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The Market Ticker – What Makes The Ticker Unique (It’s Not Going To Change)
There have been a rash of people who have lost their accounts on the forum of late as my tolerance level for stupid has been ratcheted down quite a bit.
Before you post commentary on the Ticker or in the forums you might wish to remind yourself of the fact that this is not Daily Kos or Huffington Post, nor is it a place where the people doing the moderation and empowered to make those decisions have short memories.
On the contrary — one of the “curses” I have been “blessed” with is a highly-associative but not-quite-photographic memory with excellent recollection spanning decades.
This makes running BS very dangerous in my presence, as it is extremely likely that I will remember at least that are you are contradicting yourself and there's a better-than-even chance that with the slightest of machine assistance I can find the actual deception.
Oh, and I built pretty good machine assistance in the form of the search system into the codebase here. On purpose.
Now you know why.
As such your odds of getting away with any sort of nonsense like that are pretty low around here.
Now couple this with the fact that I have a very-public and couple of decades-long history of calling things exactly as I see them in public. This isn't a new thing either.
I was recently “presented” what was sold as an “opportunity” to attempt to drive my ~300,000 uniques a month to 10x that. The people who presented it included the usual pablum about “improving” public image and penetration. I raised enough objections that we didn't get to costs, but I did point out that when I write code for someone I only get paid when I deliver against a specification and I wasn't intending to change that model sitting on the other side of the desk.
There were plenty of reasons for me to doubt the efficacy and ability to hit the claimed goals among the presenters, but the most-damning was the simple lack of research into what makes up Tickerguy.
It's not like it's difficult — you don't have to hire a private dick to follow me around and see if I'm doing goats at 3:00 AM when nobody is looking. My life is rather boring, in point of fact. What's not in question, however, is that I have never been willing to exchange calling things as I see them for being “better liked” — not professionally, not personally, and not in the public eye.
30 seconds with a search engine ought to disabuse anyone of that notion — if it does nothing else.
If you want a politician who is so greasy that you'll never manage to shake his hand without it slipping out of his palm then go find one; you can't swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting one in the head. Most of them spend the bulk of their time trying to figure out how to extricate themselves from the latest line of BS they ran on some constituency, rationalizing why that speech doesn't contradict what they claimed 30 minutes earlier.
The press is guilty of the same thing, by and large, and for the same reason.
The fact is that they did contradict their previous position which is why they're in that pickle — being liked was and is more important than having a set of first principles and tracing their positions and actions to those principles.
The Market Ticker is a place where, for as long as I own and operate it, I will talk about the things that interest me and will present my color on the events of the day as I see them.
That makes my job here really easy. All I have to do is tell you what I think. Since I'm never trying to remember the lie I told 30 minutes previous and make sure that I don't contradict something I intentionally deceived you on a day, a week or a month earlier I don't need a knife to cut a fork in my tongue nor do I need to spend hours cross-checking every posting and reply to make sure I'm not about to stick my foot halfway up to my mouth through my butthole.
This isn't the “let's make a media or political brand out of a guy” sort of place. It's about presenting to the best of my ability what I believe is going on in the economy, in the markets, and what is likely to impact you, along with my view on those events that interest me. That's all The Market Ticker has ever been and all it will ever be.
If you want The Ticker to change to what you want on this site then show up with a big fat wad of money and press it into my palm, buying the place wholesale and the Trademark that goes with it.
You can then do whatever the hell you want with it.
After all, as an entrepreneur I freely admit to being a whore — all I ever argue about when it comes to buying and selling something is the price.
The Ticker came into being because in 2007 I saw the same scam in a different color dress that was run on the people in the late 1990s and I also saw what happened to a lot of people through no fault of their own during that time and few if anyone was calling the scams and schemes out for what they were.
I keep writing The Ticker because I enjoy it. I don't write it as a gateway to a political career, I don't write it because I want a TV show or anything of the sort. If you want to send me a nice bottle of Scotch or Cognac I'll drink it but that's not the goal either; I'm not much of a boozer as I don't like the hangovers.
The Ticker is simply my view of what's going on in the world, why it's going on, and what is likely to come as a consequence.
I'm not always right; nobody is.
But I won't compromise what I believe or sugar-coat my presentation for the sake of “increasing penetration” or “being popular” and, if it comes to the point that I find the personal rewards that are associated for running this place are exceeded by the costs all-in, including the intangibles on both sides of the cost:benefit equation then I will simply walk off and go do something else — including something so simple as just going fishing.
Before you engage in the next “woe is me” and “you have to do what I want because I can make you popular for a fee” fest around here, or worse, think that you'll impress me or get to spew nonsense because I should be “afraid” of losing readers, go back and read the above a few more times.
Then do yourself a favor and self-ban your account — because if you don't I'll be more than happy to oblige you.
I call the balls and strikes as I see them folks. I won't change that — not for you or anyone else. And while honest and clean debate is always welcome around here, for this is how one puts together an informed position and opinion BS is neither welcome nor will it be met with “tolerance” and “understanding.”
Now go make yourself some money — but do so honestly, lest you be the subject of the next Ticker.
Source: http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=221452
