[vinoveri]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

If by "connected intellectuals" you include EJ, I'd respectfully suggest that it is far better for our purposes as members that EJ be as connected possible. Besides, one does not need to be an iTuliper for half as long as you vino to understand that EJ is far too diplomatic and prudent to wave the bloody shirt. There's plenty of that already and anyway like the man says...

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Thank you Woodsman. No, I don't expect EJ to dress down any of our esteemed leaders as that is the quickest way to get ignored (or worst). I do think however that this forum should allow "truth" to be told if even in a "wink-wink fashion", but I perceive more of a "The Fed are a bunch a kindly old folks who are doing their best and acting in good faith", and believe me "bad faith" is the heart of the matter. At best I can hypothesize and attribute a sort of invincible ignorance and Noblesse Oblige worldview to these folks, but even then they must deliberately mislead to prevent the masses from catching on to how simple, systemic and rent-skimming the scam really is. I'm tired of the lies and self-congratulatory bullshit, as if committing to lend unlimited amounts of money at 0.25% to a select few and monetizing $1Trillion every year in new debt is "hard and thoughtful" work. Give me a break. Several years from now after the next crisis Bernanke's book will come out stating that either "how could he have known" OR "he suspected and wanted a different course but was pressured to continue" the ludicrous accommodative policy. There's no penalty for ******* up anymore precisely because the game is rigged. Maybe we should talk about this - but again the "talkers" are connected and too busy either feathering their own nest or hoping to get admitted to the inner circle where their ideas can make a difference (i.e. pipe dream).

And with respect, everybody does not know - only the connected and the worldly wise how the game is rigged - the masses may suspect - but they don't understand the intricacies and they're not going to learn from listening to Fed speak lies or their high school government civics class. The social contract is broken (OK maybe its always been this way, but I just came to understand in the last 5 years - call me foolish, naïve for not knowing- OK true enough). That doesn't make it right. It takes a thief to know one - but first it takes a thief to teach a new thief - and our culture has turned to larceny and everybody now cheats.... and its OK because everybody knows?; can't agree with that my friend.

Senator Roark:
Power don't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big and gettin' the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you've got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you've got 'em by the balls.
Senator Roark:
Everyone would lie for me. Everyone who counts. Otherwise, their own lies — everything that runs Sin City — it all comes tumbling down like a pack of cards
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sin_City

[Woodsman]

Re: Just In - No Taper!

Forgive me if I gave the impression that by everybody knows, I believe it is all okay. It is most definitely NOT okay, copacetic, cool, or any other such thing!