Pfffittttt.....and its gone...

All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned.....
Karl Marx, The Manifesto of the Communist Party(1848),Section I, Paragraph 18, lines 12-14

When I was a young man I read right over the above quote. I just didn't get it. As I got older and did the inevitable reread the total view of this great work took on a whole different light. That is one of the weirdest and most wonderful things about Marx; it just won't get old. The things that I thought would never go away in my lifetime have. Former workplaces, people, the whole gamut. Marx was so right. Ole Karl always said turn the proposition on its head. So if everything melts into air, everything solid must come from air! The process is reversible. Just try picking winning stocks over a several year time frame. You will soon find if you are good that all that is solid comes from air. I always had a theory about the Manifesto.. It is pretty radical and I hope I don't offend any great Marx scholars. Here it goes, hold on tight. Karl and Friedrich had no idea in the least how important the work that they undertook would really be. Most of it was written in bars and taverns and we all know that Karl loved his beer and cigars.. "A spectre is haunting Europe..."  Brilliant Herr Marx! Karl replied over and over; " if you thought that was good buy me another beer and some cigars, Oy, I got hundreds of 'em" They drank free for at least six to eight weeks I figure.. If you don't believe me go to the Karl Marx Commons at Wikipedia and two thirds down there is an actual manuscript page! Note the ashes on the edges! And is that a hotel monogram on the sheet of paper? I will leave it to you dear reader to decide. And yes this story has a morale; Don't , don't, DON'T  drink and write. You could destroy the world!

This is I think my fourth post. I honestly thought that I would be talking to myself for at least six months. Wrong! I already have readers in Canada, United States, United Kingdom and really surprising Singapore! The new media what can I say? And the daily percentage increase is staggering. I am totally humbled. Now it is 11:00 pm. I have just finished watching my beloved CBC The National and that wonderful young man Adriane Harewood with my local news. Now what do I do? Watch George Whoselastnameicant sayorpronounce with the Red Chair or Charlie Rose? Pfffitttt... George your gone. Charlie Rose was awesome again tonight. Tee Chung-hwa was a great interview!(Lots of economic intelligence..) And Charlie Rose don't need no in house audience to back him up! And Charlie has every right in the world to be as arrogant as George IS but he demurs, he has no one to impress and nothing to prove. George you jacky little shit! You should watch Charlie Rose and learn your craft like a good journeyman!

For a blogger in Ottawa, Canada's National Capital it is sometimes truly great to be alive! An Ontario Superior Court Justice has struck down three provisions of the criminal code that literally decriminalizes prostitution in the Province of Ontario! What a hoot! Even I knew this was coming and I am truly glad I lived to see the day. Meanwhile the Tory's are beside themselves in moral outrage and indignation!! Meanwhile in Queens Park in Toronto Dalton McGuinty is looking for the bright side, and he soon finds it! " Gee guys this is one form of manufacturing you can't outsource!"  Woo Hoo! Sign us up! There go's the deficit! Successful politics is all in the outlook.. And I swear you could literally hear the square meter price of every empty commercial building in every empty industrial park in Ontario go up. In closing the utter highlight of the day occurred in Tim Horton's (somewhere in Ottawa..) When I overheard two old girls discussing Rona Ambrose
and her hissy indignant claim the federal government will appeal right away.. Rona Ambrose oh yes .. she's the minister of Shrew!

Seeing the light...

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874

If you have ever read the Wealth of Nations straight through -cover to cover- in the unabridged edition you will notice that the work starts with unabashed optimism. But as the end nears I could sense that the optimism was giving way to a realization that he had discovered the dark side of the new economics that he was relating to the world. But yet, like realizing that the wife is cheating on you, you want to be the last to know. What Adam Smith witnessed being born was the greatest social system ever to emerge. Its strength brooked no challenges it would destroy and create everything in its path and it has! Even militant communism lasted but a blink of economic time. But will it get us also?

Adam Smith.

World markets are firming, the Canadian TSX gained over 80 points today. Even "bad news" is having no effect. If you have the time, check out the William Stanley Jevons article at Wikipedia. Jevons was the first to propose that the activity in our Sun drove the "animal spirits" here on Earth. His major problem was that he did not have very good data. Today we have the Royal Belgium Observatory and the Solar Influences Data Center. Check out the pretty charts. I don't know about you but I could trade off of that. The peak of each period or wave looks to me to be pretty easy to nail more or less...When you think the peak has been reached may I suggest a square root out of the money straddle? No I have not seen it in any book either..Now just do a little mental math. If you miss the peek and nothing happens your out chump change. If you hit the payoff could be very huge indeed. If your a real rocket scientist you might want to sim it out.

While attempting to watch my beloved CBC TV, there is this stupid recurring commercial that just boogles the conscious mind. It is about a casement window that is made in Canada. Okay... The rather fat and ugly swarthy guy goes on about how well they work in all the different climate conditions in Canada. Okay... Then he starts going on about would this window work in the Amazon jungle? Then cut to a board hut in the Amazon jungle! (WTF??)  Then the fat swarthy guy gets up off his fat ass and goes to open and close the window! BUT the shack is soo crappy that the cracks between the boards let in more then enough light and ventilation!! Why would any moron put a $1,200.00 casement window in a $1.99 shack? You are free to do what you are told... You are free to do what you are told.. You are free to do what you have been sold....Hey Wait a Minute!! (See: You-Tube-Bill Hicks- any performance..) God help us all....

Stronger....

Conservatives insist that government should be "run more like a business". One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation.
Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few (1974), sixth edition, Chapter 15, p. 267

It is municipal election time in Ontario, Canada. And here in Ottawa it is the dying days of the infamous Cue- Ball administration. I believe it was Alexis de Tocqueville who said " that whatever does not destroy a democracy will only make it stronger". Well when the great Jim Watson becomes mayor on October 26 2010 he will inherit the strongest city in Canada. It will be great relief to see my city, my home, be run by someone "who gets it". A large modern city of over one million people cannot be run at the whim and dead ideology of one flawed man but rather it must come to its moments of decision by the shared consensus of all its stake holders. According to Mercers 2010 Quality of Living Survey Ottawa is now number 14 in the world. We should easily be in the top 10!

 On the economic front the merger of Biovail and Valeant has gone through. I hadn't checked the stock price in a while, it is over $27.00 a share! Woo Hoo! I paid 8 and change! If you have it don't sell it...I got this sneaking suspicion that something is in the pipe so big that it will make viagra look like aspirin.. But I will hold no matter what. I have learned the hard way..Now remember that one of these entity's is into stuff for skin ailments. I'll let you discover the rest. A very interesting and even at the present price a value play.

Now to media.. Being a pink far left Canadian and staying so even in my advanced years it will come as no surprise that I love my Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in all its many forms. But one show on the television network really pukes my chicken! I think it is called In The Dragons Den, the premise is a starving inventor appears and pitch's his idea in the hope of receiving  venture capital funding. Now I know that the last years has been hard on the CBC. With all the Tory Conservative budget cuts they have been forced more and more over the years to demean the brand to get ad revenue. It is all so depressing. Is this what are best and brightest have to look forward to? Sucking Satan's Cock? (See Bill Hicks-Sucking Satan's Cock on You-Tube....) The "good part " of the show is apparentely  the part where the likes of greasy Kevin O'Leary (a truly great man) try's to get as much of the poor bastards idea and lifeblood as possible in the form of his giving up forever a percentage of his idea!  I wonder what Karl Marx would say if he were alive today! lol...I was so disgusted from watching just a part of one episode that I swore never to watch again. And to never buy any of the advertisers products, and you should start to think like this... Media will get a lot better fast if you just turn the damn thing off!

An Introduction...

"he who enlists a man's mind wields a power even greater than the sword or the scepter,"
Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers(1953), Chapter I, Introduction, p. 3

Saint Jerome in his study.

Welcome to The Economy of Media. Each blog entry will always contain a cited quote. If you read this dribble, you will always go away with more than you came with. It has been a rule that I have followed all my life. I will follow a standard format also. First there will be the quote, which I am hoping you will find timely and clever, followed by a discussion . The third  part I will discuss some topic of the economy; it may be local or international. The fourth part will discuss some topic of the media and its impression pro or con that it has left upon me. Economy and media are two things that we are buffeted and abused by every day. I am pissed and I am not taking it any more. All I have to lose is my rage. All I have to declare is my naked shining brilliance.
I am somewhat goal oriented, so the goal of this blog is to see it to a size of one million words, and to see its popularity reach some where in the top one million websites on earth. In the past that nagging little voice has been telling me to write, write, and write some more. I would shudder and lay down until the feeling went away. The main thought that frightens me the most is that my words could someday cause revolution, move the earth and or cause some other unintended consequence. What would Karl Marx think if he found out how his musings written in The British Library Reading Room had and continues to have through out the earth?
But the voice won't be placated by a nap any more. My wife and sister in law are begging for the first entry.
Once when I was a younger man a book seller told me that if I wrote a great book, I would get laid and fetted in the most luxurious way(s)! But I demurred I just felt and still do that it just isn't in me.. Then a little later on I met an actual author who told me, that hell, even if I could write a bad book I would get laid! Woo Hoo!! Sign me up! I know I can write bad most of the time so it is all blue sky really! A lot of this will be just random association and if one or two sentences sound like Kurt Vonnegut or Hunter S. Thompson; Thank you Lord...
There will be no corporate whoring here! Every ho is welcome to compete for a space! Later on when I figure out how to do it I will install  a virtual "begging box" (donations...) I got a strategy for this to... No one will pay for good writing, but some one may pay me to stop!
At first I wanted to call the blog The Oracleofottawa but some other putz already took the name and wrote less than ten paragraphs about his trip to the third world with some skank he was dating at the time and then stopped! So I thought and thought,  while napping of course, for a real good slick Canadian name. The Economy of Media came to me. It contains two popular buzz words and I figured that I could get a ton of pity and error hits. Entering The Economy of Media on Google search netted 220 million hits. Which by the way is way more then The Oracleofottawa could get, way , way more... So here we go folks I bought the ticket and we are going to take the ride. I just hope I am not too successful because I hear that too much alcohol and fornication can kill you....

F. Scott Fitzgerald

This part is about the economy, something that used to serve us all, but now we are slaves of. I have read my Ayn Rand and my Adam Smith (really I did..) and to me capitalism was the cats ass. Then along came 2008 and my opinions have been changed for ever. We will get into this a lot more latter. But the daily bug of the economy is this bubble of gold, the barbarous relic as Keynes would say. I have my very own conspiracy theory about this and it is the right wing bible thumping wacko's conspiring together to ruin President Obamas' first term. The only world these people are going to change for the worse is  there own. I figure that at the end of his second term gold will be somewhere around $250 - $400 an ounce. You have been warned.

In the realm of the media, I don't know where to start. But let us end on something positive. It was so good that I felt myself about to levitate from my sofa! It was Charlie Rose interviewing Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Go to Google Video and watch it. Brilliant! Two guys seated at a very nice oak table. One man wanting to share what he knew and another man that wanted to really know. How much did this cost to make? Hardly nothing. What will be its value to posterity? Priceless! Did I learn something? You bet. It left me convinced that although things are a little rough right now America and Western Civilization will pick itself up, lick itself off and rise to ever higher heights. No one ever made money betting against America.