When I first started blogging in 2006 or so, I loved the idea of being able to have conversations with people all over the world, many of whom I didn't even know existed.  It's served me really well in that respect, I've met a ton of people and developed my most important online social network.  I have several relationships in the real world that developed because of blogs.

Then Twitter came along, and was all real-timey and stuff.  It's fun.  It feels like a cocktail party.  I can blurt out things that I think would make funny fortune cookies and there's an audience for that I guess.  But in terms of content it was a real lightweight compared to blogs, the medium is just too constraining.  At its core Twitter is a 140-character message bus, and there are lots of things lacking there for heavy-duty collaboration to happen.

Next came Facebook, which allowed me to find a lot of people but not necessarily the ones I wanted to have technical conversations with.  It's also completely ungeared towards anything longer than a sentence or two, the commenting system resembles a car with just an engine and a frame and a steering wheel.  Also not suited to hard-core collaboration of any kind.

Over time the collaboration model on blogs got better with the introduction of commenting systems like Disqus (although I still don't like the fact that I rely on them 100% to safeguard those comments).  But it never really changed much, we always had blogs and RSS to distribute and comment on meatier content.

But then, this year, came Wave.  And I fell head over heels in love with it.

We have a president who thinks he is king.  What's worse is that he appears to be right, until things get so bad that the citizens will rise up against him.

For all of the fraud and stupidity that has transpired thus far in this financial crisis, I was absolutely floored by what happened recently with Chrysler's bankruptcy.  The Obama administration ramrodded through a deal with completely obliterated black letter law in regards to who has precedence in a bankruptcy.

Pension funds and investors--regular people just like you and I--had invested in Chrysler bonds.  These bonds are, by law, senior to other debt in a bankruptcy.  Obama decided that it was more politically expedient for the unions to take precedence, and so it was.  Pensions and individual investors received basically nothing, while the unions who contributed to Obama's campaign got full payment on their debt.

The administration argued that this was better for the economy.  Ok.  So what.  You have sworn to uphold the Constitution of this country.  You lied.

The Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on this decision, but they caved today and it will proceed.  So much for checks and balances.

I was willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but this is indisputable.  He does not care about the rule of law, he is already campaigning for the next election.  The laws of this country be damned, all hail King Obama.

This is a sad day.  I really don't care what he does from this point on, the Chief Executive of this country has proven beyond any doubt that he does not care about fulfilling his duties as the head of the Executive branch--that is, enforcing our laws--but is more concerned about scratching the backs of the people who scratched his.

If I had any shred of faith left in our government before today it is gone.  Sorry all you Obama-supporters out there--I know many of you--your guy is an empty suit with no moral compass or sense of duty.  Our Commander in Chief blows with the wind.  Yay.

By the way, this is going to do wonders for the credit markets.  When you're thinking about buying debt that is supposed to be senior to other debt, you'd like to know that that is, in fact, what you are buying.  When this can be changed by the whims of The King you might think twice.  So long, credit market, nice knowing you.

Hi ho, all hail King Obama.

Great read from Bloomberg:

They're right.  The longer he delays the inevitable, the more this will be seen as "his problem".  His honeymoon is about over.  Unless Obama grows a pair quickly and forces this problem to clear, he is going to preside over four years of a declining economy and the Republicans will have a field day in 2012.

Maybe he's not the political genius everyone thought he was.  Perhaps it was just the laughably anemic competition he was facing.

This idea actually build on my last hot trend for 2009, Risk Aversion.

When you can't trust anyone else with your money, the one thing you can invest in, with certainty, is yourself.

When people get laid off, they have a choice.  They can either sit on the couch and wait for a job to come along (they'll be waiting a LONG time), or they can invest in themselves and their own personal brand and create opportunities for themselves.

Simply because of the fact that many very bright people are being laid off right now, and will continue to be laid off throughout 2009, I believe we'll see an uptick in people investing in themselves.  This can take several forms:

• Self-education, which is free for the most part, resulting from more reading and personal investigation.  Included in this category are laid-off software developers contributing to open-source efforts, etc.
• Back to school.  I can see junior college enrollment going way up as people go back to school to learn a new trade or career.  (Conversely I can see 4-year college enrollment tanking as they are spectacularly overpriced right now, and there are a ton of recent graduates with $100k+ student loans crying in their beers)
• Entrepreneurship:  when you know how to do something well, there's no better investment than selling your skills directly.
• Starting Web sites:  starting a Web site like a blog or a niche informational site is a great way for people to expand their network and their brand.  But it does requires a SIGNIFICANT amount of time, time which most people aren't willing to invest in normal circumstances.

Personally I think this is a great thing.  Forcing people out of their comfort zones may not be the most pleasant thing for those people, but there's a big opportunity here for people to grow and actually come out of 2009 in a better position than they came in.

Also, I'm looking forward to a more educated populace; hopefully it won't put up with all the BS being sprayed across the country from Washington

A post by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch today really got me riled up:  The SEC has shut down Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending site.  This was up in the air until yesterday:

Yesterday, the SEC issued its formal cease-and-desist letter (embedded below or download PDF), outlining its reasoning for characterizing Prosper as a seller of investment, something prosper had vigorously resisted in the past by arguing that it was merely a marketplace matching lenders and borrowers. But the SEC is having none of that.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this is an exact rerun of what happened with the original Napster and the music industry, only worse in my opinion.

The key here is that Prosper itself was not lending or borrowing, it was simply matching up willing borrowers and willing borrowers.  It also provided additional services such as collection and tracking.  The HORROR.

The real fact is, if private citizens were allowed to freely lend to one another, the private banking cartel that is our central banking system would lose the little control they have over the economy.  The free  market would freely set interest rates and people and businesses would be free to do an end-run around our corrupt and bloated financial system.  The financial engineering that has allowed Wall Street to siphon off trillions of dollars in profit at our expense would be crippled.  The SEC is simply acting as the enforcement arm of our private national banking cartel.

Don't fall under the protection of the cartel?  Goodnight, chump.

Over the past several weeks the financial markets have undergone a tremendous amount of stress. What you are witnessing is the result of common sense being thrown out the window.

The abomination of legislation which has resulted from this mess includes, among other horrible things, permission for Hank Paulson to unilaterally spend your money without permission from ANYONE and with complete protection from any court or legislative body:

Sec. 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Welcome to the USSA.

Obama finally won the primary and can now start down the road to becoming our next president.  It's in the bag at this point.  McCain is a dishonest man who looks like a dead chipmunk, and he's also a Republican.  This one looks like as automatic as they come.

I'm still leery of Obama, but I'm holding out a sliver of hope that he's actually different.  We should know within the next 12 months.  I'm not happy at all that he'll most likely raise the capital gains tax--I worked more twenty hour days earning my money than I care to remember, and nobody has a right to take that from me without my permission--but if he actually reverses the unconstitutional acts that Bush put in place while in office it will be a price worth paying.

I just hope he understands the gravity of our national debt situation, because it's directly tied to the dollar and ramping commodity prices, and if it's not addressed--SOON--citizens will be out in the street with pitchforks calling for somebody's head.

I also hope that he has more sense than to pick Hitlery as his VP lest he find himself in Robert Kennedy's situation.  The ego on that woman boggles the mind.

Just hours after I had written letters to my Congressmen about the Bear Stearns bailout, I read Karl Denninger's post regarding the same.  Karl is one of the people whose opinion, knowledge, and insight I truly value, and when he speaks I listen closely.

He had this to say:

"It is widely reported that both Hank Paulson and George Bush personally "signed off on" The Bear Stearns "bailout" last Sunday. As such their direct and indirect actions, in my view, constitute a "High Crime and Misdemeanor" within the meaning of the United States Constitution and therefore subject George W. Bush to impeachment proceedings as proposed in the above sample article for same."

I know there are many people who believe that Bush should be impeached for many other reasons, but I don't care to comment on those here.  What I will say is the Bear Stearns bailout happened here and now, and it certainly seems to be a blatant and outright violation of the trust of the American people.

Karl links to John Hussman who writes in no uncertain terms:

"The Fed did not act to save a bank, but to enrich one. Congress has the power to appropriate resources for such a deal by the representative will of the people – the Fed does not, even under Depression era banking laws."

I agree with both of these men.  What has happened, folks, is that the Federal Reserve, the private company that has only the mandate of maintaining price and currency stability, has unlawfully promised $30 billion of OUR money to the JP Morgan Chase company.

This is NOT lawful, this was NOT warranted, and the Federal Reserve was under NO circumstances authorized to do this.  The only end result that you or I will see because of this is that the price of gas, bread, and mortgages will go up further.  JP Morgan Chase has essentially been guaranteed $30 billion of our collective tax dollars.  It is our elected representative's duty and obligation to act on our behalf and take whatever actions necessary to punish those responsible for breaking the law, and I hope that you will join me in letting them know that the kind of unlawful actions we have seen in EXTREMELY recent history are unacceptable and WILL NOT be tolerated.

Karl has started a new petition to impeach George Bush as a result of his recent actions to enrich JP Morgan Chase at our expense.  I urge you to put your John Hancock to it as a responsible citizen of our country.  The proof is there in black and white, our elected representatives have betrayed us in a very fundamental and unmistakable way.  It is incumbent upon us to act.  If you have the time I would urge you to write your Congressional representatives on your own as well.  Your personal financial future may depend on it.

We are in dark times here folks, I hope and pray that our country can emerge from this crisis with some semblance of honor and integrity intact.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this Ron Paul phenomenon is just amazing.  And I'm not saying that because I'm a supporter, but this guy has literally picked up so many passionate supporters that they're moving financial markets now.  The Internet is no longer just an ancillary information channel in 2008--it is THE information channel.

Background:  FOX News is sponsoring a debate between Republican candidates on January 6th.  Problem is, they're excluding the candidate who raised the most money in the 4th quarter--Ron Paul.  In response, his supporters coordinated a one day sell-off of News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) stock today.  And it has already dropped the stock price by almost 3%.

I've never heard of this type of ingenuity in stuffing a candidate down the Old Media's throat.  After shattering all kinds of fundraising records, Paul's supporters are now literally sucking the lifeblood out of FOX because it pissed them off so much.  I'm sure FOX is now paying attention.

It will be interesting to see other news outlets' take on this.  Paul's supporters are singlehandedly ripping the "Fair and Balanced" label off of the network and at the same time depantsing it in the financial markets.