Financial topics

[gerald]

If you believe missiles will be headed toward where you are now, then the rational thing to do is move.

What assumptions are you making that lead you to this conclusion?

That you want to live.

"Enjoy and experience life as you live, relish the moment, all goes to dust, if you partially understand so much the better, accept what is, most do not" ---
A quote from an Atlantean

cheers

[aedens]

Review

[John]

I heard a commentator make an interesting comparison today.

America's "far right" is opposed to government debt and printing
money.

Europe's "far right" is opposed to austerity and favors more debt
and printing money.

John

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/488340

This is pretty interesting. It details how the leadership of Europe and the USA was unable to come to agreement as the Euro was imploding during November 2011. Zero Hedge makes the point that absolutely nothing has changed in the 3 years since.

No, the real news is that even as Europe was facing near certain disintegration, it still was unwilling to make the compromises necessary to move away from a pseudo-union, one which is neither a federation where joint bond issuance is possible and where members are ratably responsible for each other, nor where the countries are willing to cede sovereignty to the most stable and viable entity in order to spread risk.

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-2 ... d-now.html

Speaking of how nothing has changed in 3 years, or maybe I should say has changed for the worse,

BlackRock Inc. (BLK)’s Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink said the U.S. housing market is “structurally more unsound” today than before the financial crisis because it depends more on government-backed mortgage companies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“We’re more dependent on Fannie and Freddie than we were before the crisis,” Fink said today at a conference held by the Investment Company Institute in Washington, noting that he was one of the first Freddie Mac bond traders on Wall Street.

[gerald]

I heard a commentator make an interesting comparison today.

America's "far right" is opposed to government debt and printing
money.

Europe's "far right" is opposed to austerity and favors more debt
and printing money.

John

John you might find this video interesting regarding how the S&L problem was handled ( indictments and prison time ) vs. the current banking issues -- no indictments --- different generations.

Bill Black On Robbing Banks (From The Inside): "The Weapon Of Choice Is Accounting" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-2 ... choice-acc

[Higgenbotham]

Getting back to the more mundane, the regular stock market is closed today but the futures are open and the S&P 500 futures made a new record high this morning. I tried to short last week on the proposed May 21 turn date and lost some money. I am trying again now on the equivalent of the 1906 S&P 500 resonance level, which is about where the index would have topped out this morning in line with the futures. The resonance levels are calculated by adding 378 to the past key levels of this bull market. For example, the April 2012 high of 1422 was arrived at by adding two 378 point increments to the March 2009 low of 666. This level is from the January 2010 high of 1150. The previous level of 1853 was 378 points over the September 2012 high of 1475.

[aedens]

Getting back to the more mundane, the regular stock market is closed today but the futures are open and the S&P 500 futures made a new record high this morning. I tried to short last week on the proposed May 21 turn date and lost some money. I am trying again now on the equivalent of the 1906 S&P 500 resonance level, which is about where the index would have topped out this morning in line with the futures. The resonance levels are calculated by adding 378 to the past key levels of this bull market. For example, the April 2012 high of 1422 was arrived at by adding two 378 point increments to the March 2009 low of 666. This level is from the January 2010 high of 1150. The previous level of 1853 was 378 points over the September 2012 high of 1475.

No matter your stripe the entire banking system rests on a statistical probability. This denies the statistical possibility of payment. Basically people are unable to see the natural law VS. kantian utiliarianism in the internal Austrian arguments of "the conscious reflection on our moral beliefs with the aim of improving, extending or refining those beliefs in some way.

As John noted the right here and there has two definition to one net effect of nature that has one rule. Water - wheat - weather. Simple math even in log 3 basic investment principles.

[Higgenbotham]

Yesterday.

http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/democ ... 93544.html

CNN's John King reports that Democrats are privately calling President Obama "detached," "flat footed," and "incompetent.""

September 4, 2013.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101008123

Economist Eliot Janeway (1913-1993) is credited with saying, "When the president is in trouble, the stock market is in trouble."

That's a bad omen because "clearly the president is in trouble," said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James.

"Those troubles began with the Benghazi scandal, escalated with the (Department of Justice) spying on news reporter James Rosen, followed by the IRS scandal, and now we have Syria," Saut said in his morning note to clients Wednesday. "In fact, we are even alienating two of our steadfast allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, whose silence on our Syrian strategy has been deafening."

Since then we have the Obamacare software failure and now the VA scandal.

Here are the latent issues I see:
1. The birth certificate.
2. Fast and Furious.
3. Benghazi.
4. The IRS scandal.
5. The NSA spying.
6. The Obamacare software failure.
7. The VA scandal.

What seems obvious to me is that Bernanke's counterfeiting of $85 billion per month created a feel good effect that temporarily masked the effects of these scandals. Any one of these scandals looks equivalent to Watergate.

The other thing that seems apparent is that the Whites don't want to criticize Obama for fear of appearing "racist". That will lose its effect once it is realized that the country probably isn't going to survive and the people as individuals realize they aren't going to survive either.

[vincecate]

John, can you give some idea of how bad you think the coming crisis will be? Like more killed by war/famine/disease than WW2? How long till things are back to current economic level?