Adam Crowe

CollegeHumor -- Googling with Bing

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:28:29 PDT

'The easiest way to Google since Yahoo!' - HAHA

CollegeHumor -- Web Site Story

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:19:53 PDT

'CollegeHumor's first Broadway musical since (LOL)Cats.' -- GHEY

Business Insider -- Everthing Thing You Didn't Know About Tech & Media

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:17:59 PDT

'The first company to buy and run an ad through Google's automated auction business was a live mail-order lobster store.' -- Awesome!

Zero Hedge -- Jon Stewart Takes On Goldman Sachs

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:50:31 PDT

"The US economy is basically a pyramid" scheme.

Huffington Post -- Andy Borowitz: Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:34:38 PDT

'In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury. According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we." The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things." Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."' -- Hehe

Associated Content -- World Trade Center Building 7 and Financial Markets

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:59:28 PDT

'Before the explosion on 9/11 the SEC, IRS, and the Secret Service were housed in building 7. The first reason the building was destroyed is to destroy evidence. Evidence relating to 9/11 and illegal trading including the put options placed before 9/11 had to be destroyed. The second reason building 7 was destroyed Is the building next to it at 140 west street was the hub and switch for voice and data communication for all of lower Manhattan. A clear reason for shutting down the NYSE was needed because without shutting down the markets the sell pressure would have destroyed investor's faith in the market for years. Without question NASDAQ, Archipelago and Instinet, as well as the futures and options markets in Chicago were ready to function throughout the disaster.'

Technology Review -- How to Stage a Revolution

adamcrowe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:04:58 PDT

'... two new qualities of leadership: #The first is the ability to distribute a leader's influence to as many followers within a given time. #The second is the ability to be sufficiently persuasive to change and hold the allegiance of followers who they can influence. When these factors come into play, the balance of power depends on the distribution of leaders. ...the key to seizing power, or at least gaining a significant foothold, is the effective distribution of a small number of leaders within a larger group. "A better distribution pattern has larger influential region and greater clustering factor, which can equip the leaders with the capability of influencing more followers in a given period and strengthening the persuasion power on the followers as well."' -- In the linked paper: '...the mechanism underlying such an apparent “following the minority” in the whole group is due to the scheme of “following the majority” locally.'

zero hedge -- Max Keiser: "Goldman Sachs Are Scum"

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:02:49 PDT

"Well, at least one person says what he thinks." -- Tell the people!

True/Slant -- Matt Taibbi: Max Keiser: “Goldman Sachs Are Scum”

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:00:38 PDT

"Man, and I thought I hated Goldman. Check out this video. If only American TV was like this!" -- Max goes viral!!!

The Archdruid Report -- Nature, Wealth, and Money

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:37:14 PDT

'...when money dominates a society, so does the world of finance, and the amount of money being traded for money can exceed by several orders of magnitude the amount of money being traded for goods and services. What makes this problematic is that the rules governing money are not the same as those governing other goods and services. Unlike goods and services that have their own value, money is only worth what it can buy; unlike goods and services that must be produced by labor from resources, money can be conjured from thin air by dozens of different kinds of financial alchemy, or by the momentary whim of a government. Nor does the amount of money in circulation have to have anything at all to do with the amount of other goods and services available. All these differences mean that the economy of money can very easily slip out of balance with the economy of nonfinancial goods and services.'

The Economist -- What went wrong with economics

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:43:49 PDT

'Too many people, especially in Europe, equate mistakes made by economists with a failure of economic liberalism. Their logic seems to be that if economists got things wrong, then politicians will do better. That is a false—and dangerous—conclusion.' -- 'What about trying to fix it? Here the financial crisis has blown apart the fragile consensus between purists and Keynesians that monetary policy was the best way to smooth the business cycle. In many countries short-term interest rates are near zero and in a banking crisis monetary policy works less well. With their compromise tool useless, both sides have retreated to their roots, ignoring the other camp’s ideas. Keynesians, such as Mr Krugman, have become uncritical supporters of fiscal stimulus. Purists are vocal opponents. To outsiders, the cacophony underlines the profession’s uselessness.' -- No mention of Austrian Economics except in comments. The Economist = FAIL.

YouTube -- Glenn Beck: Why Goldman Sachs Is The Evil Empire!

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:40:05 PDT

Dude is definitely losing it, but the ugly truth might do that to a fella. Nice summary.

YouTube -- Michael Milken: Leveraging big ideas to make change

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:00:37 PDT

Feb 2001: 'Michael Milken talks about using your own particular set of skills to make real change in the world. In his case, the energetic mind that once created exotic junk bonds is now driving the "Manhattan Project of cancer" -- with lifesaving results.' -- Financial technologies. More californian techno-utopianism.

WSJ.com -- A Tale of Two Bailouts

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:31:34 PDT

'Goldman will surely deny that its risk-taking is subsidized by the taxpayer —but then so did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right up to the bitter end. An implicit government guarantee is only free until it's not, and when the bill comes due it tends to be huge. So for the moment, Goldman Sachs— or should we say Goldie Mac? -- enjoys the best of both worlds: outsize profits for its traders and shareholders and a taxpayer backstop should anything go wrong. We like profits as much as the next capitalist. But when those profits are supported by government guarantees or insured deposits, taxpayers have a special interest in how the companies conduct their business. Ideally we would shed those implicit guarantees altogether, along with the very notion of too big to fail. But that is all but impossible now and for the foreseeable future. Even if the Obama Administration and Fed were to declare with one voice that banks such as Goldman were on their own, no one would believe it.' -- Goldie Mac!

True/Slant -- Matt Taibbi: The real price of Goldman’s giganto-profits

adamcrowe — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:33:08 PDT

'So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not free-market earnings but an almost pure state subsidy. This is the final evidence that the bailouts were a political decision to use the power of the state to redirect society’s resources upward, on a grand scale. It was a selective rescue of a small group of chortling jerks who must be laughing all the way to the Hamptons every weekend about how they fleeced all of us at the very moment the game should have been up for all of them. -- *They’re just really smart!* Bullshit. ...these guys on Wall Street causesd this crisis, and now they’re raking in money on the infrastructure their buddies in government have devised to bail them out. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle — beautiful, in a way, but at the same time sort of uniquely disgusting.'