Economist Maxton: Modern Economics Has Failed Us
Upgrades and Downgrades
Upgrades
WYN – Wyndham Worldwide initiated with Neutral at Nomura
APC – Anadarko Petro upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer
CVX – Chevron target raised to $120 at Oppenheimer
AA – Alcoa initiated with a Buy at Stifel Nicolaus
SIMO – Silicon Motion initiated with a Outperform at Northland Securities
CFN – CareFusion initiated with a Market Perform at BMO Capital
BCR – C.R. Bard initiated with a Neutral at Cowen
CHTR – Charter Comm initiated with an Outperform at Credit Suisse
VMW – VMware added to Conviction Buy List at Goldman
RA – RailAmerica initiated with a Sector Perform at RBC Capital
BRCM – Broadcom initiated with Buy at Societe Generale
QCOM – initiated with Hold at Societe Generale
KSU – KC Southern initiated with an Outperforms at RBC Capital
DFS – Discover Financial Services initiated with Market Perform at William Blair
AKS – AK Steel upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Goldman
WXS – Wright Express initiated with Outperform at William Blair
GWR – Genesee & Wyoming initiated with an Outperforms at RBC Capital
PEP – PepsiCo upgraded to Buy at Argus
Downgrades
PCL – Plum Creek downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital
SQNM – Sequenom downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Jaffray
COH – Coach initiated with a Hold at Deutsche Bank
CAKE – Cheesecake Factory upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Jaffray
X – U.S. Steel downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman
TEL – TE Connectivity upgraded to Overweight from Underweight at JP Morgan
IBM – IBM downgraded to Sector Perform from Outperform at FBN Securities
BMI – Badger Meter downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Janney Montgomery Scott
BSX – Boston Scientific initiated with a Neutral at Cowen
HAS – Hasbro downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman
STJ – St. Jude Medical initiated with a Neutral at Cowen
CROX – Crocs target lowered to $21 at Stifel Nicolaus
EP – El Paso downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna
PGR – Progressive downgraded to Hold at Argus
TLM – Talisman Energy initiated with a Buy at Tudor Pickering
Comments »Gapping Up and Down This morning
Gapping Up
VRX +0.6%, HGSI +13.3%, SFSF +7.3%, PH +2.8%, DPZ +1.4%, VMW +0.5%,FELE +4.6%, GFI +1.4%, CCL +1.2%, CPTS +8.3%,
Gapping Down
TSON -35.9%, CROX -35.1%, STRI -14.5%, IM -13.2%, CWTR -10.6%, REGN -4.8%, IBM -4.6%, AGL -4.5%,
BHE -4.4%, RIO -3.1%, GMCR -2.4%, SLW -3.9%, AG -3.8%, SLV -3.8%, RIO -3.4%, SVM -3.1%, AUY -2.7%,
MT -2.2%, BHP -1.7%, VMW -2.4%, BHP -1.7%, BIDU -1.2%, BA -0.3%, CHK -2%, WAG -1.4%, EP -1%,
Comments »In Play and On the Wires
Traders See Cracks in the Inner Workings of the Market
Downtown Josh Brown Discusses Downtown Manhattan #OWS #Occupy
Earlier on Monday, iBankCoin Financial News reposted commentary by Charles Gasparino about the Occupy protestors. Because we like to present all viewpoints here at iBC FN in order to piss off everyone, here is The Reformed Broker (Josh Brown) with an opposite take on the movement. Josh’s must-read blog can be found here: thereformedbroker.com
___________________
And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mould a new reality
Closer to the Heart
– Rush
Today I had the audacity to disagree with Charlie Gasparino about the nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement and he wasted no time in going ad hominem on me, espousing that I don’t “know anything”. I felt bad for ten seconds and then checked his Twitter stream – it reads like the a menu of insults and defensive barbs against anyone who dares to feel differently than he does about any given issue. For a tough guy reporter, he has an awfully thin skin. I liked that guy, too, what a shame.
But what I’d like to do tonight is explain why I’ve got a banner across the top left of this site proclaiming my support for Occupy Wall Street lest anyone misunderstand where I’m coming from. I’d also like to reiterate how important it is for my colleagues on The Street -the proverbialMen Who Hold High Places – to give a fair shake to the kids down there and to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not all “Marxists” as Charlie would have you believe.
The first thing to understand is that Karl Marx actually got it half-right; the philosopher taught that capitalism, left completely unchecked, would ultimately destroy itself. Marx said that the capitalists would figure out a way to industrialize to the point where workers were no longer necessary and that the result would be a social order and economy that would cave in on itself. If you can’t see that this prediction was a shockingly accurate depiction of our current Jobless Recovery for the Few then you’re simply not paying attention.
The part that Marx gets wrong – the most important part in my estimation – is that capitalism is astoundingly good at repairing itself after a major fall. This is because capitalism, while flawed, is, at the end of the day, the closest approximation to human nature that we find among all the different economic theories.
We can argue about when it was that capitalism began destroying itself for hours and hours. Some would say it goes back to Reagan and the logic of “deficits don’t matter”. Others would say that the orgiastic deregulation of the second Clinton administration and both Bush terms was the trigger. Regardless, the undeniable fact is that we tilted the scales too far and chainsawed the rulebooks, allowing that lack of regulation to chainsaw our economy and tilt it into the abyss. Business is guilty, government is guilty, banking is guilty and the voters are guilty – so let’s accept that and move on.
The fundamental question facing those of us who seek a way out as opposed to political victories is whether or not things must change. I stolidly answer that question in the affirmative. To me, the fact that an Occupy Wall Street even exists after so much acquiescence and docility in the American public is a positive sign. Agents of change often scare the shit of the mainstream at first. Think of Jesus Christ overturning the moneychangers’ tables at the Temple, think of the booming cannonfire at Lexington and Concord.
Is it a bit too precious to compare the outcry in Zuccotti Park to some of the most momentous rebellions in human history? Perhaps, but I am nothing if not dramatic and if I cannot be dramatic about something as thrilling as this, then what kind of blogger would I be?
The simple fact is that, as Suzanne explained, OWS is about checks and balances in an era of nearly unparalleled financial system dominance. It’s about ripping back the opportunity from those who have hoarded it for themselves and bringing back an economy where students don’t begin life as debt slaves forced to choose between dead-end jobs and no jobs. It’s about punishing those who’ve inflicted so much punishment on the rest of us, enabled by their position on the crony capitalist totem pole. It’s about wrenching apart the hand-in-glove coziness of Congress and Wall Street so that a few inches of daylight can shine through on everyone else.
I am not blind, and I recognize that there are anarchists, extremists and socialists among the demonstrators. But no one is forcing me or you to agree with every single sign held aloft at the various protests being held all over the country. One doesn’t have to agree with all of the causes, only with the fact that there are causes currently worth fighting for, now more than ever.
Obama promised Change and didn’t even attempt to deliver. But should his epic failure stop us from seeking to effect that change ourselves? Can we really afford to wait for 2012 and the next functional psychopath who is voted in by the disconnected electoral machine?
And so when I see The Men Who Hold High Places like Bill Gross and Mark Cuban and Jim Chanos and the like express their understanding for the protesters and their anger, I am encouraged to do so myself. When I see tandem movements start up like the 1% that supports the 99%, I am proud of the fact that there are Wall Streeters like myself who are both Capitalist and Humanist at once.
And to the elitists and defenders of the feudalist status quo, I say this: Pay close attention – closer attention than to anything else that currently occupies your thoughts – because when capitalism repairs itself as it always does, your role in administering it may be greatly diminished.
Sleep tight.
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Charlie Gasparino’s Take on the Marxist Element of the #Occupy Protests
The standard portrayal of the Wall Street protesters goes something like this: Ragtag group of unemployed young adults, venting often incoherent but overall legitimate populist outrage about economic inequality. But go down to the movement’s headquarters, as I did this past weekend, and you see something far different.
It’s not just that knowledge of their “oppressors” — the evil bankers — is pretty thin, or that many of them are clearly college kids with nothing better to do than embrace the radical chic of “a cause.” I found a unifying and increasingly coherent ideology emerging among the protesters, which at its core has less to do with the evils of the banking business and more about the evils of capitalism — and the need for a socialist revolution.
It’s not an overstatement to describe Zuccotti Park as New York’s Marxist epicenter. Flags with the iconic face of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara are everywhere; the only American flag I saw was hanging upside down. The “occupiers” openly refer to each other as “comrade,” and just about every piece of literature on offer (free or for sale) advocated socialism in the Marxist tradition as a cure-all for the inequalities of the American economic system.
Don’t try to explain to any of these protesters how those who sought to create a Marxist utopian dream of revolution also gave us the Stalinist purges, Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution and many other efforts to collectivize thought in the name of economic “justice.”
One woman was holding a “Nationalize the Federal Reserve” sign; I tried to explain that the Fed is already nationalized, because it’s part of government, and she told me to “go check my f–king facts — it’s privately owned.”
That’s when I was handed a piece paper offering the following wisdom: “The Game of Capitalism Breeds Dishonest Men.” The author of such deep thinking was a dude named De La Vega, an artist convicted a few years back for painting graffiti on a warehouse in The Bronx.
That was pretty mild compared to the sentiments offered in the official “Statement of the League for the Revolutionary Party” on the protests. These guys view as the enemy not just Wall Street tycoons, but also liberal labor leaders like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO.
The problem with Trumka, according to the Revolutionary Party and its Zuccotti Park contingent: He wants to work with wishy-washy Democratic Party politicians, where the true revolutionaries want to “defend and develop Marxist theory as a guide to action,” which is the protests’ real purpose.
Maybe the worse-spent dollar I have ever spent in my life was on a propaganda broadsheet titled “Justice,” which advocates “Struggle, Solidarity, Socialism.” On the front page of the newspaper-like document, beneath the headline “Capitalism: System Failure,” was a tease for a story on the economy and how “influential business economist Nouriel Roubini” recently said how “Karl Marx had it right. At some point, capitalism can destroy itself.”
Yes, the left-leaning Roubini made that fatuous statement, and many similar ones — so many, in fact, that he has lost much of his credibility in financial circles, though that didn’t quite make it into the “Marx Was Right!” story.
Also absent was any notice of how the much-hated banks benefited not from free-market capitalism, which would have let them fail in 2008, but from crony capitalism that bailed them out. The similar cronyism practiced by Trumka and the Obama administration — massive spending on useless but politically connected businesses like Solyndra, paired with class-warfare rhetoric — likewise has very little to do with free markets.
I don’t advise going down to Zuccotti Park to have a serious conversation with the protesters, given their growing propensity toward violence and the growing revolutionary tone of the movement. But I would suggest that President Obama might want to put a hold on his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement as his 2012 re-election bid approaches.
If he keeps saying nice things about the protesters, the debate among business types and voters won’t be whether the president has some socialist leanings, but how much virtue he sees in the thoughts of Karl Marx.
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BUCHANAN: SUICIDE OF A SUPER POWER
Via Drudge
BOOK WARNS OF END
Fri Oct 14 2011 07:00:25 ET
**Exclusive**
“As the faith that gave birth to the West is dying in the West, peoples of European descent from the steppes of Russia to the coast of California have begun to die out, as the Third World treks north to claim the estate. The last decade provided corroborating if not conclusive proof that we are in the Indian Summer of our civilization.”
So begins Pat Buchanan in his hardcore work, SUICIDE OF A SUPERPOWER.
“Will America Survive to 2025?”
Buchanan, set for maximum controversy, launches all rockets at introduction “Disintegrating Nation” — and does not let up for 400-plus pages.
“America is disintegrating. The centrifugal forces pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What unites us is dissolving. And this is true of Western Civilization….Meanwhile, the state is failing in its most fundamental duties. It is no longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.”
The books reads as if its been written to be left behind in the ruins, only to be found by a future civilization.
SUICIDE ranked #2,668 on AMAZON’s hit parade early Friday. It streets on Tuesday.
Now only the DRUDGE REPORT can offer a look inside.
Chapter 1: The Passing of a Superpower
“We have accepted today the existence in perpetuity of a permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by society — fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer’s expense their entire lives. We have a dependent nation the size of Spain in our independent America. We have a new division in our country, those who pay a double or triple fare, and those who ride forever free.”
Chapter 2. The End of Christian America
If [Christopher] Dawson is correct, the drive to de-Christianize America, to purge Christianity from the public square, public schools and public life, will prove culturally and socially suicidal for the nation.
“The last consequence of a dying Christianity is a dying people. Not one post-Christian nation has a birth rate sufficient to keep it alive….The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe, a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation.”
Chapter 3. The Crisis of Catholicism
“Half a century on, the disaster is manifest. The robust and confident Church of 1958 no longer exists. Catholic colleges and universities remain Catholic in name only. Parochial schools and high schools are closing as rapidly as they opened in the 1950s. The numbers of nuns, priests and seminarians have fallen dramatically. Mass attendance is a third of what it was. From the former Speaker of the House to the Vice President, Catholic politicians openly support abortion on demand.”
“How can Notre Dame credibly teach that all innocent life is sacred, and then honor a president committed to ensuring that a woman’s right to end the life of her innocent child remains sacrosanct?”
Chapter 4. The End of White America
“[W]hite America is an endangered species. By 2020, whites over 65 will out-number those 17 and under. Deaths will exceed births. The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear.”
“Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being over-turned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution — to “insure domestic tranquility” and ‘make us a more perfect union’? Or have we imperiled our union?” (Page 134)
Chapter 5. Demographic Winter
“Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.” (Page 166)
“Not any Iranian weapon of mass destruction but demography is the existential crisis Israel faces….By mid-century…Palestinians west of the Jordan river will out-number Jews 2-1. Add Palestinians in Jordan, it is 3-1.”
“In a startling development of history, Russia’s population has fallen from 148 million in 1991 to 140 million today and is projected to plunge to 116 million by 2050, a loss of 32 million Russians in six decades.”
Chapter 6. Equality Vs. Freedom
“Those who would change society begin by changing the meaning of words. At Howard University, LBJ changed the meaning of equality from the attainable — an end to segregation and a legislated equality of rights for African-Americans — to the impossible: a socialist utopia.”
“Where equality is enthroned, freedom is extinguished. The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society.”
“A time for truth. As most kids do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in the band, or the verbal ability to excel in debate, not every child has the academic ability to do high school work. No two children are created equal, not even identical twins. The family is the incubator of inequality and God its author.”
Chapter 7. The Diversity Cult
“The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality,” Wattenberg trilled.4 Yet, one wonders: What kind of man looks with transcendental joy to a day when the people among whom he was raised have become a minority in a nation where the majority rules?”
“Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”
Chapter 8: The Triumph Of Tribalism
America’s war of revenge against Japan was a race war. Newsreels, movies, magazines, comic books, headlines treated “Japs” as a repulsive race whose extermination would benefit mankind….Only well after the war was over was it re-branded a war to bring the blessings of democracy to…Japan.
We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.
Chapter 9. ‘The White Party’
“Through its support of mass immigration, its paralysis in power to prevent 12-20 million illegal aliens from entering and staying, its failure to address the “anchor-baby” issue, the Republican Party has birthed a new electorate that will send it the way of the Whigs.”
Chapter 10: The Long Retreat
“We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from the Gulf states to defend the Gulf states. We borrow from Japan to defend Japan. Is it not a symptom of senility to be borrowing from the world so we can defend the world?”
“Are vital U.S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where were have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 — or by what is happening on our border with Mexico?…What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?”
Chapter 11: The Last Chance
“We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited — the best and greatest country on earth.”
Developing…
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