quote:

We have a British bank account, his salary gets paid into that.

quote:

Don't Worry Be Happy Tout TV's Economists Will Soothe Thee

By Roger Wiegand
Oct 25 2007 3:49PM





“Fund managers and their media boyz’ spinmeisters sing perfectly in tune giving us loads of reasons to keep buying their game and prolonging the inevitable. This is fine except for one ornery 81 year-old guy who keeps mouthing-off protecting his legacy while diverting blame to his we-got left-holding-the-bag, bag holders. Greenspan resembles an active hunting dog marking-off his territory. Bush fervently wishes he would go chase pheasants, literary queens and publishers while getting lost in the economic woods. Instead, he offered the following to a private equity group meeting in Chicago yesterday saying:

"We are now in a state of fear"

Aw geeze Alan, did you really have to tell us the truth? He immediately realized his mistake and followed with, “We are not out of the woods in terms of credit turmoil and told us recession odds are less then 50-50 and he doesn’t expect that the economy will go into an actual recession.” Pardon me while I choke.

Too late Alan; the kitty jumped out of the potato sack. We agree the economy might not go into a recession; we are already in one. Our stronger concern is hyperinflation, bank runs, deflation, rampant unemployment and the D word-Depression. In our view, all of this is inevitable. Our primary concern is a report we got from credible European analysts this week adding more gray hairs to my head and my chinny-chin-chin. That report told us with a very clear vision how we might see army troops and tanks in the streets in America at this time next year.
Now I’m in a state of fear.

Consider These Small Insignificant Issues

1. The reserve currency of the world, our U.S. Dollar is under water and seeking even lower depths.


2. Europe and Canada are taking the brunt of our cheapie dollar enduring rising homeland currencies hurting their exports and making everything more expensive.


3. Meanwhile, Washington D.C. trade and commerce minions and lackeys chortle about our rising exports costing less each day. No kidding dummies, the dollar is not worth squat. It certainly had nothing to do with their, ah, expertise.


4. American consumers providing 70% of all U.S.economic activity are on life support. They have a negative savings rate, and are living day-to-day on plastic lying awake at night wondering whether they lose their homes tomorrow morning.


5. Housing in the USA and most free nations is falling off a cliff.


6. Bankruptcy filings have tripled and slicker lawyers are in feeding frenzy.


7. Hank Paulson, our esteemed Treasury Secretary appeared on the verge of a stroke when we saw him on the last Saturday news almost begging and pleading with platitudes, telling us all is okay except for …………………….


8. Chopper Ben Brenanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve demonstrates regularly his interpretation of a deer in the head lights. Frequently on high beam.


10. Foreign buyers of our currency, notes, bonds and bills are horrors, not only not buying the stuff, but stuffing it into sovereign funds for expeditious investments in hard goods throughout the world. El Dumpo the dollar.


11. There is almost no credibility from the Washington D.C. national government and little more from the financial world in New York. One guy told us notorious criminal gangs have more respect.


12. Fuel and food are skyrocketing and agriculture is failing over the planet from drought and a variety of growing and producing problems.


13. Bush’s Middle Eastern adventures kicked over a hornet’s nest and the buzzing cloud is rapidly increasing in size as it spreads through adjoining countries.


14. Our large collection of former international friends, partners and colleagues once numbered in the hundreds. Now, if the truth be known they could be counted on one hand. Many of them would not hurt us but refuse to engage their nations in Bush’s nefarious schemes for control of global oil.


15. The Enron boyz merely got caught too early. Global investment bankers committed much worse but they exist in the “too big to fail world”so they not only get a free jail pass but get paid more large fees to sweep the news under Wall Street’s rug.


16. The only thing this country has left of value is our gold reserves. Now this week we learn our government treasury leaders have been leasing it out and otherwise diminishing the so-called held and stored supply. In our view, we wonder if these pirates have left us any at all.


17. Oil, gas and other energy sector prices moved to the stratosphere. Lower paid workers can’t even fill the tank to go to work. Not only that but these prices are headed to the moon making the current burden into a religious moment; a real genuine crisis.


18. Next year we get an election and it seems to us our choice will be between a fascist or a socialist-semi-communist. So how is this going to help this nation?


In summary, the old fashioned spirit of working together and helping each other in America is fading like our dollar. Society is becoming dog-eat-dog with every man and woman for themselves. Charities cry out for donations and food banks go empty just when they are needed the most. Millions of American children will go to bed hungry tonight just like their parents in the so-called richest nation in the world.
We know of no answer or, can offer hope of an answer. Maybe our Founding Fathers and the old guy helping to originate our freedom who said, the “Tree of Liberty must periodically be refreshed with blood” was eerily prescient. We hope to God it doesn’t happen. Pray for peace and hope for the best.

Gold and silver are real untainted money. They offer no attached corresponding offsetting debts or danger. Get busy and pay off debts, and get trading and investing in precious metals. The largest portion of the rally is just over the cyclic hill. -Traderrog

Roger Wiegand



****

quote:

Originally posted by Ronald Rutherford:
Mishkin: Fed helping Main Street, not Wall Street

quote:

Originally posted by meljomur:
I don't normally source Fox news, but this is just too funny, I think.

quote:

So is that a bad thing?
Take your money out of the stock money if you are worried.

quote:

And now for something completely different...
Do Americans See Economy Tanking?

quote:

Is the major media going to continue to be as lock-step with the Democrat agenda of defeatism on the economy as it is about Iraq?

When will reality shine through their fading gray pages?

quote:

According to Mr. Gillian Tett of The Financial Times, quoting an anonymous trader,

“…as he has embarked on this sordid task, he has discovered that the only effective way to get rid of these distressed assets is to avoid putting any tangible price on the trade.

“Barter is the only thing that works right,” he chuckles grimly. “It is like the Dark Ages.”

Indeed, in some arenas, such as mortgage-linked securities, sentiment now seems to be getting worse, not better. And that raises the prospect that we are now moving into an entire new phase of this year’s credit squeeze.

Take the ABX index, the basket of derivatives linked to subprime securities. As financial tools go, this index is far from perfect, since it is barely two years old, and tends to be thinly traded.

But right now it has the unfortunate distinction of being the only tool easily available to measure sentiment in the opaque subprime securities world. And in the past couple of weeks, the message emerging from this measure has started to look utterly dire.

The experience of living through the Enron scandals earlier this decade means that the audit industry is now terrified that it could face lawsuits if it is perceived to be too lax towards its clients. So some now appear to be demanding that their banking clients reprice their mortgage assets according to the only visible market tool – namely the ABX. It is thus little wonder that some banks have suddenly been forced to increase their writedowns in recent weeks. Indeed, I would wager that the pernicious combination of ABX and the “Enron factor” is a key reason for the recent shocks emanating from Merrill Lynch.

However, the rub is that while auditors at some Wall Street banks are becoming quasi-evangelical about the need to reprice subprime assets, there are still other, vast swathes of the financial system which have not been touched by the full blast of transparency yet. Moreover, many financiers outside the world of Wall Street banks remain very wary of rewriting their mortgage assets to current ABX price levels, due to a lingering hope that the recent ABX slump will remain temporary.”

quote:

I have long said the inflation vs. deflation debate is over and the central bankers have told you loud and clear they will print their way out of trouble, and there is no other way. The Fed injected (printed) $41 billion on November 1st, the largest amount in a single day post 9-11. However neither this nor the $70 billion superfund will solve this mad cow problem, as trillions of dollars of mortgage positions need to be unwounded. Nor is adjusting interest rates going to make a difference now.

In public and privately, the Fed needs to redeem any and all mortgage debts with new paper. It needs to catch up and print $billions more until the government officials took off by helicopters Argentine style. Don’t anticipate a crash in the stock market.

The Dow is selling at a discount measured in a free falling currency.



The dollar has dropped 17% in 2 years and 37% in 6 years.



The dollar’s free fall will continue, while gold and RMB’s rise will accelerate in pace. We will look back and kick ourselves for not buying gold below $850. For those who hold dollar savings, to borrow from the classic line from the movie “Romeo Must Die” by the Kung Fu master Jet Li to his brother who betrayed him – “That was a mistake.”

John Lee,CFA

quote:

Executive Summary

The price of gold should be $2,500 per ounce. While this may appear to be an overly optimistic projection, it is reasonable when analyzed in the context of today’s highly inflationary environment. Inflation occurs when central banks create excessive amounts of money and today we are in the middle of the largest money creation exercise in history. Since 2000, the supply of US dollars has grown by 84% and since the early 1970s, when official dollar convertibility into gold ended, the number of dollars in circulation has grown by over 1400%. That is not a typographical error. In 1971 there were 776 billion US dollars in circulation. Today there are over 12 trillion. Around the world the supply of paper money is growing at a stunning pace. In the last seven years alone, the supply of British pounds grew by 99%; Euros grew by 78%; Indian Rupees grew by 234%, Chinese Yuan grew by 227% and Russian Rubles grew by 1,508%. Because central banks create money at virtually no cost, its supply tends to grow without constraint.

quote:

1. Spend less, save more

quote:

2. Take a job as soon as possible and, preferably, avoid job switching.

quote:

3. Avoid risky stocks and bonds, or avoid stocks and bonds altogether.

quote:

4. Avoid real estate, because the current housing bubble is likely to completely burst by 2009.

quote:

5. Diversify bank deposits and park the money in bank CD's and up to the FDIC insurance limit.

quote:

6. Buy some gold.

quote:

7. Avoid business expansion unless it is in the oil-related business, even oil could be risky after 2010.

quote:

8. Avoid speculation and stay away from hedge funds.

quote:

9. Buy some foreign currencies, preferably euros.

quote:

Originally posted by meljomur:
Thanks for the imput Pee Wee, we obviously "see" the economy differently, so hence will make very different financial decisions.

This advice was taken from a book I am reading called,
The New Golden Age, by Ravi Batra.

It was relevent for me, because it is many of the financial decisions that my husband and I made a year ago, and have done very well because of it.

I am not saying it is what everyone should follow, I am no economist (in fact I only had econ. 101 and 102 in college), but I do read ALOT about the economy from all different sources, so I kind of think of my self as a "dabbler".

quote:

when its obvious the dollar is in free fall.

quote:

Returning to the Commission cellule, it said that: "Among the actions that can be undertaken when a member state experiences serious balance of payments difficulties, Articles 119 and 120 EC provide for the possibility to reintroduce 'quantitative protective measures' against third countries."

The measures are of course exchange controls. This is the nuclear option, but Europe's politicians could equally invoke Article 104 of the Maastricht Treaty giving politicians the power to set fixed exchange rates (by unanimous vote) or a dirty float for the euro (by majority).

quote:

To quote a line from an old song, "When will they ever learn?"

quote:

By Richard Daughty "The Mogambo Guru"
Nov 22 2007 9:59AM

www.dailyreckoning.com



I slept right through it, as there were no alarms raising a ruckus in the Impregnable Mogambo Steel-Reinforced Fortress (IMSRF), even as Total Fed Credit expanded $1.4 billion last week, taking the total to $866 billion. It wasn't much, as money-and-credit-creating calumny at the Federal Reserve usually goes, but a few warning bells rang when the banks gorged on $55 billion in repos last Thursday! Wow! $55 billion! In one day!

After this most surprising repo thing, I almost overlooked the fact that that Currency in Circulation, which is actual money in the form of bills and coins, jumped by $5.2 billion last week, too.

There may be lots of reasons for such a large infusion of cash, which works out to about $50 for everybody that has a damned job in the whole country. But I knew something fishy was up because when I ask these people to loan me a lousy $10, which I helpfully point out leaves them with $40, which is probably about four times as much as I am asking for, they say they don't have any money at all! Even when I leap upon them and turn their pockets out to see if they are lying to me, they're not! They don't have the money on them!

So I conclude that the government is using the cash for their payoffs, bribes and corruptions, probably for some more of that filthy Iraq-Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan-North Korea corrupt crap and God-knows what other Congress or CIA outrages are being pulled.

But whether or not the money is spent for a burger here on the streets of the USA, or spent for a falafel in the hot sands of a barren desert, the global glut of dollars is expanded by another $5.2 billion nonetheless, bloating the money supply by the little bit more and driving down the value of all the existing dollars, like the ones in your wallet, so when you go to the store to buy something, like a tasty falafel, and you take out your wallet to pay, you will notice that the prices of the stuff you are buying has really gone up, and the pathetically few dollars that you have in your wallet are suddenly inadequate to the task of buying anything! And you're hungry, damn it!

And the worst news is that it is going to get worse, as John Williams' of shadowstats.com reports, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the seasonally-adjusted CPI-U" in October was a reading 3.5% inflation in prices, but Mr. Williams figures that "Adjusted to pre-Clinton (1990) methodology, annual inflation was about 6.9%, up from 6.1% in September, while the SGS-Alternate Consumer Inflation Measure (1980 methodology) showed October's annual inflation at roughly 11.1%." Eleven freaking percent inflation!

I am trying to calm myself, forcing myself to think analytically, and I realize that this makes sense, because rising prices always follow rises in the money supply, and from the very same John Williams we learn that according to his calculations, the annualized growth of M3 (the broadest measure of the money supply) is roaring along at 15.2% in October, "the highest level since August 1971 (closing of the gold window), up from 14.7% in September and 13.9% in August." I gulp in horror.

Taking up an Uzi in my trembling hand, I am suddenly brave and bold enough to bellow, "What in the hell is going on here? Inflation in prices is freaking roaring all around us, and yet there is no panic? This is the stuff of nightmares!"

And if you are thinking that you are about to lose your freaking mind at the prospect of inflation at a terrifying 11%, then you will wonder what to do. In fact, many people ask, "What Would The Mogambo Do (WWTMD)?", especially those people who are so frightened at what is happening with the economy that they are pooping in their pants...............