Discussion of Housing Bubble, US Dollar, Debt, Trade Deficit, Oil, Gold, Consumer Spending, Central Banks, Inflation, Outsourcing and the Bleak Future of the US economy
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Wednesday, March 11, 2009
New Open Forum
Post your thoughts, share hyperlinks, hold a discussion etc here.
Warren Buffet says.... "Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time," Buffett wrote. "It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America's best days lie ahead."
Just the sort of smoke most Americans are dying to have blown up their u know whats.
I always enjoy and agree in large part with Jim Willie's analysis.
Of special note this week are his views on the US Dollar:
"A certain analyst (unnamed here, named in newsletter) has been on the job within the economic and political spheres, even military aspects of the war and its costs. He summed up very well the impact of the lost custodial role of the USDollar. My claim has been that the Untied States will enter an isolated corner best known as the Third World. He concurs in eloquent style, when he writes: "If the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreigners will not accept dollars in exchange for real things. This event would be immensely disruptive to an economy dependent on imports for its energy, its clothes, its shoes, its manufactured products, and its advanced technology products. If incompetence in Washington, the type of incompetence that produced the current economic crisis, destroys the dollar as reserve currency, the 'unipower' will overnight become a third world country, unable to pay for its imports or to sustain its standard of living. How long can the US government protect the dollar's value by leasing its gold to bullion dealers who sell it, thereby holding down the gold price? Given the incompetence in Washington and on Wall Street, our best hope is that the rest of the world is even less competent and even in deeper trouble. In this event, the US dollar might survive as the least valueless of the world's fiat currencies."
Don't know if you're aware of it or not Mark, but I've stated much of the same in the past:
An article in GlobalResearch.Ca by Danny Schechter (creator of the documentary 'In Debt We Trust'): Who will Rescue Us as Our Economy Stays in Free Fall? Found an interesting para inside: Mo Sacirbey, former investment banker and VP at S&P says (emphasis mine): "I think we had a transition from what truly was a free-market system to something now that is out of control and probably what I would define as a predatory system where we are not so much dealing anymore about the notion of fair prices, and the notion of markets that -- that work transparently an open late but in fact frequently markets that are manipulated for the end of maybe a few out there -- a few investors, mega-investors. It's even -- even that's very difficult to tell. We still don't know who in fact is making money while so many are losing money on Wall Street right now."
Go hereLink to interveiw and check out the links to the Edward Griffith audio. Excellent interview from the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island".
This is the way foreign buyers of US bonds are going to get ""a haircut"". I predict, that, after this the demand for US T-bonds could drop to zero. Do these goofs in the US government REALLY think foreign buyers are willing to continue buy US T-bonds after they have taken such a financial blow. Read the ENTIRE article.
listen to the audio interview of Simon Johnson on the bailout and economic collapse. He is the founder of the website baseline scenario, and was an economist for the IMF and is currently a fellow at the Peterson Institute, and a professor at one the business schools. Very interesting interview!!!
The US government is warning banks that its deposit insurance fund could go broke this year as bank failures … WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US government is warning banks that its deposit insurance fund could go broke this year as bank failures mount. The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, in a letter to bank chief executives dated March 2, defended the FDIC's plan to raise fees on banks and assess an emergency fee to shore up the fund and maintain investor confidence. Bair acknowledged the new fees, announced Friday, would put additional pressure on banks at time of financial crisis and a deepening recession, but insisted they were critical to keep the insurance fund solvent and protect. "Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year," Bair wrote. The FDIC chief said in the letter that the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions raised the prospects of "a large number" of bank failures through 2010. "Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero or even become negative," she wrote. The FDIC last Friday announced it would impose a temporary emergency fee on lenders and raise its regular assessments to shore up the rapidly depleting deposit insurance fund that insures individual customer deposits up to 250,000 dollars. A week ago the FDIC reported a sharp depletion of the deposit insurance fund in the fourth quarter due to actual and anticipated bank failures, to 19 billion dollars from 34.6 billion in the third quarter. The FDIC said it had set aside an additional 22 billion dollars for estimated losses on failures anticipated in 2009.
Today I heard someone praising the stimulus package. "Did you know that some first time home buyers will get an $8,000 gift to apply for a down payment"? I don't know how accurate that is BUT. It is absolute lunacy. That's just what we need more home buyers who will turn around and lose their jobs and not be able to pay their mortgage. I tried to explain the lunacy of it to them but it went in one ear and out the other. The overwhelming ignorance in spite of the voice of reason amazes me.
I highly recommend everyone listen to this talk by Mohamed El-Erian. It's simple and brilliant at the same time. http://fora.tv/2009/02/24/Mohamed_El-Erian_When_Markets_Collide#chapter_02
He talks about how we are living through a crisis OF the global system where circuit breakers don't work.
He also describes the day in September - can't we all remember that day! - when he called his wife and told her to go to ATM and get cash because he wasn't sure if the banks would open the next day.
He talks about where we are in the problem and what's driving it; what to look for to see if we're reaching a turning point; and how to navigate this very bumpy journey to a new destination that we are all going toward.
Thanks for that link Ellen. I wish I could share his optimism, but at least I know that "prepare for the worst but hope for the best" has a tolerable outcome, providing that everything goes nearly perfect from this point (baking the known bad news into the cake). But wait - that is the exact reason I can't share in his optimism. He is also a Keynesian best I can tell, and I tend to fall in the Austrian camp (thanks to Randy's "college in a sidebar"). He states that our great contribution going forward is 1) Reserve Currency, and 2) Financial Structure. If I was the productive world I would be preparing for a shift in 1, and pretty discouraged bordering on angry about 2. The young lady who espoused hope about "Green" taking us to future prosperity needs to realize that in the producer countries, the "debate is over" talk is foolishness. Japan is now moving into the camp that says the facts are not yet in, Russia and India are doing science that tells them that we are going to further cripple our own economy needlessly, and China just doesn't care that much. They are still dealing with the true toxic pollution that we fought in the '70s. The CO2 "science" is some of the shoddiest in recent memory as amply demonstrated by the deconstruction of Mann's "Hockey Stick" and Hansen's GISSTEMP "global thermometer". Ocean and solar cycle variability are both only now being acknowledged as possible drivers that can overwhelm the signal from the lesser greenhouse gases.
What happened to the Jon Stewart video making fun of CNBC? It disappeared from your site. I was glad to see that someone is finally calling out those phonies at CNBC. They didn't complain much about the Wall Street bailouts, nor did they complain when their parent company - General Electric - had to borrow money from the Fed to meet day to day expenses (who knows - Santelli's paycheck could even be from bailout... uhm, loan money from the Fed). They said they were just "testing" this new Fed lending facility. Yeah right. They deserved to be made fun of.
Recieved my silver coins today from Superior Silver. just as promised! David was great to work with. Thanks for the link, Randy. Also, ordered some more Ar-15 mags over the weekend. I don't want to sound crazy, but If this country and the world are going to get worse, it's going to happen much faster than most think.
Randy, Here's a "Screw the taxpayer" joke. Would be very funny if it wasn't so true! Ellen
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.
All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700."
The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?" The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."
"Done!" replies the government official.
And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan will work….
The mess in the U.S. is amazing. I lived through something similar in Sweden in the early 1990s. Here's how we handled and solved it.
http://www.petersoninstitute.org/realtime/?p=504
Personally, I benefited from the crisis. I bought my apartment in the center of Stockholm at rock bottom price, still live in it (now worh five times what I paid) and have zero debt.
Read an interesting exchange between family member of deceased and a credit card company. Seems the deceased woman died with a zero balance. Family member is reporting the death with persistant credit card staff insisting that account with additional extra fees will be turned over to collections or even the fraud division.
NEO, this economic crisis was manufactured starting back 30 years ago with the world's biggest Ponzi scheme (Google it). The US was the world's biggest producer of finished goods before Reagan, and once Reagan took office, the US began to lose that position around the world. And now, the US is the world's biggest importer of finished goods and the world's biggest exporter of raw materials. This has been a Ponzi scheme by the monopoly-debt financial capitalist economy to subvert what was the mature (product based) capitalist economy. The manufacturing of securitized debt instruments was the wealth generator (finance is 40% of our GDP).
Now it has burned up. $60 trillion of worker's wealth, worldwide, has vanished. 1 in 5 homeowners in the US are underwater. 1 in 10 are in default or foreclosure. $8T in home valued wealth has burned up.
I have noticed something peculiar. Everytime Randy is putting up a link to an article called ""Dow: where is the floor ?"" the DOW is near a temporary low. A very contrarian signal.
This is a very interesting graph. (From the website dshort.com). It compares the current bearmarket with that of 1929-1932.
Sobering graph - Illustrates that this beating is worse than the early years of the depression.
As far as a contrarian signal, I did state in my post last Thursday (DOW a historical perspective) that the markets (due to oversold conditions) would likely stage a rally before we plunge to much lower depths...
With that said, a one or two day event (yesterday and today) don't make a rally trend. Lets see what the next few days ahead bring.
Tomorrow we can expect retail sals figures, jobless claims and business inventories - ALL good news I'm sure ;>)
Friday will bring Trade reports, import/export prices and consumer sentiment - Once again, lets wait and see how the markets react...
There're a number of reasons the stockmarket could(!!) stage a (small ??) rally this month and into early april: 1. Next week the march 2009 stock options expire. 2. March is the "End of 1st quarter reporting season". By selling in march assetmanagers can try to improve their performance record. 3. The "Put/Call Ratio" (Source: CBOE) was recently above 1 again.
56 comments:
Love the image Randy!!! A barrel of laughs!!!
Such reassuring words!
Obama tells powerful lobbies: Bring it on
A wind bag bag with pearly white teeth?
Warren Buffet says....
"Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time," Buffett wrote. "It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America's best days lie ahead."
Just the sort of smoke most Americans are dying to have blown up their u know whats.
The new Jim Willie is up:
Gold: Musings and Peptalk
PS - I never would have found JW without this website so consider me grateful.
Thanks Mark,
I always enjoy and agree in large part with Jim Willie's analysis.
Of special note this week are his views on the US Dollar:
"A certain analyst (unnamed here, named in newsletter) has been on the job within the economic and political spheres, even military aspects of the war and its costs. He summed up very well the impact of the lost custodial role of the USDollar. My claim has been that the Untied States will enter an isolated corner best known as the Third World. He concurs in eloquent style, when he writes: "If the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreigners will not accept dollars in exchange for real things. This event would be immensely disruptive to an economy dependent on imports for its energy, its clothes, its shoes, its manufactured products, and its advanced technology products. If incompetence in Washington, the type of incompetence that produced the current economic crisis, destroys the dollar as reserve currency, the 'unipower' will overnight become a third world country, unable to pay for its imports or to sustain its standard of living. How long can the US government protect the dollar's value by leasing its gold to bullion dealers who sell it, thereby holding down the gold price? Given the incompetence in Washington and on Wall Street, our best hope is that the rest of the world is even less competent and even in deeper trouble. In this event, the US dollar might survive as the least valueless of the world's fiat currencies."
Don't know if you're aware of it or not Mark, but I've stated much of the same in the past:
Dollar: Faltering Foundation of US Economic Strength
FWIW, that "unnamed analyst" in Willie's article is former Assistant US Treasury Secretary (under Ronald Reagan) Paul Craig Roberts!
Link
Nothing matters until we have a different monetary system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_hgwH2n7c0
moneyaswealth.blogspot.com
http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/cde
http://www.coeur.com/
An Idaho silver and gold producer.
Even Hershey's is moving work to Mexico.
http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=121&num=209917
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
march1 the Remedy for the Underlying Bank Fraud"
Banks taking TARP have engaged in fraud.
Sunday night market futures:
http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/
DOW down 80 already.
Engdahl video.....
Taking on the banking cabal
Stimulus Watch: Find projects by state or territory
Not sure why the above didn't work but you can copy and paste it from this.
http://www.stimuluswatch.org/project/by_state
And The Good News Just Keeps Coming
ordered 500 oz of silver rounds from Superior. So far Dave has been great to deal with. Looking forward to recieving them. Price is great.
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
An article in GlobalResearch.Ca by Danny Schechter (creator of the documentary 'In Debt We Trust'):
Who will Rescue Us as Our Economy Stays in Free Fall?
Found an interesting para inside:
Mo Sacirbey, former investment banker and VP at S&P says (emphasis mine):
"I think we had a transition from what truly was a free-market system to something now that is out of control and probably what I would define as a predatory system where we are not so much dealing anymore about the notion of fair prices, and the notion of markets that -- that work transparently an open late but in fact frequently markets that are manipulated for the end of maybe a few out there -- a few investors, mega-investors. It's even -- even that's very difficult to tell. We still don't know who in fact is making money while so many are losing money on Wall Street right now."
IBM RFID TV Advertisment - Start Shopping As a Chipped Human Now
Hey anon,
That quote from Marx in the Schechter article seems applicable.
Go hereLink to interveiw and check out the links to the Edward Griffith audio. Excellent interview from the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island".
This is the way foreign buyers of US bonds are going to get ""a haircut"". I predict, that, after this the demand for US T-bonds could drop to zero. Do these goofs in the US government REALLY think foreign buyers are willing to continue buy US T-bonds after they have taken such a financial blow. Read the ENTIRE article.
Thanks to Mike Shedlock.
Oops, I seem to have forgotten to add the weblink to the comment above. Click here
Visit this website.
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13
listen to the audio interview of Simon Johnson on the bailout and economic collapse. He is the founder of the website baseline scenario, and was an economist for the IMF and is currently a fellow at the Peterson Institute, and a professor at one the business schools. Very interesting interview!!!
The Root of All Evil
James Quinn
A Stairway to Retail Heaven (Part 1)
I'm starting to develop a theme here lol.
Now Berkshire Hathaway Credit Default Swaps Climb
Wow Randy, What do you think about this!?!
The US government is warning banks that its deposit insurance fund could go broke this year as bank failures …
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US government is warning banks that its deposit insurance fund could go broke this year as bank failures mount.
The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, in a letter to bank chief executives dated March 2, defended the FDIC's plan to raise fees on banks and assess an emergency fee to shore up the fund and maintain investor confidence.
Bair acknowledged the new fees, announced Friday, would put additional pressure on banks at time of financial crisis and a deepening recession, but insisted they were critical to keep the insurance fund solvent and protect.
"Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year," Bair wrote.
The FDIC chief said in the letter that the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions raised the prospects of "a large number" of bank failures through 2010.
"Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero or even become negative," she wrote.
The FDIC last Friday announced it would impose a temporary emergency fee on lenders and raise its regular assessments to shore up the rapidly depleting deposit insurance fund that insures individual customer deposits up to 250,000 dollars.
A week ago the FDIC reported a sharp depletion of the deposit insurance fund in the fourth quarter due to actual and anticipated bank failures, to 19 billion dollars from 34.6 billion in the third quarter.
The FDIC said it had set aside an additional 22 billion dollars for estimated losses on failures anticipated in 2009.
Ellen,
I just saw that too. Holy monkey!
-Iconoclast
Thanks Ellen - good find,
The end result: complete US banking system nationalization - there is no other option!
Banana Republic, U.S.A
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1223&theme=home&page=1&loc=b&type=cttf
Today I heard someone praising the stimulus package. "Did you know that some first time home buyers will get an $8,000 gift to apply for a down payment"? I don't know how accurate that is BUT. It is absolute lunacy. That's just what we need more home buyers who will turn around and lose their jobs and not be able to pay their mortgage. I tried to explain the lunacy of it to them but it went in one ear and out the other. The overwhelming ignorance in spite of the voice of reason amazes me.
I highly recommend everyone listen to this talk by Mohamed El-Erian. It's simple and brilliant at the same time.
http://fora.tv/2009/02/24/Mohamed_El-Erian_When_Markets_Collide#chapter_02
He talks about how we are living through a crisis OF the global system where circuit breakers don't work.
He also describes the day in September - can't we all remember that day! - when he called his wife and told her to go to ATM and get cash because he wasn't sure if the banks would open the next day.
He talks about where we are in the problem and what's driving it; what to look for to see if we're reaching a turning point; and how to navigate this very bumpy journey to a new destination that we are all going toward.
Ellen
Thanks for that link Ellen. I wish I could share his optimism, but at least I know that "prepare for the worst but hope for the best" has a tolerable outcome, providing that everything goes nearly perfect from this point (baking the known bad news into the cake). But wait - that is the exact reason I can't share in his optimism. He is also a Keynesian best I can tell, and I tend to fall in the Austrian camp (thanks to Randy's "college in a sidebar"). He states that our great contribution going forward is 1) Reserve Currency, and 2) Financial Structure. If I was the productive world I would be preparing for a shift in 1, and pretty discouraged bordering on angry about 2. The young lady who espoused hope about "Green" taking us to future prosperity needs to realize that in the producer countries, the "debate is over" talk is foolishness. Japan is now moving into the camp that says the facts are not yet in, Russia and India are doing science that tells them that we are going to further cripple our own economy needlessly, and China just doesn't care that much. They are still dealing with the true toxic pollution that we fought in the '70s. The CO2 "science" is some of the shoddiest in recent memory as amply demonstrated by the deconstruction of Mann's "Hockey Stick" and Hansen's GISSTEMP "global thermometer". Ocean and solar cycle variability are both only now being acknowledged as possible drivers that can overwhelm the signal from the lesser greenhouse gases.
Gold & The Panic Phase
The new Jim Willie, for us knuckle draggers...
What happened to the Jon Stewart video making fun of CNBC? It disappeared from your site. I was glad to see that someone is finally calling out those phonies at CNBC. They didn't complain much about the Wall Street bailouts, nor did they complain when their parent company - General Electric - had to borrow money from the Fed to meet day to day expenses (who knows - Santelli's paycheck could even be from bailout... uhm, loan money from the Fed). They said they were just "testing" this new Fed lending facility. Yeah right. They deserved to be made fun of.
Recieved my silver coins today from Superior Silver. just as promised! David was great to work with. Thanks for the link, Randy. Also, ordered some more Ar-15 mags over the weekend. I don't want to sound crazy, but If this country and the world are going to get worse, it's going to happen much faster than most think.
Economic mess is manufactured - excellent video that explains it in a nutshell.
http://neoversion1.blogspot.com/2009/03/economic-crisis-manufactured-surprised.html
Keep up the good work Randy.
What does one TRILLION dollars look like?
Randy, Here's a "Screw the taxpayer" joke. Would be very funny if it wasn't so true! Ellen
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.
All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some
figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says,
I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100
profit for me."
The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700."
The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?" The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."
"Done!" replies the government official.
And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan will work….
The mess in the U.S. is amazing. I lived through something similar in Sweden in the early 1990s. Here's how we handled and solved it.
http://www.petersoninstitute.org/realtime/?p=504
Personally, I benefited from the crisis. I bought my apartment in the center of Stockholm at rock bottom price, still live in it (now worh five times what I paid) and have zero debt.
Read an interesting exchange between family member of deceased and a credit card company. Seems the deceased woman died with a zero balance. Family member is reporting the death with persistant credit card staff insisting that account with additional extra fees will be turned over to collections or even the fraud division.
Treasury secretary may face loss in NY home sale
http://www.app.com/article/20090309/NEWS/90309124
America's Fiscal Collapse. Did this guy, Michel Chossudovsky, go insane or is Obama really planning such an austerity program or this "War budget" ?
Break out the party hats.... It's about to roll over to 11 TRILL
NEO, this economic crisis was manufactured starting back 30 years ago with the world's biggest Ponzi scheme (Google it). The US was the world's biggest producer of finished goods before Reagan, and once Reagan took office, the US began to lose that position around the world. And now, the US is the world's biggest importer of finished goods and the world's biggest exporter of raw materials. This has been a Ponzi scheme by the monopoly-debt financial capitalist economy to subvert what was the mature (product based) capitalist economy. The manufacturing of securitized debt instruments was the wealth generator (finance is 40% of our GDP).
Now it has burned up. $60 trillion of worker's wealth, worldwide, has vanished. 1 in 5 homeowners in the US are underwater. 1 in 10 are in default or foreclosure. $8T in home valued wealth has burned up.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Please Don’t Riot… It’s Just What They Want David Icke
I have noticed something peculiar. Everytime Randy is putting up a link to an article called ""Dow: where is the floor ?"" the DOW is near a temporary low. A very contrarian signal.
This is a very interesting graph. (From the website dshort.com). It compares the current bearmarket with that of 1929-1932.
Willy2,
Sobering graph - Illustrates that this beating is worse than the early years of the depression.
As far as a contrarian signal, I did state in my post last Thursday (DOW a historical perspective) that the markets (due to oversold conditions) would likely stage a rally before we plunge to much lower depths...
With that said, a one or two day event (yesterday and today) don't make a rally trend. Lets see what the next few days ahead bring.
Tomorrow we can expect retail sals figures, jobless claims and business inventories - ALL good news I'm sure ;>)
Friday will bring Trade reports, import/export prices and consumer sentiment - Once again, lets wait and see how the markets react...
Randy
The Obama Deception
There're a number of reasons the stockmarket could(!!) stage a (small ??) rally this month and into early april:
1. Next week the march 2009 stock options expire.
2. March is the "End of 1st quarter reporting season". By selling in march assetmanagers can try to improve their performance record.
3. The "Put/Call Ratio" (Source: CBOE) was recently above 1 again.
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