SW Richmond

Where's the Bottom? Still Anybody's Guess

"Try to imagine a world without WaMu, Citi, JPMorgan, Goldman (GS), or BofA, maybe even no Wal-Mart (WMT), Costco (CSCO), or Nordstrom (JWN). It’s pretty hard to visualize, isn’t it?"

Nope. I dream about it every night, and wake up smiling. The big banks are the vehicles for pillaging the working public. Let 'em die.

"In short, the end will come one of these centuries, but I do not think that the end is near."

The inflection point came (and your thoughts on debt and the need to grow it forever make me thing you would agree) when the gold standard was destroyed. We prospered on the gold standard; we left it because of the need to inflate for a war. Since then, the ability ti inflate has brought us still more expensive wars. The war on drugs, the war on terrorism are all fought as wars on our civil rights. If we want to restore our civil rights we must stop inflating to fund the war machine.

The absolutist "zero" end is not near. But we are I believe one big black swan away from a major, forced economic realignment. We are running on confidence right now, and confidence is waning. A domestic bank run, or a foreign bank run that starts a scramble for assets leading to a dollar run, is all that it would take for the US to declare martial law.

Don’t Buy What Wall Street Is Selling

I agree with the article except for your assessment of Lehman. Fuld is a Fed board member and there's no chance in Hell that Lehman will go under. None. The same kind of s*lf-dealing that "sold" BS to JPM for 2 bucks (until the screaming started) will"save" Lehman, all backed up by the generosity of the US Taxpayer.

Unless, of course, the Fed is out of bullets. The latest TOMO slosh report ain't lookin' too spiffy.