Financial topics

[aedens]

I will hold my short position as is until after the election cycle for the incoming jagged pills.
I recently added 1/7 th more to it.
The German Banks already know we are slowing as they speak in platitudes.
I still expect Mother nature to seal the deal. Water, Wheat , Weather.
The last actual true poll was taken down in Germany on Spiegel to what the taxpayers already knows
over there. Lately Merkel has formed an opinion which I have to admit was as pragmatic as it should of been.
I hope they understand not all voters like dimmcrats either so what color shield pulls her strings?
Like I noted we are seeing people move here who had the brains to say when the river went dry we
needed no other facts to tell us it was time. Expect more narratives from the elected ones who are ignored
as the swamp creatures they have become at the 19th hole. I do not want my family again in that snake pit
called the middle east.
As we seen early and noted - Running From A Lion... Into A Bear... Bitten By A Snake. Amos listened and written was is so will you?
We are being looted as the sheep are being scattered. It was said the center cannot hold.
What center now would that be?

Dry run to sealing the doors. Metals still are the currency's safety valve so lets not get ahead of 6000 years of history.

For 39 minutes today, as we noted earlier, the US stock "market" broke. As Nanex details, a total of 1,384 symbols were affected as 100s of stocks trade with crossed NBBOs, practically eliminating any chance for retail traders to transact. Options market were frantic, volatility swung around like a Ukrainian border-patrol agent, and yet the US equity indices limped ever higher. For those who fear 'the big one', for those who understand market liquidity, for those who got a glimpse of what happens when large crowds meet small doors in the high-yield credit market, today's "broken" market was a cold hard lesson that few 'moms and pops' would have noticed... but from the perspective of 'ability to trade' - today's market was worse than the Nasdaq Blackout and the Flash Crash... Hedge accordingly. t

I asked a simple question and the blank stare was real. Bloody sheep will be gutted, not sheered as we seen before.

[jcsok]

H - Looking at the same seasonal tendency of major tops in late summer, therefore I'm short, expecting up to 2020 to continue to sell into this rally. Throwing more $$$ at a possible top, like I've thrown $$$ in the past 4 years at turning points, only to have the pain as the market keeps going. Keep thinking of John's mantra of the market will be irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

As A keeps reiterating, water, wheat, weather. If the volcano blows in Iceland, we WILL experience global cooling. I have written in previous posts that I expect a natural disaster to be the game changer in the global economy.

[gerald]

H - Looking at the same seasonal tendency of major tops in late summer, therefore I'm short, expecting up to 2020 to continue to sell into this rally. Throwing more $$$ at a possible top, like I've thrown $$$ in the past 4 years at turning points, only to have the pain as the market keeps going. Keep thinking of John's mantra of the market will be irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

As A keeps reiterating, water, wheat, weather. If the volcano blows in Iceland, we WILL experience global cooling. I have written in previous posts that I expect a natural disaster to be the game changer in the global economy.

Is this the beginning?
Ebola Devastates West Africa: Revenues Down; Markets Not Functioning; Projects Canceled; GDP Plunges 4% http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-2 ... s-canceled

hmmm

[Higgenbotham]

I've written about the decaying infrastructure but don't think that will deliver the knockout blow. My best guess is that the most likely culprit for delivering the body blow to the system that puts it into an irreversible, irreparable state will be a pandemic. There have already been a lot of severe mishaps - Lehman, BP, Fukushima - but the petroleum still flows, goods still get delivered, the grid is still up, payments get processed. I think it's going to be a pandemic that grinds that to a halt. Natural disasters will very likely precede any pandemic and will serve the purpose of wearing the population down and making it susceptible to disease. That might not take very long compared to the wearing down process that would occur in an agricultural system. I think tens of millions in urban environments are sitting ducks. What will happen if/when the equivalent of the Black Death sweeps through the kind of living arrangement we have now? Will it be worse? I can imagine that it could be a lot worse, and that there will all of a sudden be a lot of critical functions that can't be performed.

[gerald]

I've written about the decaying infrastructure but don't think that will deliver the knockout blow. My best guess is that the most likely culprit for delivering the body blow to the system that puts it into an irreversible, irreparable state will be a pandemic. There have already been a lot of severe mishaps - Lehman, BP, Fukushima - but the petroleum still flows, goods still get delivered, the grid is still up, payments get processed. I think it's going to be a pandemic that grinds that to a halt. Natural disasters will very likely precede any pandemic and will serve the purpose of wearing the population down and making it susceptible to disease. That might not take very long compared to the wearing down process that would occur in an agricultural system. I think tens of millions in urban environments are sitting ducks. What will happen if/when the equivalent of the Black Death sweeps through the kind of living arrangement we have now? Will it be worse? I can imagine that it could be a lot worse, and that there will all of a sudden be a lot of critical functions that can't be performed.

I use to tell a little story, to some college students ( tenants of mine ) who wanted an easy job. -- Want an easy job? How about the men who monitor and maintain the main pumps in the Chicago Water Department,. You can watch them work from a viewing area on Michigan Ave. downtown. ( There are several pumping stations in the city ) What do they do? -- Sit at their desks, check a few gauges once and a while, do a little cleaning, ( their work area is as clean as a hospital ) and generally move in slow motion. Sounds nice and they have job security. --- The down side? If they make a mistake or over site, 500,000+ people have no water, they make the news and they are shit on a stick. Most students don't want that kind of responsibility.

Yes, these are the generally unseen jobs that make a complex society function. When you think about it, society is truly dependent on very few unseen people.

[Higgenbotham]

I use to tell a little story, to some college students ( tenants of mine ) who wanted an easy job. -- Want an easy job? How about the men who monitor and maintain the main pumps in the Chicago Water Department,. You can watch them work from a viewing area on Michigan Ave. downtown. ( There are several pumping stations in the city ) What do they do? -- Sit at their desks, check a few gauges once and a while, do a little cleaning, ( their work area is as clean as a hospital ) and generally move in slow motion. Sounds nice and they have job security. --- The down side? If they make a mistake or over site, 500,000+ people have no water, they make the news and they are shit on a stick. Most students don't want that kind of responsibility.

Yes, these are the generally unseen jobs that make a complex society function. When you think about it, society is truly dependent on very few unseen people.

Similar to your comment, I've seen a familiar line in the news many times when there is a big power outage: Something like, "Crews were brought in from other states to help restore power." A pandemic brings up many possibilities in that regard - crews don't want to travel to stricken areas, crews don't want to travel at all, crews are disproportionately stricken by the pandemic, etc.

[Higgenbotham]

Something I noticed yesterday with regard to the stock market. The ratio of the Nasdaq to the S&P 500 hit a new multi year high. That is likely telling us we are in bubble territory. Though I have no direct corroboration, when John says that software engineering is probably the one area of the economy where work ethic and credibility has been restored, it makes sense that would be the case. It didn't cost anything to do it for one thing. Does that mean the Nasdaq should be this high? Probably not; that is probably more indicative of continuing corruption in finance, but it might mean that some of the increase in the ratio is valid.

I have some thoughts about the singularity, assuming it really does happen. Most who discuss the singularity seem to think that when the computers become smarter than the humans they will begin to solve all of our problems. Let's take a recent problem I read about as an example. Plastics are accumulating in the oceans as we know, but a lesser known problem is the plastics are degrading into fine particles that resemble sand and getting into the food chain that way. Most seem to assume that when the singularity hits the computers will just say, OK, we have figured out how to get this plastic out of the environment for little cost - here is what you do. Having studied another branch of engineering, my experience says things don't always work that way. With regard to some problems, the computers could just as easily come back with the answer that there is no solution that doesn't violate natural laws and the humans are trapped, they let it go too far. Upon hearing that, I think the humans would say the computers are lying to us and trying to outmaneuver us so they can inherit the earth, and then a war between the computers and the humans would ensue.

[Higgenbotham]

Deadly, brain-eating amoeba found in Louisiana water system
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/08/28/c ... d%3D521820

Nowadays, an article like this raises my suspicion meter.
http://fortune.com/2014/08/27/moynihan/
It turns out that just as this article is being released about Bank of America Merrill Lynch's supposed turnaround, they have started a campaign to attract large deposits.

Invasion of Poland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War (Polish: Kampania wrześniowa or Wojna obronna 1939 roku) in Poland and the Poland Campaign (German: Polenfeldzug) or Fall Weiß (Case White) in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, while the Soviet invasion commenced on 17 September following the Molotov-Tōgō agreement which terminated the Russian and Japanese hostilities (Nomonhan incident) in the east on 16 September.[14] The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
We passed the anniversary dates of April 12 and April 19 of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, where it appeared the Ukraine was on the verge of igniting WWIII. This one is next.

[aedens]

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/ ... ettlement/

Rot just keeps growing.

And, http://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/mergers.html

After some hundreds of years to get away from the desease it wants back in.

Some doubt we even escaped the paperclip psychopath in the shadow swamp with only 1.2 trillion missing of Rumsfield's factoid.

Do not be decieved since the hard right and and hard left are the outer shell protecting the other nuts.

Bad enough watching the silent weapons of the silent war victims stumble into the future.

The future was yesterday.

[Higgenbotham]

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/08/fed-v ... apitalize/