59 comments

Awesome Must-Watch Pep-Talk For The Zap Zone

Filed in Astro-Global-Financial-Fuqery

This truly is a must-watch pep talk for Uranus square Pluto.

Yes, it’s America-centric,  a UCLA commencement speech and tres preppy.  But it’s SO RELEVANT and totes worth your 20 mins or whatever for the genius of Dr Michael Burry, the only financier to actually predict the Global Financial Fuquery.

Annoyingly, I can’t find his birth deets online but he looks Taurus and sounds Uranian.

Clearly, he’s not cut out for politics but he would be my dream president…of America, the I.M.F, my town…anything, really. I love how he gets the balance of Jupiter (hope, get your awesome on) and Saturn (it would be naive to be anything other than brute pragmatic) here.

Thoughts?

 

 

59 thoughts on “Awesome Must-Watch Pep-Talk For The Zap Zone”

  1. Mystic, I just found this and had to share…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/blow-bullies-on-the-bus.html?_r=1
    This article and the incident that it is about just reek of Zap Zone…

    “The country is changing, and that change is creating friction: between the traditional ruling classes and emerging ones; between traditional social structures and altered ones; between a long-held vision of an American ideal and growing reality that its time has passed.

    And that change is coming with an unrelenting swiftness.”

    It is actually a little terrifying, as a media-saturated-hyper-aware youngish American, to be witnessing.

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      • It is… But it is also fascinating as a social phenomenon. The outpouring of compassionate responses is impressive and it seems more and more apparent that the lack in quality of life that Burry described might be the thing that’s helping people get their priorities in line. We have no choice but to get along and get our lifeboats ready.

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      • I should add that I’m a bit troubled by the concept of giving money and prizes to the victim. This thinking that giving money is enough is a different kind of problem…

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        • I don’t know your ages but I am 47.

          I remember in the mid to late eighties when suddenly the share-market variations become a regular part of the TV news. I found it disgusting at the time and I still do. Financial fluctuations aren’t news…. news is what is happening to other people around the globe. You know, North, East, West, South.

          The concept that money is everything has only grown and we can now see the focus of that effecting (a or e?) the globe, but the story of how the financial fluctuations are actually changing people’s lives is not even touched upon….just how much it might change ‘us’ who haven’t experienced the ramifications yet.

          I hope the zap zone blows the worship of money to smithereenes and we get back to focusing on each other. It’s been missing for a few decades now.

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          • yeahme too but with housing affordability a real issue money has become a real thing / concern but yeah I agree I hope so too and thanks for your thoughts

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  2. “No serendipitous excuse should be acceptable to anyone… Today is absolutely not fair… Accept the world as it is… exploit the opportunities… in as just a manner as possible.” YES.

    “It is as if we are dealing with the binary judgment of a fundamentalist religion.” — Oh snap!!

    “Mainstream economist and finance practitioners, please check your premises: you have contradictions before you.” (Not a question.)

    “You will experience withering yet stealthy attacks on your quality of life, as government attempts to manage its faltering finances… You will see declines… This is a false prophecy: I’m describing what is already happening.” So true. Sadly.

    “Faced with a set-back, you will be most creative. Under stress, you will think better– and act stronger. So much so that looking back, it will seem as if it was all meant to be.” Rah!

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  3. I don’t agree about Michael Burry being a representative of the new era… And he is certainly not the only one to have predicted the financial fuquery… Stiglitz , Ha-Joon Chang, Dan Rodrik, Naomi Klein, not to mention Noam Chomsky have had something to say before Burry…! Thinkers who have truly made waves! Michael Burry, to me, is very “old guard”, morally dignified, yes, financially perceptive, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. I don’t see the Uranus OR the Jupiter. I see a lot of Mercury, actually… He lacks the vision of a true revolutionary, and from his boyish bangs to his voice he reeks of mama’s boy “better safe than sorry” vibe. But here is an example of the real deal, Chris Hedges, in my opinion, is WAY more NEW, NOW and a true Zap-Zone harbinger. You might want to read this, for inspiration… http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_to_the_asylum_20120430/

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    • I see what you mean about the Mercury – but I think the idea that he’s trying to sell here is that a paradigm shift is the very thing that’s necessary for coping and survival in this society and on this planet.

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    • Add N Roubini to the list.

      I have a bad net connection so I will save his speech for now but if the snippets Scorporation wrote are his, then this guy is repeating already approved slogans. Many before him kept harping on the direction the US economy had been taking, yet they had rarely been given enough time/space in the mainstream media for their ideas to be heard.

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    • I agree that he seems more Mercury than Jupiter or Uranus, but who better than Mercury to speak about economics? I also see a Sagittarian influence in the directness and the forceful/bold tone of his language.

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    • I’m on the Taurus bandwagon…..too slow for mercury
      Too plodding…ly….practical…
      Perhaps some cancerian moon or something at play here…
      Earth earth earth….and maybe some Scorpio rising…
      My scorp ascendant is very uranian…or at least accented

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    • Ms Noir Besides agreeing with What CH’S Wrote I like what I found in the comments section, I feel even more in standing with my right not participate in voting, from Chris Hedges Comments section:

      The USA has all the trappings of an 18th Century attempted democracy. Hasn’t progressed much since. Still a 2-party system. A 2-party system cannot be democratic. What or who created the 2-party system? I didn’t learn in high school, so I’ll have to clue in Shenonymous (again) that the USA founders accidentally created a 2-party system by failing to include any methods of ensuring proportionality. Without proportionality, the (more rich and corrupt) minority trumps the (more poor and honest) majority. Can’t be democratic.

      I don’t totally blame the founders. Pro-rep wasn’t invented until several decades after the Constitution was adopted. But the USA, because it is so isolated intellectually from the rest of the world, knows little of this. But such international isolation does not stop them from becoming discouraged enough to stay away from the polls in huge numbers.

      Some how my mercury in pisces just gets this.

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  4. Sometimes I feel like I’m too young to feel this overwhelmed by a transforming society… As a college student, this really struck a nerve.
    I know way too many dejected, desperate teens/20s/early 30s people who have gone 5-15 years without seeing a dr or a dentist and who slave away at jobs they could lose at any moment. Having a family you can fall back on is the new winning the lottery. The best most of us can do to achieve security (the illusion of it) is to get a management position at a megacorporation (and be a good worker bee).
    Once I graduate, I know I face a challenging job market and a traditional profession is not in the cards for me. The actual challenge is a creative one. How do we survive? It is really hard to stay optimistic sometimes, but this jolted me in a good way.

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  5. Okay all right, YES there were definitely other peeps who saw this coming, i was just getitng with the vibe of the thing.

    And i like it when peeps on the inside show this sort of heightened consciousness/conscience/perceptions etc. He doesn’t get with the mandated message here.

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    • “Microsoft VP creates perfume that smells of money: wearers stalked by politicians and unrecognized artists.”

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  7. No WAY, that’s amazing. This is not a hijack – this is a deepening of the discussion. BTW re the above, i decided i loved it when he said the bit (to these graduates) about how they can craft their life according to their true selves, their honest strengths, weaknesses and needs. I think that said to a bunch of students coming from someone like him is profoundly validating and empowering.

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    • I like your choice. Coming at fearful people with extreme proselytising and righteous rage is rather offputting. It doesn’t inspire people to listen let alone change. First, look familiar, sound familiar, establish common ground and common values. Then your candour becomes interesting and inspiring, refreshing. Your success becomes aspirational rather than enviable.

      And when i turned my head away from the screen to just pick up voice modulation i did note some similar pitch patterns with a particular Uranian i know. Who were the Boaz and Jachin dudes in the sunnies??

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  11. I would only listen to this guy on Mystic’s recommendation. And I listened to it all. I understood all the economics this guy is talking about, I understand exactly what he’s saying, and more importantly, what he’s NOT saying. And I was horrified.

    Note that this wasn’t a commencement speech at UCLA. This was a speech at the UCLA School of Economics. That is important. This guy is being held up as a model of what their Econ graduates should be like. There are two basic schools of economics, Paul Krugman calls them “Saltwater” and “Freshwater.” You can read about that here:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html

    This guy is at the center of the Saltwater Economists. He is a Keynesian, and those were the guys who caused this whole economic disaster.

    But not to argue the abstract economics of the issue, let’s go straight to the bottom line. This guy was a hedge fund manager, he talked in detail about how he saw the economic disaster coming, bet against it, and won big money. Huge money. Billions. Now think about it.

    When everyone was losing their fortunes, THIS guy took their money.

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            • Lol. I love Taurus…..dad,grandfather,a couple best friends…and a slew of lovers :)

              Taureans take care of their own..and if they have a family..as in wife etc…forget it!!!
              The bull will be scooping up ALL of the lucre that slips through the cracks…and it’s totes ethical under the circumstances…
              My last bf went on and on about how NO ONE was going to be taking money out of his family’s mouth….yes I wrote mouth…
              -mind u we had no children…or pets at the time…tho he did support his retired father…

              I’m just sayin’

              ;)

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    • Ah yes and i get it – he’s not proud of that btw – it has been a journey for him, Albeit a well rewarded one.

      But you see i am always thrilled when insiders get it – it is a powerful way of engendering real change. The peeps he is talking to are bound to become key influencers in their own right. He is seeding something within them.

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      • I agree. Only an ‘insider’ knows what a profession chooses to hide from the ‘non-educated’ in their field of expertise. And only a particularly bold person within the fold will be game to hand out knowledge to the ‘upcoming’ within the fraternity. Most professionals choose to keep their knowledge – good or bad – to themselves. It is a form of power.

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    • Oh Charles….sorry, but neither Keynes, nor the Keynesians, nor Keynesian principles caused the GFC, nor the European Sovereign debt crisis.
      Keynes gets blamed for so much that he explicitly argued against….
      The one Keynesian thing that Burry says here is that the Fed shouldn’t have spurred on/prolonged the housing boom by keeping interest rates artificially low. Keynes would have been appalled by this; more than any economist before him, he understood the enormous dangers posed by speculative booms. He would also have been appalled by the deregulation of the financial system that allowed the ratings agencies to act as a collusive force, rather than independent arbiters of risk. The conflict of interest was such that ratings agencies rated as safe the huge risks taken by financial institutions driven by short-term bonuses took re mortgages, that they then repackaged into dodgy derivatives to shift the risk onto other investors and institutions. Yet many such derivatives were rated as safe by the ratings agencies.
      Keynes would also be appalled by US fiscal and monetary policy pretty much from the Vietnam war period onwards, just as he would be appalled by the lack of oversight of the European Commission/ECB that allowed countries heavily in debt into the eurozone, and the constant deficits run by European nations thereafter given that credit was again, priced so low. Keynes thought that a temporary deficit was not a bad thing in a recession, as long as that deficit was repaid in better times. Any government running a chronic deficit – ie one that could not pay back, even in better times – would, in Keynes’ view, have a structural fiscal problem on their hands – ie they were basically spending way too much and needed to rein such expenditure in, since there’s a limit to how much you can tax before you compromise incentives and investment. Mind you, he wouldn’t have agreed with the Bush tax cuts to wealthy individuals either, and would have suggested increasing incomes at the bottom instead, to ensure sufficient aggregate demand to keep local and small businesses and employment going. But then, even billionaires like Buffett and Gates who profited out of it agree with Keynes on this point. Keynes would also have told the US to stop borrowing to fund oil and ideological wars way back from the days of Vietnam, and the European basket cases to sort out their tax evasion problems decades ago.
      As I sit here marking 3rd year economics exams, I entreat you to read Keynes more thoroughly before you pass this kind of judgement. I wouldn’t label myself as a Keynesian, by the way, but I do hate to see a dead man libelled thus.

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      • Thank you from me for writing this, almost kinda
        grasping it ‘cept for the ‘derivatives’ that’s where i get lost.

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        • Hey pegs, that was me, fi, forgetting to sign in before I posted. In this case, derivatives are an investment that package other primary investments into a product – e.g you package up sub-prime mortgages into another investment product, that is supposedly safe, IF those who did the original loaning for the primary investment did their due diligence. When such products are rated as reasonably safe by supposedly independent and credible credit ratings agencies that should have known that the housing boom was artificially fuelled, investors (including those trying to invest their retirement savings, along with other institutions that should know better) think everything will be hunky dory…yet it is on record that several of the big financial institutions selling these repackaged investments knew damn well that they were dodgy as all shit, all the while, selling them as a great deal. that’s what burry is talking about when he mentions to young economists who might be lured to work on wall street that they’ll see a lot of people doing really dodgy/downright dishonest things in order to obtain the massive bonuses they are offered by those who employ them for taking incredible risks with other people’s money/lives. Without ratings agencies as truly independent arbiters of risk, the information available to the investor is dodgy.

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          • ps. When halled up before congress, Greenspan, who presided over the Fed in the lead up to all this, issued a stunning – and very telling – mea culpa about his misplaced faith in the free market, and deregulation of financial markets, in particular, that struck many of many of us non-orthodox economists as rather disingenous, and too little, too late. Gosh, he said, I figured that a combination of caveat emptor, and market discipline would make everything ok. If investment banks and their products were dodgy, then investors would vote with their feet, and such institutions would be forced out of the market. Not so, obviously. Even Adam Smith, founder (so-called) of the discipline of economics, favoured regulation of the banks – since he was highly suspicious of the corporate form, barely nascent in his day, particularly as it might apply to banking. He didn’t like the idea of businesses being allowed to take risks with other people’s money. You won’t hear that from the neocons or neoliberals or tea party types, though – those who claim Adam Smith as their inspiration – mostly because they never actually read Smith. Smith, writing in the 1770s before corporations (like big investment banks, Apple, etc etc) were common, let alone in a position to buy and sell most countries, was a far more insightful dude than any of them, and he’d be right in Keynes’ camp if they both resurrected in 2012. Batman and Robin, they’d be.

            As Keynes would say, there is an irrational, emotionally (dopamine-driven??) herd mentality to booms and busts – and if ratings agencies don’t act as the purveyors of honest and accurate asssessments, and if the Fed is covering up the cracks of the deregulation agenda it supported with pro (rather than Keynesian countercyclical) monetary policy, then disasters happen. And then, even worse – and to the total distaste of BOTH the libertarian republicans who refused it on first vote, as well as the democrats – there is no option but to bail out the banks. Why? Because just about every small business in America – not to mention whole US states – rely on lines of credit to cover time lags between outlays in inflows. Without that credit – and the solvency of the banks – you would have seen unemployment of Greek tragedy proportions in a heartbeat, as businesses, facing precipitous falls in revenue due to loss of consumer confidence and retrenchments, had to lay off most of their staff or close up shop completely. As it is, 25% of US kids are living in poverty – the rise in homelessness is unbelievable – but it would have surpassed 1930s proportions without a bailout that all concerned felt deeply sick about. It didn’t solve the problem, but the tea party solution ain’t gonna work either. Keynes pointed out why in his seminal analysis of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It doesn’t matter how much you cut taxes, or drop wages – if business isn’t confident that there are enough consumers with enough income to buy more, then they won’t take on more workers, even if wage rates and tax rates hit rock bottom, simply because they know that there aren’t enough people with money to spend to cover the additional wages. And if wages DO hit rock bottom, you only get more of the same – businesses who aren’t stupid, and know that one’s person’s income (wages) is another person’s (their) business revenue, such that if too few people have money to spend, there is no point hiring more people. The fact that the small number of rich people remain rich doesn’t help, since they tend to buy niche quality products/save or speculate with much of their income anyway.

            But shit, better get back to marking exams. If you’re interested, Pegs, read Hyman Minsky – financial instablity hypothesis. Advanced capitalism as a highly unstable ponzi scheme…Zap zone indeed. xxx

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            • Second Hyman Minsky. I would add fi’s post that in addition to “toxic rating agencies”, I see the problem as investment and consumer banking getting mixed. These two should have been kept separated.

              Kudos fi! How were the exams? ;-)

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              • lol, q, yes indeed re need to separate conditions applied to everyday vs high risk banking – not to mention need, in my mind, for some kind of tobin tax, but figured i’d ranted enough!! not to mention that I have another 100 exams to mark by wednesday, and as one of those who actually cares about being fair, it takes a bloody long time – more time than I’ve got! So better go x

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            • Thank you whoever you are anonymous with your insights. SO miss intellectual reading since ceasing study……..your insights are very succinct

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              • FI, thanx for that. It actually make my head spin. No wonder the catch call now is Simplicity and Transparency.

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  12. Mystic, I agree with you in respect to who should be president. I have always felt that we need someone, like Dr. Berry, who has gone through economic tragedy, knows what it is all about and knows how to handle it. When it comes to economics we need some who is logical and proactive in improving that. Thanks for posting.

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  13. Watched J Edgar Hoover last night and when Dr. Burry said ‘he asked questions and was investigated by FBI’, i found that to be the scarily fascist.
    These sub-prime-hedge funds make no sense to me, try as i may to understand it, it’s a foreign language.Do we have the Aussie equivalent?
    I don’t think so,nothing as convoluted but that could be a result of population discrepancy, more people make more mess.
    Aussies don’t worship at the altar of Mammon as much, as too busy doing beach & barbies (barbecues).
    My heart bleeds for the 20-30 yo’s that cannot but a house unless they buy a share in one, at least i had a choice, although interest rates in the 80′s were huge compared to now, so one needed 50% in cash to be safe from repos from banks (and usually a husband to obtain a loan even).
    Perhaps living out the twilight years in somewhere like Timor or an outer island in the Pacific makes financial sense, no utilities needed with Radio Coconut and warm temperatures.
    Creativity loves a challenge & living simply has it’s own rewards (note to self :-) .
    A BraveNewWorld? Some-one close Pandora’s Box quick but at least there’s Hope at the bottom of it.

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  16. I find the remarks about government persecution the most disconcerting. I think our American government has forgetten the text of the Declaration of Independence that declares the duty of the people to throw off oppresive government.

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    • I like his chicken little story, And im not suprised by the FEED, I didnt know if he would really be the first as Ive seen others claim also, and If i was at that speech I would have fallen asleep, there just is no urgency there for me. Im 32 and I could barely get through the whole thing, these kids and my generation are raised on intensity gaming and porn. To them its just another boring speech like all the others, thats the thing, when a good one comes along, we already shut off. Shut down because we been lied to so many times. Im not saying I have, but I know how my generation and the ones before are thinking.

      Its like when the weather folks hype the weather here so much, no on listens when the big one comes. This im afraid is how most of the class of 2012 will take this. They have no idea, and its nice of the guy to be optomistic but the sad fact is alot of these kids are gonna crack under the pressure, some will make it and some will take there own lives like many are doing now. I just dont feel revolution from this guy. And I think thats the only thing that is gonna save any of us and make the people picking on the rest leave us alone finally.

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  17. be true to yourself despite the infinite distraction, get your own edu/facts not the trad entrenched old institutional assumptions, and keep the faith. he sounds very grounded, real, as well as uranian to me, and thanks Mystic.

    he must have had some rad transits the last few years!

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