Seeking Alpha
About this author:
Submit
an article to

It doesn't seem possible that six months have passed under the bridge of time in 2009 yet, does it? Yet they have.

Let's take a look at the scorecard first from my 2009 Prediction Ticker, remembering of course that I have six months left!

  1. The economy will not recover in 2009. No sign of it yet, "green shooters" be damned. I predicted that U3 would reach 8% by the end of the year, it has exceeded that wildly, and is now 9.5%. U-6 also has exceeded my predicted value already.
  2. Deflation, not inflation, will become evident well beyond housing. Already has. CPI and PPI have come in with negative prints as has capital goods pricing.
  3. Housing prices will continue to decline. Yep.
  4. The Fed's attempt to "pump liquidity" will be shown to be an abject failure. I'll leave this one on the table for now; I believe the evidence is in, but I'm in the minority. Score this one as a "no result" as of yet.
  5. GDP will post a 12-month negative number. 12 months aren't up yet, but we're working on it!
  6. The Stock Market has not bottomed. Remember, this was made with the market around the 900 level. Major check; we declined to 666. My secondary prediction was a 50% trading range and a 5xx low; we missed that by 67 points, but I still have six months left. I'm sticking with this one.
  7. Precious metals will not be a safe haven. Oh Jim Sinclair! Where's my $1,600+ gold price? (Or for some, their $5,000+ gold price?) Missing, that's where. I know, I know, its all manipulation (instead of debt deflation.) Check.
  8. The Dollar will not collapse. Hasn't yet.
  9. The pound or euro will be where the FX dislocation originates if it occurs. I predicted Par for both being a possibility, not happening yet. We'll see what the next six months bring.
  10. The US Consumer will go from a negative savings rate to a seriously-positive one. I'm predicting 4% but it could go as high as 10%. Major double-check! We're up close to 7% now. That's a home run in any book.
  11. Commercial Real Estate will effectively collapse. The REITs have not yet imploded but the pricing and occupancy look like something that came out of the back end of a horse. Anyone got a finger to lend to push this pile over?
  12. Along with the above, expect 10% of retail stores to close. We're getting there.
  13. Several states will get in serious financial trouble and outright default of one or more is possible. California anyone? Major check.
  14. Mortgages are not done. Yep. Prime, OptionARMs, ALT-A.
  15. If you want to refinance you may get one brief shot at it with long rates around 4%. Check again. Hope you took it.
  16. Those who have said that the corporate bond market is being "unreasonable" in its expectation for defaults will start to look like the jackasses they are. Ding! Check CDS spreads the last few weeks? They're widening again. Even worse, the actual corporate default rates are getting rather nasty. This trend continues.
  17. Calls for "more lending" to consumers and businesses will go exactly nowhere. Major check. The drunk who is passed out from intoxication can't lift the bottle. Nice try guys.
  18. General Motors (GMGMQ.PK) and Chrysler will wind up in bankruptcy. DING!
  19. Protectionism and currency manipulation will rear their ugly heads. This has started but there's much more to come. Watch out; this has the possibility of igniting wars.
  20. Commodities will appear to be headed for a new bull market but this will turn out to be a false hope. Attempts to manage oil output to prop up the price will fail. Crude just rolled over, in fact, and major agri commodities were lock-limit down on one day last week. Ding.
  21. Sovereign debt defaults will number at least three. Not yet.
  22. China will have its first large-scale rumbling of civil unrest. Maybe. Scattered reports, but nothing confirmed. Let's call this a "not yet."
  23. Foreign uptake of Treasuries will be choked off. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING! Treasury changes the definition of "indirect bid" and then under the NEW definition demand appears to have (just recently) collapsed. This, by the way, is double-plus ungood.
  24. "The City" will be recognized as getting it worse than we are. No kidding?
  25. Things will get "revolting" in a number of nations. Not yet on any meaningful scale, unless of course you count Honduras and Iran. I'll call it a "not yet" for now, as those weren't the areas I was thinking of and I don't believe in "curve fitting."

So let's see - I have 25 predictions and of them I can score 13 "confirms", half the year is over, and no busts as of yet (although there is one, the Euro/Pound prediction, that is looking shaky.)

That's not bad, and we have six months left. I'll take it.

Now let's talk about what's going on.

First, I want to focus on housing, because, well, everyone else is, even though the housing mess is a symptom, not the cause of the problem. But the WSJ's "opinion" page had an interesting article up Friday morning:

The analysis indicates that, by far, the most important factor related to foreclosures is the extent to which the homeowner now has or ever had positive equity in a home. The accompanying figure shows how important negative equity or a low Loan-To-Value ratio is in explaining foreclosures (homes in foreclosure during December of 2008 generally entered foreclosure in the second half of 2008). A simple statistic can help make the point: although only 12% of homes had negative equity, they comprised 47% of all foreclosures.

Stan then waxes on about the necessity of "real" down payment amounts, something I've harped on for more than two years. In fact, on April 6th 2007 I said this:

You should have put down 20% of the purchase price as a down payment. The down payment serves two purposes - it insures you have "skin" in the game, and more importantly, it demonstrates conclusively that you have the discipline to amass a decent chunk of cash and sequester - rather than spend - that money. Historically, this money had to be "seasoned" - that is, it could not have come from some other form of loan (e.g. a personal loan) or gift (e.g. your parents give you $20,000); the source of the down payment has historically had to be disclosed and proven.

The reason for this, by the way, is not "simply" (as is often claimed) to provide positive equity. In fact, that's a side effect that happens to be very beneficial.

What Stan misses (as do the others) is that down payments are an inverse to leverage, and it is leverage throughout the system that got us in trouble in the first place.

Unfortunately neither the government nor columnists such as Stan "get it" in this regard. Stan claims this is "New Evidence" in the title of his piece; it is, in fact, not new at all. I've been yelling about this since literally the founding of The Market Ticker, and with good cause - it is the reason we are in this mess.

The market is a cruel enforcer of reality in this regard - when Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Lehman and Bear blew up all had leverage ratios in excess of 30:1 - that is, less than a 3% decline in asset value caused them to detonate.

This is the bottom line in the housing and indeed all other markets. Values fluctuate in the marketplace and the only way you can avoid those fluctuations becoming a bankruptcy trigger is by leaving yourself sufficient cushion by keeping leverage to reasonable levels.

This same principle applies to banks, it applies to homeowners and it applies to businesses. The concept of "too little skin in the game" is really a matter of leverage ratios, and how far an asset can depreciate in value before the holder owes more than the asset is worth. Once that occurs the so-called "asset" becomes a liability, and in short order it will sink you economically.

The underlying foolishness among our so-called "experts" in industry and government is that nobody is talking about or addressing this.

Why?

Because doing so means that we must:

  • WITHDRAW the "excess stimulus" that made this idiocy possible in the first place, and is attempting to continue it.
  • ACCEPT that asset prices will FALL until they reach equilibrium with income, and will appreciate only in concert with real income from production, not from leverage and debt.
  • DEFAULT the existing bad debt that cannot be serviced under the above two points, forcing those institutions and individuals who are over-leveraged to go bankrupt.
  • DEAL WITH the inevitable contraction in GDP that will come from this, even though it will be painful and unpleasant.

The last three points sound awful, and they are.

The problem is that they're more awful today than they were two years ago when I started yelling about this in the current economic malaise, and are much more awful than they were in 2000, when we should have done it, but refused due to the idiocy of Alan Greenspan and our elected government officials at the time.

The longer we wait the worse the damage will get, and you need no more evidence than what has recently come out of the auto industry.

The last couple of years of the bubble featured 14 million unit sales rates. This has now collapsed, of course, along with GM and Chrysler.

Their own people, along with the government, now predict that "stability" will come when we return to a roughly 10 million sales rate for new vehicles.

THAT IS A TWENTY-NINE PERCENT DECLINE!

Folks, do you realize what we're talking about here? If you look at the 2009 "Year In Review" Ticker (linked above) you will find that I discuss (again) the fact that in 2000 the Internet fraud had created an "excess" 10% GDP that had to be taken down to restore balance. It wasn't - and instead of 10%, now we are faced with 25%.

But the automakers are telling us that the real number in terms of capital goods might be closer to thirty percent.

It is happening here and now whether the pundits like it or not. We have gone from a -3% savings rate (roughly) to a +6.9% one. This is a 10% swing and with the consumer being 70% of the economy that's an immediate hit of somewhere between 4.83% and 7% of GDP (depending on whether you "count" the negative as an additive force, and you probably should.)

The problem is that it doesn't stop there: The government calls this a "savings rate" but it isn't. It counts debt repayments as "savings" among other distortions, meaning that trying to use the "savings rate" as an indicator of future capital formation is a lost cause. In point of fact there is no capital formation going on - people are cutting back on their voluntary 401k and IRA contributions because they don't have any money to put in - they are furiously paying down debt as fast as they're able in an attempt to avoid foreclosure and bankruptcy.

That of course means that spending drops which in turn means that employers need fewer people to work. Capacity utilization is in the toilet and average hours worked has fallen to never-before-recorded numbers in the history of the data being collected. This in turn feeds more layoffs which begets more people without income to spend on discretionary purchases (and in some cases non-discretionary ones!)

There is no avoiding the necessary contraction in GDP to bring the system back into balance, and the longer we continue to allow our government and media to LIE about what has happened, who is responsible, and what has to happen before the economy can clear and recover the worse off we will be.

Two years ago I began beating the drum on the prescription for a solution. It involved pulling the rug - intentionally - on housing price supports, and allowing them to collapse to sustainable numbers, all at once.

This would have resulted in a lot of people losing their homes. But by now, they'd be starting to buy them back at half or less of their former prices - and at sustainable payments under a 30 year fixed mortgage. They would have been able to save the 20% down payment too.

We would have seen myriad banks, including most of the big ones, go under. So what? The FDIC would have consumed the "bailout funds" in paying off depositors, which is bad, but the debt would be out of the system. Instead we have gotten exactly nothing out of more than $2 trillion now borrowed and spent by government - the debt is still there, it is still toxic, and it is still preventing recovery.

This story is by no means finished. The government has spent $2 trillion it does not have and has committed to nearly $6 trillion more in either guarantees or outright payments, and yet capacity utilization continues to drop, employees continue to be laid off, consumption continues to fall and frantic attempts to pay down debt and avoid default continue to rise.

In response the economy has continued to shrink and tax revenues have sunk through the floor, skyrocketing the deficit. Treasury apparently detected a reluctance among foreigners to continue buying our used toilet paper and changed the rules on reporting of "indirect" sales - which then, even after the change to intentionally overstate foreign interest, have precipitously declined anyway. It is fair to say that foreign interest in Treasuries is all-but-exhausted and barring a collapse in equity prices to recreate a "fear" environment for holding government bonds, there is going to be an increasing problem with funding the insane "prop up the game" money flood policy of The Fed and Treasury.

California is just the beginning of this unraveling; they are now issuing IOUs. Most other states will find themselves in similar circumstances and be forced to dramatically curtail spending along with raising taxes. The public labor unions (state and federal) are currently able to prevent their overly-fat pension and benefit programs from being brought in line with private industry, but this will not last forever, and when that wall cracks it will come with ferocious intensity. The "death spiral" of higher taxes leading people to erect their middle finger and either cocoon, go underground with their earnings, or depart has begun in California and will spread - count on it.

At some point reality must be faced, and we may as well do it now while we still have civil order. Those politicians, numbering nearly all of them from both parties, who argue that this can be "avoided" or that we can "support housing (and/or asset) prices" need to be run out of town on a rail.

There is no way to prevent the unwinding of leverage when the carrying costs exceed income and the more debt we as a society take on in trying to do so the worse things will get in the end, as we are simply adding to the pile of defaults that must occur.

I am quickly running out of possible scenarios to prevent a severe deflationary depression from taking place. By "severe" I mean 20%+ U3 unemployment, GDP contraction of at least 25%, and a possible loss of federal funding capacity leading to the immediate destruction of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a 50% reduction of defense spending and near-complete-elimination of all other Federal Programs due to a "sudden stop" in the ability to fund Treasury issuance. Yes, it could get that bad, and it could happen a lot faster than you think.

I wish there was good news - "green shoots" - that I could honestly find and report. There are not. There is only more obfuscation and fraud, which I have and will continue to chronicle here in The Ticker, not so much in the belief that government gives a damn, but rather so that historians have it available later and, if the collapse I believe is possible does materialize, the angry proletariat with pitchfork and torch will know where to properly direct their wrath.

Government needs to lock up the psychopaths that have run the asylum for the last 20 years and let adults into the room to rationally discuss the inevitable and how to best deal with it. They're refusing now, just as they did when Bush was President. This is not a partisan debate - even having lost badly in November the Republicans are wasting time with the same old canards about "Tax and Spend" instead of attacking the problem at the root: fraudulent credit issuance, much of which they championed and enabled themselves.

Print this article with comments
Comments
25
Older > Comments 1 - 20 out of 25
You are viewing the latest 20 comments
  •  
    Pretty good rant by one of SA leading Cassandra's, and the "predictions" that he makes would be great as a party trick.

    I don't have much to add except that the stimulus is needed and called for by all rational economist ( a small group I know), without it things would be even worse.

    Corruption is the main cause, with real estate appraisal process being the villains.

    The main problem was not that people were given bad loans, they were given phony loans, e.g. a $200k home was appraised at $300K because the bankers paid the assessors to over value the loans since they made money on the loan amount.

    The guy might have been able to afford the $200K house, but now he needed a "special mortgage" to get into the $300K house. No problem though because the house values were going up so fast, according to the fake assessments, that in 2 years they could refinance.

    Another Ponzi scheme, some things never change, especially the feeling we can tell the future from the past.

    There needs to be a purge of the real estate business, with some serious time handed out to those who turned a good idea into another way to take people's money.
    Jul 06 10:43 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    I remain hopeful that the gloom and doom prophecy will not materialize, but I agree that current US economic policies only will succeed in digging us into a deeper hole. Trying the same measures and yet somehow expecting a different result. Even though short of capital, we seem to have cornered the market on a wealth of gullible and naive people who go along with this madness.
    Jul 06 10:51 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    The saver/spender pool is shrinking, and the "entitled" pool is growing. The economy will not be rescued by spenders. The export of industry will continue to shrink the economy. As the momentum of the pre-Nafta economy draws down, Americans will have the 3rd world economy planned by the "globaistas". Its part of the plan. Get used to it.
    Jul 06 11:15 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Very good article. Most people have their head so far under ground they can't see whats coming.
    Jul 06 11:15 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Hey Karl.... gold to 1600? already hit 1000. give it time. DING!!
    Jul 06 11:24 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    OK, he closes with this: I am quickly running out of possible scenarios to prevent a severe deflationary depression from taking place. "By "severe" I mean 20%+ U3 unemployment, GDP contraction of at least 25%, and a possible loss of federal funding capacity leading to the immediate destruction of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a 50% reduction of defense spending and near-complete-elimination of all other Federal Programs due to a "sudden stop" in the ability to fund Treasury issuance. "

    This assumes that the Fed will not just take up the slack in purchase of treasury bonds. But they have already signaled they will. Read his scenario again. There is NO WAY IN HELL that any US administration is going to allow Social Security to be destroyed on their watch. Particularly not a left-leaning one that fancies itself the creators of a "New New Deal". So the die is cast and the way forward is clear.

    If demand for the ~$2 Trillion in US Treasury Debt isn't met by foreign governments the Fed will buy what is remaining, up to "all of 'em". Yes, this is the event that many have foretold, that has extremely predictable consequences. (ie: monitizing the debt, snake eating it's tail, printing money like no tomorrow....)

    Which means that the period of deflation might still be followed by a period of very high inflation, and the gold bugs might yet be right, despite Karl's disparagement of them.

    Regardless, the loss of appetite for US debt is sure to spark a loss of appetite for US dollars as the reserve curreny, which is already in play. The question is once the value of the dollar starts a steeper decline where can you go to hide your money?
    Jul 06 11:44 AM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Confronting reality is never pleasant. I thank you for not sugar coating anything. The house I am still living in cost a whopping $18K brand new in 1971. As a working stiff wage earner, I am all to painfully aware that wages did not keep up with the Ponzi bubble you describe above. It was reported by the 'competition' in the campaign that McCain had voted against raising the minimum wage 9 times. Couple that with labor competition from illegal aliens, outsourcing, downsizing, and shows like "Flip This House"...we should have known these 'empty boxcars' were on a collision course with a train wreck. Your last sentence re. those in "The Beltway" being the architects of fraudulent credit issuance, and that which I mention here, is the most relevant concluding remark that could possibly have been made -ever- by anyone on SA. A lot of people will go to jail..."the usual suspects", of course...but not many in Congress will face charges= who set up this 'lose-lose' game to begin with.
    Jul 06 12:46 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Karl,

    You have done a good job on your predictions thus far and it always seems harder when you stick your neck out on the line and put them in print. Congrats, I happen to agree with much of what you are saying.

    One of the important things is that Real Estate is still the eye of the storm. A real estate bubble bursting is much worse than an internet stock bubble bursting because the RE bubble effects the banking system, and the banking system is the lifeblood of our economy. So much of the consumer/banks/our economy is tied in, that this should be a very painful recession/depression.

    Our "leaders" denied and denied and denied for so long until it was un-deny-able. Now they see "green shoots". Who cares what they see, they've been wrong for far too long.

    $
    Jul 06 01:34 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    BTW if you're curious about my 2008 predictions and how they turned out, have a look at the forum at tickerforum.org - the top of the page has a link to the 2009 Prediction ticker, in which all of my full-year 08 predictions are reprinted and scored.

    As for my money, I have repeatedly disclosed that I am currently short the broad market but not in size; I believe this particular move is NOT "the big one" and will take the (very profitable at present, as I got most of the shorts near 950) positions down when this turns, wait for the ride back up to try to break out (which I expect to fail) and then get short in MAJOR size.

    The only reason I'm short now (~20% of maximum position) rather than sitting is that I may be wrong about the retrace, and if I am, I want skin in the game!

    BTW metals are not the place to hide if the worst-case scenario comes out, nor will The Fed be able to stop it. They've already proved to themselves (and everyone else) their inability to do so.
    Jul 06 01:50 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Oh please. metals have done just fine since the bottom at 252/oz re: Gold. Take a look and refresh your memory horizon. Then take a look at history during extreme moments of deflation and inflation. Then take a look at the developing shape of stagflation, which you altogether fail to address. As I go through the list, I wrote, yep, check, on target, and bing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for each one of them. Get back to me in 6 months time for a follow up. and lest we leave another important grand markets episode off the "list", let's try the 1970's leading to the prior all time gold price high. In that regard we're not even in the 4th inning of the game yet Karl. BING!!!! Ding ding ding!


    On Jul 06 01:50 PM Karl Denninger wrote:

    > BTW if you're curious about my 2008 predictions and how they turned
    > out, have a look at the forum at tickerforum.org - the top
    > of the page has a link to the 2009 Prediction ticker, in which all
    > of my full-year 08 predictions are reprinted and scored.
    >
    > As for my money, I have repeatedly disclosed that I am currently
    > short the broad market but not in size; I believe this particular
    > move is NOT "the big one" and will take the (very profitable at present,
    > as I got most of the shorts near 950) positions down when this turns,
    > wait for the ride back up to try to break out (which I expect to
    > fail) and then get short in MAJOR size.
    >
    > The only reason I'm short now (~20% of maximum position) rather than
    > sitting is that I may be wrong about the retrace, and if I am, I
    > want skin in the game!
    >
    > BTW metals are not the place to hide if the worst-case scenario comes
    > out, nor will The Fed be able to stop it. They've already proved
    > to themselves (and everyone else) their inability to do so.
    Jul 06 02:02 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Very interesting summary Karl -

    I too have been short since the mid 900s - Any thoughts on where this dip may stop (I too do not think it is the "big one" although I am convinced that is on its way this fall). I am seeing resistance at the 875-880 range; however, the next two weeks of earnings reports, especially next week, could through a wrench into that and this could turn into an avalanche. I don't expect this to happen given the twisted way the banks can report; however, anything other than a marked improvement from Q1 could spell trouble.
    Jul 06 02:25 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    I'm paying particular attention to the 200MA and a double-fib coincident with it today; we rejected off that this morning, but the bounce was pretty weak.

    If it falls, the next logical levels are down between 840-850 (there's decent chart support there) and then again around 811.

    Lose 811 and odds go WAY up we're in for a retest of the March lows - now - which is the primary reason I want some exposure on, as if we start losing those support levels there will likely be no good entries available - you either got your positions on or you take a horrible risk on a chase-trade.

    The metalheads amuse me and their curve-fitting is knowingly fraudulent. The last time they ran this tripe back in the early 80s they cost people more than half their money. Buying tops is a great way to get creamed and the loudest bulls are ALWAYS screaming at the top.

    Go figure.
    Jul 06 02:36 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    Good article Karl: Already starting to see social stresses in China. While thier infrastructure stimulus is impacting some commodities in a small way thier exports are still way down. They can't sustain growth without Joe six pack's dollars and without growth thier social order could be in dire straights. This is kind of like playing russian roullet with one empty chamber. Who will get it first?
    Jul 06 04:17 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    So Karl says we have too much debt. Someone had to do all the lending. To be in too much debt, it takes two to tango. You would think that lending organizatons (mostly private companies) would have to be careful about lending unwisely but they weren't, interesting.
    Jul 06 05:14 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    I am confused about what the prediction is for u.s. treasuries. Karl says deflation, that should help the price of treasuries. Karl says the foriegners have stopped buying treasuries, but treasuries prices have increased the last few weeks. I understand the "fear" argument driving up treauries. But if the foriegners really pulled out, I would think that would cause u.s. treasury prices to collapse.
    Jul 06 05:17 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    This came out today. Maybe Karl get's a ding on this one for 25.. - wsj

    "The death toll in riots in China's northwestern Xinjiang region rose sharply Monday, with state media saying that 156 people had been killed in what appears to be one of the deadliest episodes of unrest in China in decades."
    Jul 06 05:37 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    You've made a lot of good points Karl. The economy is in much worse shape than some people want to believe. However, negative thinking in an economic sense is also self-perpetuating in a downturn. Many things can go one way or another. A few cannot. For instance Medicare needs to be fixed. I am glad that Obama is making this a high priority. However, I am distressed by virtually every "solution" that I have heard. Obama talks about solving the problem. Then he ends by saying proposals should at least be budget neutral. I interpret this to mean that they are all even more expensive than what we have.

    Medicare is a fiasco. We need to solve the recession. However, we need to address medicare even more long term. It has been bankrupting the social security system. The situation is worsening. Almost anyone can be kept alive indefinitely these days. There have to be severe limits on these expenses. Plus the expenses need to be cut drastically.

    The AMA et al is likely too powerful to run rough shod over. An alternate solution might be to open a few new "national" medical schools geared specifically toward providing care to medicare patients in metropolitan areas. In exchange for a medical education, the graduates of these schools might agree to work for 10 years or more at lower wages. Some would stay beyond the 10 year period.

    Another item that needs to be dealt with is medical law suits. While many are justified, the fact is that lawsuits are causing the cost of medicine to skyrocket. They make doctors leave the business, which decreases the doctor supply. Their actuality and their threat leads directly to higher costs for physicians, nurses, other medical workers, and hospitals. They need to be drastically curtailed by Congress, even if a few people with very valid complaints do get hurt by it. Naturally another powerful group, the ABA, will oppose this.
    Jul 06 09:40 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    One down day got the bears excited. Fed can print money. That's why depression will not happen.
    Jul 06 10:59 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    David W., Thanks for your comments on the AMA controlling the number of medical schools. This is so important and so infrequently discussed. Ask yourself, why shouldn't San Diego State and Colorado State not have a medical school? We need more jobs. We need more medical professionals to keep health care costs lower. Taking away the AMA's ability to license medical schools in the u.s. is an important long term step in fixing our health care cost problems. But it's a long term solution so few care.
    Jul 07 12:00 PM | Link | Reply
  •  
    The psychopaths are the government. They need to lock themselves up, because the voters are not up to the task. Too many of them are on the dole and off the tax roles. That is the problem with democracy, which this great American republic unfortunately has become. I doubt if there will be any cataclysmic event to galvanize the masses. Just a gradual raising of the water temperature. The frogs will be cooked before they realize what has happened, and it will be impossible to get out.
    As the Fed monetizes the debt, the dollar will lose its value. Hence, hard assets are the way to preserve your wealth. Real estate, gold, energy, food, businesses paying dividends in non-dollar denominated currencies, such as BP, BHP, RTP, PWE etc. This is how I am positioned now. That, and owning small businesses that produce cash flow.

    "Government needs to lock up the psychopaths that have run the asylum for the last 20 years"
    Jul 07 07:12 PM | Link | Reply
Viewing Comments 1-20 out of 25 Older comments >