Ramen Review

Some mixed odds’n’ends…
“No police officers will be prosecuted over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, Crown prosecutors Service say.”(BBC, February 13th 2009)
Those were strange days, back in 2005. For a conspi take that is at the same time kooky and rather interesting in an unJonesian way, try 7/7: The Ripple Effect. It seems certain from the weight of evidence that some MetPol honchos were investigating rumours of an upcoming attack on some Israeli interest, although the question of whether … read more

“Mientras en Davos se reúne el mundo que muere, aquí se reúne el mundo que nace”
(Hugo Rafael “El Commandante” Chávez Frías, ibid.)

Yes, it would be about time. No, not yours I hope. (There are elements that are cool, but as a whole — no!!)

Commie (as in “one of the rather few good commies”) journalist Wal Buchenberg discussed[de:] some statistical graphs on de:indymedia these days. Graphics were provided by frosch. This stuff is cc-by-sa-20
So here we go:

This is the US GDP … read more

[...] I expect the rate of decline to slow asymptotically when the DJIA hits 5,000ish ticks [...]“(mihi, October 16, 2008)
“Asymptotically” was of course a major /facepalm kind of mistake. There’ll always be a bit of bouncing when a new carrying capacity, strange attractor or whatnot is reached, particularly after such a steep deline.
Markets held econo-porn pattern for what looks like two one-month waves. Some stabilization in December, just around what values I had guesstimated: in the short run, 8-9K for … read more

Al-Arabiya.
Who’d have thunk? Nice.

I remember the scenery as seen on TV — after 1991, there was a time where war was CNN, and CNN was war. And there was no Web where I lived, and the nights of war were green in colour.
An arid landscape, yellow and ruddy hues. Stark sunlight. Acacias. The December 9th 1992 nighttime photo op, Navy LCAC running up on an Indian Ocean shore. I was very much into naval technology then, and took due note that for … read more

Back for picking up some pieces.
Icelandic krónur, somewhat worse for the wear, definitely qualify as "filthy lucre" these days.
The IS króna is being re-floated; trade in that currency was essentially suspended since mid-October to prevent hyperinflation. As is to be expected, “float” is fairly misleading here. The official term is “managed refloat” anyway, which basically is the fiscal equivalent to dropping a fat chunk of volcanic rock overboard somewhere in the GIUK Gap, with a safety line tied to it … read more

DJIA Goes South[de:].
Dell Goes to Hell.
[Profits declined 5% [when?], it was reported after NYSE closure]
I actually wanted to say a few things about pirates.
Maybe later. The N225 has quite a bit of catching-up to do.
7K’s the name of the game, or what?

“[... Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant will be operational by 2009 ...]”
Spokesman Mohsen Delavizi, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. November 18th 2008
n-tv gives some details[de:] IRNA lacks; I have no idea where they got it from. Al-Jazeera does not carry the news yet. Neither does CNN. In any case, the Germans claim that they’re doing final outfitting in Bushehr as of now and adds a “we hope” before the quote above.
I observe: there is not a cratered landscape littered with debris … read more

Citigroup to cut 50K more jobs. On top of the 13K that already are gone, and the 9K that remain to be done in.

“What all of us have done - and perhaps injudiciously - we’ve added a lot of people over [...] this very benign period [...]”
Citigroup chairman Win Bischoff, November 17th 2008

Maybe so. What you guys did do was to play around, as late as 2008, with investments — a lot of investments — that had “EXPIRY DATE DUE … read more

I won’t discuss the G20 meeting, as it’s gonna be all over the papers.
Markets have slid nervously, are rather volatile and partly decoupled. The reaction on the G20 meeting, I suppose, will be unison. As the DJIA has left last week in a pessimistic mood after a good start, the N225 has actually a chance to pull quite far ahead of it. I do not know whether this matters in the long run; I suppose not.

FRG Minister of the Interior … read more

“You know we don’t do body counts.”
(U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks. 020323, Baghlan Air Base, Afghanistan)

Miriam Makeba 1932-03-04 – 2008-11-09

As of [early] 2008, General Motors (1908 — 2008) employ[ed] about 266,000 people around the world. It manufactures its cars and trucks in 35 different countries and sells them under the brands of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GM Daewoo, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall, and Wuling.

I note that the DJIA enters next week with good odds to break 9K and settle there (roughly), having hysterically failed to reach 10K. The DAX is nearly at 5K and if the Asian markets don’t fuck up, it’s likely to easily go above that for starters. The N225 (having missed the last day) suggests they will.
An interesting observation is that the pattern is very finely in tune in all three indices. It is extremely stark if you check … read more

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy — tonight is your answer.”
(PotUS-elect B. H. Obama, Grant Park, Chichago, 20081104)

I hope he will be better than the last one. Compare:

(Thanks to “FuckYouBush” for keeping up the good work)
The waste treatment plant (”Proposition R”) failed[de:] 1/3rd Aye to … read more

I was wrong about the “friends” of Pakistan. The formal name is “Friends of Democratic Pakistan Initiative”; in any case it is not a bunch of Quran students. Still, I guess an informal transnational group containing the EU, the PRC, the UAE, the UN, and the US is interested in applied heavy atom physics too. Everybody likes nukes. Anyway, in this case Steini is likely to be part of the team too.
He is not a good man. He is efficient … read more

It is such a gem that it deserves to be said once again. For posteriority:
“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?” Waxman asked.
“Absolutely, precisely,” replied Greenspan [...]
This Sam Zuckerman article in the San Francisco Chronicle has a nicely wrapped-up presentation of the Capitulation of October 23rd (see below for that other October 23rd). Crutsinger & Gordon of Associated Press add in some more local flava surrounding the hearing.
Reactions are as … read more

Indices have been doing some sort of bottoming out in the last week or so. The general trend looks very massively downward, if you think in terms of more than two or three weeks.
It is not yet obvious how the new pattern looks like and whether it is stable. Though as regards the latter, I would rather say no. If a main line tears, as it has, and things come to stop on a rescue line, as they have, there … read more

Not much going on; as expected The Vote passed in both houses. Greens and Socialists against, all other parties in favor — though there are two MPs which don’t belong to any parliamentary party and don’t get reported about: one ex-Socialist who left in scandal because he made some extra bucks as a pimp, and one ex-Christian Democrat, a guy called Henry Nitzsche who left after vowing to fight the “cult of guilt [for the Nazi's crimes]” and other things. … read more

As already indicated yesterday, stock markets resumed their global decline today. The Nikkei ended up with a small plus, but it is lagging one day behind this week and does its best to catch up with its lame-ass friends’ nosedive.
Since the G7/G8/G20/Gwhatever aid packages are to be unleashed from now on over the course of the next 2 months or so, the start of this week seems to set the precendent: stock markets will probably for some time behave like … read more

The Harper minority government in Canada won the general elections, but fell short of the absolute majority. Voter turnout was an abysmal 60%, meaning that his party’s parliamental (relative) majority represents less of 30% of the Canadian electorate. Al-Jazeera’s report has sparked an interesting discussion about the whys and hows, and that allows a deep peek into the diverse mindset of Canadians in these days.
Ilham Aliyev gets 80.5%[de:] of the valid votes in the Azeri presidential election. The OSCE was … read more

DJIA down a bit, while European indices rose again by half as much as yesterday. Nikkei rallied, Chinese (ML + TW) stocks made good what they lost yesterday, and some more. So the DJIA performance might be just selling-off of some junk stock cheaply acquired yesterday.
But across the G8, tech indices did not perform well amid reports that the industrial sector is in deep fear of recession and dwindling consumer purchasing power. NASDAQ closing down 4.5% and NASDAQ futures … read more

Stocks surged up after the global state banking sector promised basically unlimited credits. I heard of three exceptions (Taiwan, PRC, Indonesia) which are all goods-n-services-based economies. But the important indices (to us G8lers) all closed with a nice green plus. The Atlantic indices closed with record gains, up 10% or more.
I like Yahoo Finance for price graphs of shares, stocks ‘n’ stuff. It has this nice timespan thingy at the bottom of the Flash.
The DJIA looks bullish if you … read more