Socrates

When books come to life after hours

2012-01-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

The book shop closes, everybody leaves, the lights are turned off.
It's then that the books are waking up and coming to life. A Toronto
book shop has done a brilliant job doing this video.

The joy of books:

Watch: Americas most unusual and interesting presidential candidate, Ron Paul

2011-10-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul probably is the most misrepresented, slandered and
foulmouthed politician of all, from both the left and the right.
The media do their best not to mention him at all or misrepresent him.
Yet in spite of all this, and probably also because of this, videos
showing him are finding an ever increasing audience.

Congressman Ron Paul was practically the only conservative
politician who was against the war in Iraq. And not just this, he
is known, and that makes him outstanding, he constantly reminds
people of the costs of the war.

The popularity of videos with Ron Paul comes as no surprise
because of what he has to say. And sometimes a video gives
a really great insight into American politics, like this one here,
Ron Paul in a presidential election debate in 2007.

It is probably his opposition to wars that earns him the respect
of rather decent, non dogmatic, left wingers like Bill Maher, who
declared him as his hero some time ago.
More recently Jon Stewart made fun of the media for keeping
a strange silence about Ron Paul, apart from obviously respecting him
for what he says about wars and others matters. Ron Paul is getting
the most contribution from active military personnel, by the way.

Another video shows Ron Paul on "candidates @ Google", a video
well worth watching because he fits perfectly into a more demanding
environment.

Economic crisis: the insanity of financial reporting and opinions

2011-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

If people are getting fed up with the financial reporting and opinions,
their stomachs churning as a result of this perpetual crisis, sensationalism
and getting indeed deeper into problems then it is a logical reaction. As
a result, a storm is brewing over both investment bankers and financial
media.

One bothering aspect are the opinions, substituting proper reporting.
Rare and few are proper reports, real news. It is relentless barrage
of news trash and opinions which is followed by ideological debates and
politically biased dog fights. All in all the perfect recipe for people to get
really in economic and financial problems, to end up as fool.

What is already getting clear as the stock markets dive, remain low,
investment advisors are becoming obsolete because of the bad
experience people are making, seeing their investments lose value.
Banks are already starting to lay off investment and other stuff.

And it won't be long before the media have to lay off stuff, inlcuding
those of the financial sections. Because, as it turns out, the consumption
of news and opinions just cost time and money.

The Guardian ran an article some time ago in which newspapers from
2009 were compared to those of 1984, 25 years ago. The article
was pretty straight forward from the beginning:

How did readers know what to think in 1984? Once you get over the
minuscule, blurred pictures and the lack of colour, the first thing that strikes
you about the newspapers of that year is the paucity of opinionated columnists.
The finger-jabbing, red-faced anger of today's commentariat, the passionate,
omniscient certainty with which they declare opinions, scarcely existed 25
years ago. Incredibly, the Sunday Times – under that most opinionated of
editors, Andrew Neil – did not then have a single serious regular weekly
columnist,...
The article, So much news, but so little comment, does not deal with financial
and economic reporting and opinonizing. But the same could be written about
the financial "journalism".

Life is likely to continue to be full of surprises and experiences. What is
supposed to be final word and wisdom at a given moment is usually
rendered obsolete, if not turning as outright nonsense, soon after. Either
by what is going on in the financial markets or elsewhere.

The failure of the media in financial and economic matters is to some extent
well known. The failure of the financial media is actually well known.
It should also not to be forgotten that the media, pundits and journalists,
never pay any damage for wrong and stupid investment advice for instance.
The could practically never be hold responsible for instance for their
often very patronizing advice which by coincidence turns out to be
disastrous time and again.

The media crisis is likely to take accelarate for many reasons. Newspapers
and their self made decline is also known to be of interest for (that's just an
example) short sellers.
This is pointed out here just to have a really different perspective of that
business.

The financial history of Western Europe & Euro crisis

2011-09-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Without exaggeration there are few crime novels which can keep up, keep the
reader glued to pages than the financial history of Western Europe. A history
that has time and again been swept under the carpet, been forgotten in truly
Orwellian manner. And that is just one of the surprises when reading this book.

First published in the 80s, this books keeps what others promise.
Charles Kindleberger, the author, first provides a nice insight into how money and
banking evolved in this part of Europe from about 1400 onwards, including how
governement financing developed, listing such things as
Financial Revolution, The Power to Tax in England, Tax Farming,
Taxation, Borrowing, Selling Assets, ...Following this is then a chapter how
these government powers turned into a problem, causing poverty, economic
problems and financial crisis. Souvereigns, monarchs, were in financial trouble time
and again, occasionally defaulting on their debt.

One also gets a clear idea how things worked out eventually. For instance the
Spanish quest for gold and silver in the newly discovered Americas. A rather
bloody bit of history for one. And were for good reasons doomed to failure.
Kindleberger: The Spanish were at war during most of the sixteenth and first
half of the seventeenth century until ... the end of the Thirty Year War in 1648.
... They encouraged in warlike pursuits, and discouraged in the more humdrum
pursuits of agricluture, commerce and industry by the rich treasure uncovered
in the New World. The treasure was spent as fast, and frequently even faster, than
it was acquired. ... Spain was forced at the end of the sixteenth century to debase
its money with copper bought in Europe.

Great is also the insight into war finance and the consequences: In the Middle Ages
bankers were brought to ruin less by collapsing commodity and security markets,
as in modern times, than by failure of kings to meet debts incurred to raise
mercenary armies and to subsidize allies.
Needless to say that Kindleberger tells of currency debasement, a fraud commited
by monarchs numerous times. Ot that 24 bankers were sent to the guillotine in the
French revolution as a consequence of their failure

The generous insight possible in this case on Google books can really be appreciated.
The reader, visitor, gets to know what the book is really about, what it is dealing with,
better then any review could provide.
It should be mentioned that the book is sold way cheaper on amazon.co.uk (UK) for
a price around £ 21 than on amozon.com (US) where it is really expensive.

Another reason why this book deserves praise is the calm manner in which it is
written. Kindelberger does not incite to incite to wailing, ranting, outrage, one
serious problem of our present times. The reader thus does not lose brain and
understanding of what happened, but can follow up for instance how kings,
governements, turned to all kinds of taxation when in problem, apart from
usually resorting to fraudulent measures and deceit. The book is great by
giving a proper insight and thus is of use for anyone who does not want any
such disasters. There is really nothing that would recommend big time
defaults.

Getting a job or starting a business in the financial crisis

2011-09-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

Starting all over again with a new job or business is in some ways similar to the situation after WW II, when people all over Europe found themselves entirely impoverished, everything was in ruins and just everything seemed hopeless.The only apparent relief then was that the war was over, the dangers and the dying of the war was over. That basic security and liberty was not just a relief, it was essential for the new beginning. Drastic and hopeless as the current situation may seem at least there is peace, the world is not in such ruins as it was back in 1945 and when comparing the economic situation back then the present economic situation is, desperate as it might be perceived, still way better now, fortunately so.

The economic crisis sometimes entails considerable changes in the lifestyle, job prospects and may even include relocation. It is for instance quite amazing to learn that younger, well educated Greeks flee the cities, return to their ancestral homes and begin entirely new.
Once people have made the transition, relocated and begun with something complety new, something they wouldn't even have thought of some time ago, like bee keeping, they find that their new situation and occupations are actually great and are quite happy with their new circumstances.. An article in worldcrunch.com tells of some interesting cases.

Meanwhile those who have made such decisions are unlikelz to regret them when one considers
how things are going in Greece. That's a situation when a really existential existence, having
enough to eat and roof over the head, instead of being subjected to the expenses of city life
without a job, is likely to be appreciated.

It is any case quite amazing what kind of economic misery people survive. For instance refugees
after WW II, who were just left with very few possesions, only what they could carry. And who
had the face the drastic reality that food was really scarce at that time. The war had taken its toll
on every bit of the economies.
The pictures tell an economic story for themselves. The first one are russian refugees, the second
German refugees after the War.
The pictures might be helpfull by considering crisis scenarios, help avoid
useless expenses that are later regretted as well missing out on chances.

Model law to fight white collar crimes became effective in Ireland

2011-08-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

A law that is likely to become an inspiration for other countries,
designed to clear up white collar crimes became effective today
in Ireland.
It is a real legal beauty. It has all the qualities to end all kinds of
old boys networks, as well as all kinds of rewards for keeping
quiet, for refusing cooperation with the police and other bad
habits.
Here one of the newspaper article describing it.

Watch: The hero reporter in the Murdoch scandal (video), Nick Davies

2011-07-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

(Updates below!) He is known for his patience and tenacity. He
was reporting about such media scandal since years. And he also
was the one who eventually found about the latest scandal, the
Milly Dowler thing that blew it. Ever since then there is
big coverage of all those media scandals on TV and other
media, a novum in media history. Usually scandals within the
media received only special, limited attention, got reported
only on a small scale.

Here is the video with Nick Davies, the Guardian reporter:

Nick Davies also wrote the Book: Flat Earth News
The comments at amazon, below, give a good idea.
(Update: Nick Davies is writing a new book, due in 2012.)

Update: Certainly Nick Davies keeps on reporting. The latest
revelation, just as disgusting as the Milly Dowler case, it the
Sarah Payne phone hacking scandal.

Murdoch's News Corp and taxes. Another "shocking" scandal? Updates

2011-07-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

Murdoch corporation is known for avoiding paying taxes,
operating via a host of tax havens, moving profits and losses
between countries. It is long time practice of Murdoch to do
so. Paul Farhi, a Washington Post writer, gave a nice insight
into these practices in 1997, when News Corp was still
registered in Australia.

In 1999 a BBC report looked at Murdoch how much he
paid taxes in Britain:
"According to The Economist, Mr Murdoch has saved at least
GB Pounds 350m in tax ..."
"How he has done it remains a mystery - and News Corporation is
certainly loath to give away any financial secrets.
But it appears that Mr Murdoch's tax accountants have surpassed
themselves - making full use of tax loopholes to protect profits in
offshore havens." The article came to the conclusion:
One thing is for sure - the company's accountants and lawyers
deserve a bonus.

In 2005 an article in the Observer briefly noted that Murdoch
had floated his his family's £3.8 billion personal investment
company in Bermuda - saving himself £522 million in taxes.
Bermuda was chosen because the media tycoon, who chairs
News Corporation, wanted to avoid the taxman after his firm
changed domicile from Australia to the United States recently.

These are just three articles that give a some insight into
the not paying tax tradition of Murdoch's company. So far,
there were obviously no closer looks of tax inspectors
at this practice.

Also well known is meantime the cosy relationship with
whomever. In Britain it included politicians, John Yates,
the assistant commissioner of the (London) Metropolitan
Police, who now regrets having blocked investigations in
2009, or a judge in the UK who threw out a case proposed
by the local police to go to trial, involving a corrupt police
officer, about the illegally obtained information of politicians.
They were all wining and dining with Murdoch, courting him,
and they were afraid of him. And not just in Britain.
Politicians of all parties were also courting and afraid of
Murdoch in Australia.

In the hindsight of all this it is not impossible that a closer
look by tax inspectors in a number countries could turn up
one or the other thing, if not a bit more, concerning tax
matters.

Update: The Daily Mail, a rival tabloid, is taking up the issue
of this as well, raising principle awareness to News Corps
practice of avoiding to pay tax as much as possible.

Update: The US is taking an interest in News Corps books
according to a Reuters article in which it asks whether the
US could do an Al Capone.

Stupid film reviews and how they are produced

2011-06-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Ever been curious or maybe even annoyed by this barrage
of film reviews in which just about every new film is praised
as totally exciting, you-must-see-this or that. Thing is, it is
fake excitment. An AOL content slave tells it how he was
producing such reviews until he broke down, was a wreck.

AOL Hell: And AOL Content Slave speaks out

This is giving some explanation why big book chain stores
are going bust, they are usually trying to sell stuff, DVDs and
CDs included, that is not all too popular, just being pushed on
them by sales people of bigger firms. Until some bigger bank-
ruptcy makes an end to all that.

The end of newspapers as we knew them

2011-06-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

... we journalists can never stop looking back... back to the
days of printed copies selling in their millions on a daily basis...
back to an era of seemingly unlimited advertising. ...

Roy Greenslade wrote a marvelous piece about the
steady decline of newspapers in the UK, a decline that
only becomes apparent when looking at the numbers,
the decline of circulation.

In 1966, the Daily Mirror sold 5.1m copies a day, the
Daily Express 4m and the Daily Telegraph 1.4m. Last month,
those titles had circulations of 1.2m, 631,000 and 635,000
respectively.

Those were the days, my friends, ...

Update: the phone hacking of Milly Dowler, a 13 year old girl
slain in 2002 could eventually be the trigger for some serious
media criticism of the general public who is now learning of a
really disgusting case of the practices of media misfits. The further
decline of newspaper circulation, particularly the tabloids, is
pretty sure the result of this.

Murdoch's British newspapers are all loss makers since years.
The phone hacking scandals with all the libel damage cases
related will lead to a considerable further deterioriation of the
financial situation of those newspapers.

Update: The News of The World is closing.

Kudos for Melissa Harrison who organized the Twitter campaign
that target advertisers, a real highlight in that affair:
Why I set about hitting the News of The World where it hurts

Nick Davies (here in a video), the Guardian reporter who is a
long time critic of media and who was crucial in uncovering and
reporting that scandal wrote the book "Flat earth news", a books
of course soon talked down as silly, not really interesting, is
nevertheless a book of interest. It reads even better after
the closure of NoWT.

Bye bye media: the conflict Google, the net and old media brilliantly nailed by song parody

2011-06-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

As the Murdoch scandals are continuing, providing serious fuel for the media
crisis, this song parody nails it once again with "the year the media died".

The magic and power of the internet versus that of the old media. A beautifully
crafted essay could hardly match the insight given in that song parordy, the way
newspapers are vanishing, the problems of TV advertisers and wasted
ad expenses, changing consumer habits or the many more chances and choices
people have with the net. And it is fun on top of that.

The song parody can be followed up by having a look at the
newspaper crisis in the US, Murdoch's loss making newspapers
in the UK (Murdoch is ranting about Google, the net, since
years), most hated TV ads in the US and other aspects of
the media business. These are just a few examples.

Update: as the Murdoch / News Corp scandal unfolds here
a very interesting article in Al Jazeera. It tells of Murdoch's
ambitions of expansion in the Middle East, a totally irrational
strategy. It's no wonder when things go wrong for him and
his corporation in the end.
Murdoch's ambition in the Middle East

Great laugh: Texas hoax that caught the media

2011-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

"Europe woke up to a tremendous disappointment on Wednesday.
Despite the lurid promises of the 11 o'clock news, authorities in Texas
had failed to unearth 30 dismembered bodies from a property in rural
Liberty County. Not even 15 bodies. Not even one stinking cadaver,
with or without extremities – much less the poor mutilated children TV
viewers were all prepared to be horrified/titillated to learn all about."

Bob Garfield knows how to enjoy such a media failure:
Texas hoax had the media digging their own grave

And it's not just a great article, the comments by readers are
hilarious.

Bad financial advice: the great failure of media

2011-06-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

When the mistakes of investors are the subject of articles the hype of the media in
the recent past is usually not the subject, something they were just never into.
For instance that pretty popular video on You Tube is, for the media, just not worth
mentioning even though it is one the best examples of what the media and financial
experts were up to.
Some of the characters who had the big say then could by now easily apply for a role
in a financial thriller, even a James Bond with an appropriate plot.

Another example of such voluntary censorship is the farewell letter
of Andrew Lahde, a hedge fund manager, who identified the problems
correctly soon enough and began short selling. He quit his job in 2008
with a funny farewell letter in which he made it clear what he thought of
those who provided the opportunities.

Or, take a look at the role newspapers played, in the US and Europe,
their complicity and sins in the financial crisis, here a nice summary by
Danny Schechter. about American newspapers. (The newspapers in
the US are meantime in their sixth year of decline.)

Pretty much the same criticism could be written about European media.
These are just examples.

As a final example of how the media manage to become almost
eternal problems the way the Irish media turned round can be seen
as prime example. A couple of years ago the Irish media were great
in hyping up anything. And then, when things turned sour, the bubbles
they helped to create burst, they turned to the old fashioned "bad news
are good news", real body snatchers who are making a show of the problems
and are now something like cheerleaders for wailing, whining, ranting,
problem loving, while badly informing, thus assisting people to get ever
deeper into problems.

Irish banks burning junior bond holders

2011-05-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

In a move long overdue three Irish banks have announced
plans to burn junior bond holders, settling those debts
at 10% or 20% of the original value of those bonds.

It is a move that can really be welcomed for many reasons.
One of them being that those bigger fools who would never
even think of what they were doing and who part and parcel
of that mass madness learn it the hard way. Indulging in mass
madness, going along with popular delusions was never any
good and that's the least of punishments those in the financial
markets deserve to get.

When governments lie: the history of propaganda and spin. Book review

2011-05-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

The lies of governments have a long history. They are going back
to ancient times when propaganda and spin were invented, came
into fashion. The old Greeks for instance had a rather full blown and
very effective propaganda, followed by the Roman Empire.

What is possibly surprising when looking closer at that bit of
history, is that those ancient liers are not to be underestimated.
The spin masters of those long perished regimes would have
no problems becoming spin masters again in modern times
and with all the modern means available.

Philip M. Taylor wrote a very interesting, easy to read and very
knowledgable history of it all. Published in 2003, this book
deserves all kudos and recommendations.

A very generous insight is made possible via Google books.
A good bit of the first part of the book can be read here. And
that is probably the best way for the reader to get to know it.

Western Romance and a sense of humor

2011-04-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

The Spaghetti Western Orchestra is one of those bands
that should not missed. They keep you glued to the
screen. Enjoy The Good The Bad The ugly:

Not piracy but the lack of intelligent movies is the problem

2011-04-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

John Carr wrote a remarkable article about the obvious failure of Hollywood
producers who all too often make rather stupid decisions and have not to
bright strategies.

Carr poinst not only at the decline of twenty percent at the box office recently
but goes further:

"If Hollywood continues down its path of churning out tired remakes and franchise
entries, they will inevitably sacrifice huge swaths of the movie-going public, and
eventually start losing their core teenage/young adult base. (Put bluntly, the fact
is: crap all dressed up is still crap.)

It's odd. Just when a movie like The King's Speech proves to Hollywood that
boomers will go to the movies in droves when an intelligent, high-quality feature is
offered, they turn around and go back to pushing all their 3-D product for kids."

The practically permanently declining TV programmes, the films offered on TV,
are the other obvious evidence of the lack of good movies. John Carr thus asks
with good reasons: Are Movie Theaters an Endangered Species?

The crisis in the film industry began in 2009, not just in LA, but other countries as
well. (A search with "movie industry crisis" on the net turn up quite a lot.) This
crisis came parallel with the financial crisis, interestingly enough. One of the big
mistakes that led to it was the idea to make a lot of money with stupid movies, a
concept that did not work out.

Occasionally a report in the financial pages mentions an investment
fund or other investment vehicle that invested in movies is performing
badly, if not being bust altogether, that these funds had financed
Hollywood flops.
The idea a couple of years ago was to finance some, mildly stated,
silly movie and make lots of money out of that. The same idiocies as
elsewhere in the financial sectors were also committed with non
market worthy movies. And, when looking closer, it is often those
who sit on such non market worthy movies who blame whoever
and whatever, are close to blackmail the general public for some
money to compensate them for the mistakes and follies.

NoW scandal ringing in end of tabloid era?

2011-04-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

The hacking scandal of NoW could well accelerate the decline of readership and thus
circulation. Newspapers are losing readers anyhow, gradually and continually.
Coming into real disrepute now with that scandal is likely to decrease their value for
advertisers because once a newspaper, a radio or TV channel is not taken serious
anymore so are the ads appearing there. All of it is regarded ever more as ludicrous,
silly, even by the most narrow minded readers.

The newspapers of News International are in any case not profitable. Murdoch is
subsidizing them out of the other News Corps operations. A further decline of
revenue of the newspapers is thus becoming a serious dead weight in News Corp's
balance sheets. This subsidy to loss making newspapers is any case a serious
issue with investors in News Corp shares.

That scandal might eventually have some funny aspects. A great part of tabloid
buyers are rather old, with not too much education and living in rather humble
circumstances. It is not usual that those eldery folks buy two, three or even four
tabloids every day, spending between twenty or thirty Euros a week on such
papers, a lot for somebody getting just a small pension.

Those readers are the ones who believe every word written in those newspapers.
If something is in the papers then it must be true. The nonsense in those papers
can't be crass enough to shake their belief, their faith or superstitions. Now that
this scandal is even on TV even they cannot escape information and news about
the media, their newspapers. It is something like the scandals of priests.

The involvement and connection of politicians with the tabloids is likely to be
another point that works against Murdoch's papers. Once people realize they can
punish politicians by saving on the outlay for newspapers an additional few percent
of readers and revenue are gone. Other motives might come in. When a newspaper
is falling into disgrace the motives, reasons for disliking and getting rid of it are
usually varied, very nuanced, there are lots of them.

Then there is Hugh Grant, the actor, who recorded what an ex - reporter had to
say, was eager to tell about News of the World. That story, published in the
Statesman, made it round the world. It gave online suddenly a juicy and funny
inside look at such newspapers.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens. This is what has happened in the
United States: a look at the number of layoffs in the newspaper industry.
Here in Ireland the prospects for the media, including those belonging to NI, are
not looking good for many reasons, the economic crisis being one of them.

So, what books can be recommended in the event of a media crisis, to be
prepared for the worst?
There is the satirical crime novel written by John Denton, a veteran NYT
reporter: Black And White And Dead All Over. It gives, among others, an
insight into how narrow minded media people can be. And it has all the
essentials of satirical crime novel. Here is the introduction.

And ever since this scandal includes politics and politicians and as the
last decade was one of rather extreme amounts of spin, the history of
propaganda by Philip M. Taylor might be of interest. Taylor writes really
well, he is very knowledgable and has a sense of humor.
A nice insight into the book is possible via Google books, most of the first
part can read here.

There is a God. Tabloid ceases publication

2011-04-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

For a long time it was all too often assumed that anything stupid in the publishing
or media industry would be the key to financial success. Strangely enough this
assumption was repeated again and again even though the actual data of the media industry point the other way since quite a while. Usually it is half witted left wingers who spread nonsense out of their own, see profits where losses are made, see success where a decline of audience can be found out very easily.

And so one folly goes hand in hand with another folly until the famous gang of brutal facts makes an end to the superstitions and nonsense altogether. Ironically it was April 1 that the news of the cessation to trading and publication of the Daily Sport in the UK was announced.

The comment sections in newspapers are quite often more like Dante's Inferno, the place for the eternal hopeless. Not so in this case. It's is good to read rather different comments once in a while, having a good laugh for a change.

That closure could ring in the end of the tabloid era, considering the effects
and the fallout of the NoW scandal. It doesn't take much for tabloid to lose
the effectiveness for advertising altogether once they are coming into real
disrepute.

The economic circumstances are likely to speed up the media crisis here in Ireland,
something that is really overdue in order to sort out matters, clear obstacles out
of the way merely to minimise damages in the first place, to make an end to that
kind of nearly eternal fooling and drooling along while getting ever deeper in
problems.

Media frenzies and the lunacy of media

2011-03-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

Feeding frenzies of the media about an affair, a disaster or other topic are lasting a maximum of two weeks. Then the topic is dead, news about such a frenzied topic are all of a sudden getting less, disappears from the headlines altogether. And this is what predictably will also happen in the current case of the Japanese disaster. After two weeks at the latest far fewer reports and articles appear to that, some then more casual, on the odd occasion more factual and informative before the topic is dropped altogether. The media will then look out for some other topic they deem worthy of hyping up. And frustrate their remaining audience ever more.

People who prefer to miss out on such frenzies, keep their distance, will again
discover that they haven't missed anything. The value of actual information is
pretty low, often the media have no problems distorting facts intentionally for
whatever stupid reason. That's one the reasons why keeping news consumption
low does not lead to a lack of information or knowledge.

A really good article was just recently published in the Huffington Post about
disaster journalism, giving an insight into the usual modus operandi, how such a
topic is played out.

Contrary to the assumption that such bad news frenzies are selling news, help to
push up readership and audience, the media are losing consumers. One of the
reasons why there are fewer gossip articles, not to mention frenzies about
celebrities like they were the daily usual a couple of years ago is that most media have lost out big time. Most of all in the USA.

A look at number of layoffs at American newspapers tells a story of its own. In
2008 they had 15 992+ layoffs, in 2009 it was 14 783+ jobs and in 2010 the
number was 2 828+ jobs. That's quite remarkable, something the media never
report much about. Their suicide strategies and rather idiotic assumptions about
mankind, what people accept and want, would all become too apparent and the
myths that anything silly, nonsensical and sensational would get a further dent.

In Europe the media "crisis" was less drastic so far, but they are also losing readers and audience. British newspapers for instance are gradually losing readers, and this means the Irish readership included in some of those numbers. The national Sunday papers as well the national dailies are losing readers.

Assange's case: media are often more like electrically lit barbarians

2010-12-15T05:35:00.000-08:00

Assange is not prosecuted for what is normally understood as rape but for rather obscure reasons. Assange could never be prosecuted for such sex crimes, as they exist in Sweden, in other countries. A closer look at those allegations reveals an entirely different picture than what might be assumed: sex by surprise.

Those allegations against Assange and their non reporting in many media are a blatant case of the media behaving as gatekeepers, letting their readers only know what they chose. That's the case in many matters as well only this time it might turn out to work out against them.

Instead of proper reporting, the readers are being served totally uniformed opinions and somehow with that being told how to think. The Guardian had an interesting article how newspapers were in 1984 andhow they had changed over the years. It begins:

How did readers know what to think in 1984? Once you get over the minuscule, blurred pictures and the lack of colour, the first thing that strikes you about the
newspapers of that year is the paucity of opinionated columnists. The finger-jabbing, red-faced anger of today's commentariat, the passionate, omniscient certainty with which they declare opinions, scarcely existed 25 years ago. Incredibly, the Sunday Times – under that most opinionated of editors, Andrew Neil – did not then have a single serious regular weekly columnist, ...
...continue reading article

Other reasons why media are behaving strange is certainly that many are war mongers like Murdoch and his staff, his many pundits. A good idea of Murdoch as war monger on his own is provided in that article,telling it how he praised Tony Blair in 2003 for his courage to go to war against Iraq. And he also made some great economic predictions:
He said the price of oil would be one of the war's main benefits. "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
Following his own logic, stupid economic (bastard) reasoning, he has no idea
of the costs of the war, like here for the US.

And in order to complete the picture, a look at what Murdoch had to say recently. Speaking at a Baroness Thatcher lecture, he threw his support behind the coalition government tonight, applauding its tough approach to cutting the budget deficit and praising David Cameron."Strong medicine is bitter and difficult to swallow," he said. "But unless you stay the political course, you will neither be robust nor popular."

In other words, life is full of surprises for news consumers as well as non consumers the way things turned out economically and financially.

Church scandals. Can priests and bishops go to hell?

2010-07-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

For a laugh about that danger for the clergy, whatever rank they might have.
One of the Tom and Jerry comic videos tells it how Tom, the cat, one day
is facing the danger of going to hell. Thing is, Tom is having far fewer sins
than all those clerics and are surely having a far bigger chance of going to
hell than poor Tom. So, lets see what Tom is facing and what kind of nightmare
those clerics should have:

Tom & Jerry: Heavenly Puss

(links like this have better streaming quality than posted videos)

Throughout the millenias priests were always good in scaring the hell out of the
lay folks. A practice that is known as the 'message of threat' while in fact they
would have many good reasons to worry about their own destiny and be afraid
of being sent to hell themselves. They are in the hot seat as far as the LORD is
concerned.

If anyone is held accountable in the first place then it is all the many servants of
Christ:. He made this very clear right from the beginning in no uncertain terms,
for instance with that, one those quotes regarding those operating in his / Gods
name:
Matth. 7:22:
"On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name,
and cast out demons in your name and do might works in your name? And then I
will declare to them: I never knew you, depart from me, you evildoers!"

Church scandals and the Vatican's handling of all that.. What a wast of time

2010-06-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

For those who have some faith left probably the best way to solve all those
problems is by converting from the Church to God / Jesus. It even makes fun,
can be done with a smile. And thus all such problems are really solved instead
of being fooled along all the way by the Church again and again.

Would Jesus or God go to Church? It's a question many writers were asking, time
and again when the Church was stuck up to to the neck in the mud of scandals.

There is the interesting advice Jesus gave when he said: "And when you pray go into
your room, shut the door and pray to your father, who is in secret..." (Matth. 6:6)

Not bad this advice if one considers just the first part 'And when you pray go into
your room, shut the door ...' what kind of problems somebody, knowingly or
unknowingly, avoids, saves himself, by following this advice and stays at home on
Sundays when looking at the history of religion and Churches. A visit to a public
library would definitely be justified in order to spend some time going through
books in the religious sections. It's really unbelievable what sort of problems
somebody can save himself in good consecience. Take for instance the tenacity
and persuasiveness of clerics and preachers, the way they usually overwhelm
people with their talk, and that is just the initial problem.
They never give up on their own even though it is more than clear that the fruits
they are growing are sour grapes at best.

Staying at home on Sundays instead of going to Church means leaving behind a
mountain of at least 5 349 724 "faith truths", and that's only counting the bigger
ones, piled up over the course of it's history. (A faith truth is for instance declaring
black to be white, and A as a Z, and so forth). Furthermore, there is the huge pile
of 140 786 contradictions and paradoxes theologions managed to create in the
context of this complex mixture of theology, philosophy and history.

Thus staying at home is good for the brain. It works much better there,
particularly when in a good mood. Not losing a sense of humor is the actual moral
requirement when it comes to something. Fear, anger, hatred are bad advisers.
The codebreakers working for the secret service would never have much would
they given in to anger, hatred or fear. This would have their abilities to solve the
problems they had on hand.

Staying at home on Sunday can become a nice little pleasure when for instance
looking at the sordid parts of church history, the medieval ages, the Borgias, who
became the reason for the upheaval, the protests against the Catholic Church and
teh subsequent reformation.

Merely staying at home and shutting the door means also avoiding the company
of the hypocrites and the fanaticism with which they pull off their stunts and
shows. And also the gossip and slander inevitably coming produced by them.
The history of religion would not be what it is, the almost eternal disaster,
without the gossip and blathering stemming from there. Gossip and slander
were time and again the means with which to implement and maintain certain
policies, be it something concerning the sexual moral or war mongering and
supporting dictatorships.

If the Church can be relied on in anything then it is the funeral service. The
Church has a history of getting people buried one way or another, it is
known for that. In other words, life is too short to be wasted like that.
And if one looks in the Bible what Jesus actually prophecied and warned
of were all those coming in his name, the name of God. Staying away from
Church as an act of conscience objection like quite a lot of "atheists" do
because they consider too many things as unchristian, rightly so, is thus
far more christian than going along with whatever.

In other words staying away from the Church makes life far more
interesting. It can be done with good conscience. The Lord in all that
simply did not tell not anyone to visit a temple. Quite logically to that he did
not have the list of sins in store for those not going to the temple like the
Church has. There are no Church sins in the four gospels. Waking up on
a Sunday morning, enjoying the bed and rest, enjoying to be lazy and falling
asleep again can become a special little pleasure in the hindsight of the
Church and theology. Sleeping longer on a Sunday means missing a
tradegy, a disaster, something like missing a flight that crashes, a journey
on a ship that sinks.

Suggested literature:
James J. O'Donnell: Agustine. A New Biography.

When Jesus says, in Matth. 11:28:
"Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart
and you shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light,"
it may seem strange, not make much sense. But it is getting very clear in a secular,
totally rational sense, when coming across the exact opposite, the core of Catholic
religion.

Briefly: Augustine of Hippo is the guy whose theological achievements include
the faith and believe in the Church. It was others that began with that and he
eventually instituionalized it, brought it really forward. Before him, there was
no such creed in any church. When catholic kids are taught that believe and all
the related sins (not going to Church is a sin, and so forth) which includes the
believe in priests, the believe in rituals (the sacraments) then it is Augustine's
theology which they are fed. Most catholics never get to know or hear about
that guy though. The church, in its outward appearance, keeps increasingly
quite about him while he is the most important "Father" of the whole lot.

Augustine was furthermore completing the creation of the "horrible God," the
God of doom and gloom that ruled from then on the increasing world of faith..
It was Augustine's theology that was the real Bible, with Augustine thus the
real messia, the one whose every word mattered. Jesus and the four gospels
just served as some kind of sugar coating, the occasional sweet for kids to lure
them into something and nasty experiences to follow.
The Augustinian theology also, logically, includes the denial of the individual's
mind, conscience, autonomy, the freedom to chose. Not suprisingly, this
theology is force fed authoriatarian style. Unfortunately, there is no easy to read
book which compares Jesus and Augustine, the two are extreme opposites
altogether.
Augustine's theology is very complex, paradoxical, too much for a normal
human being to read it all through. It's is the benefit of that biography that it
provides a readable and comprehensible understanding of all that. O'Donnell
is a bit stuck in the matter, maybe shy when talking of the fascination of that
"father", but he gives a really good acount and readable summary of this
incredibly complex theology and of that man. he also mentions what is fascinating
about Augustine. A reader thus gets a good idea, if he wants to, about the
deceit and abuse of confidence in Gods name. In other words, Augustine is
also shown from his sweet sides. It is book for people who like to think for
themselves, like to make up their mind on their own.

The other book is:
Charles Freeman: The closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of
Faith and the Fall of reason, 2004

Freeman gives an interesting insight of what happened after Jesus, of what Jesus
actually warned of rightly and really prophetically. And what people often complain
about endlessy- instead of reading ambit. And missing quite a bit really interesting
things. The challenges of life include successfully or unsuccesfully coping with crime,
sex and money. Apart from censorship and it's consequences. There were indeed
longer periods of time when people had no chance at all to get their hands at
such insights.

Paywalls: the useless temptation. The strange world we live in.

2010-06-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

It's time to revive a 60's hit for that occasion. "Master Jack" by Four Jacks & and a Jill. It has surprisingly prophetic lyrics that make it so nice and worthwhile to listen to, ever since Murdoch is the proponent of that costly feature.
"Master Jack", a cheerful protest song, has reallz great lyrics, for instance;

You took a colored ribbon from out of the sky
And taught me how to use it as the years went by
To tie up all your problems and make them look neat
And then to sell them to the people in the street

"It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack ..."

It is estimated that about 90% of the consumers are not paying for online news. That's very interesting and good news. Murdoch for instance is known for his war mongering, he and News Corp were actively involved to bring that war about.

People may actually be much better off without the "information" and
opinions from that corporation. Murdoch turned out to be a false economic
protest with his prognosis how the Iraq war would be beneficial:

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you
could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than
any tax cut in any country."
"Murdoch praises Blair for his courage ..."

Old media: News Corp and other media empires are getting older by the day

2010-06-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

A video to watch this summer is this funny song parody making fun of the woes
of the advertising and media industry,
the:
Mad Avenue Blues

(Links like this often have better quality, are faster than posted vidoes. That's why
only the link.)

Who isn't a poor artist these days, in the economic crisis?

2010-01-11T05:34:00.000-08:00

A funny old painting, The Poor Poet (1834) by Carl Spitzweg
has lost none of it's relevance in what it depicts. It can be of use
for reflections of the personal economic situation.
Presuming a sense of humor, it may assit when contemplating
such matters. That the economic is serious enough can be
gathered by many aspects. For instance, young irish people are
apparently coming to drastic conclusions at present when they
decide to emigrate to other countries for economic, job, reasons.

It may help to offset all those billionaire stories and get rich quick
articles in the media that let people forget about their own
situation and didn't make anyone richer at all. It provides a basis
to think about the very existential needs in all relaxed ease. And
thus it may be comforting and inspiring when meditating over
financial matters when brainstorming.
It may also restore and regain lost self-esteem that was washed
away by all that media and advertising frenzy, not to mention the
priority of trivialities in the media. Thus it can assist to come to
terms, find the right ideas and problem solutions and consider
matters at length, take the time for it. That's what art is for.

Through the window snow covered roofs can be seen. It is
obviously cold. The tiles stove is not heated. The poor poet keeps
warm by staying on his matress, wearing his sleeping coat and
covering himself with a blanket. An umbrella protects his sleeping
place from dripping water coming through an obviously leaky roof.

Spitzweg, 1808 - 1885, lived in Germany all his life. He painted a
number of well know paintings. Considered an outsider bymost
art "experts" and reviewers who only had contempt for
him in his time, The Poor Peat became one of the most popular
paintings, right after da Vinci's Mona Lisa among Germans a poll
found out early this century.

Books dealing with the lives, the circumstance and economies of
artists, for instance painters that lived centuries ago, have it in
them to make the reader hungry, make the stomach rumble. Every
bit matters. A roasted chicken, a bottle of wine is eventually
greeted with joy when selling a painting. The economic history of
Dutch painters is for instance a history of personal good days and
bad days.

Czech writers, to name just one example, can be very appreciative
in their writings when it comes to cooking a soup, enjoying a meal
and things like. The Communist period was marked by food
rationing, people were subjected to a frugal life for a long time. That
personal experience is often reflected in their works, their books.
Russian writers are also often very descriptive, going into detail,
when it comes to getting a big chunk of meat, a scarce and thus
valuable commodity, cooking and eating it. A feast that is usually
- both in literature and in real life - followed by Vodka.

Extra! Finance journalists confess some of their sins

2009-04-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

Eventually business journalists are beginning to confess
in larger numbers their sins. In the USA. Lets hope
this serves as a good example for European journalists
and gets them to do likewise. The newspaper crisis has positive
side - effects after all.

The financial crisis, all those tremendous losses in the
banking sector would not have been possible without
the media acting as cheerleaders, hyping up all nonsense,
acting as gatekeepers - those that select and decide what
the general public needs to know and what not. An activity
which seems harmless, almost unnoticeable, it's just omissions
and seeming desinterest in certain matters and stories, but
which has disastrous consequences later on. When an
investor in the worst case finds the office of an investment
firm simply closed because it folded.

The Colorado Independent broke the story (it was also
on the Huffington Post):
Business Journalists Confess ...

For visistors interested in looking back: a pretty popular
video that is posted on this blog under "Crisis bunch". It
consists of three news shows on TV in the US in 06 / 07
and provides a convenient flashback of what the pundits
said and recommended on TV.
(And is reposted here again):
Peter Schiff ...

Update:
Readers for whom the media crisis is not the end of the
world or even expect something good out of that might
be pleased with Jack Shafer's:
Life After Newspapers
an article in which he describes the newspaper strike in
New York in 1962 / 63. It quite funny to read.

And as good news can also this opinion poll / survey be
regarded according to which lots of Americans blame
ad agencies and the media as complicit in the financial
crisis. That's obviously the rather prudent folks who seem
to be in mood to change their media consumption, what
they have money for according to their experience and
knowledge.
Americans blame ad agencies ...

It would be interesting what results a similarly sensitiv
and rather intelligent poll conducted here in Europe come
up with.

Songs that became suddenly hits in the 60's

2009-04-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

Susan Boyle and Paul Pott are not the first to have
overnight success. A really cheerful story was told
two years ago by Michelle Phillips, member of the 60's
band The Mamas and Papas and a couple of then
practically unknown artists became a success after
participating in a festival in Monterey, California.
A festival that was also unique the way it was set up,
an idea that seemed impossible to realize at first.

Michelle Phillips told that little story in the Huffington
Post: Mods And Rockers Festival: California Dreaming ...

Hit number one of the day:
Scott Mackenzie: San Francisco

And here one later hit of the then largely unknown, a
random choice:
The Who: Baba O'Riley

Susan Boyle and Paul Potts may be different in their
appearance, look different, but what they have all in
common is talent. They all can sing.

Newspaper rants about Google. And "Oh Shit"

2009-04-07T23:46:00.000-07:00

Media people have somehow asked for it. And they
got it now. A brilliant response from Danny Sullivan
from Search Engine Land. It really is a funny and
inspired essay.
Silicon Alley Insider introduced his essay to a wider
audience. hence the link here:
Search Guru Tells Newspapers ...

In the mood for some more laughs about the
newspaper industry?
Henry Blodget wrote a funny article a longer
time ago that is still not old, quite to the contrary.
He elaborated his way on the advertising revenue
of the newspaper industry and what is going to
happen (in the USA):
$ 42 billion up for grabs ...

For those not receiving pay checks from advertising
or newspapers, the newspaper (and media) crisis
includes some good news. For instance the end to
the often highly problematic financial / bank
advertising that was paving the way into all this
financial crisis. Not to mention a lot of other sins and
bad habits.

Paparazzi turning cameras to scandal bankers. A good idea, after all

2009-03-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

The paparazzi and some tabloid media might do some
really good after all if one looks at what a very solid and
well-run investment firm, who have understandably no
sympathy whatsoever for crooked bankers and their
practices, have to say.

It began in the USA that the paparazzi and some tabloid
media turned their attention to the overpaid scandal
bankers. The Huffington Post recently pointed this out
and linked to an article in the NYT about that subject:
Paparazzi turn cameras on CEO's
And meantime this idea has caught on in the UK as well
as the Guardian reports:
Rich pickings

It might be be a good thing if this interest of paparazzis
would extent to other countries as well. It's actually quite
likely for many reasons.

And from the tabloid interest in these fat cats we come to
Greycourt & Co., a financial services adviser with lots of
experience in the financial and money market business.
They know what they are talking about. While Greycourt
focus on rather wealthy clients, what they have to say and
the insight they give in the linked - to white paper here is
basically recommended reading for poor poets, a working
poor person just the same as this paper certainly is of
interest to not so poor persons.
They could not have been much more outspoken in the
context of a white paper, providing a proper insight into
the fraudulent practices that evolved over the years and
which are far more serious in their consequences, the
problems created than one might assume. One is getting
used too easily to this mess and softballing. Time is well
spent on this nineteen pages.
Greycourt & Co.:
The Financial Crisis and the Collapse of Ethical Behavior

After being properly briefed by Greycourt's paper the
new found interest of the paparazzis is probably seen a
bit different as well. As highly necessary, probably. Apart
from adding some colour to such dry stuff, maybe even a
bit of crime, sex and money. Their attention is really
necessary because it not just takes away some unresolved
frustration, they shed by coincidence light on matters
which are existential.

They might by coincidence be of some help to take a look
who is on the board of directors of publicly traded companies,
particularly banks. Not that this requires a lot of research.
Investors have been a bit negligent over the years, didn't care
much about those board members who clearly failed in their
duty to excerise their control, their obligation of oversight
of what is going in a bank, for instance.
Here the general description by Wikipedia of the "boards",
their various funtions, what they are supposed to be there
for.
Right now the bonuses are the outrage, the big themes.
That's just part of the story. Who was responsible for these
bonuses? The "boards". And not just that, they were also
great in their failure to exercise control when things got
- and still deteriorate further. Right now "everybody" on
these boards, including politicians, excel with "didn't know",
"nobody knew, could have seen it coming" and so forth. And
so those board members in banks have the same brilliant
explanation.

And this why a bit tabloid - like attention would shed light
into a corner hitherto unfortunately neglected. If for instance
some such media would have the idea to come up with names
and faces, placating them as the ones responsible for whatever
this would be the spanner in the works. All magic and
mysterious power all too often ascribed would vanish like
morning mist in sunlight.

Let's also hope that those tabloid media digging in such
matters are not regarding people in general just as stupid.
Being not familiar with one or the other subject does not
mean a person is stupid per se. They could just as well
provide some upgrading, some learning, for the general
public.

As we see, upgrading on some basci corparate law and
structure, to name just one theme, is basically damn easy,
no big deal at
all.

The newspaper crisis: very easy to explain

2009-03-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

The crisis and occasional closures of newspapers in the USA
and here in Europe can, from an ironic perspective, be explained
very easily, summarized to: circulation down and ad rates up.
Just recently the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado shut down
and staged the end pretty media - typical, as not many other
businesses going bust would do.

In 2004 an article appeared in a biz - journal, written by Amy
Bryer, who told of the falling circulation of the two Denver dailies,
the RMN included, that was down by 11,6 % while ad rates at
both papers were increased by 189%. This article made inter-
esting and lucid reading and got noticed also here in Europe,
inlcuding the editorsweblog.

Ever since then some sort of drama, a ratrace took place. Two
opposite strategies were pursued. The one by the more serious
ad professionals, business and tax consultants who know of the
pitfalls of advertising and ad expenses. And of course business
managers, etc. themselves who calculated and decided different
from how the media would want.
The media increased their efforts to get as much ad revenue as
possible. The efforts of ad sales reps were obviously intensified
as much as possible. And all over the place they all had the same
instrumtent: the forecasts of national as well as the global media
consumption and ad expenditures. Both were rising steadily and
permanently, like in this one by the WAN.

That was their tool, mass psychology and instrument of
persuasion at the same time. And that was the only, the
absolutely true, the holy, the only legal and anyhow best possible
criteria for businesses on which to base their advertising
expenditures.
The media would not know any other criteria for ad spending
than that. And would make sure no one has any other ideas in
this universe.

For a long time advertising increased like the arms race decades
ago. It was often merely to make more noise than the others.
Consumers on the other hand were not so enthusiasitic, would
all the time long not have minded somewhat less of that.

Convinced that the whole world decides and spends like told on
ads, some businesses spent like that. For a longer time they
were pretty careless and complacent about that. But only to some
extent. Basically it was clear that it was an unsustainable
situation that would come to an end eventually. The Denver
papers are surely more extreme cases of ad expenses getting
too expensive. But similar pricing strategies can certainly be
found in Europe as well. Usually it is small businesses getting the
worst deals.

For a long time printing a newspaper was considered to be some-
thing like a licence for printing money. In the USA this was more
openly talked, even bragged about, while high - earning papers
in Europe were more discreet about that. The media are not that
holy or very good people when it comes to their revenue. It is
widely known that they are fleecing their clients.

Critical investors consider newspapers risky since a longer time.
Their pricing strategy, revenue policy made it all too clear. The
share prices of newspapers have declined dramatically over the
last two years. A sure bet for short sellers. Bets that were
confirmed time and again.

The unsustainablility of advertising expenses was brought to
a climax last Christmas. For instance, both in New York, USA
and Londong, UK, shops began selling at discount prices weeks
before Christmas. Even the luxury segment had to sell at
discounted prices. A page in the New York Times costs about
$140 000,- (superficial research). A page in The Times, UK,
(circ. 1,2 million) goes up to £ 98 700,-
A page in the Irish Times (circ. 105 000) goes up to about
Euro 32 000,-, in the property even over 34 000,-. That's
(examples of) ad expenses which were splashed out rather
easily as long as people were on the spending spree, before the
credit bubble burst. But such expenses weigh heavy on shops
when the going gets tough and they have to discount prices.
Then even ten or twenty percent of former ad spending burns
a hole in the pockets of firms.

It is further possible to take a critical look at the role of the
media in the years leading to this financial / economic problems.
What Danny Schechter writes about the US media is just as
valid for European media.

Now the media companies, newspapers first of all, have to
face the music, are having the "blues". Here a look at the
stock market of a few, just as examples.
New York Times, NYT, News Corp, NWSA, or INM,
owner of, among others, the Irish Independent.

When the outgoing media threaten with doomsday scenarios,
no life on earth without them, the end of democracy and what-
ever, new media inreasingly come up. And this is probably
continuing. The more old media go out of business, the more
chances and opportunities there are for new start-ups. And
probably doing a much better job than the current ones,
even if it is just something nice centred on crosswords, sports,
recipes, etc. And also journalists are likely to find new chances
in maybe even better circumstances than now.
Intellectual sincerity is most likelyan important criteria for the
future. Not much chances for manipulators, people without any
critical reflection of media drivel, rather problematic money
and finance advising, and so forth.

The crisis. The growing unpopularity of pundits on TV and a popular video with Peter Schiff

2009-02-19T03:21:00.000-08:00

While many people still have a fresh memory of the
many wrong predictions on TV, the same awful pundits
now recession experts, the video with Peter Schiff seems
to come in handy. Simply being a re-run of three news-
shows in 06 / 07 with awfully wrong predictions, it helps
to restore the memory and meeting a certain need of
criticism at the same time.
By now it obviously gets popular with people otherwise
not interested in stock markets and things like that, often
people who have figured out problems in good time and
who just want to see their suspicions confirmed.

If somebody had the means and would care to put together
viral videos of financial news shows here in Europe, the
results would be pretty much the same. What was said
and predicted by the money experts, bankers and pundits
in 06 / 07 was not different at all.

Here it is again (it is the second posting of it on this blog):
Peter Schiff was right

and, fitting to that (also a repost): where comedian Bill Maher
asks much later on Art Laffer, one of the guys making those
really wrong predictions, about the one cent bet with Peter
Schiff. For a laugh:
Bill Maher questioning Art Laffer

In case of interest, and not if fully informed about the matter:
the media are finding themselves increasingly in a crisis, have
problems to make ends meet. There are lots of complaints to
be heard from their side about decling ad revenue, for instance.
And somehow they seem to have lost some favour with the
general public.

May 7: (update) coming soon on this blog:

bookreviews and author introduction:
two finance / money historians:

Charles R. Geisst, auhtor of a several books, including the
History of Wall Street, and his book "Undue Influence",
80 years of Wall Street lobbying ( very hot topic right now,
righfully so)
for a first glimpse:
Undue Influence

Niall Ferguson, author or a couple of books,
here for a first glimpse (if unknow)a visit to his site:
Niall Ferguson

Update:
Peter Schiff was guest in The Daily Show / Comedy Central
with Jon Stewart. Here's a clip, not the best quality but the
only available right now.
Peter Schiff guest of Jon Stewart

Novel and movie inspiring aspects of Madoff scam

2009-01-28T18:09:00.000-08:00

Bits of the Madoff scam could be the basis for novels
and films set almost anywhere. Bank Medici in Vienna,
Austria, and the "Austrian woman", Sonja Kohn, who
was active in selling Madoff related funds. And now
she might be in danger of duped investors. An article
in the NYT points at the possible physical danger from
Russian oligarchs who belong to this group. Sonja Kohn
managed to find investors even among Arab investors.
If all that doesn't make up some good background for
novelists or financial thriller writers!
Austrian Woman Who gathered ...

Vienna was the location for what became a classical
movie: The Third Man, shot right after the war, released
in 1949. This movie, it was based on reality, dealt with
gangs dealing with, among other, pharmaceuticals that
got streched to make more profit and thus got letal,
killing children.

What made The Third Man really famous was the
film music. Here a clip with the Zither player Anton Karas
with shots included from the movie. Maybe something for
inspiration, to get a feeling for novels, a bit of scenic drama and
people, characters. A 7 minute trailer, without showing
Anton Karas: here.
Every country offers it own opportunities for movie directors
and novelists.

The story of the movie is nicely told on Wikipedia.

Update: A movie is coming out:
Timely Hollywood thriller sheds light on shady banks

Madoff's scam straight out of crime comedy book: Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer

2008-12-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

Obviously crime comedy lovers have their sixth or seventh sense proved right. The Madoff fraud affair on Wall Street is just like it is carried out by Harvey Metcalf who sells shares in a non-existing North Sea Oil producing company. A scam in which he creates exactly the same impression of a well-doing investment fund just like Bernie Madoff did.

Has Madoff read Archers' comedy?
Here the factual insight into the Madoff case:
Henry Blodget from Business Insider has done an excellent job shedding light on the conduct and behaviour. If not knowing it from Yahoo finance, here's the link (Silicon Alley Insider):
"I Knew Bernie Madoff Was Cheating"

Investors held the belief that Madoff was cheating somehow and assumed they would gain because of that. They would not expect a good old-fashioned that it actually was.

"Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" was first published in 1976 and been reprinted several times since then. It is an evergreen. We have introduced it in
September on this blog, together with another similar crime comedy classic:
Wodehouse's: "Do Butler Burgle Banks?"

Such scandals, affairs, bankruptcies are, seen historically, time and time again pretty much the same in their core characteristics. The real differences are the scope and size, the amounts of money blown and gone. The amount embezzled between four investors in "Not a Penny more" came to $ 1 Million. 1976 was a time when £ 30,- for petty expenses were expenses, lots of money for that matter.

The same goes for "Do Butlers Burgle Banks?", written and published a bit earlier, and set much further back. A time, when a "deficiency" in a banks balance of say, £ 150 000,- was a mind blowing and existential problem. Whereas today it's billions, if not trillions.

It is probably the much smaller amounts of money at stake or lost in those yesterdays books that make them so easy to read, to understand what is really the core problem. Those billions currently coming up are really a psychological hammer, it takes a while to come to terms, get a clear mind again to tackle the principle problems, criteria, beginning with accounting standards and so forth.

The goal of the heroes in Archer's story is to get all money back
to the cent. And indeed they came close to it more at the end
(but not the very end!):
"He still owes us $ 101 and 24 cents."
"DISGRACEFUL", said Jean-Pierre, "Burn the place down."

Update:

Henry Blodget continues to do a great job:
The Perfect Ponzi

And Nina Burleigh sees it from a satirical point of view in the Huffington Post:
Madoff in Manhatten

(Our copies of crime comedies are sold out at the moment, we have to refer potential buyers to the net.)

Suspects & Whodoneit? for (Irish) crime, thriller and crime comedy writers: journalists, editors, the media

2008-11-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

One group of suspects and potential villains for
crime stories has so far been largely neglected:
editors, journalists and paparazzis.
While every other socially higher standing profession
like the priests and the churches, politicians, judges.
policemen, and so on, had their fair share of scandals
and appear adequately in all the "good books" this is not
the case for the media profession. A grave omission,
isn't it?
And it might also be a new source of income, the new
business model, for quite a lot of journalists who are
getting laid off. All they have to do is write about their
experience as insiders, scandalizing it, add the necessary
amount of money, sex & crime to it and write "paperbacks."
Apart from the opportunity newspapers have to use the
papers to that end. This would be their way of the media
crisis. It is really no wonder readers are vanishing if one
considers how drab they got - and how interesting they
could actually be. It would not easy cost them lots of money
to investigate, nor big expenses would be run up nor other
investments needed. Readers always need something new,
and when it comes to sensations and scandals, something
really surprising. Otherwise people get spoiled, bored and
disappear. Not to mention that advertising revenue, rapidly
dwindling right now, would jump up again and thus everybody
would be happy again.

The absence of some media person as suspicious, dodgy,
maybe even dangerous in TV crime series is THE explanation
why they are getting so boring. Some surprising element
is missing, a surprising twist and the end. That's because
no journalist is getting caught, no editor facing jail for life.
Wouldn't paparazzis make ideal cases as stalkers, for instance?
Wouldn't an editor-in-chief be the ideal character as king-pin
in a drug cartel, a position from which lots is masterminded,
organized, supervised everything kept under control?

One example where a newspaper editor turns out to
be suspicious, maybe even guilty of some heinous crime
in the little town of Lydmouth in the 1950's is in:
Andrew Taylor: Call the Dying

It is a cosy crime set at a time when television sets are
just beginning to be bought and the classical sexual neuroses,
hypocrises and other such related psychological complexes
played a vital part in small town life. The mentioned
newspaper editor is not the main character, just a minor
character. But sufficiently taken on, explored, to make it
nice fictional media critique. For people who just can be
inspired to have a laugh about a media guy.
Taylor has a very dry sense of humour and he can also
understate when necessary superbly.

Whatever they wrote, it was finally used against them:
the libel cases in the McCann case. Here are just a few
of the reports to those:
Madelein McCann: Robert Murat and newspapers

Parents of Madelein McCann accept apology and damages

Tapas 7 in McCann case awarded damages

So, there is no problem sourcing "underlying" material
from actual reality. Someone using or getting inspired by
those libel cases then just needs to have a bit of talent,
dream up characters. A policeman, detective needs to
have a mind of his own when he for instance includes
the media in a crime either as perpetrators straight
away or as associates of crime. One motive, hopes of
financial gains from a case is all evident. And then it is
up to the author how the story unfolds, what is coming to
light in the course of a story. Is it just obstruction of justice
and the investigation that the media people are guilty of?
Or is at a range from parking offenceses (paparazzi photo-
graphers), trespass, complicity to blackmail someone,
sexual exploitation of an occasional "escort" or maybe even
a paying relationship with a druglord. Who knows.

And then there is certainly the possibilty to dig in the
finance crisis and the media complicit in all that.
In the above mentioned McCann libel cases all the lawyers
needed to do gather sufficient evidence was to use newspaper
archives and make copies of it all. Ironically enough, most of
the papers even had online - archives. It couldn't have been
easier for the lawyers.

The same holds true for the media and the finance crisis.
While what they are writing today seems to be the perfect
knowledge, the perfect forecast and prediction something
in the future, all that may look a little bit different when
going back and looking what a paper wrote in the business /
finance section years ago and then go forward towards the
present.
The media are protected by the freedom of speech. Sueing
them for false information or something to that effect may
make it nearly impossible to take them to court successfully.
(It could also be for the reason that nobody so far has even
attempted to do so. In would require a real ace of a lawyer,
in any case.)
But at least in theory it would be very easy to gather really
convincing and definitely enough evidence for such a case.
Mysterious as much of the stock - exchange talk, advice,
and so forth is for most of the consumers, declared laymen
would have absolutely no problem at all in, say a court,
(or reading about in a story). Practically everybody would
understand what sort of mysterious - complex financial
and business writing, including all media frenzy, led to the
financial crisis and the credit crunch.

Not so long ago the papers' property section was full with
expensive properties, all written for people who don't really
need or want to ask about prices, like they would be really
rich oil - sheiks. Interesting was that at times it was in many
cases impossible to tell paid-for PR - articles from estate
agents apart from independently written property articles
about properties. Most of those independent looking articles
included the phone number of an estate agent in all openness.
If only that was not a mistake, albeit a small one.

And they were also big into recommending shares, investment
funds, all sort of financial products. The interesting thing,
the potential nemesis, of everything to do with money and
finance is that afterward one has perfect knowledge. For
example, no problem finding articles about Lehman, Bears Stearns,
and so on years ago and what a certain paper wrote about them
and prophecied (usually with greatest certainty, absolutely
convincing). Every self-declared layman or laywoman just needs
to take a look at those and knows instantly the outcome
(might be quite surprised how easy it is to understand when
doing so, understanding everything in all relaxed ease).
And this is certainly part of the challenge for writers:
to provide the readers with an account what has happened and
what was somehow going on. Kind of a service coming
with the book.

Considering the extent, the sheer extent of the finance crisis
this all calls not just one, but a lot of writers to the task.
In order to have their detetectives and investigators do the
job. Also very much needed. In reality in takes much longer
for the mills of justice beginning to grind, we all know for instance
how the fraud department of the FBI in the USA was down-
sized years ago.

Finally, we come to the question of marketing and selling.
Would books in which the media are criticised one way or
another, editors and journalists stand model as villains
find the approval of the media? Certainly not, one may
assume. Could the media ruin the chances of such books?
Yes and no.
Some longer time ago the Catholic Church was considered all
powerful and they were very much into censuring and damning
books. They did create a lot of problems. But the fact that the
Church was damning a book was time and again reason for its
success, whether it was the condemnation or not. (Quite a few
rather silly, "unworthy" books benefitted from it.)
The same is the case with the media. What really matters, in my
opinion, are the potential readers. And they better be taken
serious, not underestimated. Readers for such books are most
likely to have a mind of their own, are used to use their head,
have a sense of humour and like to have a laugh, occasionally,
about the powers-that-be, at politics and so on. The don't need
any sensation.
Important is in my opinion that the potential is not mislead
about a book. If it is some easy-going fluff, making jokes etc. it
should somehow be told. Creating expectations and betraying
is bad for business.
And, as far as the likely disapproval of the media is concerned,
some discreet hint that a couple of journalists are included in
the suspect / guilty / whodoneit group, that the author is does
not suffer from an authoritarian conscience towards the media,
is a bit respectless, in fact. This might just do the trick, be
enough - and sell the book.

When being critical about the media, one should not forget
those journalists, etc. who are, apart from being occasionally
self - critical, admitting to mistakes, are rightly critical about
the media. Some of the best media criticism is written by
members of that profession. We will introduce some ( more) of
them soon. (So far: Danny Schechter and briefly Jack Shafer).

Very finally, at the very end, an introduction to:
Paul Kilduff: Square Mile (its a link to amazon).

Kilduff wrote four financial thrillers. Square Mile, published in
2000 might provide an interesting look back, at the financial
scene at that time. - And leave the reader wondering what the
hell ever since then.
(We have also introduced Linda Davies on another page of this
blog. She is another great financial thriller writer.)

Media: former editor admits media played part in financial crisis

2008-11-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

Slowly people from the media begin to admit to
the role of the media in the financial crisis.
The british Guardian currently being the only
newspapers to carry such articles. We appreciate
that.
Will Hutton criticises media's role in financial crisis

Given the extent of the financial crisis and when
one remembers the media frenzy far more has
to come. The media need a bigger confessional
in any case.
And there might even be a market for that, a larger
part of the potentially interested in hearing such
confessions. This might be even the financial rescue
of some. All they have to do is spice such confessions
with a bit of crime, sex & money, sort of scandalizing
it a bit and here we go. Business for the media would
jump up again.
The media, journalists, editors and so forth are the
only socially important profession that has not yet been
scandalized in contrast to the churches, bankers,
politicians, and so forth. Scandals about the media,
involving themselves would thus be reallu necessary as
a matter of principle and something new for a somehow
bored and frustrated audience.
So lets see what's coming.

For angry banking / media consumers: Danny Schechter: Plunder, An investigation of the Subcrime Crisis

2008-11-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

We have referred to Danny Schechter (USA)
already before on another page here.
His new book:
Plunder: An investigation into the Subcrime crisis
(September 2008)
here is the direct link to his site and the
synopis.
Unfortunately the book is not yet available here
in Ireland, therefore we have refer buyers for
it to other sites.
Here is video clip with Danny Schechter from
06 / 07 It is also about:

"In debt we trust", a film he has done last year.
One also gets to know him, that he was working
for TV before he got independent. How he became
a journalist and got very critical about the own
profession and why. (If link to You Tybe clip is not
working, "Danny Schechter" can be found very
easily on You Tube.

And here is a clip to his film "In debt we trust"
Pt. 1

And here is a clip in which he talks about his
book "Plunder"

For readers somehow detached from the newspaper
industry, maybe critical somehow ot it, it may be of
interest to have a look at the various trade publications
and publications in which they are talking about them-
selver, their strategies, and so forth.

It appears that they are living in a world and state of
mind of their very own. Have somehow lost the plot.
Their interest may not meet the interest of the
consumer.
Here is one, the editorsweblog.

A decent critic of church, religion and sexual moral: Uta Ranke - Heinemann: Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

2008-11-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

It was a bestseller in the early nineties, is was out of print but is available
on Amazon:
Uta Ranke - Heinemann: Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

Ranke Heinemann was born in 1927 in Essen in Germany. She studied
theology, had Pope Benedict XVI, Josef Ratzinger, as class mate, taught at
a Catholic seminary from 1955 on and became the first female professor of
theololgy worldwide in 1970. She married in 1954 and has two sons. Her
husband died a couple of years ago.

She taught Catholic theology at the University of Duisburg before teaching in
Essen. Her license to teach theology was revoked by bishop Hengsbach in
1987 after voicing her criticism about the virgin birth on television.
She was a critique anyhow from 1970 on, concerning matters of war
and peace and other issues and was activ for humanitarian and peace
causes.

The loss of her permission to teach Catholic theology was a bit of a
scandal in Germany. She became professor of history at an independent,
secular, faculty soon after.

Heinemann was critical of the latent homosexuality in the Catholic Church
long before the scandals blew up. The indoctrination of priests going back
a long time meant a hatred of the human body in prinicple, and an
indoctrinated misogyny on top of that, which bred a particular - abnormal -
kind of homosexuality. In other words, she had good reason to be critical
about theology, knew the stuff from inside out.

Her critique, long before the scandals blew up, included among others
two secret letters from the Vatican concerning homosexuality and the
pedophile scandals. One was from cardinal Ottaviani in 1962,
(Crimen Sollicitationis) and one from cardinal Ratzinger in 2001
(De Delictis Gravioribus) in which, carrying the threat of excommunciation,
bishops were commanded to secrecy concerning such matters and scandals.

The Church managed to fool the world by going in the offensive, ranting
about and condemning the sin of homosexuality, thus projecting their
offences upon others. It worked. The whole lot of Church - critical
journalists would, for many years, not take serious any complaints, reports,
etc. about such scandals because of that.

Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven is giving a proper account of the
theological reasoning, what those "fathers" were thinking. And that is
actually a scandal in itself.

Fortunately, quite a lot of what was once moral is meantime obsolete.
The interesting thing is that the whole lot of that sexual moral is
actually Godless.

As it is, the theologians simply could not justify their moralizing with bits
or pieces from the Old or New Testament, Jesus for instance never
bothered about the sexuality of young people, for instance sex before
marriage nor did he tell his principles to mind such matter. Neither would
he or his principles interrogate married couples about their love and sex
life like theologians later made it their business and major source of
income.

The merits of knowing the history of that moral is that it is easy afterwards
to make such comparisons if someone wants to do that.

Ranke Heinemann is a great example of intellectual sincerity, a quality
not too often found in the theological arena.
When losing her faith in her Church - based faith she did not lose her
faith in God. Her marriage was a happy one, that was very important
for her.

The comments and reviews of readers at amazon give a nice idea what
the book is about. A look at those can be recommended very much.

Update:
The Ryan Report in Ireland, just recently published, brought
the whole issue again to the forefront. A really interesting article
was written in IrishCentral, what outraged Irish Americans
remembered certain things.

(This book is available in some Dublin public libraries.)

The comments and reviews of readers on amazon are quite
interesting, they give additional information and insight.

End of Lifestyle opinions: journalists embark on course of modesty

2008-10-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

That the media, first of all newspapers, followed by magazines are
having to face the music and are in serious and increasing financial
problems themselves can be learned from the Google reader on the
right side.

Jack Shafer, media critic at Slate, noted the new trend coming from
them:
Good news from the coming depression
Journalists have discovered it!

It is a funny piece.

Are financial offshore centres and tax havens going bust, melting down as well? Suspicious silence, non-reporting

2008-10-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

While banks and financial institutions all over the
place are ran into serious problems and those problems
are known, reported on, there is an almost suspicious
silence emanating from tax havens.

Tiny as many of them might seem, they are global
players because of the huge assets and funds they
manage and have in their accounts.
There are two basic questions:
A) Have those banks and funds, etc. done better, were
they smarter, more prudent in their conduct? In which
case they would be some sort of positive provocation
to the rest of the financial world.
B) Or have they made the same mistakes and are melting
down just like the others? If that is the case this would
provide the answer to some presently unexplainable
occurrences in the stock markets globally, like forced
sell- offs and so on.

Such a crisis in tax havens would have some interesting
aspects. There are some of the proceeds of drug dealing
stored away, invested. Or Third World politicians are
known to invest all the embezzled money there. Thus one
or the other political scandal would follow in such a case.
And maybe one or the other scandal worthy of tabloid
reoporting and elaborating as well.

It would in any case require some rather old-fashioned
competent reporting, some knowledgeable guys who know
what they are talking about. Drug money of political money,
the proceeds from corruption, are of course stories that take
a longer time to figure out and give an adequate account.

Certainly are differences among those centres how they
handled banking, their legal requirements and so forth.

Here is an article from Jersey (it is possible to go from
the articles linked here to current articles on the following
newspapers, if interested):
Euro talks to protect finance

And here another one from Isle of Man:
The Manx Lads: It's Not Our Fault

Here is one from Guernsey:
Confidence in Guernsey will survive

And here one about the Vatican Bank:
Officials says deposits in Vatican Bank are safe
(The Catholic Church had some problems in
the past, a longer time ago, 1982.)

Update:
The Stanford - case brings the issues of sunny islands,
tax havens and more to the front again.
Here a summary so far in the Guardian:
We said, are you this guy ...

All that might be an excuse or reason to visit some of
the news media in the Carribbean directly (this affair
is leading to elections in Antigua, where the Prime Minister
called for elections in March)
The Nation Newspaper, Barbados

the: CaribWorldNews

and the Caribbean Net News

For the record: these are just some of the media in the
region.
As for the USA: there is a link to Silicon Alley Insider
on this blog. A rather new publications, they have their
own style of writing, relaxed, with a sense of humour, yet
professional - and always linking to sources (giving credit
to deserves credit) that is obviously gaining rapid
popularity.

Fancy some music after so much hard
reading? Here is Harry Belafonte: Island in the sun

Financial thrillers by former City banker turned writer Linda Davies

2008-10-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

Dealing with things financial and moneywise as knowledge-
able authors is obviously a trait of the Davies family.
We introduced "The History of Money" by Glyn Davies.
Daughter Linda Davies on her part wrote a couple
of financial thrillers. Instead of an unnecessary duplicate
introduction, a link here.

Somehow fitting to that we would to introduce
"DealBreaker", an online Wall Street tabloid.
It is, according to its definition, a specific tabloid
that includes Wall Street gossip and news about
people "who are to be considered innocent until
proven guilty".

Matching the themes we have chosen the film music
to the James Bond movie "Goldfinger"/ "Diamond are
forever", Shirley Bessey singing at the occasion.
hahaha

Re - inventing gun powder, money and banking by way of: The History of Money ; a book suggestion

2008-10-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

The finance crisis and bank collapses brought with them
a number of questions. What the hell banks are good
for and needed in the first place, what it would be like
without banks. Or even more radically asking the
question: what would it be like if money would be
abolished. Karl Marx for instance wanted to have
money abolished. that's why the rubel was a real
paradoxon during the Communist period, when the
pircture of Marx, the one who decried its abolishment
was on the Rubel - bills.

One way to get a little bit deeper is reading the history
of money, how and why it evolved a long time ago.
A really proper book on that was written by Glyn
Davies. A link to a synopsis and Davies' biographie
here.

Were media complicit in finance crisis? First shy confessions from insiders / journalists

2008-10-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

Somebody suspecting the media of being complict in
this crisis and interested in related critique can turn
to Danny Schechter, US film maker and author of
several books.
Here an article from him in the Huffington Post in
Nov. 2007 which turns out to be accurate early
warning:
Media Complicit in "Shopapokalypse" as consumers
go wild

What is actually overdue are confessions from people
inside the media just like insiders from the finance
industry who tell it all. There would be a lot to tell
in any case.

The first inside criticism was published today, Oct. 13
in the Guardian:
"Why didn't the City journalists see the financial crisis
coming?"

Certainly there is more to come, has to come. As soon
as any such articles are found, they will pointed out
here.

Aspects from the bank rescues: advertising largesse and big bonuses

2008-09-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

Banks and financial institutions are big spenders on
advertising.
A nice little critique on that appeared recently
in Seeking Alpha:
Is Wachovia's $150 Million Ad Account Smart Spending?

Because of the many bankruptcies and bailouts the
whole lot of advertising by the financial sector took
on a rather comic character. Just a couple of weeks
ago a number of such institutions tried to make a
big impression on the media consumers with glossy
ads. Only to find their names big in the headlines
a little bit later.

Pretty drastic were the results of all the ads for credits
in recent years which were all over the media. Many of
those mortgage firms are meantime out of business or
drastically reduced.
It is obviously because the media were the beneficiaries
of these ad revenue that they would not raise hell
about them. There would have been a real need for
scrutiny from an early phase on.

Another aspect to which many people object, find appalling,
are the salaries and bonuses of some in the financial sector.
Really greedy people whom they now have to bail out or
whatever.
Here an article in Boomberg from last year:

Wall Street Plans $38 Billion of Bonuses as Shareholders Lose

European institutions are not much different either.
It is no wonder when people have grown weary and got
critical.

Will concerns over banks going bankrupt also hit the media; newspapers and TV?

2008-09-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

The events of the financial markets are likely to
affect the media. "Follow the Media" points to
some of the related problems:

"Media World Upheaval - Credit Crunch Hits
Revenue Even More As Alernative Media Grows"

In addition to that it is quite likely that the consumers
are changing their media consumption. For instance
in cases where they feel badly informed, misled.
There was indeed a lot of manipulation going on in
the recent months if not years as it turns out now.
One just has to think of the many assurances made
time and again which were regularly followed by nasty
surprises, exactly the opposite of what experts and
bank economists said on TV. It was really ludicrous.
It would thus be no big surprise if the media worldwide
would be falling out of favour, losing audience and anyhow
really excessive advertising revenue.

The worries and concerns over banks goings bust is
of concern pretty everywhere in Europa and the USA,
possibly people in Asia are asking the same questions.
Thsi means, even without any big busts, the super -
Gau, the meltdown of all public relations efforts and
advertising of banks. The millions spent by them turning
out to be complete waste of money. A case where
advertising and PR backfires, is eventually counter-
productive.

"Follow the Media" (link above) also quotes from a survey
conducted in France concerning TV ad popularity.
According to that, "nine out of ten people in France
are not keen on enduring more ads on TV. Eight in
ten believe there are already too many".
The survey was carried by a radio group, thus a bit
biased, but it is vertainly not far off the mark.

Considering the damage and costs those ads for credits
that ran in recent years have caused, surveys might come
to even worse results if that would be included.

It is possible that because of these concerns media
consumers are disconnecting themselves somehow
from the media. They might even liberate themselves
from one or the other medium when it is percerved
as annoying, useless or burden, something to shy away
from.

Crime comedies amidst the financial market turmoil. Two cosy crime classics:

2008-09-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Archer:
Not a penny more, not a penny less

One million dollars - that's what Harvey Metcalfe, lifelong king of shady deals, has
pulled off with empty promises of an oil bonanza and instant riches. Overnight, four
men - the heir to an earldom, a Harley Street doctor, a Bond Street art dealer and
an Oxford don - find themselves penniless. But this time Harvey has swindled the
wrong men. They band together and shadow him from the casinos of Monte Carlo
to the high-stakes windows at Ascot and the hallowed lawns of Oxford.Their plan is
simple: to sting the crook for axactly what they lost. To the penny.

Since its first publication in 1978, this book got reprinted 57 times. And it is
probably needing some more reprinting. Never really out of fashion, always good to
read in hindsight of all those smaller and bigger financial scams, it is - as can be
expected - in bigger demand again.

And another classic of this genre:
P. G. Wodehouse:
Do Butlers Burgle Banks?
(synopsis:)
Situated as it was in a prosperous county town, Bond's Bank had long enjoyed the respectful
confidence of its clients. But when Mike inherited the Bank from his late uncle, Sir Hugo, he was
shocked to find that, thanks to the prodigal benevolence of his predecessor, the Bank was many
thousands short in the kitty. Time was needed to make up the defalcations, but, as ill luck would
have it, the Bank Examiners were due immediately to go over the Bank's books. The prospect of
gaol loomed large. "Unless", said Mike desperately, "some kindly burglar takes it into his head to
burgle the bank before the Examiners arrive, I'm for it."

It was with no such altruistic thought that, coincidentally, Horace the gentlemanly gangster, had
indeed planned such an enterprise, but strictly for the benefit of himself and his deserving
colleagues, Ferdie the Fly, and Basher, the safe expert. To further his plans, Horace took a job
as butler to the Bond residence where, inspired by her superlative cooking, he fell in love with Ada,
Mike's secretary; and as with other ardent lovers before him, the pure flame of love changed his
motives— if not his intentions. And all might have been well, but for the well meant endeavours of
Jill, Mike's sprightly fiancee, the intervention of Charlie the Chicago gangster and the suspicions of
Potter, the hard-faced man from Scotland Yard. All these events, and what eventually fell out, are
faithfully chronicled in this highly diverting novel by the inimitable P. G.
Wodehouse.
.

Warren Buffetts' famous 2003 warning of the credit crunch and bank failures

2008-09-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

A contributing author of Seeking Alpha has dug out
Warren Buffetts letter from 2003:
"Warren Buffett warned us in 2003"

It is indeed a memorable piece in which Buffett
describes the derivates as "financial waepons of
mass destruction".

Book review: Confessions of a subprime lender. An insider's tale

2008-09-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Richard Bitner was co - owner of a mortgage shop. He saw
the dodgy practices in this industry and got out of it in
2005. In good time, for the company he was a partner in
before went bust in 2007.
His book draws on the experience inside the mortgage
industry and tells it all. According to him it was a matter
of lacking professionalism, crazy loans, greed and outright
fraud. And ignorance.
Bitner pulls the curtain back to reveal the inner workings
of the mortgage industry and explain why the housing crisis
is much worse than people think it is. The books is easy
to read and understand, enlightening and for someone not
affected entertaining like a crime story.

Richard Bitner: Confessions of a Subprime Lender:
An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, & Ignorance

Here a link to his website, www.lendingsanity.com.
The first chapter can be downloaded free.

Sins of the media in the subprime crisis

2008-08-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

That the media are occasionally involved in what turns out
to be huge financial and other problems is nothing new.
Here two articles that, put together, make up an own story,
they are current history.

A pretty stern critique originally and surprisingly published
in the editor & publisher, the trade magazine of the US publishing
industry, Danny Schechter asks:

Where Was Medie When Sub-prime Disaster Unfolded?
"“It is somewhat surprising,” Larry Elliott, economics editor of London’s
The Guardian observed recently, “that there is not already rioting in the
streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the
expense of ordinary Americans.”

and, further examines the explanations delivered once the scandal broke:
"A New York Times columnist even admitted that experts and
advocates first warned them in 2001 that predatory lending practices
were devastating poor neighborhoods but the issue was not covered
in any depth for five years. ... "

Somehow fitting to the above article, here one when,
eventually, the NYT sent a reproter round to a concumer advocacy
office, in February 2008:
Someone to Speak for Borrowers in Trouble
2/17/2008

Parkinson's Law . The rise to the highest level of incompetence Book review

2008-07-20T00:11:00.000-07:00

C. N. Parkinson got this little book first published in 1957. In it he describes how to
climb up the career ladder within an organisation. In order to achieve that it is
necessary to boost bureaucracy (the Wiki entry to Parkinson is a bit weak, there
is a bit to Parkinson) increase the size the size of the organisation whatever that is,
a business or government.

Boosting the bureaucracy increases the importance of the department, of the
manager, of the bureaucrat. The bigger that gets, the better. It's all getting ever
more inefficient, becoming a purpose just for its own sake. And hence, the
necessary conditions are set for the aspiring manager to rise to the highest level:
the highest level of incompetence.

That's the highest level achievable in life, in an organisation, in politics, the position
that enjoys the most prestige, the most admiration and is regarded as most
powerful. It then also enjoys the morbidity of the half witted fascination of the fatal.

Not in the book, because it was a later development, is the large spending on
advertising and PR such managers initiate, with the organisations money of course,
in order to have a lot of media presence, lots of fuss made about them, praises
of all kinds by such lavishly sponsored media, journalists.

This goes on until the manager, the rising star, is becoming too successful in his
way, too expensive his policy and a real problem for which he is finally rewarded
with a big compensation for leaving the company, getting the golden handshake.

Parkinson for instance tells how important it is for someone making a career like this
to meet the right kind of people, for instance inviting crucial people as well as
supporters to diner. Forty or fifty years that meant usually the conspiracy of the now
old fashioned hypocrites, the busy bodies of the local church and the likes.

When such a manager or office holder eventually gets the golden hand shake he is a
rich man, made for life and can comfortably live the rest of his life from what he has
made and the usually high pensions coming with it.

Parkinson got to know this problem in the military after WW II. There he could
observe that kind of growing bureaucracy that, once established, became a factor of
itself, had to be maintained for it's own sake.

Otherwise this rise to the highest level of incompetence is also known as the
"Peter principle", named so after another author, Laurence J. Peter, who
took it all a step further and wrote competently about the highest level of
incompetence. The book was in any case really prophetic, everything he
pointed out as problematic was brought about, kind of created. For instance
the way the banking industry grew into dinosaurs and became a serious
problem for the economies.

When Parkinson wrote this book, the world was still a
sleepy place compared to today.
For instance he talks of the thickness of carpets in offices
to showt the importance of the manager.

Here an article in the UK Times, to compare to today:

April 15, 2007

BIGGER TOYS FOR THE BONUS BOYS

"City high flyers are spending like there's no tomorrow"

An article written just in time before the credit crunch.
That's just one example if one follows up on Parkinson,
takes a look at real life after reading.
Parkinson's Law can also be observed in politics.

Contemporary examples of people achieving the highest level of
incompetence are the CEO's of banks. They were masters in
creating huge organisations with highly problematic purposes like
inventing the credit derivatives and dealing with them. And who,
when things blow up get their huge bonuses and pensions while
leaving behind torched earth.
They were also lavish spenders on advertising and PR, giving
the media a reason to make a issue out of them, dragging things
along and making matters worse.
A look into the blog CEO watch can be recommended.

Stock market predictions, forecasts and history. Our Booktip: Charles R. Geisst: Wall Street: A History

2008-07-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

With good reason one of our bestsellers is Wall Street: A History
by Charles R. Geisst.
Looking back on how things worked out or didn't, one has
almost perfect knowledge. One can figure out to the cent or
penny what was going on, how and why, where all the money
went and so forth. Predictions and forecasts made yesterday
or longer ago read completely different afterwards, once
facts have established themselves and become common
knowledge.
It is almost needless to mention that history is a graveyard
of predictions, forecasts, crystall ball reading. If only one had
known, or the parents or grandparents had known how some
stock / company had worked out!

And sometime historians are good in identifying future
problems, in cases when history is repeated, or in explaining
how certain problems were brought about and the consequences
they create.

One of the current underlying problems concerning banks
and financial institutions is the deal-making in cases of
mergers.

excerpt from an interview:
Charles R. Geisst:
"... Wall Street discovered -- probably in the 1960s and the
1970s in the more contemporary period -- that a fair amount
of money could be made through mergers, and it was actually
much more profitable in some respects than underwriting stock."

"In the 1990s, that just became a boomtown bonanza, if you
will, because the deals were upward of between $10 billion and
$40 billion. Even a couple percentage points off that for fees
could make a very good year for the average Wall Street firm."
in:
www.pbs.org

And here a glimpse at actual company history, how some of them did.
Seeking Alpha recently came forward with a list of the best and the
worst performers at the US stock market, their market capitalization
Changes in Market Cap for Biggest U.S. Companies
July 29