It's Called Evolution, Gentlemen (Tickerforum Changes)
The Market Ticker - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Login or register to improve your experience
Main Navigation
Sarah's Resources You Should See
Full-Text Search & Archives
Leverage, the book
Legal Disclaimer

The content on this site is provided without any warranty, express or implied. All opinions expressed on this site are those of the author and may contain errors or omissions. For investment, legal or other professional advice specific to your situation contact a licensed professional in your jurisdiction.

NO MATERIAL HERE CONSTITUTES "INVESTMENT ADVICE" NOR IS IT A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY OR SELL ANY FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO STOCKS, OPTIONS, BONDS OR FUTURES.

Actions you undertake as a consequence of any analysis, opinion or advertisement on this site are your sole responsibility; author(s) may have positions in securities or firms mentioned and have no duty to disclose same.

Market charts, when present, used with permission of TD Ameritrade/ThinkOrSwim Inc. Neither TD Ameritrade or ThinkOrSwim have reviewed, approved or disapproved any content herein.

The Market Ticker content may be sent unmodified to lawmakers via print or electronic means or excerpted online for non-commercial purposes provided full attribution is given and the original article source is linked to. Please contact Karl Denninger for reprint permission in other media, to republish full articles, or for any commercial use (which includes any site where advertising is displayed.)

Submissions or tips on matters of economic or political interest may be sent "over the transom" to The Editor at any time. To be considered for publication your submission must be complete (NOT a "pitch"), include full and correct contact information and be related to an economic or political matter of the day. Pitch emails missing the above will be silently deleted. All submissions become the property of The Market Ticker.

Considering sending spam? Read this first.

2013-09-28 22:18 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 838 references Ignore this thread
It's Called Evolution, Gentlemen (Tickerforum Changes) *
Category thumbnail

In 2007 I began writing The Market Ticker due to the outrageous conduct of various branches in the Administration and portions of the Capital Markets.  Endemic fraud in the financial system that had generated unbridled and outrageous credit creation threatened the collapse of our entire economic system.

The consequence of this should have been thousands of indictments, prosecutions and imprisonments -- of banking executives, of members of Congress, of various executive branch officers in various agencies and more.  The banking system should have been forced to match assets to liabilities and either put up the margin to back their bets or liquidate them -- and if that forced them out of business and collapsed asset prices by 90%, so be it.

Instead our government took the easy way out.  It doubled down on the fraudulent models of the past.

But the models of the past were unsustainable and no amount of gaming arithmetic changes the outcome.  Indeed, the laws of mathematics state that the longer you allow an exponential system to run away from you, the worse the correction to reality you must sustain is.

From 2007 to 2013 the government has grown from $2.7 trillion to $3.68 trillion, a 36% increase. Marketable federal debt has gone from $4.96 trillion to $12 trillion, up 120% (that is, more than a clean double.)  

At the same time median family income has dropped from $56,000 to $52,000 in 2013 dollars (that is, adjusted for "inflation"), a roughly 7% decrease.

Oh, and that's before taxes.

Everyone talks about there being a "tsunami" of incoming inflation to be expected.  The real tsunami is government spending and debt and it already happened.  In real-dollar terms the federal government alone is taking from you nearly twice as much today as it was in 2007 and 80% of the minimum-wage-earner's buying power has been destroyed from 1980 to today.

And this is before Obamacare really kicks in.

Then there are the outrageous actions of our government in Benghazi.  What we are covering up there has not yet been determined with accuracy, but we don't need the fine details to understand the essence of the act.  That our tax money was funding terrorists and other bad guys in some form or fashion, and that we were probably providing them weapons is unfortunately pretty-much beyond dispute.

Never mind the outrageous and unconstitutional acts of the NSA in spying on people.

But perhaps the most-outrageous of all has been Obamacare and the medical "industry", which has used the power of government to utterly destroy any pretext of a fair and free market, creating a system where your medical care costs five times or more what it should.  That, incidentally, means that you should be able to pay cash for what your deductible is on your insurance (including Medicare!) were that outrageously corrupt system to be exposed to the white-hot light of either the market, prosecution under the Sherman Act or both.  Instead of making strides to resolve that outrage, no matter how small, Obama and Congress have doubled down with signature legislation embodying in statute the utter financial rape of our entire society and both sides of the aisle in Congress not only allowed it to happen but continue to allow it to proceed to this very day.

I've been a contributor to the government in the form of taxes my entire adult life.  I've written plenty of checks to the IRS, some of which gave me writer's cramp.  Never have I claimed a federal or state benefit check -- no food stamps, no welfare, no medicaid, nothing.  But I have been poor enough to qualify earlier on in my life -- I was simply too proud to do it, and found some how, some way to not.

I have tolerated running a company in a state where an employee that was fired for not showing up for work was able to collect unemployment, along with several others fired for cause.  I paid the increased rate of tax for what were bogus claims on my account and which drove up my tax rates.  I complained, but I paid.  I have put up with the ignobility of never actually owning real estate, having to rent it every single year from the State and County governments, even though claiming that you have "ownership" of something that you then must pay to keep is an abject fraud.  I have been "promised" both Social Security and Medicare even though it is mathematically impossible for me to ever receive them, and have paid taxes to support those programs for decades, while those who made the promises knowing they're false have never faced indictment, prosecution or imprisonment.  I have watched our government reach its hands down the crotch of sick 80+ year old leukemia patients claiming they might be "terrorists" while at the same time a man who states openly he attacked other Americans and killed them on a military base in the service of Islam is called an incident of "workplace violence" and those injured or killed are denied just recognition of being harmed in combat against a self-declared terrorist and/or taking heroic action to save others from same.

We all have our point at which we simply refuse to consent.  A few, like Joe Stack, take that refusal and turn it into acts of violence.  Singularly such acts are futile and amount to nothing more than martyrdom at best and a waste of human capital at worst.

But others, like myself, are unwilling to waste our lives.  One can recognize there is a non-violent means of refusal that no government can counteract or put a stop to.  It is far more effective and personally-satisfying than active, violent resistance, especially when the latter is singular and most of America is busy watching Dancing With The Stars, unworthy of anything more than being sheep to provide warmth for the "leaders" and occasionally a plate full of mutton.

Some of us have entrepreneurial ideas that might change the world.  But the drivers for entrepreneurs are more complex than simply the satisfaction of seeing something we imagine come to fruition.  For some it's simply the acquisition of wealth to the exclusion of everything else, but if I wanted to make that my focus in life I'd choose to be a bankster and figure out how to rip people off and get away with it.  After all it's far easier to abuse leverage to rob people than it is to build things, in today's environment the odds of going to prison for doing it are somewhere between slim and none, and Slim left the bar an hour ago.

At the end of the day you have to be able to sleep with yourself every night.  And unfortunately there can come a point where the cost-to-benefit ratio is simply all out of whack.  I've been blessed with both industry and luck; via both I was able to answer the "do you have enough?" question in the affirmative close to twenty years ago.  My motivating factors left the realm of making sure I could eat at that point and now the balance has unfortunately shifted to where what I do every day is work rather than joy.  

In no small part this shift is due to the zombie-like activity of many in this nation, including in places and among parts of the population where you'd think it would not be present.

I refuse to continue to silently accede to, and actively fund through my drive to acquire that measured in and rewarded by "wealth", the rampant theft and fraud that has and continues to take place in the economic sector, especially in the banking and health care areas of our economy.  None of this could ever exist except through the insertion of the guns of government up the noses of the American people.  

I can no longer live with being one of the better sources of funding for these abuses.  This decision did not come lightly, easily or quickly.  But I'm convinced it's the right choice as things stand today.

In short, if you want it in two words, it's this: I'm done.

I choose instead of either active participation through funding of our government's BS or violence to peacefully withdraw my consent.  To refuse to labor.  To make do with less -- a lot less.  I choose to reduce my voluntary contribution to the tax hoard that is misspent or forms the foundation against which our government borrows, giving the proceeds to those who think that doping it up is a grand past-time or shoveling guns, missiles and money to terrorists while groping our grannies, using the very existence of the terrorists we gave the guns and missiles to as justification for what any civilized society would call sexual assault.

The portion of that which I earn by my efforts that I am able to retain in real terms shrinks by the day, and I have concluded that the balance of benefits and harms, especially the harms done to others using my tax dollars, is no longer acceptable to me.

My decision will not change until America changes.  Until it wakes up.  Until the people demand and the government of this county, this state and this nation recognize everyone's fundamental rights -- that shall not be infringed means what it says, that shall pass no law means what it says and all branches of government stop using taxpayer dollars to arm terrorists, maintain and promote medical monopolies, promote and empower banking cartels while excusing violence and fraud, both financial and corporeal, committed against the people of this nation by those entities and the agents of government itself. 

I have seen enough frauds committed by and with the active involvement of government to become convinced that this is what, in the main, my tax dollars are buying.  Whether it be Angela Corey's apparent intentional withholding of evidence from George Zimmerman's counsel (and now her firing of one of the people who tried to do the right thing), the rip-off of pension funds and the taxpayer through both looting of the funds and ridiculously over-promised rates of return or the literal thousands of citizens that have had their homes foreclosed upon through blatantly fraudulent process and perjured documents, enough is enough.

I will not accept mere political promises as they are rubber checks without a penalty for being fraudulently issued and over the last 20 years they have always bounced.  I instead demand action, indictments, prosecutions, break-ups of monopolies, impeachments, business closures, the end of deficit spending and reform. These are not discussion points, they are demands.  They are demands that I have every right to make because it is with the fruits of my hand and mind that this government has foisted upon the American people these frauds, costs and harms.  I have written too many large checks to the IRS over the years only to see this crap not only continue but accelerate in the harm done to our nation -- and especially our youth.

I hope, pray for and encourage others to also peacefully withdraw their consent.  If enough of us who are the producers in this nation do so then government will have no choice but to bow to our will or collapse.  My decision in this regard, if ratified by concurrence of just a small percentage of the population, represents what I believe is the only remaining lawful and peaceful way to accomplish that goal.

If there are an insufficient number of others willing to also participate then my personal conviction that it is unacceptable to fund the screwing of others, whether it be financially or through actual acts of violence, will be demonstrated to be that of a tiny minority.

I accept that this is not only possible, it's likely.

But should that be the case then this nation does not deserve to survive as a Constitutional Republic -- and in the end, it will not, becoming something much darker, uglier and unworthy of any of my support.

There is only one way to know which of the two possibilities is true -- and that is to act, and see who also acts.  To lead not through exhortation (or worse, extortion) but rather by example.  To see who chooses to not only continue to consent but actively supports the murder of others, physical violence served upon those who simply wish to enjoy their unalienable rights and the financial rape of our own citizens en-masse -- especially our children and young adults.

If and when things change I will reconsider my position and lower my middle finger.

But not before.

I therefore choose to reduce the ability of our government to tax my income to as close to an effective zero as I can reasonably achieve in keeping with what I enjoy doing, which is putting before the people a chronology of lies, frauds and scams in the hope that others wake up.

But I will do so on my terms, not someone else's.

Therefore, Tickerforum's donor program has been closed, effective today.  Existing gold donor privileges will remain active through their expiration date -- or 12/31, the latest a quarterly donor could expect them to remain active (and the longest donation formally permitted since mid-2010.)  Those who set up recurring donations have had their profiles canceled at PayPal.  

For those who wish to comment and discuss politically-related topics the politics areas will remain fully-accessible for the present time.

The formerly-anticipated newsletter, coding for which is in fact complete and ready to go, will not be launched.  My personal activity in the markets and otherwise, including entrepreneurship, will for nearly all intents and purposes cease by the end of the year.

The Market Ticker will continue to operate in an advertising-supported format but other than macro-level economic reports (e.g. the payroll report, Z1, etc) you will find the balance shifts toward less market-related material and more politically-related material -- simply because I have withdrawn from market-related activity beyond the macro level.  There will be fewer articles, and many days with none at all -- a rarity up until now.  Old articles will disappear from public view, a change recently implemented and one now filtering through the various Internet archives as they "refresh" their links.

Finally, for those who argue that I should become more involved in political pursuits, no matter what they may be, I will answer your question in advance and save you the time you'd otherwise use to solicit me for such purposes: No.

On a net basis this should reduce my "income footprint" to be within the "Screw You Uncle Sam" range.  The comment capacity on The Ticker will be commensurately reduced, as I have observed that for the most part those who are not donors to the system comprise the vast majority of inane (or worse) comments.  But for those who can form a cogent opinion and use logic, your input to the discussion will still be possible.

The activities that I choose to undertake in the entrepreneurship area will all be of a long-term capital gain in nature, where the government is able to garner little of what I come up with, and then only on my schedule, not theirs -- a schedule that may well be "never" if I so choose and there is no reform.

It is time for those of us who care to direct our energies in a different way, and I know of no better means of laying that forward than through personal example.

For whatever you deem it to be worth, here's my example.

Go to responses (registration required to post)
 



 
Comments on It's Called Evolution, Gentlemen (Tickerforum Changes)
Login Register Top Blog Top Blog Topics FAQ
Page 1 of 9  First123456789Last
Wakeupcall 8k posts, incept 2009-06-08

What do you mean, old articles will disappear from public view? Do you mean your tickers? That would be a shame.

----------
Its easier not to know the hell what you are doing when you are a government employee
"Pfuck Pfizer
"The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink" Chinese proverb
&qu
Jkc054 126 posts, incept 2007-09-28

KD, you mentioned you had a catastrophic health plan. Now that the health care system, including insurance, is firmly under the absolute control of the government, do you plan to exit from any and all health insurance coverage? If you exit from such coverage do you plan to pay the fine imposed by the IRS if you do not have coverage by the beginning of 2014?

----------
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Themortgagedude 12k posts, incept 2007-12-17

Congrats. Good to know a man with conviction.

----------
I think its time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that our founding fathers intended for us. Ronald Reagan 1964
Irishblues 722 posts, incept 2010-12-18

Bravo, Gen. I heard this on the video tonight, and completely respect (and sort of expected, based on things around here this week) this decision.
Dontezuma 46 posts, incept 2009-09-10

It seems expatriation is the only real choice here, no? You won't be able to 'get by' without incurring the wrath of the leviathan. Health care fines, your ever-increasing property taxes, the reach(around) of the TSA, the creep of the NSA...

What's a man supposed to do when his country is usurped by a clever and well-protected gang of well-dressed thugs?
Andysvw 2k posts, incept 2010-06-26

Thank you. I was worried you might go another way.
Jkc054 126 posts, incept 2007-09-28

I feel like we have two nonviolent choices left. Internal exile, becoming self sufficient much like the Old Order Amish, or external exile outside this country. In other words separation from the beast both so the beast loses its control over us and we stop feeding it.

----------
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Tickerguy 198k posts, incept 2007-06-26

I was considering just shutting it all down on 12/31. That was the end of the commitment I had made when I removed the quarterly on the 18th, which was originally going to go away on the 30th but was moved up a bit.

I decided after some fairly-careful analysis that I can accomplish close enough to all of what I intend from a standpoint of not feeding the beast without doing that, and still might accomplish some good in the process.

My evaluation may change over time, but that's where it is now.

I do a lot of thinking on subjects like this; these decisions do not come quickly or without a lot of contemplation. I'm kinda funny like that; I spend a lot of mental energy in contemplation before I make a significant decision, examining all the various angles, but once I've done that it's pretty much "this is how it is, this is how I evaluate the potential benefits and risks, and this is what I'm going to do."

----------
"Anyone wearing a mask will be presumed to be intending armed robbery and immediately shot in the face. Govern yourself accordingly."
Sutluc 380 posts, incept 2010-01-15

Good for you Karl. Slow down, do what you need to do.
Cmalbatros 519 posts, incept 2008-05-07

That ticker was as brilliant as any "Founding Fathers" papers. Bravo.

----------
The only regulation that works - is failure.
Remember, the value/price of stocks and shares fall as well as plummet.
Chthonic 281 posts, incept 2007-12-20

Bravo, Mr. Denninger. Bravo.



Sean 2k posts, incept 2009-04-21

Quote:
What's a man supposed to do when his country is usurped by a clever and well-protected gang of well-dressed thugs?


Exactly what Karl is doing.

----------
GEN 5:32,GEN 7:6, 6/17/1689, 6/17/1789, 10/13/1917, 10/13/2017 (???)
Supertruckertom 7k posts, incept 2010-11-07

Internal for now. Personaly I changed position Friday at work.
I went to the extra board. I will be on call now. If they need me I have 2 hours to report. Like I said earlier this week I am tired of the 65 hour week for a bunch of ingrates.
This is not a total drop out, I still have to work but short of flipping burgers this is my pull back.
No more city P&D work for me. I will spend my weekends with family and prepping.
Competed in another CMP 50 yard 3 position this morning. Silver medaled.
Thanks Karl for helping me understand.
Please keep the light on as long as you feel you can provide a beacon for the few that are still searching for safe harbor.

----------
Preparing to go Hunting.

Iou 1k posts, incept 2009-03-16

History will one day shine a light on your good works. You have made a difference. Thank you and God bless.

----------
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies
Davidcrue 391 posts, incept 2011-07-23

Gen, that is awesome.

Quote:
You won't be able to 'get by' without incurring the wrath of the leviathan.

Sure you will. Just not "in the style of living to which you had (hoped to) become accustomed". I went grey man. Turned down a job that equaled a big promotion with benefits, kicked my personal game board over and started hitchhiking around the country. I "get by" quite comfortably, mostly because I have redefined comfort to a realistic level, and good luck to the leviathan on hitting a target that moves town every few days.

Pain will happen. The option is not between 1) happy middle-class TV-watching bliss for you and your children or 2) nasty wrenching poverty instead of happy TV time.

The choice is 1) pain now, or 2) more pain later, or 3) avoiding pain right now yourself in the hopes your children deal with a cesspool of pain beyond comprehension in twenty years, or 4) gamble you can push off the pain happening in your lifetime in return for condemning your grandchildren to pain unto death.

But the pain will happen. You just get to decide who pays it.

Drbill 13 posts, incept 2009-08-29

About time Karl. You membership card will be sent to you shortly.

----------
WARNING! Anything and everything you put into any form of electronic communication is, at the very least, being copied and stored by the NSA in the name of "public safety", or "national security", in
Tickerguy 198k posts, incept 2007-06-26

Thank you David.

Yeah, it means "less." But you know what? That's ok. Less isn't dying, it's still being ok. It means winding down. It means less bullshit, more time with the few people I truly give a fuck about and will cover their six -- and can trust them to cover mine.

There aren't all that many of those, in truth. I like most of the people here, but I don't know many of you all that well -- not really. Not well enough to KNOW that if the shit gets ugly, they'll be behind me -- nor can most of the people here possibly know whether if I'm behind THEM I'd shoot them in the back or whether I'd cover them instead. There are exceptions, of course, but in the main that's a fact.

I've gone through this twice. Once in 1998, and then again now. In '98 it was a tough call. Take the company public, be a billionaire if it worked. Get out with a shit-ton of money even when it blew up in 2000, as I knew it would. I'd still have 100 times what I have now.

But I had to choose between raising my kid, REALLY raising her, from just around 2 years old, and paying a Nanny and being a half-way-there Dad. I looked at the pile of money I could have, I looked at her and the much smaller pile I'd have if I made that call, and the decision was done.

This is the same sort of thing but at a more-subdued level. The monetary rewards are smaller and the price is diffuse instead of being a point-source like it is with your kid. It took more time, more thought, more evaluation, but in the end the decision was still easy on the merits.

----------
"Anyone wearing a mask will be presumed to be intending armed robbery and immediately shot in the face. Govern yourself accordingly."
Oldno7 2k posts, incept 2008-11-14

I feel your frustration and felt this was coming. so be it. I wish you good health for you and your family and you will be missed as a voice of facts and reason. The Math will work in the end and that will be the end. May God help us all.

----------
IT'S THE SPENDING STUPID The US must become less a government of men, and more a government of LAW.When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose they lose it -Gerald Celente
Andysvw 2k posts, incept 2010-06-26

I still have a family to feed. But that aint stopping me from starving the beast in my own way. They get chump change from me now and if my other thing works out they will get 0. All legal of course.
Howie 4k posts, incept 2007-11-02

Hey, just do what you've got to do. Really, no explanation needed.

----------
"Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money)
Aztrader 8k posts, incept 2007-09-10

A ticker worth sending to my Congresscritters. Well said. The crooks have taken over every aspect of our government and the best way to handle it is go off the grid.
When Obabacare kicks in, we will see a lot of whining, but will anything change. Probably not as long as they can keep paying out the bribes.

I envy your position. If I a could afford to disappear, I would. Good luck in your endeavors.
Sean 2k posts, incept 2009-04-21

As a note guys. My state, AZ, has income tax credits $ for $. I pay 75%+ of my income tax due to AZ instead to private catholic schools and a Catholic homeless shelter.

Look into that in your state.

Yea, you may not like the private charities/whatever. But is it not better to give to a private charity (Not necessarily the CC) then the State?

And don't forget thrift stores and Craig's List!

----------
GEN 5:32,GEN 7:6, 6/17/1689, 6/17/1789, 10/13/1917, 10/13/2017 (???)
Susanjbear 781 posts, incept 2010-06-10

Aww man. Don't go away completely Karl. We all need you. But I don't blame you in the least for wanting to reduce the footprint.

A lot of us feel the same way. Why voluntarily feed the beast?

Now I don't feel like such a wacko - when I say NO I will not fly, NO I will not ride public transport where TSA has left its trail of slime, NO I will not patronize those who screw us.

I dread what the next few years will be like for this country.

----------
Susan
Vernonb 3k posts, incept 2009-06-03

Today, the real John Galt just stood up.

----------
"Mass intelligence does not mean intelligent masses."
Login Register Top Blog Top Blog Topics FAQ
Page 1 of 9  First123456789Last