People are sad because they are lonely. I will use post secret as an example. Don’t you think it’s just a little sad and pathetic that so many people have to write down their secrets on a postcard and send them in anonymously because there is not a single person in their lives they feel comfortable confiding in? Most of which contain people who reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings to complete strangers likely because no one in real life pays attention to them. No one sees anything wrong with this?
In this day an age, it’s hard to admit you’re lonely. After all, we’re surrounded by an endlessly vast amount of people on a daily basis. We have co-workers, extended families, ect.... Sometimes we have children, foolishly hoping that a small baby will fulfill our need for companionship. When none of that works, we buy a dog. If, at the end of the day, nothing fills the void, we say to ourselves, “I have it all, so why I am a still unhappy? I have no right to be unhappy.The issue isn’t the amount of people in our lives, though. We has lost the ability to meaningfully connect with other people.The very day we became obsessed with the self esteem of our children is the first day shit started going downhill. We told our children they were unique and special and perfect. We insisted that the world would one day find them beautiful and smart and glib. We told them their individuality was their greatest asset and refused to criticize them even when it was sorely needed.The end result? A generation of children who are endlessly fascinated with themselves who can’t, for the life of them, understand why the rest of the world isn’t as enamored by their utterly uniquely genius minds as they are. So many people are infatuated with themselves, sometimes to the point of delusion. With so much of their love and energy devoted inward, how can we expect them to feel love for another?
I had a date recently...she was babbling about something ridiculous and no matter how many times I tried to change the subject, she kept referring back to our original discussion. Finally, I gave up and for two solid hours, my only reply to her was, “Mmhm.”SHE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE. She happily chattered on for 2 straight hours, absolutely oblivious to the fact that I had quit listening to her. I was amazed.In reality, it takes two people to have a meaningful, enjoyable conversation. How can we expect to connect to people on a deeper level if we consistently fail to engage our conversational partners?Much like most problems in life, the solution to our loneliness is simple:If you want people to care about you, you should care about them.If you lack the ability to do that, then grab your prescription for prozac
Friday, October 3, 2014
ARTICLE: Revisiting the Lehman Brothers Bailout That Never Was By JAMES B. STEWART and PETER EAVIS
Inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, time was running out to answer a question that would change Wall Street forever.
At issue that September, six years ago, was whether the Fed could save a major investment bank whose failure might threaten the entire economy.
The firm was Lehman Brothers. And the answer for some inside the Fed was yes, the government could bail out Lehman, according to new accounts by Fed officials who were there at the time.
But as the world now knows, no one rescued Lehman. Instead, the firm was allowed to collapse overnight, a decision that, in cool hindsight, let problems at one bank snowball into a full-blown panic. By the time it was over, nearly every other major bank had to be saved.
Why, given all that happened, was Lehman the only bank that was not too big to fail? For the first time, Fed officials have offered an account that differs significantly from the versions that, for many, have hardened into history.
Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman at the time, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury Secretary, and Timothy F. Geithner, who was then president of the New York Fed, have all argued that Lehman Brothers was in such a deep hole from its risky real estate investments that Fed did not have the legal authority to rescue it.
Photo
Richard S. Fuld Jr., center, chief of Lehman Brothers, was heckled by protesters after testifying to Congress in October 2008 about the collapse. CreditSusan Walsh/Associated Press
But now, interviews with current and former Fed officials show that a group inside New York Fed was leaning toward the opposite conclusion — that Lehman was narrowly solvent and therefore might qualify for a bailout. In the frenetic events of what has become known as the Lehman weekend, that preliminary analysis never reached senior officials before they decided to let Lehman fail.
Understanding why Lehman was allowed to die goes beyond apportioning responsibility for the financial crisis and the recession that cost millions of ordinary Americans jobs and savings. Today, long after the bailouts, the debate rages over the Fed’s authority to bail out failing firms. Some Fed officials worry that when the next financial crisis comes, the Fed will have less power to shield the financial system from the failure of a single large bank. After the Lehman debacle, Congress curbed the Fed’s ability to rescue a bank in trouble.
Whether to save Lehman came down to a crucial question: Did Lehman have enough solid assets to back a loan from the Fed? Finding the answer fell to two teams of financial experts at the New York Fed. Those teams had provisionally concluded that Lehman might, in fact, be a candidate for rescue, but members of those teams said they never briefed Mr. Geithner, who said he did not know of the results.
“My colleagues at the New York Fed were careful and creative, and as demonstrated through the crisis that fall, we were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to try to protect the economy from the unfolding financial disaster,” Mr. Geithner said Monday in a statement to The New York Times. “We explored all available alternatives to avoid a collapse of Lehman, but the size of its losses were so great that they were unable to attract a buyer, and we were unable to lend on a scale that would save them.”
Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson said in recent interviews with The Times that they did not know about the Fed analysis or its conclusions.
Interviews with half a dozen Fed officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named, so as not to breach the Fed’s unofficial vow of silence, suggest some Fed insiders believed that the government had the authority to throw Lehman Brothers a lifeline, even if the bank was nearly broke. The Fed earlier came to the rescue of Bear Stearns, after doing little analysis, and only days later saved the American International Group. The government subsequently saved the likes of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Ultimately, whether Lehman should have gotten Fed support was a judgment call, not a matter of strict statute, these people said.
“We had lawyers joined at our hips,” said one participant. “And they were very helpful at framing the issues. But they never said we couldn’t do it.”
As another participant put it, “It was a policy and political decision, not a legal decision.”
A Wall Street Watershed
The account from the New York Fed officials provides new insight into a dangerous moment in Wall Street history. Countless financial figures — from Wall Street chiefs to government policy makers — have said that allowing Lehman to die the way it did was a misjudgment that inflicted unnecessary pain.
“There is close to universal agreement that the demise of Lehman Brothers was the watershed event of the entire financial crisis and that the decision to allow it to fail was the watershed decision,” Alan S. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Fed, wrote in his history of the financial crisis, “After the Music Stopped.”
“The Fed has explained the decision as a legal issue,” Mr. Blinder said in an interview. “But is that true or valid? Is it enough? Those are important questions.”
Photo
“I will maintain to my deathbed that we made every effort to save Lehman, but we were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority,” said Ben S. Bernanke, in an interview with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Nov. 17, 2009.CreditShawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
Whether the Fed should have tried to save Lehman is still a subject of heated debate. And it is unclear whether the firm could have been rescued at all.
What happened that September was the culmination of circumstances reaching back years — of ordinary people too eager to borrow, of banks too eager to lend and of Wall Street financial engineers reaping multimillion-dollar bonuses. Even so, saving Lehman from complete collapse might have shielded the economy from what turned out to be a crippling blow. And as the subsequent rescue of A.I.G., the insurance giant, demonstrated, a rescue could have included substantial protections for taxpayers.
Back in 2008, the Fed possessed broad authority to lend to banks in trouble. Section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act provided that “in unusual and exigent circumstances” the Fed could lend to any institution, as long as the loan was “secured to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve Bank.” In the eyes of the Fed, that means a firm must be solvent and have adequate collateral to lend against, and making that determination was the responsibility of the New York Fed, the regional Fed bank that had begun to assume responsibility for Lehman. On that September weekend, teams from the New York Fed were told to assess Lehman’s solvency and collateral.
Whether and how much the Fed could lend Lehman depended on those teams’ findings, although the final decision rested with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board.
A Question of Valuation
In recent interviews, members of the teams said that Lehman had considerable assets that were liquid and easy to value, like United States Treasury securities. The question was Lehman’s illiquid assets — primarily a real estate portfolio that Lehman had recently valued at $50 billion. By Lehman’s account, the firm had a surplus of assets over liabilities of $28.4 billion.
Photo
“Let me also say, for the record, strongly: There was no authority, there was no law that would have let us save Lehman Brothers,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr., at the House Committee on Financial Services on Nov. 18, 2008. CreditAlex Wong/Getty Images
Others had already taken a stab at valuing Lehman’s troubled assets. Kenneth D. Lewis, then the chief executive of Bank of America — who, with the government’s encouragement, was considering a bid for Lehman — asserted that Lehman had a “$66 billion hole” in its balance sheet.
A group of bankers summoned to the Fed by Mr. Paulson, who was hoping they would mount a private rescue, did not accept Lehman’s $50 billion valuation for its real estate and could not decide whether Lehman was solvent. But potential private rescuers had a motive to lowball Lehman’s value. Fed officials involved in the valuation stressed that the Fed could hold distressed assets for much longer than private parties, allowing time for those assets to recover in value. Also, because the Fed sets monetary policy, it exerts enormous influence over the assets’ ultimate value.
“There can’t be any reasonable doubt that had the Fed rescued Lehman, that very act would have pushed up the value of its assets,” Mr. Blinder said.
While the Fed team did not come up with a precise value for Lehman’s illiquid assets, it provided a range that was far more generous in its valuations than the private sector had been.
“It was close,” a member of the Fed team that evaluated the collateral said. “Folks were aware of how ambiguous these values are, especially at a time of crisis. So it becomes a policy question: Do you want to take a chance or not?”
Argument continues today over the value of Lehman’s assets. A report compiled by Anton R. Valukas, a Chicago lawyer, at the behest of the bankruptcy court overseeing Lehman concluded in 2010 that nearly all of the firm’s real estate valuations were reasonable. It also suggested that Lehman’s chaotic bankruptcy caused many of the losses later borne by the firm’s creditors. Other analysts have argued that Lehman was deeply insolvent.
Photo
“We didn’t believe we had the legal authority to guarantee Lehman’s trading liabilities, even using our ‘unusual and exigent’ powers,” said Timothy F. Geithner, in “Stress Test,” his 2014 book on the financial crisis. CreditKevin Lamarque/ReutersContinue reading the main story
Ultimately, the appraisals of the New York Fed teams did not matter. Their preliminary finding was that Lehman was solvent and that what it faced was essentially a bank run, according to members of the group. Researchers working on the value of Lehman’s collateral said they thought they would be delivering those findings to Mr. Geithner that September weekend.
But Mr. Geithner had already been diverted to A.I.G., which was facing its own crisis. In the end, the team members said, they delivered their findings orally to other New York Fed officials, including Michael F. Silva, Mr. Geithner’s chief of staff.
On Sunday, Mr. Bernanke was in Washington awaiting the New York Fed’s verdict. In a phone call, Mr. Geithner said Lehman could not be saved.
The Fed would be lending into a run, Mr. Geithner told Mr. Bernanke, according to both men’s accounts. In a recent interview, Mr. Bernanke said, “Knowing the potential consequences of Lehman’s failure, I was 100 percent committed to doing whatever could possibly and legally be done to save the company, as were Tim and Hank.” Mr. Paulson has concurred, saying, “Although it was Ben and Tim’s decision to make, I shared their view that Lehman was insolvent, and I know the marketplace did.”
Those at the Fed who have contended that Lehman was insolvent have never provided any basis for that conclusion, other than references to the estimates of Wall Street firms and other anecdotal evidence. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission asked for such evidence several times, but the Fed never provided it. The members of the New York Fed teams said that they did not prepare a formal, written report, and that no one asked them for any notes or work papers or asked them to elaborate on their findings. Scott G. Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, told the commission that there was “no time” that weekend for a written analysis.
‘A Lack of Legal Authority’
Phil Angelides, the crisis commission’s chairman, said no one ever mentioned the New York Fed analysis during his hearings. “If in fact the analysis existed and was independent, it would have been in everyone’s interest to have that out, even if it were in the form of notes,” Mr. Angelides said in an interview. He added, “If you look at the record, there is no legal stopper,” meaning a legal barrier.
So why, then, was Lehman allowed to die?
Mr. Paulson has said that politics did not enter into the decision. But he had endured months of criticism for bailing out Bear Stearns in March 2008, and the outcry only intensified after the Treasury provided support to the mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the first week of September. During a conference call on the Thursday before Lehman’s collapse, Mr. Paulson declared to Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Geithner and other regulators that he would not use public money to rescue Lehman, saying he did not want to be known as “Mr. Bailout.”
In written testimony before Congress that September, Mr. Bernanke made no mention of any legal constraint. Instead, he said, “We judged that investors and counterparties had had time to take precautionary measures.”
It was only on Oct. 7, after early praise for the decision to let Lehman fail had turned into a wave of criticism, that anyone mentioned the legal argument. In a speech that day, Mr. Bernanke said, “Neither the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve had the authority to commit public money in that way.” Mr. Paulson first mentioned the claim a week later. In an interview, Mr. Bernanke said, “We made a deliberative decision to be very cautious about publicizing our inability to save Lehman out of concern that it would further worsen the market panic.” Mr. Paulson made the same point. Mr. Bernanke was emphatic before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2009: “I will maintain to my deathbed that we made every effort to save Lehman, but we were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority.”
Mr. Bernanke and others have said that a Fed lifeline to Lehman might not have stopped the run on the firm. But others have said the point of Rule 13-3 was exactly that — to stop such panics.
“Of course the Fed can stop a run,” said Mr. Blinder, the economist. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Scholars are still struggling with the claim that the Fed could not rescue Lehman but was nonetheless able to save Bear Stearns and A.I.G.
What is clear to Mr. Blinder, he says, is that the decision was a formula for panic.
“The inconsistency was the biggest problem,” Mr. Blinder said. “The Lehman decision abruptly and surprisingly tore the perceived rule book into pieces and tossed it out the window.”
At issue that September, six years ago, was whether the Fed could save a major investment bank whose failure might threaten the entire economy.
The firm was Lehman Brothers. And the answer for some inside the Fed was yes, the government could bail out Lehman, according to new accounts by Fed officials who were there at the time.
But as the world now knows, no one rescued Lehman. Instead, the firm was allowed to collapse overnight, a decision that, in cool hindsight, let problems at one bank snowball into a full-blown panic. By the time it was over, nearly every other major bank had to be saved.
Why, given all that happened, was Lehman the only bank that was not too big to fail? For the first time, Fed officials have offered an account that differs significantly from the versions that, for many, have hardened into history.
Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman at the time, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury Secretary, and Timothy F. Geithner, who was then president of the New York Fed, have all argued that Lehman Brothers was in such a deep hole from its risky real estate investments that Fed did not have the legal authority to rescue it.
Photo
Richard S. Fuld Jr., center, chief of Lehman Brothers, was heckled by protesters after testifying to Congress in October 2008 about the collapse. CreditSusan Walsh/Associated Press
But now, interviews with current and former Fed officials show that a group inside New York Fed was leaning toward the opposite conclusion — that Lehman was narrowly solvent and therefore might qualify for a bailout. In the frenetic events of what has become known as the Lehman weekend, that preliminary analysis never reached senior officials before they decided to let Lehman fail.
Understanding why Lehman was allowed to die goes beyond apportioning responsibility for the financial crisis and the recession that cost millions of ordinary Americans jobs and savings. Today, long after the bailouts, the debate rages over the Fed’s authority to bail out failing firms. Some Fed officials worry that when the next financial crisis comes, the Fed will have less power to shield the financial system from the failure of a single large bank. After the Lehman debacle, Congress curbed the Fed’s ability to rescue a bank in trouble.
Whether to save Lehman came down to a crucial question: Did Lehman have enough solid assets to back a loan from the Fed? Finding the answer fell to two teams of financial experts at the New York Fed. Those teams had provisionally concluded that Lehman might, in fact, be a candidate for rescue, but members of those teams said they never briefed Mr. Geithner, who said he did not know of the results.
“My colleagues at the New York Fed were careful and creative, and as demonstrated through the crisis that fall, we were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to try to protect the economy from the unfolding financial disaster,” Mr. Geithner said Monday in a statement to The New York Times. “We explored all available alternatives to avoid a collapse of Lehman, but the size of its losses were so great that they were unable to attract a buyer, and we were unable to lend on a scale that would save them.”
Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson said in recent interviews with The Times that they did not know about the Fed analysis or its conclusions.
Interviews with half a dozen Fed officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named, so as not to breach the Fed’s unofficial vow of silence, suggest some Fed insiders believed that the government had the authority to throw Lehman Brothers a lifeline, even if the bank was nearly broke. The Fed earlier came to the rescue of Bear Stearns, after doing little analysis, and only days later saved the American International Group. The government subsequently saved the likes of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Ultimately, whether Lehman should have gotten Fed support was a judgment call, not a matter of strict statute, these people said.
“We had lawyers joined at our hips,” said one participant. “And they were very helpful at framing the issues. But they never said we couldn’t do it.”
As another participant put it, “It was a policy and political decision, not a legal decision.”
A Wall Street Watershed
The account from the New York Fed officials provides new insight into a dangerous moment in Wall Street history. Countless financial figures — from Wall Street chiefs to government policy makers — have said that allowing Lehman to die the way it did was a misjudgment that inflicted unnecessary pain.
“There is close to universal agreement that the demise of Lehman Brothers was the watershed event of the entire financial crisis and that the decision to allow it to fail was the watershed decision,” Alan S. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Fed, wrote in his history of the financial crisis, “After the Music Stopped.”
“The Fed has explained the decision as a legal issue,” Mr. Blinder said in an interview. “But is that true or valid? Is it enough? Those are important questions.”
Photo
“I will maintain to my deathbed that we made every effort to save Lehman, but we were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority,” said Ben S. Bernanke, in an interview with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Nov. 17, 2009.CreditShawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
Whether the Fed should have tried to save Lehman is still a subject of heated debate. And it is unclear whether the firm could have been rescued at all.
What happened that September was the culmination of circumstances reaching back years — of ordinary people too eager to borrow, of banks too eager to lend and of Wall Street financial engineers reaping multimillion-dollar bonuses. Even so, saving Lehman from complete collapse might have shielded the economy from what turned out to be a crippling blow. And as the subsequent rescue of A.I.G., the insurance giant, demonstrated, a rescue could have included substantial protections for taxpayers.
Back in 2008, the Fed possessed broad authority to lend to banks in trouble. Section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act provided that “in unusual and exigent circumstances” the Fed could lend to any institution, as long as the loan was “secured to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve Bank.” In the eyes of the Fed, that means a firm must be solvent and have adequate collateral to lend against, and making that determination was the responsibility of the New York Fed, the regional Fed bank that had begun to assume responsibility for Lehman. On that September weekend, teams from the New York Fed were told to assess Lehman’s solvency and collateral.
Whether and how much the Fed could lend Lehman depended on those teams’ findings, although the final decision rested with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board.
A Question of Valuation
In recent interviews, members of the teams said that Lehman had considerable assets that were liquid and easy to value, like United States Treasury securities. The question was Lehman’s illiquid assets — primarily a real estate portfolio that Lehman had recently valued at $50 billion. By Lehman’s account, the firm had a surplus of assets over liabilities of $28.4 billion.
Photo
“Let me also say, for the record, strongly: There was no authority, there was no law that would have let us save Lehman Brothers,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr., at the House Committee on Financial Services on Nov. 18, 2008. CreditAlex Wong/Getty Images
Others had already taken a stab at valuing Lehman’s troubled assets. Kenneth D. Lewis, then the chief executive of Bank of America — who, with the government’s encouragement, was considering a bid for Lehman — asserted that Lehman had a “$66 billion hole” in its balance sheet.
A group of bankers summoned to the Fed by Mr. Paulson, who was hoping they would mount a private rescue, did not accept Lehman’s $50 billion valuation for its real estate and could not decide whether Lehman was solvent. But potential private rescuers had a motive to lowball Lehman’s value. Fed officials involved in the valuation stressed that the Fed could hold distressed assets for much longer than private parties, allowing time for those assets to recover in value. Also, because the Fed sets monetary policy, it exerts enormous influence over the assets’ ultimate value.
“There can’t be any reasonable doubt that had the Fed rescued Lehman, that very act would have pushed up the value of its assets,” Mr. Blinder said.
While the Fed team did not come up with a precise value for Lehman’s illiquid assets, it provided a range that was far more generous in its valuations than the private sector had been.
“It was close,” a member of the Fed team that evaluated the collateral said. “Folks were aware of how ambiguous these values are, especially at a time of crisis. So it becomes a policy question: Do you want to take a chance or not?”
Argument continues today over the value of Lehman’s assets. A report compiled by Anton R. Valukas, a Chicago lawyer, at the behest of the bankruptcy court overseeing Lehman concluded in 2010 that nearly all of the firm’s real estate valuations were reasonable. It also suggested that Lehman’s chaotic bankruptcy caused many of the losses later borne by the firm’s creditors. Other analysts have argued that Lehman was deeply insolvent.
Photo
“We didn’t believe we had the legal authority to guarantee Lehman’s trading liabilities, even using our ‘unusual and exigent’ powers,” said Timothy F. Geithner, in “Stress Test,” his 2014 book on the financial crisis. CreditKevin Lamarque/ReutersContinue reading the main story
Ultimately, the appraisals of the New York Fed teams did not matter. Their preliminary finding was that Lehman was solvent and that what it faced was essentially a bank run, according to members of the group. Researchers working on the value of Lehman’s collateral said they thought they would be delivering those findings to Mr. Geithner that September weekend.
But Mr. Geithner had already been diverted to A.I.G., which was facing its own crisis. In the end, the team members said, they delivered their findings orally to other New York Fed officials, including Michael F. Silva, Mr. Geithner’s chief of staff.
On Sunday, Mr. Bernanke was in Washington awaiting the New York Fed’s verdict. In a phone call, Mr. Geithner said Lehman could not be saved.
The Fed would be lending into a run, Mr. Geithner told Mr. Bernanke, according to both men’s accounts. In a recent interview, Mr. Bernanke said, “Knowing the potential consequences of Lehman’s failure, I was 100 percent committed to doing whatever could possibly and legally be done to save the company, as were Tim and Hank.” Mr. Paulson has concurred, saying, “Although it was Ben and Tim’s decision to make, I shared their view that Lehman was insolvent, and I know the marketplace did.”
Those at the Fed who have contended that Lehman was insolvent have never provided any basis for that conclusion, other than references to the estimates of Wall Street firms and other anecdotal evidence. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission asked for such evidence several times, but the Fed never provided it. The members of the New York Fed teams said that they did not prepare a formal, written report, and that no one asked them for any notes or work papers or asked them to elaborate on their findings. Scott G. Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, told the commission that there was “no time” that weekend for a written analysis.
‘A Lack of Legal Authority’
Phil Angelides, the crisis commission’s chairman, said no one ever mentioned the New York Fed analysis during his hearings. “If in fact the analysis existed and was independent, it would have been in everyone’s interest to have that out, even if it were in the form of notes,” Mr. Angelides said in an interview. He added, “If you look at the record, there is no legal stopper,” meaning a legal barrier.
So why, then, was Lehman allowed to die?
Mr. Paulson has said that politics did not enter into the decision. But he had endured months of criticism for bailing out Bear Stearns in March 2008, and the outcry only intensified after the Treasury provided support to the mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the first week of September. During a conference call on the Thursday before Lehman’s collapse, Mr. Paulson declared to Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Geithner and other regulators that he would not use public money to rescue Lehman, saying he did not want to be known as “Mr. Bailout.”
In written testimony before Congress that September, Mr. Bernanke made no mention of any legal constraint. Instead, he said, “We judged that investors and counterparties had had time to take precautionary measures.”
It was only on Oct. 7, after early praise for the decision to let Lehman fail had turned into a wave of criticism, that anyone mentioned the legal argument. In a speech that day, Mr. Bernanke said, “Neither the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve had the authority to commit public money in that way.” Mr. Paulson first mentioned the claim a week later. In an interview, Mr. Bernanke said, “We made a deliberative decision to be very cautious about publicizing our inability to save Lehman out of concern that it would further worsen the market panic.” Mr. Paulson made the same point. Mr. Bernanke was emphatic before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2009: “I will maintain to my deathbed that we made every effort to save Lehman, but we were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority.”
Mr. Bernanke and others have said that a Fed lifeline to Lehman might not have stopped the run on the firm. But others have said the point of Rule 13-3 was exactly that — to stop such panics.
“Of course the Fed can stop a run,” said Mr. Blinder, the economist. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Scholars are still struggling with the claim that the Fed could not rescue Lehman but was nonetheless able to save Bear Stearns and A.I.G.
What is clear to Mr. Blinder, he says, is that the decision was a formula for panic.
“The inconsistency was the biggest problem,” Mr. Blinder said. “The Lehman decision abruptly and surprisingly tore the perceived rule book into pieces and tossed it out the window.”
Sunday, September 28, 2014
ARTICLE: Secret recordings expose lax Wall Street oversight by feds By Kevin Dugan and Rich Calder
A former examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has dropped a major bomb on Wall Street by releasing 46 hours of secretly recorded audio that shows how the supposed government watchdog is nothing more than a lap dog for Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions it is tasked with regulating.
The 2011-2012 recordings by Carmen Segarra — released with her consent Friday through WBEZ’s “This American Life” and investigative-journalism nonprofit ProPublica — raise serious allegations that some of Segarra’s then-supervisors regularly looked the other way regarding issues their workers raised with banking practices.
For instance, one regulator, after a meeting with Goldman honchos, is heard saying, “I don’t want to hit them on the bat with the head [sic].” In a separate meeting, Segarra is told by a supervisor that consumer laws don’t apply to their wealthiest clients.
“The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived,” Michael Lewis, best-selling author of “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,” said after listening to the tapes.
Segarra, who was assigned to regulate Goldman, claims she was fired in May 2012 for not going soft on the financial giant. Now, her whistleblowing could spawn a congressional probe.
Upon learning of the tapes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, called for an investigation into whether the New York Fed has been too soft on the institutions it regulates.
“Congress must hold oversight hearings on the disturbing issues raised by today’s whistle-blower report when it returns in November, because it’s our job to make sure our financial regulators are doing their jobs,” Warren said.
The Segarra tapes are probably most damning for her ex boss, senior regulator Michael Silva. Silva had set up a meeting to grill Goldman about a $40 million deal it set up with Banco Santander, in which Goldman would buy some of their assets to make the Spanish bank’s capital rations look better for regulators.
In one recording, Silva boasts that he’s going to grill Goldman executives about why the banks didn’t seek his institution’s approval on a deal he called “legal, but shady.” Yet during a lengthy call with Goldman, Silva makes only a passing reference to the issue.
Segarra is heard on another tape paraphrasing comments made to her by Silva, saying, “Credibility at the Fed is about subtleties and about perceptions, as opposed to reality.” She was speaking to another company honcho, who agreed with what she said.
Segarra sued The Fed, Silva and other honchos last year, alleging she was fired after refusing to change certain Goldman findings.
Manhattan federal Judge Ronnie Abrams tossed the whistleblower suit in April, ruling Segarra failed to link her disclosures of Goldman’s alleged violations with her dismissal. Segarra is appealing.
The New York Fed has denied the allegations.
We always pretty much knew that our banking regulators were captured by the industry they regulate, and now we apparently have proof.
"The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived," famous author and finance-explainer Michael Lewis declared on Friday morning. He was referring to a new report from ProPublica and This American Life about Carmen Segarra, a former New York Federal Reserve bank examiner who claims she was fired in 2012, after seven months on the job, for examining Goldman Sachs a little too aggressively.
It seems a safe bet, though, that this story won't have quite the same impact as the video of Ray Rice punching his wife unconscious in an elevator. And it may strike some as terrifically tone-deaf to compare the inner workings of banking to the horror of domestic violence. Still, Lewis's overall point holds: Here is the material proof of something we knew was happening all along.
Based on nearly 48 hours of secretly taped conversations among Fed officials and Goldman Sachs, the reports make a strong case that bank regulators are terrified of offending the banks they're regulating, exposing what Lewis calls their "breathtaking wussiness." This suggests that, despite the worst financial crisis since at least the Great Depression and financial reform that was supposed to put Wall Street on a shorter leash, regulators still bow to banks as much as they always have. That makes a future crisis seem even more likely, with banks still able to persuade regulators that they're not taking crazy risks.
The New York Fed, in a written response to ProPublica and This American Life, denied Segarra's accusations:
"The New York Fed categorically rejects the allegations being made about the integrity of its supervision of financial institutions," it wrote. It added that it would not comment further because it is still in court fighting a wrongful-termination suit by Segarra.
Goldman Sachs, in its own written response, fired a volley directly at Segarra, claiming she was mistaken about some key facts and cattily observing that she had applied for a job at Goldman three times before going to work for the New York Fed. Segarra told ProPublica she had actually applied at Goldman four times, but that she had also applied for jobs at a lot of other banks. Goldman Sachs spokesman David Wells did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The Huffington Post is still listening to the recordings and will update this story with more juicy details as we find them.
Still it's doubtful that the Segarra tapes will have anything near the impact of the Rice footage. The Rice video was not only far more visceral and easier to understand, but it touched a still-raw nerve in our national consciousness. Our feelings about Wall Street are a little cooler, the public image of banks has mostly been rehabilitated, and our concerns about bank regulation are minimal.
See you at the next crisis.
Update: Having listened to the recordings, or at least the ones curated by ProPublica and This American Life, we can confirm that they do indeed show New York Fed bank examiners being feckless and mush-mouthed and afraid when dealing with Goldman Sachs, at the very least.
There is no clear bombshell here -- just further evidence that not enough has changed in the cozy relationship between banks and regulators, and that the Fed should be far more transparent about that relationship.
The 2011-2012 recordings by Carmen Segarra — released with her consent Friday through WBEZ’s “This American Life” and investigative-journalism nonprofit ProPublica — raise serious allegations that some of Segarra’s then-supervisors regularly looked the other way regarding issues their workers raised with banking practices.
For instance, one regulator, after a meeting with Goldman honchos, is heard saying, “I don’t want to hit them on the bat with the head [sic].” In a separate meeting, Segarra is told by a supervisor that consumer laws don’t apply to their wealthiest clients.
“The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived,” Michael Lewis, best-selling author of “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,” said after listening to the tapes.
Segarra, who was assigned to regulate Goldman, claims she was fired in May 2012 for not going soft on the financial giant. Now, her whistleblowing could spawn a congressional probe.
Upon learning of the tapes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, called for an investigation into whether the New York Fed has been too soft on the institutions it regulates.
“Congress must hold oversight hearings on the disturbing issues raised by today’s whistle-blower report when it returns in November, because it’s our job to make sure our financial regulators are doing their jobs,” Warren said.
The Segarra tapes are probably most damning for her ex boss, senior regulator Michael Silva. Silva had set up a meeting to grill Goldman about a $40 million deal it set up with Banco Santander, in which Goldman would buy some of their assets to make the Spanish bank’s capital rations look better for regulators.
In one recording, Silva boasts that he’s going to grill Goldman executives about why the banks didn’t seek his institution’s approval on a deal he called “legal, but shady.” Yet during a lengthy call with Goldman, Silva makes only a passing reference to the issue.
Segarra is heard on another tape paraphrasing comments made to her by Silva, saying, “Credibility at the Fed is about subtleties and about perceptions, as opposed to reality.” She was speaking to another company honcho, who agreed with what she said.
Segarra sued The Fed, Silva and other honchos last year, alleging she was fired after refusing to change certain Goldman findings.
Manhattan federal Judge Ronnie Abrams tossed the whistleblower suit in April, ruling Segarra failed to link her disclosures of Goldman’s alleged violations with her dismissal. Segarra is appealing.
The New York Fed has denied the allegations.
We always pretty much knew that our banking regulators were captured by the industry they regulate, and now we apparently have proof.
"The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived," famous author and finance-explainer Michael Lewis declared on Friday morning. He was referring to a new report from ProPublica and This American Life about Carmen Segarra, a former New York Federal Reserve bank examiner who claims she was fired in 2012, after seven months on the job, for examining Goldman Sachs a little too aggressively.
It seems a safe bet, though, that this story won't have quite the same impact as the video of Ray Rice punching his wife unconscious in an elevator. And it may strike some as terrifically tone-deaf to compare the inner workings of banking to the horror of domestic violence. Still, Lewis's overall point holds: Here is the material proof of something we knew was happening all along.
Based on nearly 48 hours of secretly taped conversations among Fed officials and Goldman Sachs, the reports make a strong case that bank regulators are terrified of offending the banks they're regulating, exposing what Lewis calls their "breathtaking wussiness." This suggests that, despite the worst financial crisis since at least the Great Depression and financial reform that was supposed to put Wall Street on a shorter leash, regulators still bow to banks as much as they always have. That makes a future crisis seem even more likely, with banks still able to persuade regulators that they're not taking crazy risks.
The New York Fed, in a written response to ProPublica and This American Life, denied Segarra's accusations:
"The New York Fed categorically rejects the allegations being made about the integrity of its supervision of financial institutions," it wrote. It added that it would not comment further because it is still in court fighting a wrongful-termination suit by Segarra.
Goldman Sachs, in its own written response, fired a volley directly at Segarra, claiming she was mistaken about some key facts and cattily observing that she had applied for a job at Goldman three times before going to work for the New York Fed. Segarra told ProPublica she had actually applied at Goldman four times, but that she had also applied for jobs at a lot of other banks. Goldman Sachs spokesman David Wells did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The Huffington Post is still listening to the recordings and will update this story with more juicy details as we find them.
Still it's doubtful that the Segarra tapes will have anything near the impact of the Rice footage. The Rice video was not only far more visceral and easier to understand, but it touched a still-raw nerve in our national consciousness. Our feelings about Wall Street are a little cooler, the public image of banks has mostly been rehabilitated, and our concerns about bank regulation are minimal.
See you at the next crisis.
Update: Having listened to the recordings, or at least the ones curated by ProPublica and This American Life, we can confirm that they do indeed show New York Fed bank examiners being feckless and mush-mouthed and afraid when dealing with Goldman Sachs, at the very least.
There is no clear bombshell here -- just further evidence that not enough has changed in the cozy relationship between banks and regulators, and that the Fed should be far more transparent about that relationship.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
LOVE LETTER: WHEN YOU BECOME MINE
There is a moment I like to call “when she becomes yours.” How does another person become “yours”?
When you become mine there will be millions of inside jokes that only both of us will understand, and for some reason, these jokes never stop. Instead, they get funnier by each day, morphing into new ones.When you become mine...my day will starts and ends with you, not only by texting or talking on the phone, but simply the fact that I think of you when I go to bed, and when I wake up. When you become mine your silly faces are more attractive to you than any other supermodel’s professional picture. When you become mine...the thought of you calms me. When I lose faith in humanity, you are the “safety.” I think of you and remind myself that people like you still exist. When you are mine...even the good times that you share with friends are so much fun that I want you to be part of it, too, When you are mine...I realize that I like you for your imperfections, and that other girls’ imperfections, are just.. well, that is why I am not with them, and I am with you. Your imperfections are sexy, interesting, captivating and entertaining. When you become mine,
others look or seem less attractive to me, when your sneeze is annoying to others, but is cute to me, or the way you puts her feet under my legs to keep them warm when we’re cuddled up watching a movie on the couch.
When someone becomes yours, there are no problems or arguments; there are only discussions. There is no need to explain the love, you just feel it. When someone becomes yours, their worries, sadness and happiness all become yours.When someone is yours, the joy that comes with sharing the positive results of life becomes even more enigmatic.When someone becomes yours, there is no you and I; it’s us. We present ourselves to the world together. Dynamics change, and our love for each other grows. We don’t need to say anything; we understand. We don’t need to understand anything; we can just feel.When someone is yours, you are that someone’s; you can never feel lonely ever again.
Open your heart to me; open your mind to me. Let's embrace each other, and let the world unfold in front of us.
When you become mine there will be millions of inside jokes that only both of us will understand, and for some reason, these jokes never stop. Instead, they get funnier by each day, morphing into new ones.When you become mine...my day will starts and ends with you, not only by texting or talking on the phone, but simply the fact that I think of you when I go to bed, and when I wake up. When you become mine your silly faces are more attractive to you than any other supermodel’s professional picture. When you become mine...the thought of you calms me. When I lose faith in humanity, you are the “safety.” I think of you and remind myself that people like you still exist. When you are mine...even the good times that you share with friends are so much fun that I want you to be part of it, too, When you are mine...I realize that I like you for your imperfections, and that other girls’ imperfections, are just.. well, that is why I am not with them, and I am with you. Your imperfections are sexy, interesting, captivating and entertaining. When you become mine,
others look or seem less attractive to me, when your sneeze is annoying to others, but is cute to me, or the way you puts her feet under my legs to keep them warm when we’re cuddled up watching a movie on the couch.
When someone becomes yours, there are no problems or arguments; there are only discussions. There is no need to explain the love, you just feel it. When someone becomes yours, their worries, sadness and happiness all become yours.When someone is yours, the joy that comes with sharing the positive results of life becomes even more enigmatic.When someone becomes yours, there is no you and I; it’s us. We present ourselves to the world together. Dynamics change, and our love for each other grows. We don’t need to say anything; we understand. We don’t need to understand anything; we can just feel.When someone is yours, you are that someone’s; you can never feel lonely ever again.
Open your heart to me; open your mind to me. Let's embrace each other, and let the world unfold in front of us.
Monday, September 22, 2014
PERSONAL :DATING IS HORRIBLE
Sometimes I read these woman profile and i start hating her. I didn’t even know her, but I hated her. I hated everything she represented. I hated her long flowing hair. I hated that phony little smile of hers. I hated those flawless blue eyes – the dimples on her face. I hated the way her profile said she was looking for a “nice guy with a good sense of humor.” I sat there furiously staring at the screen on my computer, as the message, “ chosen to decline your instant message at this time” flashed in the background. But it wasn’t “at this time.” She just didn’t want to talk to me. Not now. Not ever. Screw her. Who the hell is she to deny me the chance for a date, the chance to show her what a great guy I am? How could she just ignore a perfectly nice, normal guy, which would treat her like nothing less than a princess? She’s probably talking to some jerk off loser that has no personality and would treat her like the scum of the earth. All she must care about is looks, looks, look.
The anger continued to build on this lonely night It was like nothing seemed to be going right in my love life. I was a lonely, insecure, emotional wreck, stressing more and more each day over finding a girl. Life isn’t anywhere near where I had expected it to be. Every day, week, and month that went by with no success was beginning to feel exponentially worse. It had been four years since my last serious relationship. At the time I figured I’d be okay. I’m a good guy, great sense of humor, always nice to women. I’m no model but I sure could be a lot worse off. Of course I’d find another great girl as soon as time ran its course. But days turned to weeks. A few more weeks I kept telling myself. Weeks turned to months. Don’t worry Joshua, you’ll find what you’re looking for. It takes time. Months turned to years. The excuses and self-denial began to set in. “I don’t want to be in a relationship at this point in my life.”
“I love hooking up with different girls and being single.” These lies were repeated so frequently that I almost started to believe them.But why couldn’t I get a girl anymore? The truth was, meeting a girl was no longer easy like it once was. During college I had all the opportunities in the world. Girls were everywhere and it was easy to at least meet somebody. As college ended and I transitioned into the real world, things were no longer the same. Sure there were bars and clubs post college life, but the girls that were willing to talk in these places weren’t exactly the bring home to mom type and all the good looking girls seemed to have their guard especially high up. If I had a dollar for every beautiful girl that told me at this point in my life, “I would never meet a guy in a bar,” I would have been a rich man.
Outstanding, flawless game is required to win over these types, something that I did not possess at the time. Unfortunately, the same went for meeting girls at coffee shops, museums, or any other social situation. It just wasn’t for me. I was always the, meet a woman through friends type of guy, which enabled me to win them over with my personality. But with the dwindling supply of girls to be set up with, this option was no longer available when I needed it.
My confidence was falling by the day. I felt helpless and completely frustrated. After long periods of building loneliness, and a desire to once again have a meaningful relationship with a woman, I turned to the only option I saw left – online dating. I pondered doing this for months but never pulled the trigger. I was too scared. But enough was enough. There was nowhere else to turn for someone in my hopeless state of mind. Sure this wasn’t how I dreamed of meeting my future girlfriend or wife. But life doesn’t always turn out the way you plan. Besides, online dating had come so far in the past few years and I’d heard a lot of great things about it. Whereas when online dating originally started out it was something to be embarrassed about, consisting mostly of weirdoes and desperate people, it has evolved into a common and mainstream way of meeting people. What the hell I figured. At the very least, I won’t be lonely. I’ll always have a date. So I tried a one-month subscription out. That’s when the ultimate devastation came upon me. After months of working up the courage to join an online dating site in order to avoid loneliness, something terrible and completely unexpected happened. After one month I could not get one single girl to go out with me! Not only couldn’t I get a girl to go out with me, I couldn’t even get a response! Ten emails written. No response. Twenty emails written. No Response. Fifty! Still no response! So I signed up for another month. Same thing. Another month. SAME THING! Curse life! Curse every girl in it. Here I am, sitting here on an online dating that I’m paying for to get me dates, and I can’t even get one damn girl to respond to me!
I’m a good guy for crying out loud! Don’t they read my profile? Don’t they realize I’d be good for them? Is my picture that bad? I felt cursed. Reduced to nothing. I slowly began to accept my fate: a lonely, pathetic, loser. There was nowhere left to turn. I had exhausted every option. If I couldn’t even get a girl to talk to me online, what else could I possibly do? Then one day, I came to a depressing, yet enlightening realization. There are tens of thousands of people on this site. Attractive girls like Susie487 were probably getting upwards of one hundred emails a day and possibly ten to twenty instant messages at a time every time they logged in! In real life not many people have the courage to approach Susie. But behind a computer screen is a different story. Us lonely guys were like locusts, hiding behind computer screens, pouncing on every beautiful girl we saw. Susie and all the pretty girls just like her weren’t terrible people. They weren’t phony or lying when they said looks don’t matter. Girls like her really were just looking for a nice guy with a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, they were being bombarded with so many messages it would be impossible to respond to even one/one hundredth of the guys that emailed them! The unfortunate truth that I began to realize is that online dating was ten times more competitive than real life. How could I possibly penetrate through all the other guys on this site
Part 2
When feeling TERROR standing next to a hot woman you are not thinking about how soft and warm her titties will feel or how good she fucking smells or how she shaves down there and 'you'd like to see it' - those thoughts are on two COMPLETELY different wavelengths. In other words, you do not have vibrational access to good-feeling fun yummy thought when you feel like shit and are feeling fear, anxiety, depression, unworthiness, ETC! Oil and water! They don't mix! You don't have vibrational access!!!
When I was learning from a sound engineer, he began demonstrating the various frequencies of sound waves. He started with a super low bass note. We could see the woofer moving in and out, producing the sound wave, but no one could physically HEAR the sound. As he cranked up the frequency, ahhh, there it was. A low pitched growl. NOW we could hear physically HEAR (vibrationally interpret) the sound wave because it came within range of the human ear. He continued to do this, the pitch got higher and higher (BEEEEEEEEEEP) until it began sounding like a mosquito radio, or a dog whistle. You know, that high-pitched ridiculously annoying squeal. Some dude to my right goes, “Where'd the sound go? I don't hear it!” I'm like “How can you NOT hear that? It's so fucking loud and annoying!” The teacher said he couldn't hear it either. Others in the room could, others couldn't. He then cranked it up even higher. Suddenly, the high pitched squeal became PERFECT silence. But, visibly you could still see the sound water pulsating, sending out sound waves. But our physical human ears could not hear the high pitched frequency anymore – it was now out of vibrational range. In other words, we lost vibrational access to it. The sound wave disappeared or anything, it still exists somewhere in reality, but we are no longer able to vibrationally interpret it, in other words, to HEAR it. Can you guess where this is going? Your Higher Self *IS* a reality!!! You just can't see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, smell it, BECOME IT because you are our of vibrational harmony with it. Oil and water.
Whereas before in that lower frequency state of fear, anxiety, or depression you would see a hot girl and only be able to think of thought or actions/behaviors along the lines of some bullshit idea. “Fuck I'm gonna be nervous or tense, I'm going to do THIS weird tick or THAT one.. she isn't gonna like me.. I'll run out of things to say...” etc. But NOW by being in that higher mode of being and gaining NEW VIBRATIONAL ACCESS to these higher fluffier lighter feeling thought forms(thoughts are held together by the Law Of Attraction too, they're physical things!), you see that dime and you think, “Fuuuuckkkk. Just LOOK at those soft legs and that short mini-skirt. I can see her hot ass hanging out. I wonder if she has panties on... Holy shit this girl must taste incredible. She's fucking MINE tonight.”
How you do that is by reaching for the thought that feels just a little bit better and then focusing on this for 10 seconds. Why 10 seconds? What's so special about this time? It has now been scientifically proven that when you hold a “pure” thought for 10 seconds, once you reach that time a like-frequency thought will join it due to the Law Of Attraction matching these things up. Remember, like attracts like. Oil and water molecules. When you (after 10 seconds of “pure” focus) changing your point of attraction and incrementally move up the vibrational scale feeling just a little bit better about whatever subject it is you are focusing upon, you now are OUT vibrational range of the lower-vibration thoughts. Oil and water. Get it? You literally can't THINK OF that depressing weird shit anymore when you get out of range. Anytime you are feeling extreme negative emotion, it's your higher Self trying to show you in the form of Emotional Guidance that your current actions and behaviors and thinking are WAYYY off course to manifesting what it is that you are truly wanting in your personal reality.
The anger continued to build on this lonely night It was like nothing seemed to be going right in my love life. I was a lonely, insecure, emotional wreck, stressing more and more each day over finding a girl. Life isn’t anywhere near where I had expected it to be. Every day, week, and month that went by with no success was beginning to feel exponentially worse. It had been four years since my last serious relationship. At the time I figured I’d be okay. I’m a good guy, great sense of humor, always nice to women. I’m no model but I sure could be a lot worse off. Of course I’d find another great girl as soon as time ran its course. But days turned to weeks. A few more weeks I kept telling myself. Weeks turned to months. Don’t worry Joshua, you’ll find what you’re looking for. It takes time. Months turned to years. The excuses and self-denial began to set in. “I don’t want to be in a relationship at this point in my life.”
“I love hooking up with different girls and being single.” These lies were repeated so frequently that I almost started to believe them.But why couldn’t I get a girl anymore? The truth was, meeting a girl was no longer easy like it once was. During college I had all the opportunities in the world. Girls were everywhere and it was easy to at least meet somebody. As college ended and I transitioned into the real world, things were no longer the same. Sure there were bars and clubs post college life, but the girls that were willing to talk in these places weren’t exactly the bring home to mom type and all the good looking girls seemed to have their guard especially high up. If I had a dollar for every beautiful girl that told me at this point in my life, “I would never meet a guy in a bar,” I would have been a rich man.
Outstanding, flawless game is required to win over these types, something that I did not possess at the time. Unfortunately, the same went for meeting girls at coffee shops, museums, or any other social situation. It just wasn’t for me. I was always the, meet a woman through friends type of guy, which enabled me to win them over with my personality. But with the dwindling supply of girls to be set up with, this option was no longer available when I needed it.
My confidence was falling by the day. I felt helpless and completely frustrated. After long periods of building loneliness, and a desire to once again have a meaningful relationship with a woman, I turned to the only option I saw left – online dating. I pondered doing this for months but never pulled the trigger. I was too scared. But enough was enough. There was nowhere else to turn for someone in my hopeless state of mind. Sure this wasn’t how I dreamed of meeting my future girlfriend or wife. But life doesn’t always turn out the way you plan. Besides, online dating had come so far in the past few years and I’d heard a lot of great things about it. Whereas when online dating originally started out it was something to be embarrassed about, consisting mostly of weirdoes and desperate people, it has evolved into a common and mainstream way of meeting people. What the hell I figured. At the very least, I won’t be lonely. I’ll always have a date. So I tried a one-month subscription out. That’s when the ultimate devastation came upon me. After months of working up the courage to join an online dating site in order to avoid loneliness, something terrible and completely unexpected happened. After one month I could not get one single girl to go out with me! Not only couldn’t I get a girl to go out with me, I couldn’t even get a response! Ten emails written. No response. Twenty emails written. No Response. Fifty! Still no response! So I signed up for another month. Same thing. Another month. SAME THING! Curse life! Curse every girl in it. Here I am, sitting here on an online dating that I’m paying for to get me dates, and I can’t even get one damn girl to respond to me!
I’m a good guy for crying out loud! Don’t they read my profile? Don’t they realize I’d be good for them? Is my picture that bad? I felt cursed. Reduced to nothing. I slowly began to accept my fate: a lonely, pathetic, loser. There was nowhere left to turn. I had exhausted every option. If I couldn’t even get a girl to talk to me online, what else could I possibly do? Then one day, I came to a depressing, yet enlightening realization. There are tens of thousands of people on this site. Attractive girls like Susie487 were probably getting upwards of one hundred emails a day and possibly ten to twenty instant messages at a time every time they logged in! In real life not many people have the courage to approach Susie. But behind a computer screen is a different story. Us lonely guys were like locusts, hiding behind computer screens, pouncing on every beautiful girl we saw. Susie and all the pretty girls just like her weren’t terrible people. They weren’t phony or lying when they said looks don’t matter. Girls like her really were just looking for a nice guy with a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, they were being bombarded with so many messages it would be impossible to respond to even one/one hundredth of the guys that emailed them! The unfortunate truth that I began to realize is that online dating was ten times more competitive than real life. How could I possibly penetrate through all the other guys on this site
Part 2
When feeling TERROR standing next to a hot woman you are not thinking about how soft and warm her titties will feel or how good she fucking smells or how she shaves down there and 'you'd like to see it' - those thoughts are on two COMPLETELY different wavelengths. In other words, you do not have vibrational access to good-feeling fun yummy thought when you feel like shit and are feeling fear, anxiety, depression, unworthiness, ETC! Oil and water! They don't mix! You don't have vibrational access!!!
When I was learning from a sound engineer, he began demonstrating the various frequencies of sound waves. He started with a super low bass note. We could see the woofer moving in and out, producing the sound wave, but no one could physically HEAR the sound. As he cranked up the frequency, ahhh, there it was. A low pitched growl. NOW we could hear physically HEAR (vibrationally interpret) the sound wave because it came within range of the human ear. He continued to do this, the pitch got higher and higher (BEEEEEEEEEEP) until it began sounding like a mosquito radio, or a dog whistle. You know, that high-pitched ridiculously annoying squeal. Some dude to my right goes, “Where'd the sound go? I don't hear it!” I'm like “How can you NOT hear that? It's so fucking loud and annoying!” The teacher said he couldn't hear it either. Others in the room could, others couldn't. He then cranked it up even higher. Suddenly, the high pitched squeal became PERFECT silence. But, visibly you could still see the sound water pulsating, sending out sound waves. But our physical human ears could not hear the high pitched frequency anymore – it was now out of vibrational range. In other words, we lost vibrational access to it. The sound wave disappeared or anything, it still exists somewhere in reality, but we are no longer able to vibrationally interpret it, in other words, to HEAR it. Can you guess where this is going? Your Higher Self *IS* a reality!!! You just can't see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, smell it, BECOME IT because you are our of vibrational harmony with it. Oil and water.
Whereas before in that lower frequency state of fear, anxiety, or depression you would see a hot girl and only be able to think of thought or actions/behaviors along the lines of some bullshit idea. “Fuck I'm gonna be nervous or tense, I'm going to do THIS weird tick or THAT one.. she isn't gonna like me.. I'll run out of things to say...” etc. But NOW by being in that higher mode of being and gaining NEW VIBRATIONAL ACCESS to these higher fluffier lighter feeling thought forms(thoughts are held together by the Law Of Attraction too, they're physical things!), you see that dime and you think, “Fuuuuckkkk. Just LOOK at those soft legs and that short mini-skirt. I can see her hot ass hanging out. I wonder if she has panties on... Holy shit this girl must taste incredible. She's fucking MINE tonight.”
How you do that is by reaching for the thought that feels just a little bit better and then focusing on this for 10 seconds. Why 10 seconds? What's so special about this time? It has now been scientifically proven that when you hold a “pure” thought for 10 seconds, once you reach that time a like-frequency thought will join it due to the Law Of Attraction matching these things up. Remember, like attracts like. Oil and water molecules. When you (after 10 seconds of “pure” focus) changing your point of attraction and incrementally move up the vibrational scale feeling just a little bit better about whatever subject it is you are focusing upon, you now are OUT vibrational range of the lower-vibration thoughts. Oil and water. Get it? You literally can't THINK OF that depressing weird shit anymore when you get out of range. Anytime you are feeling extreme negative emotion, it's your higher Self trying to show you in the form of Emotional Guidance that your current actions and behaviors and thinking are WAYYY off course to manifesting what it is that you are truly wanting in your personal reality.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
LOVE LETTER: I LONG FOR YOU
Whom someone else dreams of during the night. You are that person someone longs for to be at their side, at all times, caressing their soul with your sincere affection. You are that person whose laughter elicits a particularly vibrant smile; whom others shed a tear for, although you remain perfectly alive. You are that person someone sacrifices thought for; sacrifices their time for. You resemble the “perfect other.” You are sketched in someone’s mind the moment they are alone, and have only you to contemplate.
You are perfect. You are beautiful. You are worthwhile.
But you decide to disregard such truths.
You wince when the opportunity presents itself. You prepare each lonely night, only to disregard such preparations when the situation arises. Sometimes, you are too deceiving in your actions. Sometimes you hesitate to make the first move, or any move, for that matter. You expect others to grasp the initiative, but they expect the same from you. You contemplate, think, ponder, dwell, cry, choke on tears, look in the mirror, stare at your soul. Your body does not move at all. You wonder why your body does not make any moves at all. Are you even alive at all? You conclude that you merely waver in the wind. You hope you stick to something before you get lost. You pray that you stick to something beautiful, something at all. But you are not under another’s jurisdiction. Your body is your own lifeline to this life. Your wonderful thoughts are above the ground, flying high, entangled with the thoughts of others. It is beautiful, yes. But you can feel the ground beneath your feet, somewhere. You learn that you can move your feet. Wander wonderfully.
You tell yourself that tomorrow will be the day, but fail to realize that this very day was once ‘tomorrow’. You allow the days to pass you by, only paying them heed with your senses. You contemplate if you experience them at all. You wonder if others are experiencing this same predicament. You wonder if someone will ever read your mind. You wonder if you’ll ever hear someone’s heartbeat, if you’ll ever embrace more than a body.
There is time! There is no time but now.
Every time you hypothesize about another person, realize that you too are the product of others hypothetical situations. Be more than your imagination! Transcend your thoughts! People are waiting on you to enter their lives just as you are waiting on others to enter your own. No one said it was easy. But everyone is waiting on you to make a move. Don’t be scared. You are capable. You are more than capable.
You are perfection. We are all your reflection.
You are perfect. You are beautiful. You are worthwhile.
But you decide to disregard such truths.
You wince when the opportunity presents itself. You prepare each lonely night, only to disregard such preparations when the situation arises. Sometimes, you are too deceiving in your actions. Sometimes you hesitate to make the first move, or any move, for that matter. You expect others to grasp the initiative, but they expect the same from you. You contemplate, think, ponder, dwell, cry, choke on tears, look in the mirror, stare at your soul. Your body does not move at all. You wonder why your body does not make any moves at all. Are you even alive at all? You conclude that you merely waver in the wind. You hope you stick to something before you get lost. You pray that you stick to something beautiful, something at all. But you are not under another’s jurisdiction. Your body is your own lifeline to this life. Your wonderful thoughts are above the ground, flying high, entangled with the thoughts of others. It is beautiful, yes. But you can feel the ground beneath your feet, somewhere. You learn that you can move your feet. Wander wonderfully.
You tell yourself that tomorrow will be the day, but fail to realize that this very day was once ‘tomorrow’. You allow the days to pass you by, only paying them heed with your senses. You contemplate if you experience them at all. You wonder if others are experiencing this same predicament. You wonder if someone will ever read your mind. You wonder if you’ll ever hear someone’s heartbeat, if you’ll ever embrace more than a body.
There is time! There is no time but now.
Every time you hypothesize about another person, realize that you too are the product of others hypothetical situations. Be more than your imagination! Transcend your thoughts! People are waiting on you to enter their lives just as you are waiting on others to enter your own. No one said it was easy. But everyone is waiting on you to make a move. Don’t be scared. You are capable. You are more than capable.
You are perfection. We are all your reflection.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
POETRY: OPEN THE DOOR
Come go with me, my sweet, for I will show to you the world, and my arms shall hold you oyster-tight, then it's off we'll go, my pearl. Let me fly you to the moon and bring closer to you.The stars.Then love will plan our destiny...next, Jupiter, or maybe Mars. Let the flute of your voice blow the softness of your words into my ear. Just those three little ones that mean so much are all I'll ever need to hear. Come go with me, my jewel.Let me show you everything,And more.For there is no end to what this world may bring once we unlock and open the door.
She whispers softly
Into my ear.
Suddenly a thousand melodies
Burst forth in gentle showers
Magnificent rose petals
Rain down from an ethereal sky
And cover our naked bodies
With invisible fragrances
And a deep, long sigh
Fills our souls
With ecstacy
I wake to feel the longing
In the depths of my heart
The dream has ended
For now
2
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you.
Wondering where you are hoping I'm on your mind, too.
Your eyes so gently make me fall for you
When they twinkle like the stars.
Your hands so softly seem to find mine,
And seems like we always lose track of time.
When I dream, I dream sweet dreams, but only of you.
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you.
Thinking wonderful things I wish would come true.
You make me go speechless sometimes,
But you are the only thing on my mind.
My need for you is endless,
And the want for you if twice times that.
I may seem careless and want to give up the fight,
That is why I dream sweet dreams, but only of you.
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you,
Knwoing that my thoughts are left in the blue.
You know what I think, you know what I feel.
I only wish you would give me the will,
To love you, to care for you, and to have you as my own.
So now as I think and as I feel, I know you can't be real.
You know who I love, you are who I want,
But the visions I am seeing I need to start believing.
But that is why, when I dream, I dream sweet dreams, but only of you
3
Love can have such a strong & powerful effect on the soul,
why can't a loved one feel what you feel for them?
Life would be worth living it
if love were easier & nearer.
What makes it so easy to love but not be loved?
What's the power or spell that makes you feel what you feel?
What makes you love what can't love you?
A loved one makes it so difficult for you,
they're so perfect,
so perfect that a whispher of theirs
can be the greatest treasure of yours.
Happiness, joy & a smile, indeed,
is what you can get
when looking, seeing or hearing from them.
Misery, tears, pain & depression
is what the heart feels
when being rejected.
No matter what the heart desires
it can not obtain its needs.
It's a shadow,
isolated from the real world
& brought to one
with no light but darkness.
A simple tear,
one from the heart
& one from the eye
means everything--
Means how much you suffer for what you want but can't have,
means how much pain your strong heart can withstand & support,
& means how much you miss your loved one,
knowing that you won't be able to see them till next time.
The only thing there is to say is:
"Love has a powerful effect on the soul
& that this power
is more powerful than love itself."
4
A simple song on the radio,
And soon my mind is completely filled with thoughts of you.
When I talk to you,
My heart is filled with joy.
I feel a connection,
Almost as if our souls have bonded.
When I listen to my heart,
I feel compelled to follow.
Yet my mind sometimes overides,
And I can only feel fear.
It seems almost so right that it should be wrong,
Everyday with you is something so new and so special.
And at least once a day, I thank God for you,
He made someone so wonderful that fits so perfectly in my heart.
Someone who fits so perfectly in my heart and soul,
It seems a mere thank you is not enough.
And times like tonight when I find the words,
My mind overides my heart and I back away.
If my dreams could come true,
I'd wake up next to you in the morning.
I'd look into your eyes and say those three little words,
The words I have found in my heart to describe this feeling.
So simple, so true,
The words "I love you".
She whispers softly
Into my ear.
Suddenly a thousand melodies
Burst forth in gentle showers
Magnificent rose petals
Rain down from an ethereal sky
And cover our naked bodies
With invisible fragrances
And a deep, long sigh
Fills our souls
With ecstacy
I wake to feel the longing
In the depths of my heart
The dream has ended
For now
2
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you.
Wondering where you are hoping I'm on your mind, too.
Your eyes so gently make me fall for you
When they twinkle like the stars.
Your hands so softly seem to find mine,
And seems like we always lose track of time.
When I dream, I dream sweet dreams, but only of you.
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you.
Thinking wonderful things I wish would come true.
You make me go speechless sometimes,
But you are the only thing on my mind.
My need for you is endless,
And the want for you if twice times that.
I may seem careless and want to give up the fight,
That is why I dream sweet dreams, but only of you.
Sometimes late at night, I sit and dream of you,
Knwoing that my thoughts are left in the blue.
You know what I think, you know what I feel.
I only wish you would give me the will,
To love you, to care for you, and to have you as my own.
So now as I think and as I feel, I know you can't be real.
You know who I love, you are who I want,
But the visions I am seeing I need to start believing.
But that is why, when I dream, I dream sweet dreams, but only of you
3
Love can have such a strong & powerful effect on the soul,
why can't a loved one feel what you feel for them?
Life would be worth living it
if love were easier & nearer.
What makes it so easy to love but not be loved?
What's the power or spell that makes you feel what you feel?
What makes you love what can't love you?
A loved one makes it so difficult for you,
they're so perfect,
so perfect that a whispher of theirs
can be the greatest treasure of yours.
Happiness, joy & a smile, indeed,
is what you can get
when looking, seeing or hearing from them.
Misery, tears, pain & depression
is what the heart feels
when being rejected.
No matter what the heart desires
it can not obtain its needs.
It's a shadow,
isolated from the real world
& brought to one
with no light but darkness.
A simple tear,
one from the heart
& one from the eye
means everything--
Means how much you suffer for what you want but can't have,
means how much pain your strong heart can withstand & support,
& means how much you miss your loved one,
knowing that you won't be able to see them till next time.
The only thing there is to say is:
"Love has a powerful effect on the soul
& that this power
is more powerful than love itself."
4
A simple song on the radio,
And soon my mind is completely filled with thoughts of you.
When I talk to you,
My heart is filled with joy.
I feel a connection,
Almost as if our souls have bonded.
When I listen to my heart,
I feel compelled to follow.
Yet my mind sometimes overides,
And I can only feel fear.
It seems almost so right that it should be wrong,
Everyday with you is something so new and so special.
And at least once a day, I thank God for you,
He made someone so wonderful that fits so perfectly in my heart.
Someone who fits so perfectly in my heart and soul,
It seems a mere thank you is not enough.
And times like tonight when I find the words,
My mind overides my heart and I back away.
If my dreams could come true,
I'd wake up next to you in the morning.
I'd look into your eyes and say those three little words,
The words I have found in my heart to describe this feeling.
So simple, so true,
The words "I love you".
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