Financial topics

[freddyv]

ok, I love this...the headline reads...

"Manufacturing in U.S. Expands for Fourth Month "
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... 0eYo&pos=2

...and the text says,"The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index FELL to 53.6, LOWER than forecast, from October’s three-year high of 55.7, according to the Tempe, Arizona-based group. Readings above 50 signal expansion." (my emphasis)

...so, the last sentence makes it just fine that the index fell, and fell more than expected, but manufacturing is expanding? This is nutty.

It did expand or grow, just at a slower pace.

--Fred

[shoshin]

yeah, I know, the headline is "technically' correct, and yes, industrial output did continue to expand, but it just paints a rosy picture when the rate of expansion is declining.

[freddyv]

"But what's happened in the last five years is so overwhelming that it can barely be grasped by the human mind. An ordinary 1990s stock market bubble, as bad as it was, has been turned, with the connivance of economic experts, journalists, professors, investors, central bankers, pundits and politicians, into a worldwide bubble of incredibly fastastic proportions that's so huge and so obvious that every expert should see it. Or maybe it's like the whole planet earth has turned from being an ordinary planet into a huge bubble planet, so that it's impossible to see what's going on any more.


Do you remember what happened in 2001 after the Nasdaq crash and the Enron scandal? People wanted to put CEOs in jail -- ALL CEOs, even perfectly honest ones. People were going crazy. Well, it's going to happen again.

The Enron scandal is one historical example, but a better example might be the bankruptcy of the French Monarchy in 1789 that led to the French Revolution. In the Reign of Terror that followed, any person who was an aristocrat, a relative of an aristocrat, a friend of an aristocrat, a servant of an aristocrat, or even had a resemblance to an aristocrat, would be tried and quickly convicted and sentenced to the guillotine.

I notice that many in the media want to compare our current situation to The Great Depression or the 1970's but nobody outside of this site has mentioned the French Revolution. I tend to believe that we will eventually end up at a place where almost nobody could predict and I have often felt that The French Revolution might be the template.

Why? Because most of the people I know are part of this is one way or another, myself included. I have accepted that I was foolish and greedy and am well on my way to reordering my life, yet I know of few others who understand what is really happening, much less care and accept their part in it. They are waiting and hoping and deceiving themselves and have no idea what is on the way. Every day now I think about what it would be like if the gas and electricity stopped flowing and I had to make do. I think about what I would do if the Internet went down or the police in my town weren't paid and quit.

Most do not believe that these things can happen and I believe that is exactly why they may happen. In a worst-case-scenario I see politicians and bankers being physically attacked and the media driving it all, hoping that nobody notices how they drove most of the problems we are experiencing. In an even worst case scenario I can imagine nuclear war as breaking out when a terrorist group gets its hands on a suitcase nuke or when we get tired of sending our soldiers to die overseas.

The smart money I listen to all believe that bad things are coming but that things won't get too bad. I hope they are right but I fear they are not. I do know that having a bit of gold coin in my possession and my camper stocked and ready to roll is not a bad precaution.

--Fred

[gerald]

"But what's happened in the last five years is so overwhelming that it can barely be grasped by the human mind. An ordinary 1990s stock market bubble, as bad as it was, has been turned, with the connivance of economic experts, journalists, professors, investors, central bankers, pundits and politicians, into a worldwide bubble of incredibly fastastic proportions that's so huge and so obvious that every expert should see it. Or maybe it's like the whole planet earth has turned from being an ordinary planet into a huge bubble planet, so that it's impossible to see what's going on any more.


Do you remember what happened in 2001 after the Nasdaq crash and the Enron scandal? People wanted to put CEOs in jail -- ALL CEOs, even perfectly honest ones. People were going crazy. Well, it's going to happen again.

The Enron scandal is one historical example, but a better example might be the bankruptcy of the French Monarchy in 1789 that led to the French Revolution. In the Reign of Terror that followed, any person who was an aristocrat, a relative of an aristocrat, a friend of an aristocrat, a servant of an aristocrat, or even had a resemblance to an aristocrat, would be tried and quickly convicted and sentenced to the guillotine.

I notice that many in the media want to compare our current situation to The Great Depression or the 1970's but nobody outside of this site has mentioned the French Revolution. I tend to believe that we will eventually end up at a place where almost nobody could predict and I have often felt that The French Revolution might be the template.

Why? Because most of the people I know are part of this is one way or another, myself included. I have accepted that I was foolish and greedy and am well on my way to reordering my life, yet I know of few others who understand what is really happening, much less care and accept their part in it. They are waiting and hoping and deceiving themselves and have no idea what is on the way. Every day now I think about what it would be like if the gas and electricity stopped flowing and I had to make do. I think about what I would do if the Internet went down or the police in my town weren't paid and quit.

Most do not believe that these things can happen and I believe that is exactly why they may happen. In a worst-case-scenario I see politicians and bankers being physically attacked and the media driving it all, hoping that nobody notices how they drove most of the problems we are experiencing. In an even worst case scenario I can imagine nuclear war as breaking out when a terrorist group gets its hands on a suitcase nuke or when we get tired of sending our soldiers to die overseas.

The smart money I listen to all believe that bad things are coming but that things won't get too bad. I hope they are right but I fear they are not. I do know that having a bit of gold coin in my possession and my camper stocked and ready to roll is not a bad precaution.

--Fred

Interesting that you think that way.

An observation from some one who on occasion entertains ideas from the "twilight zone".

The following comments (my interpretations) are from a 50 page purchased report from -

The shape of things to come.
Volume 0, Issue 2
Data Set Analysis
September 15, 2009
Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis
from, Half past human

In simplistic terms they do a computer data mining of the global Internet seeking emotional word associations ( in different languages )
They have a suspicion that there is a "collective consensus". I am sorry but this is a very crude explanation of what they do and how they get their trends, and projections, and I apologize if I misinterpret or simplify what they say and do. They also state "negative emotions" are easier to identify then "positive ones".

Compared to "Half Past Human," John is an optimist.

One of their projections is a planetary rage against "the powers that be" under the heading of "Secrets Revealed"

An indication of this, is the recent revelations against "ACORN" and "Climategate" and the beginning pressure against NASA to reveal data.( this will be a big one)

Under the "secrets revealed" there are comments regarding people keeping list of those responsible, including politicians, Ceo's and news casters, and holding them responsible.

In surfing the news stories on the net and reading the "comments" to the news reports it is striking that in the last few weeks the comments from the "Half Past Human" data are showing up with increasing frequency and anger, including the indication of force.

In relation to history the French Revolution may very well be a more appropriate comparison for today's events.

We live in interesting times.

[wvbill]

As Gerrald Celente Says, "When people lose everything, they lose it."

I think things could get very ugly.

When I think about the magnitude of change necessary in so many different areas -- financial, monetary, food production, health care, climate, military, energy, water supply, etc., etc., I am convinced that events must occur, dramatic enough to collapse nearly all existing structure. i.e. We pretty much need to start over...

I personally feel its about a shift to higher consciousness that involves cycles of thousands of years. Man cannot control his environment. We are proving that. In the next phase, if we make it, we will learn again to live in harmony with nature.

I don't mean to get off topic or to be philosophical. Its just that so much needs to change... It really has to be the big one... Everything is 180 degrees from where it needs to be for a sustainable world...

Bill

[arrowrod]

How do you survive in a meltdown? You turn into a vicious animal.

Fortunately, tomorrow will be pretty much like today. The market will go up, the market will go down.

Gold purchase is stupid. You have to guard it. You can't eat it. It is really heavy to carry in your backpack.

There is too much "real" talent around to worry about it.

[Higgenbotham]

I wrote the following in this thread on January 8 of this year:

In my opinion, our entire government and corporate structure is in an extreme state of moral decay similar to Rome, 14th Century Florence, or the Soviet Union. I do not believe there is any precedent in modern Western civilization for the scale of decay that we are seeing, except perhaps France in 1789...

I read a book once that discussed how the Internet would render the nation-state form of government obsolete, just as the printing press rendered the medieval system obsolete.

Here are some quotes from that book, The Sovereign Individual, written in 1997:

There is much evidence that adherence to the civic myths of the nation-state is rapidly eroding. The death of Communism is simply the most striking example. As we explain in detail, the collapse of morality and growing corruption among leaders of Western governments is not a random development. It is evidence that the potential of the nation-state is exhausted.

The changes implied by the Information Revolution will not only create a fiscal crisis for governemnt, they will tend to disintegrate all large structures. Fourteen empires have disappeared already in the twentieth century. The breakdown of empires is part of the process that will dissolve the nation-state itself.

When the state finds itself unable to meet its committed expenditure by raising tax revenues, it will resort to other, more desperate measures. Among them is printing money...In the new millenium, cybermoney controlled by private markets will supercede fiat money issued by governments...
Lacking their accustomed scope to tax and inflate, governments, even in traditionally civil countries, will turn nasty. As income tax becomes uncollectible, older and more arbitrary methods of exaction will surface.

[mannfm11]

John, here is one you are going to love because it fits right in with not only the wall street game being crooked, but an old Wall Street guy/Obama financial team, Carter team member from the 1970's defending Geithner. Courtesy of William Black of Resolution trust fame and the University of Missouri KC.

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot ... nance.html

This is the first of 3 articles. This is Black's Blog

UMKC is a pretty interesting place it seems this day and time with Black and a guy named Michael Hudson who has some ideas about how to get through this mess which he says could put us back in feudalism, something I have thought for some time. I am beginning to find some of my ideas exhibited in a lot of readings I am seeing now.

This is a link to an article on Naked Capitalism. It links to a forward to a book this guy "Robert Brenner" has written. Linked in the link is a PDF on something eh wrote in the spring that diagrams the process that led us from the early 1980's to the weakening of the dollar to attempt to revive trade to how Japan attempted to finance their way out of the loss of monetary competitiveness and how the plan collapsed because their system was of continued capacity expansion and unbearably high land prices. Then the US did some things in the 1990's that produced the same result Japan acheived. Now, China and the US play a game of morbid dependence, as China is now in the game Japan played for most of the 60''s, 70's and 80's, expansion of capacity in light of declining profits. He says it is benefical to China that they came late and devastating to everyone else. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/ ... lence.html

[gerald]

As Gerrald Celente Says, "When people lose everything, they lose it."

I think things could get very ugly.

When I think about the magnitude of change necessary in so many different areas -- financial, monetary, food production, health care, climate, military, energy, water supply, etc., etc., I am convinced that events must occur, dramatic enough to collapse nearly all existing structure. i.e. We pretty much need to start over...

I personally feel its about a shift to higher consciousness that involves cycles of thousands of years. Man cannot control his environment. We are proving that. In the next phase, if we make it, we will learn again to live in harmony with nature.

I don't mean to get off topic or to be philosophical. Its just that so much needs to change... It really has to be the big one... Everything is 180 degrees from where it needs to be for a sustainable world...

Bill

I agree we need a major paradigm shift, we live in a sea of false information.

The best way I can illustrate this is from the field of science, sorry if I seem to digress from financial matters, but EVERYTHING influences finance.

A few illustrations

1) The Coler coil, This has been around for at least 60 years. It is a passive octagonal arrangement of magnets and windings (coils) that generate an electric current, a take off on this is http://www.freeenergy-freeelectricity.com

2) The solid surface of the sun http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/. How can a thermonuclear reaction in the core of the sun, meaning millions of degrees, produce a solid surface of 6,000 degrees having of a rocky calcium ferrite surface and yet have an atmosphere of 1-2 million degrees (in the corona)?

3) Super critical steam http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/45431 ... ption.html, simply stated this process can produce heat for electric generation, process garbage into raw materials, and neutralize many toxic wastes.

The above are not acceptable to those that "know". An indication of such thinking is the unfolding Climategate . Peer review approval is another way of saying "accepted by the establishment".

After all, one must protect ones funding, reputation, ego, importance, power, taxing ability, control, etc. Objective truth is a problem, and it must be controlled and contained.

How can one make intelligent decisions based on false information?

And yes, we also need a major spiritual /consciousness awaking -- things can't go on as they are.

[xakzen]

...
1) The Coler coil, This has been around for at least 60 years. It is a passive octagonal arrangement of magnets and windings (coils) that generate an electric current, a take off on this is http://www.freeenergy-freeelectricity.com
...

Perpetual Motion machine? I'm sorry, but you have lost all creditability with me on this one. People have been hawking this one for hundreds of years, but in violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics in that the entropy of the system must always increase, i.e. lose energy. This is true up to and including the entire universe as a system. So unless your Perpetual Motion machine is actually converting energy from some outside source, it is a hoax.

Scientific hoaxes are quite rare, but not unheard off. They can persist for long periods of time such as the English Piltdown man, but they can only persist as long as the original "researchers" are successful in hiding their raw data or destoying it in the case of East Anglia. Cracks slowly develop in their theory as more and more contrary evidence emerges and/or no one else can reproduce the experiments, i.e. the Cold Fusion hoax of the late 1980's (by the way there is still a Cold Fusion institute in Utah). Ultimately the perpetrators are shown to be the hucksters that they are sometimes well after their own deaths, but science marches on.

I agree that there is mounting evidence to refute the man made global warming theory and that ultimately it will be looked upon with ridicule in the not so distance future. It is equally true that many "well established" scientific facts have proven to be false or more accurately not completely true and this will continue in the future to refine scientific understanding; but that is hardly a justification for you to hawk your fraudulent merchandise here!