Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Wednesday, Feb 10, 2016 - 22:09 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Monkey Business

Final version of the dissertation uploaded, so that's one more milestone done with. And while we're on completeness, I resolved to finally farm my AdventureQuest character to the Level 150 cap - don't like to leave loose ends dangling. Like the ancient screensavers from last October, for the curious.

As for CNY itself, I was struck by how... non-festive the overall atmosphere was. From Vegas To Macau III was kind of disappointing too, compared to the first two movies, they probably milked the special effects a little too hard.

Like that, lor



Makin' Hamerica Great Again!

Haven't done convo cut-and-pastes for a long, long time, so here's one from my Google Hangouts. Enjoy:

Bernie Supporter: BER NIE! BER NIE!

Trump Supporter: DONALD! DONALD!
btw they're both probably gonna win New Hampshire

Bernie Supporter: that's what they said about iowa and donald

Trump Supporter: same for ber nie
are you thinking what i'm thinking
you need a hint

Bernie Supporter: UH OH

Trump Supporter: HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BER NIE AND THE DONALD TOGETHER

Ladies and gentlemen, the New Hampsters have spoken; Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have crushed their respective opposition in a YUGE WIN in the New England state, and thereby taken the lead in their respective parties' nomination processes...


Well, now I never.
(Source: Google)


Alright, not for the Democrats, 'cause they have this thing called superdelegates, which the establishment can pass to whoever they like to grant them a hefty headstart in the race, kind of like the NCMP practice in reverse. These comprise some 14% of the total delegate count, of which Clinton has bagged half and Sanders next to none, to be 7% ahead before the first ballot was cast. But more on the Dems later.

BECAUSE IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TRUMP, BABY!


F**K YEAH U.S.A. NUMBER ONE! WHERE'S MAH BALD EAGLE?
(Source: imgur.com)


Recap of the 2016 presidential nomination race thus far: the mostly-ignored early going had featured a low-energy Bush scion ruminating about guacamole to barely-disguised indifference from his corporate backers, when TRUMP burst upon the scene with a mandate to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. The GOP leadership nodded patronizingly - they had seen it all before - only for their collective jaws to hit the floor as TRUMP blew all of their pet candidates out of the water.

This can't be happening, they said in July, as TRUMP pulled ahead of Jeb! barely four months after throwing his hair in. It's a joke. He's the new Cain, he'll be out when people get real.

Cue TRUMP breaking every tenet of political correctness in a prolonged tirade breathtaking in its scope and coverage.

It's over, nobody could vote for him after that. they said in September. The man's completely outrageous. And bonkers.

TRUMP breaks 30% in the polls, Jeb! sinks to 8%, with Ben Carson revving in as TRUMP's main competitor.

Fine. So funny. Ha ha. Any day now. they said, just about every day from then to now. Polls don't mean anything. So why hold them, you ask? Well, okay, sometimes they do, but Not In This Case, get it? Don't think about it. No way.

Iowa rolls along, and the ethanol corn farmers go for the bible-thumper, as they have been wont to. Despite more or less yawning through the result as the expected evangelical-outlier it was when Santorum and Huckabee pulled it off in the last two election cycles, the establishment chose to brand the outcome as a TRUMP DEFEAT rather than a Ted Cruz win, despite Cruz's gargantuan efforts on the ground yielding barely three percentage points over TRUMP.



Most importantly of all for the GOP power brokers, their clean-shaven fresh-faced backup plan Marco Rubio had come in a strong third, which admitted them an easy out. Good, they thought. We do the Cool Young Minority song and dance that the blasted Democrats blindsided us with in Oh-Eight. You go groom our new figurehead up, I'll figure out how to gently break the news to ol' Bush that his boy's not gonna make it.

Of course, that had probably been their plan for some months now, so it was all proceeding according to script, much in the same way that flying to Manchester, England instead of Manchester, New Hampshire qualifies, because they're roughly in the same direction. But, big picture; Rand had dropped out in disgust, Christie and Fiorina must be running out of cash soon, and Carson had been placed under sedation. We winnow the field down a bit more, then we go after TRUMP.

Unfortunately, they had overlooked a tiny detail. Nobody had remembered to charge Mr. Ruboto's batteries and do a clean reboot, the night before the next debate.

It was all going well enough, when Ruboto insisted that "[Obama] knows exactly what he's doing." This was probably not the best possible soundbite for a Republican debate, when something like "Obama eats puppies" was available, but it wasn't that bad either... Why the heck is Christie whacking our guy Rubio?! Ugh. Alright, revert to fallback programming, knock Obama for knowing what he's doing again... Okay, that sounded dumb, and Christie's calling him out on it.

Never mind, we can still fix this gaffe like we did JFK... what the... is Rubio throwing out the same line, almost word-for-word, right after having it pointed out?! Shit, shit, maybe our tech gooks were onto something when they recommended Android instead of Windows as his operating system... Oh sweet mother of... is he doing it a *fourth* time?



Unfortunately for the GOP establishment, it happens that while Americans have become more inclusive, they retain a preference for their presidents to be, well, human, and the outed Domo Arigato Marco Ruboto could only watch as his support tanked amongst the Hampsters. TRUMP for his part rolled on just dandy with his 100% synth-free rallies, and in a particularly cunning move that impressed Mr. Ham, correctly identified Cruz as his biggest threat and called him a cat. It was crude. It was low. But, hoo boy, was it effective.

Anyway, the good people of New Hampshire knew a Real Man from a Malfunctioning Robot when they see one, and handed TRUMP some 35% of their vote and the lion's share of their delegates, to barely 10% for Ruboto. Tellingly, while Ruboto had been following a 3-2-1 strategy for consolidating the establishment vote that necessitated a second-place finish here, he ended fifth, behind Kasich, Cruz and Jeb!, who must have been relieved after resorting to begging for applause.

At the end, it's only a tiny handful of delegates, but if there's one chilling message for the GOP establishment, it's this:

THE POLLS ARE REAL

If there was some faint lingering hope that it was all a dream and that sure, people might POLL for TRUMP, but they won't VOTE for him, it has been cruelly dispelled - vote for TRUMP, they will. And if so, by all available empirical evidence, this election is TRUMP's to lose. The New Hampshire result was about as favourable as it could get for TRUMP, combining an emphatic victory with a total collapse of Ruboto's momentum, while dangling enough in front of Kasich and Jeb! to keep them in, and continue splitting what few establishment votes remain.

A brief survey of what's to come, then. The circus continues in South Carolina on Feb 20 (50 delegates, TRUMP polling at 36%, Cruz 20%, Ruboto 13%), and then three days later in Nevada (30 delegates, TRUMP 33%, Cruz 19%, Carson[!] 18%), before the fourteen-state Super Tuesday First of March, offering a total of 565 delegates. As far as hard figures are concerned, TRUMP has a healthy lead just about everywhere but Arkansas and Texas, where he's slightly behind Cruz (whose home state is Texas). It may be worth a note that TRUMP is at 40% to Jeb!'s 9% in Florida, which might seem nothing out of the ordinary, until one considers that Jeb! spent eight years there as Governor. In short, TRUMP holds all the aces.


Yes, yes, feel the Art of Trump flow into you... (no, not Photoshopped)
(Source: huffingtonpost.com)


As for Bernie... well, I've got bad news. Sure, he might have royally berned Hillary today, but sad to say, it never really mattered, and I'm not saying this merely to rile up his supporters; the same polls that gave him a 99+% chance to take New Hampshire are also saying that he's still behind Hillary at about 35% to 52% nationally, and that there's no particular reason to suspect that it'll ever get any better.

Now, there are some bright spots for our brave Socialist - on the non-white vote, long acknowledged as a Bernie weakness, New Hampshire exit polls have indicated that it may not be as bad as feared; also, Bernie looks to be cosying up with community leaders such as Al Sharpton to make inroads there, and convince minorities to vote for their interests.

Unfortunately, it remains that just as TRUMP is holding the cards in the Republican contest, the fact is that Hillary still holds them in the Democratic one. Now, let's not mince words - Hillary is a consummate liar politician who will happily gorge on Wall Street money while insisting with a straight face that she can't be establishment because she's a woman, and pulling husband and former President Slick Willie out to shill for her. Quite literally next to nobody pretends that she's honest. However, many - or at least, enough - will still come out to vote for her because Bernie is a Commie. There, I said it.

None of this is airy-fairy theory talk - TRUMP is a WINNER, TRUMP's support is very real, and even if the GOP establishment could do away with the backbiting and rally around a single compromise, it might well not be enough given how flawed their alternatives have been shown up to be. Heck, Mexico has seen which way the wind is blowing, and is already desperately trying to weasel their way out of paying for The Great Border Wall of TRUMP. AMERICA WILL BE GREAT AGAIN!


Can You Smell What The PBoC Is Cookin'?

It has been a very good year for morbid humour. With stock markets around the world crashing hard, central banks are toying with going from ZIRP to NIRP, i.e. a negative interest rate policy. You know that thing where you get interest - not much in recent years, but some - for being a responsible saver and parking your cash with the bank? Well, if it goes on as it has in Japan and some European countries, one might soon be paying the banks for the privilege.

Okay, that was probably a little exaggerated. The negative rates have, thus far, applied to retail banks themselves only. Despite that, and despite all the dismissive hand-waving by academic economists over the past few years, this should be a clear and present signal that Something Is Very Wrong. Recall our December 27 blog post that explicitly put on the record that Fed rates will not exceed 0.6875% in 2016, or less than half the median figure that a bevy of top economists predicted? It may be early days yet... but given that Yellen has been dropping hints recently, one has to suppose that it's not too far-fetched.

The emerging narrative then is that the world's economy never truly recovered from 2008; the US of A effectively did emergency field surgery by slashing rates to the bone, while 7%-or-Bust China threw all their paperwork into the steamboat and whipped up a delectable Sichuan stew. Well, as the story goes, the diners are reaching the bottom of the bowl, and realising that it's all dogmeat down there.

And they can't puke quickly enough - the Shanghai Composite has been chucked from 3500 to sub-2800 in the space of a month, and it's anybody's guess what happens when markets reopen after CNY week. Meanwhile, the vultures are circling overhead: Kyle Bass, one of the stars of The Big Short, is joining Soros and a flood of hedge fund managers in betting against the yuan, having calculated that their reserve position - even if honest - is far more precarious than it appears. RBS and Citibank have already begun to run in circles crying "death spiral" and "sell everything" (likely having themselves shorted first), and even Goldman bankers are running road.

It's been nice knowing you all, folks.


Maybe a little makeup will do it? No?
[Remember the music video?]


By the way, there have been suggestions for the PBoC to set a "Singapore-style fix"; instead of a two percent peg to the US dollar, have an "up to 15 percent" band around a basket of currencies. Personally, I'm unsure of the difference between this and simply floating the yuan, since the obvious outcome sans intervention would seem to be near-instant depreciation, but I suppose I have to defer to my economic betters.

And on this, just a thought - if China are going to pick our system for ideas, they should really be aware that we're at fifty-six man-years to get an accounting of our reserves, which might be important given that the market has been viewing their reported reserves with suspicion. And, it's not exactly like we're investment wizards either, as the irrepressible Dr. Chee is always happy to point out. Our reliable alternative news media are respectfully projecting raises... in the CPF Basic Retirement Sum and retirement age, unless Our Most Successful Investment Firm books an improbable profit out of nowhere, and not pull another of those "funds under management increased (due to injections)" face-saving jigs.

Oh, and seeing as the tech bubble may be imploding already, with the representative FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet) being dumped, it'll be interesting to watch the upcoming Computing intake - and more interestingly, if our incumbents' latest Smart Nation IT hub push quietly goes stillborn. While the mainstream media remains in full-on promotion mode, reporting a "lack of 30000 IT professionals", some remain justifiably wary given past experiences.

Which brings us to the recent innovation of poverty simulation workshops. Frankly, I'm unsure what to think about this. On one hand, it could be viewed as noble to commit oneself to deprivation - kind of like fasting - but it can also easily be taken the other way. That said, poverty can indeed spark creativity, if this homemade card game is any indicator.

And one last remark - recall our 2015 GE postmortem that suggested the LKY factor contributing heavily to the incumbents' charge? Well, recently-released analysis has identified it as a significant multiplier, for what that's worth.


Next Flick Lined Up

Tripling down on the morbid humour here:



Also watched Leicester take Manchester City apart, and I have to admit to beginning to root for them to win the title, unless United go on some crazy surge. Although Rooney's improving slightly, realistically I'm not seeing that happen, but good news is that they may finally be coming to terms with Mourinho.

Might as well fit it in here - Daniel Bryan's retiring due to all those concussions. A pity, but it's also good that the WWE are getting more serious about injury risks.

Happy Year of the Monkey, all.



comments (0) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Next: Gift Of The GEB


Related Posts:
Rak Talk
A Few Reviews
Innovia Fragmenta
Trump Of The Will
Stocking Stuffers
Back to top

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.