Karmabanque is a show about finance - it’s presented by former trader and stockbroker Max Keiser and his journalist and film-maker wife Stacy Herbert. Max and Stacy made their fortune playing the markets back in the day, and freed from having to actually earn a living they now take delight exposing the finance industry’s dirty laundry - this makes for very compelling listening.
Karmabanque is not like the other finance shows which purport to offer stock-tips and money saving ideas. You will find none of this in Karmabanque - Max only has one tip, and he’s given the same one in practically every show they have ever put out. Mostly the the show is an analysis of the week’s finance news followed by quite detailed and funny explanations of the technical and historical concepts behind the big news.
Karmabanque is not intended for people who want to feel good about their economy - the show is for people who have moved beyond normal panic and paranoia into the realm of the financial survivalist - Max and Stacy want us to understand that gross corruption, lack of regulation and excessive greed have planted fiscal a time-bomb within the global banking system - all they are trying to do is warn their listeners what to do to prepare for when it goes off.
It might be easy to call these people conspiracy theorists, especially when their ultra-bearish message stands in clear contrast to the chipper “nothing to worry about” message from the mainstream financial press. I’d love nothing more than to dismiss the doom and gloom, but I grudgingly admit that the few predictions Max and Stacy have made have been astonishingly accurate:
Max’s one stock-tip (it’s actually a commodities tip) is is to buy gold. If you’d been buying gold since Max started hyping the yellow metal your bling would be worth ten times as much as your original investment. Likewise Max & Stacy were the first podcasters to cover the sub-prime scandal and the resulting credit-crunch in any significant detail.
They deconstructed the global credit crisis and how banks would be the casualties long before Northern Rock and Bear Sterns imploded. They are the soothsayers urging us all to beware those pesky Ides of March.
If this sounds like your kind of thing then get your podcasts at KarmabanqueRadio and listen to them live on Resonance FM on Saturday and Sunday nights.
The latest podcast on Steve Eley’s Escape Pod has to be the best story of the series to date. For the uninitiated, Escape Pod is a weekly sci-fi audio magazine. It features the best in new fiction and spans the fantasy and science-fiction genres.
This week’s story “How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas” was written by James Trimarco and narrated by Resonance FM’s Frank Key. Cory Doctrow of BoingBoing states that “Frank Key, of the Hooting Yard podcast, gives it a dry, sardonic reading that fits perfectly.”, and I am in agreement. BoingBoing also link to Frank’s web-site (but sadly not the podcast feed).
I’ve been trying to get Cory Doctorow to read / listen to Hooting Yard on the Air for some time now (well at least the brief time that I knew him and he lived in London). Could it be that he too is an aficionado of Frank Key’s “Hooting Yard on the Air“?
Resonance FM composer and noise prankster Dan Wilson walked away from this year’s Arts Foundation awards as the winner in the electronic composition category. Asked what he would do with his prize money, he revealed that it would be used to build an improved version of “Corrosion Suite”, an electromagnetic composition in which the sound of rusted and rusting materials would form the basis of a new soundscape… or whatever.
The truth is I hardly understood because I was far too excited to see him win to pay too much attention to the details.
I wonder if supporting your favourite conceptual artist is something like supporting a football team. You get to follow their ups & downs, and you can be sure that their lives are more painful or ecstatic than your own.
My Dan Wilson audio archive can be found at http://epistaxis.stodge.org.
I am delighted to announce the yet another exciting Resonance FM Project: The publication of Frank Key’s new anthology: “Befuddled By Cormorants“, a collection of 52 thrilling stories from the acclaimed radio series “Hooting Yard on the Air”.
It was my privilege to act as the typesetter of this wonderful collection of short prose. For more information, please visit Frank’s web-site. Alternatively you can buy the book direct from the publisher.
According to the blurb on YouTube, “This is the video for “Minger” by Meadow House (from ‘Tongue Under a Ton of Nine Volters’ on Alcohol Records). Upon its release as a single in 2006, this was rampantly dvd-dropped in public places around London and Hertfordshire.”
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Meadow House is also known as Dan Wilson, the man who gave us Epistaxis Time and Exciting Hellebore Shew on Resonance FM. The wonky sound of this recording comes from Dan’s preference of minging home-made musical instruments. The box-like fretless electric guitar in the 5th second of the video is but one of the contraptions that were specially built in order to facilitate this recording.
