Aggregated Awareness

"Is there a chance that the resolution of Australia's election will be good for stocks? Of course! Stocks, and the investors who buy them, hate uncertainty. By Saturday night, we'll know for certain who the next do-gooder in Chief will be in Australia.

Although we've never passed a gall stone, it must be a little like enduring the platitudes of two insipid politicians making bland promises and trying desperately to conceal their true selves from voters until after they secure power. Only masochists and egoists would run for high public office, and neither quality makes for a good leader!..." - Dan Denning - Daily Reckoning Australia Friday 20th August 2010

"...Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originate...Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper..." - Charles MacKay - Preface to the Edition of 1852, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

Assorted News & Commentary: General, Markets, Political & Science/Tech focus from around the world:

"...the world was always inhabited by people, who always had the same passions..." - Niccolò Machiavelli - from the work of 1503 entitled "Del modo di trattare i sudditi della val di chiana ribellati" or (On the Way to Deal with the Rebel Subjects of the Valdichiana"

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." - Franz Kafka