Sorry to be the little grey raincloud on this Hate The Hedges party, but you might want to understand the implications of what just happened

Y'know that fund that's getting all attention, Melvin Capital? Yeah, fuck them, right? Fuckin' shorters all shortin' and shit -- they played, they paid!

There's a reason they were bailed out and with all due haste.

Here's the issue: they were VERY good at the shorting game. So good that they actually had to turn away business. They made money like horses makes shit. When clients couldn't get in at Melvin, they went elsewhere. That opened the door to a lot of other firms basically mirroring exactly what MC was doing, which included shorting the fuck outta GME.

Fuck those guys too, right? It's their money, so why should I care?

Let's go back a few year, shall we, to the glorious chapter in finance and economics that was the 2008 Crash. Remember when Paulson lost his shit because he realized that in about 36 hours, the basic system called Western Capitalism was going to shit the bed; the bedroom; the whole house and pretty much every surface above the ocean within a planetary radius? This is sorta like that. Only worse.

The thing about short squeezes is that the losses can be infinite, and that's exactly why WallStreetBets did what they did. They knew if they bought and held -- diamond hands -- the stock would have to rise as the shorters had to cover their bets. Melvin Capital and a shit-ton of other, smaller firms had to do that and ran out of liquidity long before GME was even at $50. For every share of stock they shorted, they need to cough up another share at a higher value -- and they HAD to actually have the higher-priced share.

And here's where things get VERY ugly.

Shorting GME was such a sure thing that a huge number of shorts were placed. In fact, more shares of GME were shorted than actually existed. Oops. But hey, SURE THING, BABY and what's the worst that can happen?

Yeeeah, y'see where this is going now?

So these firms, not only are they broke, they don't have the shares, either. They need to come up with shares, pronto, at any price, because contractual obligations are a motherfucker in the finance world. But again, more shorts than there are shares and the people who have the shares, WSB and 4chan's /biz/, aren't letting them go. The longer they hold, the higher the price will go as short after short faces having to cough up the shares they borrowed.

A lot of people are about to lose a LOT of money -- the kinda losses that have so many zeros attached that looking at the number bores the eyes.

Back to 2008: the reason the whole world almost started Mad Max LARPing back then is that a narrow number of highly-important financial institutions were a wee bit thin on liquidity because they were having to pay it out by the boatload. That's bad. What would be better is if risk were more distributed, and how could that little plan POSSIBLY go wrong? Maybe a Black Swan event involving a huge amount of money that needs to be paid out by all of them due to this annoying bird.

That's where we are now, but no one even remotely knows what that figure is going to be. Again, (potentially) infinite losses multiplied by 150% times the number of shares actually available, multiplied by the dogshit risk factor on the loans and the leveraged payouts -- your best case scenario might be a loss of about $500 billion. Someone has to come up with that money, be it the Fed or other banks/investors, but that latter group has to come up with the money themselves, which is generally accomplished by selling profitable holdings. We all know what happens when a lot of people have to sell, right?

I always wanted to live in interesting times, thus proving what an utter fuckwit I am.

If you don't understand why Melvin Capital was bailed out and bailed out fast, you're sleeping far better than I am.

I started off with MJ and the Beach Boys at age 5. Then around 2nd grade it was Vanilla Ice & MC Hammer. Then 3rd it became Ice-T, NWA, Ice Cube. 4th grade it became Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse. 5th Grade it was Kyuss, Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Nirvana. 6th grade it was local punk bands, Lookout! Records, Minor Threat, Rancid... 7th grade I delved into the heart of Legendary DIY underground punk music. Ebullition records (Econochrist, Born against, Downcast, Spitboy, Iconoclast, Los Crudos), , Gravity Records (Heroin, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Clikatat Ikatowi), Dischord (Fugazi, Hoover, Rites of Spring). The list goes on and on. The next ten years were all about underground hardcore/punk/noise/power-violence/sludge/grind/doom.

Then I moved to San Francisco. LOL. I'm an Aquarius. AQUARIUS RECORDS!!!!! I still listen to some of that stuff from time to time. A LOT of it was way ahead of it's time. These kids these days can't hold a candle to genuine, innovative, raw DIY music.

if you have to speculate...>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Trancecoach:
there was a really amazing course at my college (the first private college to desegregate) about "Black Stereotyping in American Cinema."
The films (by the likes of Spike Lee, Sidney Poitier, D.W. Griffeths, John Singleton, and Melvin Van Peebles, among others) and the reading still shape my thinking to this day.

Sounds like you're a really boring person.

>> ^Trancecoach:

there was a really amazing course at my college (the first private college to desegregate) about "Black Stereotyping in American Cinema."
The films (by the likes of Spike Lee, Sidney Poitier, D.W. Griffeths, John Singleton, and Melvin Van Peebles, among others) and the reading still shape my thinking to this day.


Sounds like you're a really boring person.

there was a really amazing course at my college (the first private college to desegregate) about "Black Stereotyping in American Cinema."

The films (by the likes of Spike Lee, Sidney Poitier, D.W. Griffeths, John Singleton, and Melvin Van Peebles, among others) and the reading still shape my thinking to this day.

Yay! Melvins!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'NOFX, Occupy LA, ows' to 'NOFX, Occupy LA, ows, Fat Mike, Eric Melvin, John Carey, Old Man Markley' - edited by Lann

Hehehe, thanks.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
Holy shit ,your old

Holy shit ,your old

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Defcon 18, computer, thief, hacker' to 'Defcon 18, computer, thief, hacker, mel guzman, melvin guzman' - edited by blankfist

With all due respect, hijackings are not the primary threat as the means to accomplish such deeds have been handily remedied by fairly simply and minimally intrusive procedures and technology.

Things that go boom....
>> ^L0cky:

>> ^quantumushroom:
You all know who we REALLY need to profile: primarily swarthy Middle Eastern men ages 18 - 40 and behind them Middle Eastern women wearing any kind of "cloak". Unfortunately, the acolytes of political correctness don't give a sh!t if their cowardice is lethal.
I challenge that as an assumption, one that is generally held by most people (even liberals). So I actually decided to do some research; imagine that!
Before I started I'd say my opinion was that I was sceptical about any useful correlation between terrorism and race or citizenship but if any strong correlation could be found then it may be possible to convince me that it becomes a question of weighing the security benefits against the offence caused to individuals.
It's also my opinion (and still is) that the mainstream media continues to portray correlation between terrorism in the US and UK and Islamists through consistent inference, without ever stating it as fact; and therefore not requiring validation or providing opportunity to be directly contested.
I looked at the list of notable aircraft hijackings on wikipedia and followed them up via the references and/or additional searching. My conclusion is that if any profiling is used in America then it would be most useful to target middle aged white American men; and any Americans citizens with flying experience.
Here are names of people who did board a plane at a US airport and then subsequently hijacked the aircraft:
John J Divivo
D. B. Cooper (pseudonym)
Billy Gene Hurst Jr
Garret Trapnell
Melvin C. Cale, Louis Cale, Henry D. Jackson, Jr.
Clay Thomas
Aubern Calloway
There was a spate of hijackings by both Americans and Cubans in the 60's and 70's; mostly for political reasons that was mostly quelled by a Cuban-American agreement; and there was a notable incident of a hijacking by Croatian separatists in '76. Other than that, hijackings were overwhelmingly committed by white and black Americans.
Doing a more general search I couldn't actually find any hijacking of aircraft by middle eastern or Muslim passengers who boarded a plane at a US airport, apart from 9/11.
The most recent hijacking prior to 9/11 was Aubern Calloway; a black American and former pilot for FedEx who had a personal beef with his employees.
I also continued reading about non air related terrorism in the US and UK and found that the vast majority of incidents are domestic and carried out by non Muslim, non middle eastern men. I also noticed that whenever the individual perpetrators of an incident are unknown, then it will generally be attributed to an Islamic organisation; but when the perpetrators are found they are almost always non Muslim. This remains true in recent times, as well as in past history.
You can make a pretty decent start with this list of terrorist incidents; however it must be pointed out that it's generally difficult to define what is and what is not an act of terrorism; and as the issue is about security then I think what we're really interested in is any destructive and harmful incident.
To be honest I was quite surprised by the extent to which there is a lack of correlation; as well as the extreme rarity of terrorist incidents when compared to the media representation that we get of them.
If you ever find yourself wondering if anyone around you is a terrorist then the only people you can really discount are women and children. I'd therefore offer that it would be much more useful and give you a much happier day if you just stopped wondering altogether.
Hey, maybe D. B. Cooper was secretly a Muslim.

>> ^quantumushroom:

You all know who we REALLY need to profile: primarily swarthy Middle Eastern men ages 18 - 40 and behind them Middle Eastern women wearing any kind of "cloak". Unfortunately, the acolytes of political correctness don't give a sh!t if their cowardice is lethal.

I challenge that as an assumption, one that is generally held by most people (even liberals). So I actually decided to do some research; imagine that!

Before I started I'd say my opinion was that I was sceptical about any useful correlation between terrorism and race or citizenship but if any strong correlation could be found then it may be possible to convince me that it becomes a question of weighing the security benefits against the offence caused to individuals.

It's also my opinion (and still is) that the mainstream media continues to portray correlation between terrorism in the US and UK and Islamists through consistent inference, without ever stating it as fact; and therefore not requiring validation or providing opportunity to be directly contested.

I looked at the list of notable aircraft hijackings on wikipedia and followed them up via the references and/or additional searching. My conclusion is that if any profiling is used in America then it would be most useful to target middle aged white American men; and any Americans citizens with flying experience.

Here are names of people who did board a plane at a US airport and then subsequently hijacked the aircraft:

John J Divivo
D. B. Cooper (pseudonym)
Billy Gene Hurst Jr
Garret Trapnell
Melvin C. Cale, Louis Cale, Henry D. Jackson, Jr.
Clay Thomas
Aubern Calloway

There was a spate of hijackings by both Americans and Cubans in the 60's and 70's; mostly for political reasons that was mostly quelled by a Cuban-American agreement; and there was a notable incident of a hijacking by Croatian separatists in '76. Other than that, hijackings were overwhelmingly committed by white and black Americans.

Doing a more general search I couldn't actually find any hijacking of aircraft by middle eastern or Muslim passengers who boarded a plane at a US airport, apart from 9/11.

The most recent hijacking prior to 9/11 was Aubern Calloway; a black American and former pilot for FedEx who had a personal beef with his employees.

I also continued reading about non air related terrorism in the US and UK and found that the vast majority of incidents are domestic and carried out by non Muslim, non middle eastern men. I also noticed that whenever the individual perpetrators of an incident are unknown, then it will generally be attributed to an Islamic organisation; but when the perpetrators are found they are almost always non Muslim. This remains true in recent times, as well as in past history.

You can make a pretty decent start with this list of terrorist incidents; however it must be pointed out that it's generally difficult to define what is and what is not an act of terrorism; and as the issue is about security then I think what we're really interested in is any destructive and harmful incident.

To be honest I was quite surprised by the extent to which there is a lack of correlation; as well as the extreme rarity of terrorist incidents when compared to the media representation that we get of them.

If you ever find yourself wondering if anyone around you is a terrorist then the only people you can really discount are women and children. I'd therefore offer that it would be much more useful and give you a much happier day if you just stopped wondering altogether.

Hey, maybe D. B. Cooper was secretly a Muslim.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Gore Vidal, Keith Ward, Susan Greenfield, Melvin Bragg' to 'Gore Vidal, Keith Ward, Susan Greenfield, Melvyn Bragg' - edited by jwray

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Gore Vidal, Keith Ward, Susan Greenfield' to 'Gore Vidal, Keith Ward, Susan Greenfield, Melvin Bragg' - edited by jwray