really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... aming-scam

the interesting thing is to read some of the economic parallels between world of warcraft and the real economy.

the chinese forced prison camp labor inflates the market of World of Warcraft worlds, forcing a larger gap between rich and poor where the do-it-yourself player needs to work twice or thrice as hard to compete with the ones that just purchase gold or have a prison camp to farm for them. also, the flood of gold in the system devalues the currency within that virtual world, making it harder once again for the regular guy to buy items that he wants or needs.

i think it would be entertaining to read an actual economists take on the virtual worlds and their virtual currency. it fluctuates alongside the real worlds currency and is just as real as ours. both require the faith of the bearer to give them value and since there are people willing to actually spend real world money on virtual world money, it makes it completely real and with an exchange rate.

should be look into investing in virtual gold or platinum pieces? what is the forecasted rise? or since it is an inflating currency, maybe we should purchase property within the game (swords or armor)?

what is the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve of Asteroth?

So a while ago I signed up for this email list called "Energy and Capital" which was just advice on investing in renewable energy. Normally they are upbeat and excited about the market, sometimes they are wary of china and realize that the whole industry is starting to revolve around that behemoth, and sometimes they are pessimistic about america's lack of substantial investment in such a necessary market. Today, they went incredibly morbid. What they are discussing and their response to it was so out of the ordinary that I felt I needed to paste the email in here:

Wall Street Wants You to Die
By Nick Hodge | Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

We do a ton of research around here to keep you well informed on a multitude of topics.

This morning, I counted 51 windows open on my computer. There was the standard Gmail, portfolios (both personal and Alternative Energy Speculator), Yahoo! Finance, Weather Channel and Angel company website...

There was the Southwest and Hampton Inn websites I just used to book a trip to Boston for next week, where I'll be meeting with the CEO and touring the new factory of a rare earth miner and metal alloys producer...

And then there were 45 windows of research and articles about things I'd eventually like to tell you about — including such topics as the billions being spent on water in the Middle East, the increasing speed of China's elevators, building management buyout targets, Gates' and Buffett's new interest in uranium, and a survey on whether or not investors think the market is rigged (47% said yes).

Yet I'm not going to tell you about any of that today...

What I have to tell you is much more urgent, and could spare you more grief and financial anxiety than those other stories could ever make you.

Wall Street Wants You to Die

This is very serious.

On my way in to work the other day, I caught a piece of a local news radio program called Maryland Morning. The guest was Michael Greenberger, former head of trading and markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

He was discussing life settlements and mortality swaps, the newest way for Wall Street to screw average Americans.

His explanation is perfect, so I'll give it to you from the primary source:

Life settlements are investment techniques that mirror what happened in the subprime mortgage situation that blew up the economy in the fall of 2008

In the subprime mortgage situation the banks cobbled together all the mortgages that they had let to potential homeowners into a big basket of investments, and they kept reshuffling them so it was confusing to understand what the principle financial question was. And there the question was: Will people who are not credit worthy pay their mortgages?

And they so confused the issue and got the credit rating agencies to give these investments AAA ratings that people were dying to buy into the subprime mortgage market and buy a piece of this bundle of thousands and thousands of mortgages. That turned out to be a catastrophe.

So shortly after the crisis — in the spring of 2009 — these banks start thinking 'well now that everybody's angry with us over subprime mortgages, why don't we do this with life insurance policies?' So they go to individuals who have life insurance policies and agree to pay them a certain amount of money to give up their policy.

So they try to buy these policies as cheap as they can, take like thousands and thousands of these policies, put them in an investment vehicle, and have people invest in them.

And the trick is to hope that the people will die on the early side so the policies will trigger early and they'll make money. Because they'll make more money from that than they paid out to the people they were settling.

On the other hand, if people live longer, these investments may fall apart.

You understand what's going on here, right?

To be clear, life settlements on their own are nothing new. Those whose long-term plans change or whose premiums climb too high have always been able to sell their insurance policy.

What's new here is securitizing it — bundling numerous policies together and allowing others to invest in them.

Don't Fall for It

Just like the already-rich bet on the (in)ability of a lesser class to pay their mortgages, they're now betting on (and, indeed, hoping for) the early demise of the ill and elderly.

As Greenberger continued, “Wealthy investors are going to either win or lose on their investment on whether you die early or you die late.”

And just like the subprime industry, this industry is largely unregulated and has gotten off the ground under the radar screen.

The practice isn't illegal, but the fear is that banks will prey on the financially vulnerable and get them to sell life insurance policies against their best interest.

Is it ever worth it? Not usually.

Actuary and insurance advisor Scott Witt says, “Almost always, the policy being sold is far more valuable in the hands of the owner than it is in the hands of the person buying it.”

Financial advisor Tom Orecchio, a principal at Modera Wealth Management agrees: “All things being equal, the policy is worth more to your heirs than it is to an investment fund in Delaware. Ultimately, sellers may only expect about 20 cents for each dollar of a policy's face value.”

In a glimpse of how much companies care about you, insurance companies are furious at this practice.

If you're unable to pay your premiums and sell your policy to Wall Street, the premiums will be kept up until the payout. And if this practice keeps up, the insurance companies know how to fix it for you. They'll raise your premiums so they'll be too high for Wall Street to turn a profit.

Insurance companies are rooting for you to run out of money for your premiums; Wall Street just wants you to die.

Broader Point

The broader point here is that the system — if not broken yet — is nearing its breaking point.

Wealth is no longer created by selling a product or service for the market price, or by investing traditionally in stocks and bonds.

Corporations and the multi-millionaires who run them have undergone a systematic program to separate the rest of Americans from their money. And they've made the government their slave by feeding them an IV of that sweet, life-sustaining nectar: reelection cash.

Wall Street has turned to making things up because they're out of ways to make a legitimate dollar. They'd rather come up with evermore dire ways to separate you from the ones you make.

The dollar's in the toilet. Unemployment's high and not improving. Housing values continue their skid from the Street's last greatest idea.

And with nowhere else to turn, Wall Street is now trying to profit from the last thing you have left...

Your life.

Call it like you see it,

Nick Hodge

Nick Hodge
Editor, Energy and Capital



damn. the hits keep comin.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/0 ... 56091.html

So hell fucking yes. good job barry and that SEAL team and leon panetta


So, we no longer have moral objectives in the Middle East? Well, the infrastructure put in to simply catch this man will not unravel on its own. we will still have homeland security and the newly draconic flavor of the CIA. There will always be arguments towards the spread of democracy, and they aren't all hollow imperialist arguments. As witnessed with the middle east revolution, the idea of spreading democracy has been given a fair amount of substance in arguments due to these protests and their subsequent crackdowns. There will be arguments along the lines of the course that should be taken in response. should we support democracy in action militarily? or should we just await the inevitable wakening of the middle east in its own time, legitimately without outside influence? i support the information age and its ability to erode unjust governments, but i can see how alluring the military action argument is. it prevents the deaths of revolutionaries. That's true, but it also writes their story as propped up by western intervention. Many will not consider the people's new democratic movements and governments as tainted, not yet. But it is an argument and a story to be told farther down the line, when people want to criticize the government in power. they can say its foreign backed and not legitimate.

However the arguments for military intervention in the middle east will go from now on, at least one thing we can be sure of. We finally have tied up the last loose end for afghanistan. yes, maybe some will think we owe them infrastructure, some will think we owe ourselves a presence to deter terrorists from gaining a foothold. those are both however, limited arguments. they will fade with time. a living breathing martyr as the antithesis to western culture with his own riches to rags religious hero story. thats a more difficult narrative to overcome and this is the first step. yea, the martyrs will revere him. fidelity to the cause might grow stronger, but i believe with his loss and our inevitable withdrawal (however full the withdrawal may be), recruitment will go way down. Let's hope the administration doesn't make the foolish mistake of positioning Mani-Al-Suri or zawahiri as our antithesis now. don't allow anyone to be our opposite, that only gives them more power than they would have had otherwise. Al-Suri will either try to take this position, or raise another in its place. Many journalists might also be interested in making the case for another mujahideen to be thrown into the limelight as the ultimate baddy. However, this would be incredibly detrimental to our ability to draw down this cultural/religious war. The story is over. there is no sequel.

without the immense cohesion of binary opposition, light vs dark, good vs evil, west vs east, we can finally get over this chapter in our history, and hopefully move on to a much better one. those days are over.

Woo! america fuck yea!

im still here, sorry for not posting for a while now, my isp has been redirecting this website back to china unicom's website. not quite sure why. maybe it was just my isp being awful. however, at the time they were redirecting a lot of websites: the daily beast, wikipedia, newser and some others. its different than just outright blocking it. it just sends me to a china unicom sponsored baidu page.



other than censorship, ive started teaching 18 classes a week, which includes 110 kids in writing classes and an s.a.t. class of around 7 potential students including my boss and a colleague. as of right now it only has 3, but they are adding more next week.



so i correct a lot of papers. sometimes i enjoy doing that because i know i am helping the students, but other times I can tell that the kids just put chinese writing into a translation program and they most likely wont even look at what i write down for correction.

its difficult to actually grab the attention of someone who thinks they can just google a better education than the one you are giving them.

however, now that im teaching the upper level students and some s.a.t. students, there are the thirsty-for-knowledge kids who make it all worthwhile. they appreciate what you are doing.

On Sunday I moved into a new apartment. Vince the Texan moved back to texas, so I took his old place. It is huge, with an actual kitchen, two bathrooms and a back patio area. i have a grill out there and a punching bag. ill try to have pictures soon.

lontee came to town the other day, and we were drinking downtown and met some of my students. eventually after coming out of a karaoke bar sort of place, my student started shouting and yelling at these guys. something happened. as it was explained to me the next day, they almost hit his girlfriend with their car, so kevin (my student) started yelling at them and going at them. so i see this and the other guys moving up to kevin. so i join in and we go about that dance-el-macho for a little bit and the other side starts going away. the next day at school, all of the kids are coming up to me and saying "if you fight, i fight" and they are offering to call up their 20 friends to go have a rumble in downtown longhu.

this is an important thing to note about china. i mightve told this story before but when people fight here, they call all of their friends. i was once watching two of the chinese teachers from this area get into a fight near the school. they all pulled out their cell phones and the situation quickly balooned from 4 guys to over 20, standing around and facing off. it didnt end up being 20 guys fighting, just some shoves and harsh sounding words. everyone holding each other back. the lesson to be learned is: Communists Do Not Fight One on One.

other than these developments, family, when is the next skype date?

i can show you the new place.

Brad sent me this link

http://www.click2houston.com/news/27118 ... source=hou