alas the poor dollar i knew himm well

my dear country is about to begin taking its bitter medicine and the affliction will result in a long term and most unpleasant treatment (gross understatement)

the weakening (devaluation) of the dollar will force us to deal with our imbalanced trade (current account deficit)by making imports more expensive...like a tariff... only no income goes to uncle sam

a strengthening currency entitles the bearer to a greater share of the goods and services produced by a country that has a comparatively weakened currency

china, with a strengthening currency and economy none the less faces a number of future liabilities

first they hold maybe around one trillion dollars of their reserves as dollars or dollar denominated securities....the value of which is rapidly declining

second their country is "geared" towards being an exporting economy not a consumer economy, they will no doubt transition

we

the usa

are lucky that we have all our international "debts" (japan saudi britain and china hold the lions share)

all these debts are dollar denominated

by contrast poor argentia for instance owed a ton of money denominated in dollars

when their currency went bust

their debt was magnified...ouch

but as the value of the dollar drops, people around the world will be looking to either spend their dollars on real things or get out of dollars thus driving further the dollars decline

greed is not good

ok this all just got too abstract for me and im to blame...i own it

bringin it down to brass tacks

id like to make enuf money AND do substantial good along the way

some people have no concept of enuf

they are never satisfied

as the door to the tomb is slowly closing they have to go back one more time to fill their pockets up with treasure until they are trapped for eternity..entombed

1 million dollar bonuses are not enuf cause the guy next door is getting 2 million and you gotta get the most

the world is never enuf

thats greed

greed is NOT good

greed is unrestrained growth...greed is cancer

you can make money and participate in a community and a governing process that aims towards justice and fairness

and yes there are many examples where governments are corrupted and run over the people

but a land without governance,.... a free for all simply means the strongest bully , or the most powerful gang rules by terror

you can eliminate government tomorrow but one would still have, out of control mega corporations and gangs (mafia , crips bloods hells angels ms13) secret societies and tribalism

whats the alternative?

you may know them by their deeds

look, im trying to be clear not riddle-culous

you are not slow im just not saying it right

ok third try

claiming self interest or claiming selflessness...neither claim is necessarily authentic

know people by their record of actions not possibly feigned philosophical claims

MLK was an altruistic guy...not cause he said he was...cause he did he was

being brutally honest

1write wrote
"I'm slow. What do you mean?"

---

to review, you said,

"When somebody claims self-interest as a motive they seem more honest to me than someone who claims the motive of seflessness."

my rhetorical question is:

so when i rob you ill make sure to remark how im doing this in my own self interest and that will make you see me as a person of great integrity?

the honesty of a shark

1 write said

"When somebody claims self-interest as a motive they seem more honest to me than someone who claims the motive of seflessness. I'm very weary of the religious."

---

well i guess that make genghis khan one hell of a mensch

NAV for companies with international exposure

RockyR said

"mostly in cash here. sad"

hey Rocky, yeah...its hard to know if one should jump, the markets are so crazy

gold looking bubblelicious of late if you just look at the chart

but

when one considers the talk coming out of the fed...maintaining low rates

and all the rest of the craziness out there...gold probably still has a good run ahead of it

i guess...but i just dont know...and for that reason im never all in...in anything

and so ill never make the big hit...im notsosmart

theres a good argument out there that equities will continue to do well as long as the fed is demolishing the dollar

ie if one assumes any company has an intrinsic NAV then as the dollar becomes worth less the dollar denominated value of the outstanding shares should go up

heres my question, ...is this more true.... or only true... for companies that have international market exposure...i would think so,

and they should do "better" if (when) there is a recovering world economy as we, the (usa) are being dunked repeatedly in the toilet

gdx is not gld

to RockyR

im not smart about GDX, im not sure i can answer your question, so research this idea

but i think that this etf is composed of parts that mine and as such those producers hedge in such a way (straddle is it called ?) that price fluctuations outside of a predicted range, both higher and lower, dampen profits

ie the producers count a a business model where price is stable or slow trend

again im not smart about this and will check it out tonight

so speed limits should be voluntary ?

mock turtle wrote:

"how does a person get up every morning and face the day when their primary motive for most of the things they do in life is money and power"

---

That's not a statement, final or otherwise. It's a question sans interrogation mark. Money and power are just other words for freedom. A person barred by law from flying home for Christmas is in the same position as one who can't afford to fly home for Christmas.

True happiness may indeed be found in service to others for you and for me, but we have a right to PURSUE happiness wherever we think we may find it. If I help others, it's because I choose to, not because someone like you thinks I have an obligation to. I live by the Golden Rule which means that I attempt to treat others as I wish to be treated myself. As I value freedom so highly, I wish for and work for others to have maximum freedom as well.

for some, too much is never enuf

B spock

my best final statement on this subject for this evening, is simply this

in all my years my prevailing motive for most of the things ive done of importance...deeds done within the context of ...family, community, job, friends...i have done, not for profit, or personal aggrandizement, but for the greater good

true happiness is to be found in service to others

this is how i was schooled at home as a kid, in the boy scouts, at church, and what i learned from the best adult role models as i grew into adulthood (a process that took more than 25 years Smile

how does a person get up every morning and face the day when their primary motive for most of the things they do in life is money and power

because really for most of those folks...too much is never enuf

i am certain that leads to a hollow existence....certain

bad government or no government

Bearded Spock (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 9:20

mock turtle wrote, "in a mass society ...media and money buy power
there has to be a check on the size of the check

You want to solve the problems of concentrated power by creating more concentrated power. When have the powerful government leaders NOT colluded with the wealthy media moguls, businessmen, religious leaders etc against the public?

The State is a monster you have created to fight your battles for you, but you can't control it anymore than your enemies can. It will eventually turn on you and leave you worse off that without it.

intentions count for something

Bearded spock wrote

"That being said, it's obvious to me that some of the people who have caused the most harm have had the best of intentions and some of the most selfish people have done the most good, if unintentionally."

ok i read that about 5 times and that sentence certainly , as a hypothesis can stand

but

equally i hope you recognize the contra positive of that sentence is true also

ie

That being said, it's obvious to me that some of the people who have caused the most good have had the best of intentions and some of the most selfish people have done the most harm if unintentionally.

so now that you and i hopefully agree intentions dont guarantee outcomes

i ask you

who do you want to bed down with in a political and social malestrom

mother teresa or charles manson

my meaning....intentions do count for something

not a minimum wage...a maximum wage

Rob Dawg

interesting idea

i was thinking along the lines of how it was in the usa during the truman...eisenhower years and for awhile there after

the marginal tax rates were so high on huge incomes..that no company paid their top people much beyond 60 or 70 times what the bottom people on the shop floor made

similar idea

btw

i dont consider owning, and building up a company and then selling it, a wage, or salary or compensation

i would never seek to limit what a person gets from creating or inventing something and then selling it

ie an artist creates a sculpture and sells it for a million

bill gates creates and builds a software company and sells it for a billion to whom ever

a farmer acquires land piece by piece, develops it and in the latter years sells for a huge profit...no problem


*

im not all in

do i like gold...uh huh

do i like gold a lot...mos def

did i like gold a year ago..yep as written on these pages

am i all in...nope

am i half in...mmmmmm not exactly

gotta leave room on the plate for other plays in case im wrong...whch often i am

plus, just had

to lay in a supply of basic food stuffs in the basement

you know, chocolate, scotch, coffee,

and then some cash in a shit house mouse mm fund so when the time is right

play something like ryjux and tbt

an allusion to a movie

EvilHenryPaulson wrote

for anyone that didn't see it, FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Goldman warns of near-term downside risk in WTI

----

EHP this negative rant is not directed at you but at gs)

im sorry but every time i hear goldman announces a trend

i cant help but ask myself

what are their ulterior motives

guessing they have already pre positioned themselves

to profit from the rest of the herd receiving this information

thus the origin of the slogan ,"buy on the rumor , sell on the news "(or the inverse)

goldman lies esp about WTI (as if there was that much west texas intermediate left to make a market anyway) ok that was snark

all bullshit, all goldman all the time

there will be blood

an allusion to the movie btw... not a threat

fasten your seatbelts its gonna be a bumpy ride

at a receent speech Atlanta Fed Vice President and Senior Economist John Robertson commented about the report, " NFIB small business economic trends"

http://www.nfib.com/Portals/0/PDF/sbet/SBET200911.pdf

looking at that report and capital outlays and inventories current and projected

pages 16-18

robertson's optimism is not supported

the data and graphs indicate over supply and lack of demand

small businesses responding to the survey not expecting much change too soon

heres my take

we, as a country embarked upon a supply side strategy more than a quarter century ago

im not arguing that supply side or demand side, is either, better than the other..both have their place

but this is what we get when we go all the way down the road to the bitter end following any one paradigm

supply side taken to the limit leaves us with declining wages, declining prices (until the dollar is destroyed then... we go stagflation

and ebbing demand, leaving the BRIC countries to fill in the void

and wasnt that the plan all along...hahahaha

fasten your seat belts its gonna be a bumpy nite

(as bette davis said)

YouTube
- Fasten Your Seatbelts

phill gramm wanted for gutting the fire department

Basel Too wrote

"phil gramm has a somewhat valid argument. most of the institutions that have failed, or under government conservatorship, participated in activities that would have been allowed irrespective of GLBA.

----

basel that is total nonsense

"theGramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurance companies to consolidate."*

ie travelers and citigroup one of the biggest infestations out there!

this multiplied counter party risk and systemic risk

"Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued that the Act helped to create the crisis in an article in The Nation has made the same argument."

"Contrary to Phil Gramm's claim that "GLB didn't deregulate anything" (see Defense), the GLB Act that he co-authored explicitly exempted security-based swap agreements (a derivative financial product based on another security's value or performance) from regulation by the SEC by amending the Securities Act of 1933, Section 2A, and similarly the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Section 3A,"*

didnt you watch the warning re brooksley born two weeks ago on frontline....sheesh

*quotes are from wikipedia GLBA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

sorry hommie

but i gotta call BULL SHIT on this claim

blaming clinton for demise of glass steagall

a friend wrote today, lamenting the re blowing of the financial bubble, saying,
"If you could pin this bubble on one event (besides the Bill Clinton repeal of the 1934 banking reform act)...it would be...911."

i chose to ignore the 911 comment as obviously silly, but blaming bill has credence in the world of wing nuts so i responded:

its so kind of you to give bill clinton the credit

especially since the glass steagal act had been violated for years before clinton signed the gramm leach bliley act

by the way

the senate vote overturning glass steagall, was 92 to 2 with 6 abstaining

not much room for a veto there

besides, this was around the time clinton was being tried by the senate on charges of impeachment for lying about a stain on a blue dress

but .hey its ok, give all the credit to bill

im sure he could use the love

but please...remember the travelers-citi merger happened, with fed approval,BEFORE GLASS STEAGAL.. the law was dead before it hit the ground thanks to greenspan

and all the "i hate regulation" crowd was there to make it so cause you know clinton couldnt have done it alone.

remember phill and windy gramm...the banksta whores who brought this to our doorstep

im ok with you blaming bill clinton...i do too... for a lot

but you do him too much honor to give him so much credit. :)

is the fed driving the equities market?

i visited and read a post at information arbitrage

regarding the article

"barking up the wrong tree"

the authors defense of the equities market made no sense to me and i submitted comments

which may or may not get posted on the site

pending administrative "approval"

where i quired the author as follows:

you seem to be claiming that equity markets are level, open and fair

furthermore you separate these markets from what you see to be more egregious behavior committed in other markets

would you please responds to 3 of my concerns

do you see any evidence that major brokerage firms making big profits by front running the buy and sell orders of their clients? for example goldman seems to have generated a plus 90% success rate in playing the market during Q3...a mathematically extraordinary event!

consumers who are 70% of the economy are tapped out, no longer can get much in the way of home equity lines of credit, and are paying down debt and saving and in general consumers are pulling way back and yet the stock market booms while P/E ratios are way up over 125...does the fed use primary dealers to indirectly enter the equity markets and effect the market price of individual stocks and even entire sectors of the market such as banking? how can the equity market moves of the past 6 months be justified?

even without a "pecora commission" there is evidence that the price of lehman stock was destoyed by people who purchased credit default swaps against lehmans demise an then those same people drove the stock down with naked short selling...is this you idea of a fair and balanced equities market? or do you dispute this happened?

thanks in advance for your responses
best wishes
mock turtle

flip of the coin

i was asked if i thought the price of gold might be bubblelicious right now

here was my answer

go to kitco.com

scroll down till you see the graph of one year gold on the right side

click just below that, on the 5 year graph link

check out the slope and decide ,

given what you know about inflation 3 or 4 years ago

and present destruction of the US dollar

whether or not things look frothy

then ask yourself why india and china are accumulating gold

and what the end of us dollar hegemony might mean

finally... to help you decide

flip a coin...

preferable a gold coin if you have one...... Smile

nouriel warns of the dollar snap back

Fri, 11/06/2009 - 11:46
#122558

dr doom is one of my favorite characters in this nightmare we call reality

he sounded the warning along with other notables

but lately he has been sounding a warning about a collapse in the dollar carry trade...the fall of a commodities bubble and a snap back of the dollar??? what?

...dollar "snap" back...look im not half as smart as roubini so who am i to say

but

hey, how the hell is the USD gonna snap back when the fed and the whitehouse and congress are pumpin like a teenage boy into his hat at a porno theater

is the fed gonna liquidate its portfolio of ABS (that big bag of mark to model crap)

and , or is the fed gonna soak up liquidity with reverse repos...or raise the fed funds rate...or stop supporting treasuries?

some combination of those actions, for the foreseeable future, would smash this country to pieces like a wooden row boat onto the rocks of the portland lighthouse in a gale

and in the midst of the deepest recession since the GD what commodity bubble does nouriel have in mind

no doubt gold, oil and a host of other flight to safety commodities will rise, some dramatically...and then fall...but i think (guess) the rise aint done risin and the fall is even farther away

ffedresrv

bank of the united states of america

a concept ive been arguing for on these pages for almost two years

i found this excellent contribution at yves smiths site, naked capitalism

here is the direct link to the author...an excellent argument for ending the federal reserve

Washington's Blog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/

goldman, 90% trades they win

mock turtle (profile) wrote on Wed, 11/4/2009 - 9:11 am

*

TraderMark

yes indeed

golman had a Q3 that was out of this world or er uh out of this universe

kinda like an evening of playing red or black with every spin of the roulette wheel and winning 90% of the time

is there cheating ...well gosh and golly

see zero hedge

"When a firm's trading performance challenges not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions, one can merely stand back and watch in awe. Attached is a graphic of what a rigged, backstopped and manipulated market is all about. The chart demonstrates Goldman's YTD trading track record: out of 194 trading days in 2009, the firm has made over $100 million on 116 occasions!"

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities | zero hedge

most americans are ignorant of the grand theft taking place in new yourk and DC

and too many of our leaders have joined the hole-in-the-wall-gang

ben needs a little help from hank

ben calls hank on phone

ben,.. hey hank i need some help here

hank, ...youre tellin me

ben, ...no really, what are you buyin lately

hank,.. you mean me personally or our friends at goldman

ben,.... you personally

hank...why do you want to know?

ben...well i dont know if this helicopter thing is gonna quite work out and uh i might need a little protection

hank..hey you need me to send some guys over from Xe?

ben...no not that kind of protection

hank...look ben ill answer your question with a question

ben...ok what

hank...is gold FDIC insured and is the fed long on gold?

ben...whattaya mean of course its not fdic insured...and you know damn well weve been trying to hold gold down

hank...ok theres your answer... , i mean look ben i hope you didnt buy all that bullshit you got told at the NY fed,

hank continues....remember what the maestro said, back in 66 and repeated 8 years ago...gold "is" money

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22597

usa creting jobs in china to build our wind tubines

after hearing the happy news about how goldman sachs got H1N1 flue shots for its upper management

ahead of pregnant mothers standing in lines at NYC hospitals

i ran into more good news

a 600 megawatt wind turbine farm being planned for texas will create 300 jobs in china where the turbines are to be built

but wait it gets better

using USA stimulus money!

you may not like communism

but those chinese communists sure are our best friends now ..right?

why ,not only do we let them manipulate their currency to take us export jobs

but then we drop all tariffs so our minimum wage workers cant even compete

and then we even outsource energy jobs using the taxpayers stimulus money

what a country...what a slap in the face of men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line

for

this

country

makes me sick

Bloomberg Printer-Friendly Page

you will not be assimilated

often i have wondered if there is a level of complexity, in any system, beyond which the probability, rises asymptotically, for repeating and compounding malfunctions and then total system breakdown, and thus the system can not evolve in complexity beyond this level

running strategy and platform

blinkered

thanks for the thought

my plan is to run NOT accepting any campaign donations

advertise myself as the candidate that can not be bought

refuse to accept any salary until... and if i am re-elected

run a personal appearance (doorbell, speak at events) and internet and yard sign campaign

my platform

end the federal reserve and restore all appropriate power to the treasury

balanced budget amendment to the constitution

re authorize, pass..glass steagal legislation

set a limit to size of both depository and other financial institutions..an end of too big to fail

open a bank of the united states of america and issue currency direct from the treasury

enuf pitchforks and torches talk

after reading two threads down (the cit chap 11 thread)...

you guys are scaring the shit outta me

yes things are very bad

this means people have to get to work...work the system...hard damn it

stop all the talk about effin ptichforks and torches...and run for political office

im giving serious consideration to filing for the 9th congressional district in washington state

and i expect at least 434 of the users and lurkers to do the same

i dont care what your position is on green house gases or abortion damn it

thats not the issue here, you know what has to be done

replace the house of representatives...and in so doing

drive a stake in the heart of the system that is bailing out the bankstas...period...nothing else matters