Heaven & Hell: Christianity, Islam and Terror.

“Oh Lord, what fools these mortals be!” -Shakespere

Most widely practiced Religions contain some notion of Heaven and Hell.  We’ll address the concept of Heaven and Hell within the context of Christianity and Islam and its impact on terrorism.  

Christians and Muslims alike look forward to a life of eternal bliss with God, the angels, family, friends and colleagues who have heretofore passed. Meanwhile, both abhor the notion of hell along with its inherent spiritual and physical torment.  Christians describe hell as an “Sheoi,” Hebrew for “underworld,” a place where “Gehenna” a locale of eternal torment in the form of “unquenchable fire,” (Mark 9:43) reserved unrepentant sinners.  Similarly, Islam describes hell (Jahannam in Arabic) as fiery crater of various levels, much like Dante’s Inferno, the level of torment being commensurate with the degree of offenses committed by the unfortunate resident during his relatively short time on Earth.  No mitigating factors here folks!  No reprieves, no parole, and, of course, no shortage of innocent people.

Both Christianity and Islam describe Hell as some type of below-ground cavern, presumably close enough to the Earth’s core to fuel its cadre of torments.  This concept is supported by no credible scientific evidence.  Similarly, as the notion Heaven being somewhere high up in the sky as it would defy even the most fundamental laws of physics. Even if one could travel at the speed of light (the universal “speed limit”) to “get into” heaven, it would take millions of years to arrive.  Similarly, if such a place existed a reasonable travel distance from Earth, Scientists would certainly have found it by now.

Not unlike politics, religion has its moderates, conservatives and radicals, and adherence to the above described beliefs varies depending on where one’s religious beliefs lies on this spectrum.  The key criteria for identifying where a group resides is its degree of adhesion to its primary religious “authoritative source” document, e.g. the Bible and the Quaran for Christianity and Islam respectively.  

The Right espouses a loose adherence to its authoritative source.  Most “Rights” are moderates who consider their authoritative source as an imprecise but useful tool in overall guidance to how to live one’s life; a symbolic approach.   Most believe in an afterlife, but it’s what this afterlife is remains to them a mystery.  The notion of life after death can be construed as supported, or rejected by the 2004 research published in PubMed of the “out-of-body” perception that occurs as part of the near death experience. The believer adheres to the hope that this experience supports the notion that the soul leaves the body, hovers about for a bit and then travels up “towards the light,” we would assume, on its way to the Pearly Gates of Heaven.  The nay-sayer believes that the out-of-body experience has a scientific explanation. The 2014 Journal Frontiers study that suggested a “strong deactivation of the visual cortex” that, in turn, engenders mental imagery of bodily movement while observing oneself on, lets say, on a hospital gurney.  Our concern is the radical Left who strongly espouse the former and would probably seek to behead anyone who support the latter.

As we approach the Left, stronger adherence to the authoritative source emerges and intensifies.  Moderate fundamentalists are conservatives and their beliefs are tantamount to the literal interpretation of their authoritative source, however, they are able to draw the line when it comes to the more radical contents of the authoritative source.  For example, you are not likely to find fundamentalists Christians executing women they expect of practicing witchcraft based on Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Similarly, peace-loving conservative Muslims are practical when it comes to passages like: “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing… but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah” (Quaran 2:191-193.)  IBoth Christian and Muslim moderates will rightly defer any decisions regarding killing unbelievers, infidels and nay-sayers to its Jesus or Allah.

Now the fun part.  The radical Left, the extremists, the reason the world is so f***** up and the United States Government cannot afford to provide free higher education and healthcare to its citizens! This faction tends to be undereducated provocateurs who, while knowing little to nothing about their authoritative source, designate themselves (not their God) as the enforcers of the faith, largely because they have nothing else to do.  They don’t leave the burning of Witches to God, they personally take on the burning.  They don’t defer the authority of dealing with the unbelievers to God; they stone, behead and otherwise eliminate them themselves.  At the core of the radical Left are groups like the KKK, the Army of God, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Al-Shabab.   All of these religious agendas are predicated on what is referred to in Theology as the “end game.” This is one’s final destination subsequent to when one’s time on earth has expired, naturally or intentionally.  The Right believe that some higher power will transform them into a spiritual entity and take them to a place of eternal happiness and peace.  Not necessarily “Heaven” as described in the Bible, but something unknown, but good.  At the other end of the spectrum are Muslim extremists who believe that the better and more effective they are at enforcing the will of God as enumerated in the Quaran, the better the reward; 72 virgins (or “raisins” if you accept the interpretation of the Arabic term  ḥūrīyah) and a lifetime of eternal bliss.  These extremists are also inclined to support the notion of intentional termination of life in the form of suicide bombings.  To the Christian, it’s both a “place” closer to God’s “house” and a higher status in Heaven.  

This thesis espouses the dangers of ignorance that result in terrorism.  As leaders of the free world, the USA has chosen the use of its vast military resources to combat terrorism. This has resulted in death, destruction and increased hatred for what is good and Right. Wouldn’t it be better to import armies of educators and use force only to support the efforts of these educators in their fight against ignorance, hatred and hate crimes against humanity?

Brexit Nonesense

A great tragedy has befallen the United Kingdom. The Pound has plummeted to historic lows. Global financial markets are in turmoil (the markets are like police dogs, they don’t lie.) Competent UK leadership is resigning. “Leave” proponent leaders are now back-peddling from their promises. There is widespread regret for the “leave” vote, which came primarily from the English Countryside of cow milkers and corn farmers. This constituent has little to no ties to international trade. They don’t benefit from EU perks as their economy is largely local, but they want their UK back. They have no idea how powerful their country was while part of a larger economic entity. This was an idiotic decision at best.

Well folks, you’ve got it. Let’s see what you’re able to do with it.

The meaning of life…

As one ages, one introspects. We search for meaning in life, and most, like myself, fail to answer this perplexing question. So, lacking a finite meaning my our own, I look to people smarter and wiser than myself to provide some insight. I settled on the Orwellian view. According to George, we exist to expend energy aimed at countering the natural order of everything around us to gravitate towards chaos. This makes sense me. Forces of nature are hell bent on reclaiming life to randomness.

The Universe is the best example of the notion of chaos. If we don’t “live” and make our best effort to control our destiny, chaos will take over and defeat us. We expend energy and resources to prevent our front lawn from devolving into it’s natural state of chaos, weeds, underbrush, etc. We spend years in institutions of elementary, higher and advanced education so that we can acquire and retain jobs that keep us from spiraling into the chaos of poverty. We visit our physician in effort to slow our bodies from descending into the inevitability of death. We love our children to instill a degree of emotional stability in our, and their, lives.

Think about it, everything that we do is a struggle against the inevitability of chaos. The truth is that in the end, when humans are gone, the Earth will return to it’s birth state. Perhaps then, some higher form of life will inhabit it and live alongside of it and not try to defeat it.

Orlando. Again and Again and Again

Like everyone else, these days, I’ve been thinking about gun control. Personally, I despise guns. Just the sight of one makes me flinch. Having said this, if not for guns in the hands of our law enforcement and military, our government would spiral into anarchy. Same with nuclear weapons. Say what you want about nukes, but since the Cold War, it’s been the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that has prevented Soviet/Russian expansion back to and exceeding WWII boundaries.

My point is, if both sides know they each have weapons, neither is likely to shoot. Or, if both sides have guns, there will good guys on premises to do the job. The solution to the Gun debate is simple, allow Americans to purchase guns, but only after requiring the purchaser to pay for a better, much more comprehensive background check, just like the screening process used by most Police Departments. This includes psychiatric screening for mental proclivities towards violence like applicants that have a history of BOTH mental illness AND substance abuse issues. Polygraphs would be a plus. Better ways to expose criminal history would help, which can only happen if our law enforcement databases were able to talk to each other.

Day Trading: You can’t win!

I am the proud holder of an MBA in Finance from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business.  I pursued this subject matter because like many red-blooded, type A+ personality, aggressive achievers; I wanted to get rich playing the Financial Markets.

After a few prep courses in Eco and Finance, I registered for my first hard-core Financial Markets class.  Our first assignment, Burton Malkiel book, “A Random Walk Down Wall Street.”  Hell of a page turner, with one drawback; the realization that I’d never get rich playing the Financial Markets.  Not to say that this is not possible, we’ll get to that soon,  just saying that trading success comes only to Market Makers, not the average Day Trader going in and out of the Markets short-term.  In fact, according to Mr. Malkiel, you have virtually no chance to net a profit as the “little guy.”

It’s like this: there’s weather and there’s climate.  Weather is an almost random set of circumstances that result in rain one day, sunshine the next day and a mix of sun and clouds on day three.  Climate is weather in a broader context, an average of random weather events like those noted above over time.  It’s cold in the Winter, rainy in the Spring,  hot in the Summer and cool in the Fall.   Financial Markets is like Climate, a moving average of security prices over time.  What we can predict is the direction of, say, the Stock Market over time because the Capital Asset Pricing Model says that investors expect a return on a marketable security that commensurate with the price risk inherent that security.  In layman’s terms, over time, stock A, which varies in price more than the Market as a whole is riskier than stock B, which varies in price less than the Market.   Over time, stock A will reward investors a higher return than stock B.  The key words here are “over time.”  Day-to-day movements in any and all stocks have proven over and over to be statistically random; there is not way to predict whether the price will go up or down at any point in time unless you have information that is not available to other investors, which is a bad option as it is likely to land you in prison.  So, long story short, unless you adopt the Warren Buffet buy-and-hold long-term strategy, your day trading is no different from playing black or red in roulette: you win on 1/2 your trades and lose on the other 1/2.  The balance is trading fees and taxes, which inevitably will place you deep in the negative.

Getting back to Malkiel.  How does one make money in the Market?  The answer; select a random portfolio of a minimum of 12 stocks, buy and hold them for the long-term.  You can do this by taping the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal to your garage wall, throwing 12 darts at them and build your portfolio with the symbols closest to where the darts land.  This is called “diversification,” which means by choosing stocks at random, an investor is afforded the hidden benefit of the random day-to-day price changes.  Some stocks will increase in price, while others will decrease but, over time, there will be a bias towards higher prices.  This provides a profit/loss offset that, over time, are guaranteed to result positive returns.

So who makes money day trading?  Market Makers on the trading floors of the Big Houses (Goldman, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, etc.)  These folks move volumes of stocks that are large enough to move the price up (buy) or down (short.)  By long and short selling on their own trades, they make small “haircuts” that amount to lots of cash when you consider the sheer volume of long and short trades.  So unless one has a $B or so to throw into day trading, one has pretty much no access to this type of program trading.

Back to my story.  I was highly disappointed at learning that I’d never get rich trading, MBA or not, however, I appreciated the heads up: avoid day trading like the plague.

 

The Fed “Conspiracy”

This is the kind of inflammatory hogwash that folks like to hear. I suggests that the Rothschilds own the Fed and have created conflict in various parts of the world so it can gain control over other countries’ central banks. The reality is that the Fed was created by Congress in 1913 as a way to clear interbank payments. The old system was not “centralized” enough to take on the complexities of the US banking system so it needed to be replaced by what is now called the Federal Reserve System. Member banks (Citi, Morgan, Goldman, etc.) that use the Fed receive stock in the bank that pays a fixed 6% per year. The rest of the Fed’s approximately $90B in profit is paid back to the US Treasury. It’s this “Member” status that confuses people. Members just use the Fed to pay and receive payments to and from each other, this membership does not mean “ownership.”

Setting monetary Policy setting is just a part of what  the fed does.  Even here, there is no real “control.”  All the Fed can do is change the interest rates it charges its Member Banks for overnight funds that banks may need to maintain their required liquidity positions. This is called the “Fed Funds” rate. Banks rarely use this type of loan as it is considered a sign of weakness.  As such, they prefer to go into the money market for overnight funds.   Historically, member banks follow the Fed Funds rate, up or down, as part of what interest rate they charge their customers for loans on homes, automobiles, businesses, etc. 

And what about the Rothschilds? The Rothschilds don’t own the Fed, they are merely large stockholders in Fed Member financial institutions, that’s it. The Rothschild may be worth $350B, but this wealth has become so diluted over the last 2 centuries, there is no single heir worth more than $9B; not nearly enough to control anything!

Trump: 35% Import Tax

Trump: Tax goods manufactured and imported to the USA from Mexico and China at 35% and save American jobs in places like Suffolk County, NY which has lost the lion’s share of its manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. Think of the domino effect: Chinese plants close causing massive unemployment (there are lots of people in China.) China gets pissed off and calls for payment on some or all of its $1.26 trillion in US Bonds/Debt, interest rates skyrocket, inflation rears it’s head with a vengeance, the dollar tanks to record lows. 2009, and even 1929 all over again.  US product prices are so expensive, they are virtually unsellable anywhere in the world.  Beating economics is like trying to control the weather. Eliminating or changing a material component of this financial organism, over which we have very little control anyway, will cause the entire entity to perish.

The Middle Engish definition of the word “Tax” is, “The power to distroy.”  The definition has been softened by modern day political correctness to, “A burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.”  In either case, taxation impedes economic entity growth and stability, draining them of whatever benefits that arise from the free market economy that powers them.   The answer is to let the system run its course while retooling American workers at jobs that the Chinese can’t do at a lower margin. It is impossible for a system that pays $20 ph in the US to compete with one that pays $.30 ph.

The Elephant in the Room

I just took a quick look at the US National Debt Clock.  While the look was indeed quick, the just over $19 Trillion debt increased by $6 million during the glance.  I shudder to think of how much the US National Debt would have increased had my glance became a gander!  $19 Trillion, that’s $160K per taxpayer, materially more than triple the median annual household income of about $51K.  To put it lightly, we are a bit over leveraged!  Enter, the elephant in the room.

My 6 year old is reading a short story about the food chain.  The insect eat the plants, the frog eat the insect, the big fish eats the frog and the bear eats the fish.  This process has been full force in the wild since the the origin of life.  It’s like a speeding freight train, you just can’t stop it without compromising and ultimately destroying the entire process.  Our elephant in the room almost universal acceptance by our Government that it is OK to spend more money than you acquire from Taxes.  The consumer wants Government services, the Government’s elected Officials provide these services irrespective of the cost, the consumer re-elects the Government Elected Official.  Any breach in this process limits the longevity-in-office of the Government Elected Official; hence, the US National Debt.   The term “Government Elected Officials” spans both the Legislative and Executive Branches of both the Federal and State Governments.

Government Elected Officials are thankful that the concept of the US National Debt is an elusive concept.  Consumers/Voters hear it over and over again but few fully understand the concept and how the whole economic system grinds to a halt when the interest on the National Debt exceeds the US Government’s ability to service the interest on that debt. This is called the “mother of all defaults” that, if it was to occur, would undoubtedly cause the Global Economy to crumble.  You can all imagine what will happen next…

Trump: the ineffective President

Our Founding Fathers were arguably the most brilliant political strategists ever. After enduring the tyranny of European Governments first hand, they established a three branch government based on enforcing the notion of “Checks and Balances:” The Executive Branch is lead by the President, who can propose legislation to the Legislative Branch (Congress) who must achieve a majority vote to turn it into Law. Conversely, Congress can propose legislation, but that legislation cannot become law until it’s signed by the President. If this weren’t enough to create the intended “Balance of Power,” enter the Judicial Branch; the network of State and Federal Courts led by the court of last resort, the United States Supreme Court. These folks exist, in part, to ensure that any laws passed by their sister Government Branches are aligned with the Constitution of the United States, so, anything coming out of Congress or the Executive branches can be squashed by one judge presiding over a legal action that challenges the law as “Unconstitutional.”

There are a few more Checks and Balances, but you get the idea. My point is, can you see Donald Trump thriving in this environment? He can’t bark at congress to support his ideas, and he has no control over the Supreme Court. The only thing he’ll have absolute power over is Foreign Affairs, which in of itself is scary thought, but the Military will squash anything radical he attempts to do. In short, in order to the current Trump mentality to get anything done as President, he’d first have to somehow rewrite the US Constitution to read like a real estate deal. He may become President, but he will undoubtedly be the most ineffective. Enough said.