As IF Times

link Al Gore: Scott Walker is ‘extreme,’ divisive – Patrick Gavin – POLITICO.com.

One of the biggest hits of the TV season surrounds the blood feud between two bitterly opposing factions.  As it happens, “The Hatfields vs The McCoys” is a good guess, but the better answer is the political right vs the political left in the U.S..  There is no dramatization or fictional story more compelling than the political feud occurring now between an obviously divided American public, at least according to the popular media.

Increasingly, the rhetoric and animosity has escalated to levels of derangement as partisans of the left increasingly show just how nakedly unhinged they really are.  The recent landmark recall elections in Wisconsin will be seen years from now as a pivotal moment in American history.  Unable to convince others of their tenuous positions and claims through laughable maneuvers and tactics over the past 2 years, the union backed left lost a landslide vote over entitlements, not to Scott Walker and the right as has been characterized, but to the long suffering taxpayers.

Some may remember back in 2011, the novel tactic of Wisconsin lawmakers running off and hiding in the next state to avoid voting on a motion they were sure to lose.  This is the equivalent of a 3 year old covering their eyes in order to have a bad thing go bye-bye.  Some may recognize the technique of aggregating union support nationwide for their cause as the equivalent of “everyone else is doing it”.  Finally, we get to the aftermath of the recall vote where a woman actually slaps the losing contestant, Tom Barrett over conceding an obvious loss.  Given the recent stories of cannibalism in the news, Barrett is lucky she didn’t bite him.

Amusingly, the high cretin of hyperbole, Al-the-world-is-ending-Gore chimes in with his thoughts on the issue, as if he and the facts were intimate friends.   If the left is going to make a credible case for anything,  they’ll at least have to get new spokespeople for their causes.  They can’t have Bill Clinton preach about integrity; they can’t have Michael Moore babble about the oppressed, they can’t have Nancy Pelosi cry crocodile tears about poverty and they can’t have Al Gore speak about…well… anything.

In a time when the harsh wave of reality is sweeping all nation states worldwide with respect to untenable debts and related entitlements, there are still those who cling to fantasy world views of what they deserve.  Upon reflection, perhaps this is not so much deranged as it is infantile.   The name calling, the petulant behaviour, the faux demonstrations.  As the grown-ups always say, ‘it’s all fun until someone loses an eye’.

link The Facebook IPO – US Business News — Facebook Weighs Possible Listing With NYSE: Sources – CNBC.

It’s a heaping double helping of schadenfreude for most people as we witness the colossal cluster eff that the Facebook IPO has become.  What was hyped to be the most spectacular public offering in history has devolved into a bad Greek wedding-like fiasco of lies, deceit, finger pointing and likely lawsuits.   You can’t make this stuff up.

The game was stacked with star players from the outset.  Harvard grad creates world changing software platform.  Top echelon investment bank Morgan Stanley advising and underwriting along with the rest of the Wall Street elite.  Rock stars and hedge funds allocated founder shares.  And of course, a namebrand that virtually everyone knows.  Finally, the popular media frothing up the ordinary folk with projections of outlandish valuations.  What could go wrong?

Well except for the newly enriched insiders,  it all went wrong.  The common link connecting  all of the participants was plain old simple greed.  As Gordon Gekko so elegantly stated in the 1987 film “Wall Street”, “greed is good”.  I won’t deny the basic tenet of this argument, since what it really means is that without a desire to achieve more, there exists only a stagnant complacency.  This complacency leads to rot and groupthink.

But pairing up greed with complacency, now you’ve got problems.  It’s a fair bet that very few people actually read the offering document except the lawyers who were paid to write it.  Anyone who has ever seen one of those monstrosities knows that all the caveats and warnings enclosed are about as useful as the warnings on cigarette packages.  People buy stocks because they are told to.  They rely on the advice of financial advisers, consultants, friends and of course, cab drivers in really bullish markets.  As in many aspects of our lives, we rely less on our own common sense  and judgement and depend more on ‘experts’ to make decisions for us.

The free market works.  It rewards well calculated risk taking but it also punishes ill thought out schemes.  All of the current talk about lawsuits about the ‘failed’ offering are ludicrous.  As if someone should reimburse you for losing money on an investment.   This implies that there should have been a profit and that it should have been guaranteed.  Next thing you know, people will be rioting in the streets thinking  they have a right to a job making 100k a year.   Ivory tower types take note; there are many learned theories of how things work and many of  these theories can be made to sound convincing.  But the crucible of the  real world is where  theories are tested.   Unfortunately in real life, we can’t just reset the theory by starting over, we live with our mistakes.