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    • Sun Jul 13th 20:19 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Beware of Sending Fannie and Freddie Stock to Zero
      On Sunday afternoon I have the advantage of learning that Freddie and Fannie will be able to go to the discount window and borrow cheap money, just like the privately owned retail and investment banks can do.

      This makes sense. Our entire economy and way of life is now financialized. Next, Macy's and Sears will be given access to the discount window.

      Conceivably a decade down the road, every U. S. citizen and illegal immigrant will be given access to the discount window too. After the last vestige of free market Darwinism goes extinct.

      I would say that the shorts will be covering Monday, but you deeper thinkers and hands on Wall Streeters have a better inside feel.

      Dan
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    • Sun Jul 13th 20:07 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Are American Companies Now Up For Grabs?
      GLtoffic makes a lot of sense arguing for a stock swap. But that is exactly why InBev is making an all-cash offer. Otherwise the American Trojans would be inside their gates.

      I live in Colorado but buy Bud more than Coors. But if InBev starts killing off American employees my couple of beers a year will go to ..not Molson-Coors-Miller .. but an indie craft brewer, if I can find one that is not a front for a major.

      While you free-market gurus on these boards love the deconstruction of the U. S., I point out that it was the controlled market Federal Reserve at the center of the spider web that created the weak dollar, the financialization meltdown and now, the further erosion of U. S. corporate sovereignity.

      Everything the Congress and Senate and President have deregulated - from airlines to now banks (both investment and retail) - have resulted in disasters.

      Suppose it is natural that foreigners would swoop in and pick up the wreckage.

      And, yes, the flow of money back and forth across borders is wonderful but the playing fields are still uneven. When I tendered my Brazilian telephone shares last week for $43 a share - some bought as low at $15 - the Brazilian Exchange will take a 15 percent cut off the top. That's what they are free to do. Fortunately these shares were within a tax sheltered account or the "free market" scalping would have been worse.

      Globalization is really a two-edged sword, and fortunately even a few thousand U. S. economics will eventually see their mundame jobs outsourced overseas.

      DaN


      Dan
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    • Sun Jun 29th 19:38 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Lennar Management: Housing Hasn't Yet Reached Bottom
      No kidding, the housing melt down is not over yet.

      I have seen a string of observers mostly say the mortgage mess is now maybe 40 percent over, with another 60 percent to go.

      Last week it was reported on CNBC that observers just realized that about a third of the reported home "sales" were actually "foreclosures&quo... meaning that sales are even worse than they statistically thought.

      If you read Opdyke in the weekend syndicated Wall Street Journal today (we learn last week that he could not move to China to take a new job because he would have had to pay $4,800 a month rent there, plus carry his mortgage in Louisiana). He reports this week that his home is being kept on the market so he and Amy can downsize. Meanwhile, he notes that lower priced homes in his community are moving but his home listed among the higher priced ones are not. He says his home is priced right, but higher cost homes are just not moving. Do not know what overall percentage of the entire market is locked up in $400,000 plus homes, but the higher priced the home the more frozen it is right now in some markets, maybe many markets.

      All the funny money lending that boosted the housing market will not come back for 20 years, until a new generation remembers.

      I think this posting is correct in that it is not over. But I believe the wiped out consumers will not be able to fuel much of a recover when things stabilize either.

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    • Sun Jun 29th 19:27 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Week Ahead: More Bad News?
      I can't see Congress changing oil margin requirements.
      They don't even realize that the banking system - which needs continually expanding wages to handle the burden of interest payments owed to the banks - is clashing with the globalists who are lowering wages (at best stagnating them).

      The globalists are winning and the people no longer can come up with gouging interest paymends very easily (in the aggregate).

      Congress doesn't realize that fearfully sitting by on their hands while the Neocons plan to destroy Iran to proetect Israeli hegemony oil could wind up at $300 - if it can find a way here.

      This government inertia, combined with an international policy of hate, makes the fudged reports to be issued this week just background buzz.

      All these leadership people chant the mantra of free market forces - but from the existence of the control-the-market Fed to the control-the-world U.S foreign policy - free markets are in chains.

      The chaos right now in part is violent struggle against the chains of artificially imposed control.
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    • Sun Jun 29th 19:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Worst June Since 1930?
      It has always irked me that I can buy 100 shares of a stock, park it at Cede & Co, which holds all the stocks, and then some jerk comes along and borrows my shares (which artificially increases the supply) and then sell them off to weaken my holding. Occasionally shorts get caught in a squeeze. But not often enough to put them out of business.

      This is just big money trashing whatever they can to make the billion dollar bonus pools (skimmed off from out investments) for their own pockets.

      True, some stocks are overpriced and short selling can bring it back to reality before a bigger bubble pops. But overall I think this just big money throwing its weight around - not to build America. This is the same mentality that has been steadily buying local businesses, firing all the workers, exporting the jobs to cheaper foreign shores, then pocketing the saved billions for themselves. Oh, then they also open the borders so that cheap foreign labor can undercut the laid off workers for even menial jobs.

      Net result, falling purchasing power by downsized workers, who also become downsized consumers.

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    • Tue Jun 17th 16:41 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Brazilian Telecom Going Monopolistic
      I bought into BTM last year when Shrub made his visit to Brazil.
      I deeply regret that I only nibbled on the stock and did not take a bigger position, since it is up 135% since then. And it went up so fast I did not buy more in the low $20. Riches go to the lion hearted.
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    • Tue Jun 17th 00:28 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Will Vale Bid for Anglo?
      I have a position in AAUK and a a takeover bid would allow me to cash in and re-invest in smaller gold companies like Kinross gold which have gone up farther for me this year.
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    • Sat Jun 7th 19:25 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Preparing for the Fall
      It's not just the Fed and the Guvmint that can move the market.

      That loud talking former Israeli war minister - threatening to attack Iran - created the vision of a closed Straight of Hormuth and $300 oil.

      Maybe he should be investigated to see if he had a lot of short positions.

      Dan
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    • Wed May 28th 22:58 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Another Home Run for Leukadia?
      In my checkered career I worked in a very minor capacity for both Ian Cumming and for Dr. John Malone, the Darth Vader of Tele-communications and now Liberty Media. Malone is widely quoted and followed in the media while Cumming is ignored.

      Comparing the two, Cumming is a better manager hands down. What Malone was the best at was converting shareholder equity into his own pocket through options.

      But Malone does not build shareholder wealth like Cumming does.

      Yet, years ago Cumming in company meetings would call himself a pirate. At least he takes all the investors along on his forays.


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    • Sun May 11th 00:37 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The WSJ Is Wrong on the Housing Crisis
      Having gone through the Real Estate Investment Trust Collapse of the 1970s I recall that unwinding took about a decade. Continental Mortgage Investors and Diversified Mortgage Investors were the subprime lenders who took on the mortgages and development deals the banks were turning down as too risky. The banks simply loaned money to DMI and CMI instead, who then loaned out the money and lost it anyway.

      The company I worked for was fortunately at the end of the list to be taken out so I had a job for eight years.

      The post Sept. 2001 boom eventually overheated from factors that included very loose lending standards that allowed prices to continually be pushed up. That has ended.

      In each area of the country home prices will have to fall to levels that are affordable for buyers who pass very strict and conservative lending criteria. Meanwhile, rising energy and food inflation is hampering consumers ability to pay down credit cards etc to meet higher standards, I would assume. Plus wages are not soaring 7 or l8 percent a year because the continual influx of illegal labor is depressing wages.
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    • Fri Apr 25th 01:05 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Yale's Shiller: Housing Decline Could Be Worse Than Great Depression
      I bought into New Ireland Fund and it has tanked since then, prompting me to buy some more shares ....and wait. But the housing crash in Ireland corresponds with the drop in this closed end fund holding Irish shares.
      When home prices drop, home owners are less likely to bid up shares in the stock market.

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    • Fri Apr 25th 00:57 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Bill Miller: Credit Panic Ended With Bear Stearns
      I hope all of you, like me, own stocks directly. When we mis-step and something goes down, 1-1/2 percent is not taken from the remainder as a management fee.

      And when we step wisely and our holding soars. We don't have to take 1-1/2 percent off the top, we can let it ride.

      But Miller may make a point. When the other wise guy investment bankers saw Bear Stearns annihilated, and then turned over to a commercial, regulated bank....they may have given them pause to not turn on their fellow investment bankers.

      They realize if they go back to being sharks, like they were withj Bear, they could wind up eating themselves.
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    • Tue Apr 22nd 23:38 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Are Central Banks Out of Their Minds?
      There are business cycles. I have somewhere a book called Cycles, written 50 or more years ago that shows all the interacting cycles. It clearly shows an expanding cycle until about the year 2000, followed by a long down cycle/

      The Kondratiet or however you spell it long wave.

      But the Fed - and the global forces behind it and parallel control freaks like the CFR - artificially create the cycles now. They expand business with low rates, then contract the business momentum with high rates.

      I have seen this for more than four decades. Around 1990 I wrote a column saying that the then current Fed induced contraction was like a foreign enemy overflying the country and pin=point bombing businesses to take them oot.

      The Fed clearly knew what would happen when it began ratcheting up interest rates even as the pundits and observers began to wail and shriek and rend their garments.

      The enormous danger now posed by the interlocked out of control bubble had to be known by The Fed, for these are the smartest people in economics.

      The Fed should be taken over. The greedy, egocentric investment bankers should evanesce into oblivion. And the government should temporarily start a mortgage enterprise that will issue mortgages to borrowers who are in compliance with the requirements to buy properties that are accurately appraised.

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    • Mon Apr 21st 23:55 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Treasury, Fed and Bankers Are Setting the Bull Traps
      This is a pessimistic post. As far as I can tell my modest stock holdings are about where they were in January, adjusting for some money I took out to handle a squeeze from a guvmint agency.

      I had some gold positions, and coal and Brazilian telephone which offset some losses from January ill-timed buys in BDN plus some losses in some closed end real estate funds - RMP. And my drops in earlier acquired Ireland and Singapore closed end funds.

      So I can feel the collapse in commercial real estate - which needs ongoing soft money lending to keep prices soaring. And that party has come to an end for several years. Money will be hard to come by, as will excessive appraisals.

      But my gold stuff has been soaring since summer, corrected, and then has recovered somewhat - again showing the strength in commodities. I had a 123 percent profit in Consol. Energy, but cashed in when Morningstar ad flyer said that company faces pension liability pressures. It has gone up several dollars in the past week after I sold, again reflecting strength in energy and commodities.
      In short, the price action of my modest holdings seem to be reflecting the premise of this post. What Cara is seeing and "opining" I am feeling. But there is no total wipeout yet in the broader economy. Not close. As a whole, the wider economy seems to show the same muddled results as my holdings.

      A point I would like to suggest is that over the past several months there have been some big drops and scary days, but by holding on I ended up about even. Actrually ahead of the DOW

      While the economy is very weak and in recession, many sectors are holding up. My Leucadia, Plum Creek, Brazilian phone, Am. Anglo Gold, Kinross Gold, Gold Corp are well above where I started buying since late last spring. Well, maybe Plum Creek is just holding,

      So far the rot is in financials, real estate, retail. The muni's, student loans and related money equivalents are frozen, again related to financial mess. Much of the broader economy, not booming at all, is maintaining. The public wage sector is stabilizing.
      If the general U. S. does not wake up to the greed and incompetence of the Fed and the patrons it props up, we might muddle through this.

      For now - recognizing the economy is very uneven and indeed weak - I am sensing that the massive inflation from the Fed is just offsetting the massive deflation in money instruments (lost) and real estate pricing. It will take a while before the Fed flation begins to overwhelm the deflationary forces. Meanwhile, many consumers are being hammered by both forces at the same time.

      Your wives may be intuiting just one side of the opposing forces.

      But if a trap has been set, I will be caught in it.


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    • Fri Apr 18th 00:43 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      What's Ahead for Real Estate: Doing the Math
      In the middle ages property was sold on contract at no interest and if a buyer defaulted midway through, a new buyer stepped in and paid off the remainder of the contract to the original owner. Then the new owner made annual or whatever payments to the original buyer so recovered the equity he had in the property to the point of default.

      This is described in War Cycles, Peace Cycles.

      No complete wipe out. Unless the property was trashed by the original buyer, I guess.

      The problem with our usury banking system is that the money supply has to be continually expanding otherwise interest payments would quickly cannabilize and gobble up the money supply and put it in the hands of the lenders. The flow of money would congeal.


      No tree grows to the sky, no republic lasts forever, and this current Fed Bank post 1913 artificial money bubble, despite occasional deflations, has kept on growing and growing. But it can't go on for ever. The Fed and the powers behind it are playing God, ignoring the Biblical year of jubilee that is periodically required.

      Clearly our culture, especially our media and business reporters and editors, look to The Fed to bestow blessings and favor and growth, and then shriek out in fear when god Fed begins running up interest rates like a vengeful tribal God, as Greenspan and Bernanke did.


      But these are only pushy, tribal men. Clearly not gods, much less the deity we dare not speak of.


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