The Automatic Earth

January 25 2012: Occupy Your Own Space

2012-01-25T15:59:00.004-05:00

Dorothea Lange PlantationJune 1937"Wife and child of tractor driver. Aldridge Plantation, Mississippi" Ilargi: For today’s global financial problems, there are no solutions that are favorable to either incumbent politicians or wannabe leaders (unless they’re extremists, perhaps), let alone to the people they claim to represent. All our herd of leaders can do is to postpone the inevitable outcome

January 22 2012: The End is the Beginning is the End

2012-01-22T17:04:00.002-05:00

Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums Just watch me June 9 1902Fron album of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court in England between 1902 and 1916. Time has stopped before us The sky cannot ignore us No one can separate us For we are all that is left The echo bounces off me The shadow lost beside me There's no more need to pretend Cause now I can begin again."Smashing Pumpkins, The

January 19 2012: Don't Be Fooled : Nothing's Priced In

2012-01-19T13:54:00.002-05:00

National Photo Co. Bond Vault 1914"Treasury Department, Office of Comptroller of Currency -- bond vault. Contains bonds to the value of $900 million securing government deposits and postal savings fund" Ilargi: Double treat today: a thourough big picture interview with Nicole by KMO at C-Realm, and Ashvin doesn't think there's much priced in in equity markets at all.Infinite RehypothecationAn

January 16 2012: Quo Vadis, Britannia?

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Howard Hollem George Lane April 1942"George Lane, served in the last war with the British Army from Vimy Ridge to the Occupation. Two of his sons are in the American Army, one with the Air Corps in Australia. His daughter volunteered for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Seven of his nephews are in the British Army" Ilargi: There is a relative silence in the international financial press when it

January 14 2012: Housing and Oil: Dark Inventory Rules

2012-01-14T19:10:00.001-05:00

National Photo Co. Ingenious cheat February 13, 1922"Washington, D.C., Unidentified woman demonstrating an ingenious Prohibition-era fashion accessory, the cane-flask" Ilargi: I'd like to try a little intellectual exercise. There were two pieces in my mailbox this week that concerned posts at Naked Capitalism. Though their topics have at first glance little to do with one another, there is a term

January 10 2012: The Year of the Trojan Water Dragon

2012-01-10T19:00:00.001-05:00

Harris & Ewing Listening to the Future September 12, 1938Washington, D.C. "Acting Czechoslovakian Minister listens to Hitler speech. Dr. Karel Brejska, Charge d'Affaires and acting Minister in the absence of Minister Vladimir Hurban in Czechoslovakia, is pictured listening to Adolf Hitler's radio address today at the legation. He refused to comment on the speech" Ilargi: Hmm. Right, markets are

January 7 2012: Death of an Institution: Desperate Mergers & Destructive Acquisitions

2012-01-07T13:22:00.000-05:00

Detroit Publishing Co. Curb Market 1905"New York City, Broad Street exchange and curb brokers" Ilargi: In a nice coincidence, while Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh) wrote about decentralization a few days ago in The Storm Surge of Decentralization, today Ashvin Pandurangi, independently from Nicole, also focuses on that theme, albeit from a completely different angle. Perhaps even from the 180 degree

January 3 2012: The Storm Surge of Decentralization

2012-01-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

G.G. Bain Hey Mrs. Tambourine Woman New York, August 1913"Suffragettes on way to Boston: 'suffrage caravan' campaign for women's voting rights" Stoneleigh: Happy New Year from The Automatic Earth! One of our consistent themes at TAE has been not expecting solutions to come from the top down. Existing centralized systems depend on dwindling tax revenues, which will dry up to a tremendous extent

December 29 2011: Trends 2012: The End of the Euro, The End of the Investor

2011-12-29T10:17:00.002-05:00

G. G. Bain Fire 1916"W.T. Grant department store fire at New York's Sixth Avenue and 18th Street in April 1916" Ilargi: Oh, sure, don't get me wrong, there may still be a Euro a year from now. And there’ll certainly be some investors left.But the Euro, if it manages to survive, will have to do so in what can only be characterized as a radically different form and shape. At the same time, small

December 25 2011: Most. Tragic. Species. Ever.

2011-12-25T20:46:00.001-05:00

Esther Bubley Li'l Skeptics Washington, D.C. July 1943"Spectators at the parade to recruit civilian defense volunteers" Ilargi: We're supposed to be celebrating the birth and the life of the man whose only ever act of aggression was he threw the money changers out of the temple, right? Just checking. It's just that I can't seem to find much of anything that reminds me of that.Looks to me as if

December 21 2011: The forest feels denser and darker all the time

2011-12-21T15:25:00.007-05:00

Gustave Doré Little Red Riding Hood 1883 Ilargi: Haven't we been here before?It's the sort of question you would expect a child to ask in one of those Grimm Brothers fairy tales, a child that walks so far into the woods that it gets lost, and takes another wrong turn and then another, and the forest feels denser and darker all the time, and it doesn't even run around in circles to return to its

December 18 2011: 2012 - The end -and the return- of Europe as we know it

2011-12-18T07:55:00.001-05:00

John Vachon Big Cop October 1938"Policeman, Lincoln, Nebraska" Ilargi: 2012 may not bring the end of the world, but it will bring the end of the Eurozone and the European Union as we've known them. There are now too many things that can potentially go wrong, and some of them will. The fact that the European Union counts 27 different constitutions, and the Eurozone 17, makes it either

December 14 2011: A Glimpse Into the Self-Destructive Psychology of Sharks

2011-12-14T08:12:00.001-05:00

Unknown Bass August 17, 1900 A world's record 384-pound black sea bass caught by Franklin Schenck of Brooklyn with rod and reel off Catalina Island, California Ashvin Pandurangi: "You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no

December 11 2011: Cash for Christmas

2011-12-11T01:33:00.000-05:00

John Vachon Hotel Dacotah October 1940"Grand Forks, North Dakota" Ilargi: Over the course of the next few weeks, we will shift our efforts increasingly towards our new site, which should soon be ready to go. This will inevitably result in less hours put into the present site. Which will mean we will slim down the amount of material presented, though not the frequency (that would be pretty silly

December 8 2011: You're either at the table or you're on the menu

2011-12-08T21:31:00.003-05:00

Jack Delano The Planters March 1941"Planting corn on a plantation near Moncks Corner, South Carolina" Ilargi: Earlier today, in a fancy location in Brussels, - no, you're right, they probably had it €500 a plate catered, can't take the risk of venturing out into the real world where the people live they're supposed to represent-, one bullet-proof limo after another arrived to deliver the

December 5 2011: Look Back, Look Forward and Look Down. Way Down.

2011-12-05T08:48:00.002-05:00

WPA Federal Art Project poster from New York, 1936 Ilargi: At the start of a week that has been dubbed "historical" and "one of the most important moments in Europe's history", I can't seem to forget the statements by Merkel and Sarkozy sometime mid-October, when both solemnly pledged that by the end of that month the euro crisis would be resolved. We know where that went. And we also know that

December 2 2011: The Debt Walkers Strike Back

2011-12-02T17:27:00.000-05:00

Printed in 1939 by His Majesty's Stationery Office on orders of England's Ministry of Information, "Keep Calm and Carry On" was, despite being run off in vast quantities along with two related posters, never seen during World War II; the event that would have triggered its release -- a German invasion of the British Isles -- never happened. Ilargi: It's very simple, but maybe that's the problem.

November 30 2011: Day X

2011-11-30T17:13:00.002-05:00

Alexander Gardner Mr. President February 5, 1865"Abraham Lincoln, seated, holding spectacles and a pencil"Ilargi: Amid persistent rumors that yesterday the money markets were, in the words of economist Jeremy Cook, "a short shove away from complete collapse", all the world's central banks got together and decided to lower the cost of pushing US dollars across the globe. Translation: billions of

November 28 2011: Are we there yet?

2011-11-28T16:55:00.002-05:00

Russell Lee Are we there yet? June 1939"Migrant children heading west in the back seat of the family car somewhere east of Fort Gibson in Muskogee County, Oklahoma" Ilargi: Confused? No need to be. If you want to know who's right, follow these two easy steps: The bond markets are always right In case they seem to be wrong, refer back to 1)The stock markets are giddily happy today, Wall Street up

November 25 2011: Deleveraging: There never was another choice

2011-11-25T11:15:00.008-05:00

Dorothea Lange Family Trip August 1939Agricultural migrants. "Family who traveled by freight train. Toppenish, Washington. Yakima Valley" Ilargi: I'm under the impression that it’s not all that difficult to see what goes on and why in the financial world these days. Everyone simply keeps talking about what Germany should do, and about eurobonds etc., but a relatively concise overview of a few

November 22 2011: Europe Tumbles, America Pays and We Build Something Better

2011-11-22T18:16:00.002-05:00

John Vachon Jam Parked July 1941"Parking lot, Chicago" Ilargi: When everyone's talking about the same thing, you go and talk about something else, right? Right. Well, a little then:I kid you not: there were actually well-paid journalists reporting today that US stocks went up on the news that the IMF revamped a credit line, the Precautionary Credit Line, into a whole new shape, the [drumroll..]

November 20 2011: Why Germany is right to refuse to bailout Europe

2011-11-20T13:20:00.002-05:00

John Vachon Real BLANK Spaghetti November 1940"Greek restaurant in Paris, Kentucky." The word ITALIAN has been painted over after Mussolini's Fascist regime invaded Greece. Ilargi: Here's why Germany is wise to refuse using the ECB to buy up anything not nailed down in Europe. All economic forecasts for countries in the periphery -which itself grows as we go along- are based on unrealistically

November 17 2011: This is what happens when governments go bust

2011-11-17T16:19:00.001-05:00

John Vachon Tuf Nut July 1940"Arkansas farmer now picking fruit in Berrien County, Michigan" Wearing Tuf-Nut overalls Ilargi: I get acutely nauseous when I see things like new Italian PM Mario Monti, king of cuts and lackey of bankers, calling the draconian austerity measures about to be unleashed on his own people "reforms". That's the vocabulary that comes straight from the IMF and World Bank

November 14 2011: The Growth Paradigm Has Become An Embarrassment

2011-11-14T11:12:00.002-05:00

John Vachon Blowing Smoke February 1943"Camel cigarette advertisement at Times Square, New York City" Ilargi: Well, the coups have been successful: Greece changed Papa's, and Italy's going to get its Full Monti. If the financial world can't get the votes, it simply chases away chosen leaders and appoints its own guys in their place. Woe the people of Athens and Rome. Who still have no clue, if

November 12 2011: Bail Out or Revitalize?

2011-11-12T07:20:00.003-05:00

Russell Lee Home Sweet Hovel December 1936"Mrs. Charles Benning sweeping steps of shack in Shantytown. Spencer, Iowa" Ilargi: A double header today for your weekend reading. First the depressing spectacle in Europe, where Slovenia, Austria and Spain have -each in their own way- been added to the list of countries at risk of -further- downgrades, while France has received a temporary break, sort