Jason Rines (iThinkBig)

Hyperinflationary Depression Must Be Avoided

I am long the American people. I really appreciate the most wonderful commentary by you every day. I have learned a lot and each time the commentary is different even though not much may have changed from one day to the next. For what it's worth, here is my speculation:

*If gulag, the fatality sequence is 40 years
*If liberation, the USA defaults to foreign creditors and we pay the price in blood geopolitically.

We are in the nuclear age. I speculate the fatality sequence will be shortened to say, 2020-2021. May the Good Lord be with us on our journey back home to liberty. May truth, freedom and justice ring once more. Some global leadership has already made the mistake of underestimating the American people. I doubt the world will forgive those who unleashed this hell on earth.


On Nov 19 05:54 AM User 353732 wrote:

> The Middle Class is likely to find itself confronting simultaneous
> inflation in essential goods and services, stagnation(in real terms)
> in housing prices for several years and deflation in total after
> tax disposable income.
>
> Inflation because real assets will (and already are starting to )
> reset their exchange rate versus the fake dollar. The more the dollar
> is debased the more internationally traded real assets will rise
> in dollar denominated prices to maintain or enhance true intrinsic
> purchasing power. Initially, the proto currencies will "inflate"
> rapidly. These are gold, silver, platinum, rare earths and oil.<br/>Next
> will come industrial ores and metals and aluminum, fibers, timber
> and food and the rest of the energy complex, including nuclear.<br/>The
> less amenable to manipulation and corruption by the US Regime a real
> asset the first and fastest it will reset its exchange rate versus
> the dollar.
> Once all the foundational resources of the US economy(and the world
> economy) have inflated in dollar terms almost all essential goods
> and services in the US will experience inflation(or else entire industries
> will be bankrupted by a ferocious cost squeeze).
> US real estate will be the among the last asset classes to inflate
> because it is most subject to manipulation and price distortion by
> the US Regime.
>
> Transfer payments to the lower class will inflate to maintain money
> illusion ( while losing purchasing power but the lower class has
> never understood the concept of real purchasing power)so the Regime
> can maintain control. The Upper Class will prosper mightily as real
> assets inflate and the Regime gets even more gargantuan.
>
> It is the middle class that will suffer a very painful deflation
> in their purchasing power and a catastrophic erosion in their material
> and psychological quality of life.
>
> Either the Regime goes or the Middle Class vanishes in America as
> a significant political, social and moral presence.
>
> The Regime can be reformed by shame or purged by struggle.
> Shame is unlikely to be effective since the grossly indecent and
> pathologically self adoring are irredeemably shameless.
> Struggle is then the only effective alternative for purging and exiling
> the US Regime. In late 2009 it is an imponderable whether the Middle
> Class can prevail in what has to be a protracted struggle.
>
> However, should a net 7,000 jobs be lost every day for the next several
> months , small business failures continue at their current pace and
> middle class credit starvation remain high, then the struggle may
> well be initiated in mid to late 2010. If it is, then the next decade
> may be one of the most consequential in American history.
> At the end, we will once again be a free nation with a rising middle
> class and ascending liberty, prosperity, security and global stature......or
> a shabby,dark, cruel Gulag of America.

The Great Credit Crunch Is Deepening

Perfect analogy.


On Nov 19 09:29 AM User 353732 wrote:

> I suggest there are two parallel credit worlds.
>
> A world of credit feasts to which only the highly favored but monstrously
> corrupt few on Wall St are invited. There, they gorge themselves
> on limitless, free, credit and deploy the liquidity into investments
> with positive and low to almost no risk returns. The arbitrage is
> vast and pervasive and deliberately maintained by WashDC.
> The value destroyers are treated to a credit glut
>
> A world of credit famine for Main St, small and new businesses and
> aspiring start ups and many medium sized businesses. For them credit
> is rationed by both fiat and extortionate interest rates and penalties(
> some credit cards, including small business corporate cards, are
> reported to inflict interest rates in the high teens; even as high
> as 20%). Household and small business income is both suppressed and
> stolen by these predatory credit conditions.
>
> The value creators are subject to systematic credit starvation.
>
> This is the moral equivalent of Stalin's forced starvation of the
> anti-communist productive farmers and related communities in the
> Ukraine and elsewhere and their enslavement in the Siberian gulags.
>
> What food and land was in the Red Empire, credit is in the Soviet
> of America.

Our Steroid Pumped Economy

You got that right. Good seeing you around Yellow Hoard. I do need to call you in the near future.

The USA needs an economic model that evolves and finishes the Central Bank model. That evolution is called representation. The confidence will not return to the USA until it does.


On Nov 18 09:18 PM yellowhoard wrote:

> Big,
>
> State workers won't lose their jobs.
>
> Our president depends on them for reelection.
>
> State workers and federal workers will be the last to circle the
> drain.

The 10 Most Annoying Things About This Recession

Hope and Change. How about Truth, Freedom and Justice for awhile?

Marc Farber: Gold Will Never Fall Below $1,000 Again

Hear hear!


On Nov 18 09:45 AM Tony Petroski wrote:

> Mr. Mark:
>
> More Giselle, less Faber please.

Jobs and the Market Rally: The New, New Balancing Act

More like the same strategy since 1992, Washington has just accelerated the strategy now that it is becoming clear to the American people by making sure the connected individuals and companies in the market get value out of the currency before it plummets once again like a stone.

The American people are very forgiving. But if the jobs situation is not rectified, the American people will only have one job left and that will be to fix the massive structural imbalances themselves.

I do not believe such matters should be taken lightly by the political system. Of course, the disadvantage we have in that regards to Europe is that the money players had to learn the VERY hard way about the behaviors of not being able to afford to live in the 18th and 19th century. Whereas here in the USA the political class or elites or what have you, haven't had those sorts of learning lessons. That is why in Europe the social net is much bigger. I am not saying I endorse such a system I am merely pointing out the why they do and what lessons were the catalysts.


On Nov 18 02:40 PM fwi wrote:

> Personally, I find it grotesquely disingenuous for the President
> to speechify about his concern for the poor and disadvantaged, whilst
> giving the go ahead to Bernanke to pursue an inflation biased "recovery"plan.
> Whether food and energy are in the "core inflation" numbers or not,
> these 2 things have to be bought with dwindling resources. Maybe
> inflation makes the headline grabbing numbers look good to Mr. Market,
> but at some point the reality of people having to buy food and energy
> at higher prices will displace other purchases. Not everybody is
> "in the market". I think these policy makers are pursuing a chaotic
> and incoherent strategy.

Jobs and the Market Rally: The New, New Balancing Act

How about creating the monetary and political solutions for the West? Sure, Tahiti in a loin cloth sounds nice. But it sound outright dull compared to this historic period in time in either writing it, or watching it from the sidelines with a little pink umbrella in a drink. As for the rest of your comment, it has merit as for the growth status of the West as a whole.


On Nov 18 11:05 AM Mad Hedge Fund Trader wrote:

> bdc The US is turning into Europe. Think backbreaking taxes, chronic
> high unemployment, government involvement in everything, less innovation,
> and much lower growth, in exchange for a social safety net, more
> debt, and better coffee. That is the message the markets told us
> by retreating to the 6,000 handle in March, levels not seen since
> 1996, and down 54% from the 2007 peak. Equity prices have shrink
> to multiples, in line with permanently lower long term growth rates
> of maybe 1%-2%, a shadow of the 3% rate seen for much of this decade.
> Hint: that analysis gives you a stock market lower than here. Perhaps
> this is what aging sclerotic economies are supposed to look like.
> Once Ben Bernanke stops spiking the punch with ecstasy and Viagra
> by raising interest rates, this is where the resulting hangover could
> leave us. If someone is holding a gun to your head and you must buy
> American stocks, only select names that are really foreign stocks
> in disguise. Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), Oracle, (ORCL), Cisco
> (CSCO) all get 60%-80% of their profits from overseas, where up to
> 90% of the real economic growth will come from for the next decade.
> Commodity, agricultural, materials companies, and their ETF’s also
> fit this picture. As for me, I think I’ll move to Tahiti and live
> off of coconuts and freshly speared fish, wearing only a loin cloth.
> Anything is better than becoming French.

Give 'em enough rope and financial regulators will always do the wrong thing, writes Steve Randy Waldman. We need a structure where banks are universally small - not necessarily in balance sheets, but in exposure to the system.

Allow me to be blunt. The monetary model of Central Banking is completely non representative. Because of this hugely important point whether a country, bloc of nations or now world can be a democratic but the result will always rely on the character or morality of a any form of emporer and the chairman of a Central Bank. Pondering this fact leads one to conclude that human nature is cyclical. Therefore, how does the world move evolve past this model?

1) An evolutionary restoration of lending models that do not permit excess leverage.

2) Peer to Peer banking using the Internet and allowed by any individual whom wishes to lend to another. The market sets all interest rates. The model is made completely transparent and every person on earth can vote on the model itself and how it is regulated.

3) The concept of Justice must be explored once again, philosophically understood and translated into a new global Republic. Rigid anti trust laws must be established as part of a global Constitution. The majority on earth must be willing to run towards the solution. We are nowhere near this point so we had best get started as in yestererday.

World Trade Organization Warns, Gold Rises, IMF Talks, U.K. Loses Credibility

CDS 2.0 . Since it was so wonderful to 99% of the global population the first time.

The Weak Dollar and the Too-Big-to-Fails

Why no mention of a new monetary lending model based on other far more successful lending models in history and tied into modern innovation such as the Internet?

Ever hear of Peer-to-Peer lending? The Chinese have and are implementing it while their Chinese Central Bankers nod and smile at Geithner and Clinton and chuckle within. You cannot pour new wine into an old wineskin. The Chinese know this proverb well.

Washington, become Americans again and return to the concepts of truth and justice that made this country the best on earth .

You may find yourself on the very poor end of the trade participating in what your up to with your NYC business partners. The people have solutions and ways for less volatile retirement instead of far less palatable outcomes that will result from the current plan.

We're here to help but the final variables are now locking in place for only one outcome and it is extraordinarily negative, for all. Let's opt for a plan B. It is indeed a very small world these days.

JP Morgan Invents New U.S. Employment Numbers

Yeah same JPM playbook in general in geopolitics as that time frame as well. What was the name of that Republic again in Germany in 1921? Your point of the market skyrocketing to the moon has close correlation to that Republic. You are quite a piece of work. Repeating the same playbook until the entire world is under a feudal global government yields the same historic results as on the local or national level.

As for the same geopolitical playbook, what would have happened if that great old trade partner of JPM Adolph had gotten the bomb first? Containment and hubris in the nuclear age is dangerous folly friend. Global history is being rewritten by the facts on the ground and will turn away from usery lending models and little worth intermediaries. No revisionist history buddy. This time is not different, it is the same as all times in regards to Cause and Effect. JPM and the feudal empire has unleashed the variables to its own demise. The king is dead, long live the king! Watch the next Adolph betrayal from Russia this time and they will not mind how many die or WHO that individual is. What a twit you are.


On Nov 13 01:11 PM Angel Martin wrote:

> Imports are trending up, car loadings are trending up, commodity
> prices are up, the stock market is up, the yield curve is very steep.
>
>
> No birth/death adjustment, CPI quality changes, or JMP spin here.
> Same indicators investors used in 1921.

Capitalism Is for the Other Guy

I really enjoyed your description Michael of the roots of the word hubris. It is also why when I come by here to SA these days I make comments how the USA is becoming Communist to silence the economic rape victim.

History will always rhyme until mankind has perfected genetic engineering, something that will not occur in our lifetime. For now, this episode of history is easily predictable. Care for one another these next few years gentlemen. After the dark night always comes a new dawn. The next dawn is worth surviving for. This period is an end to an era and the start of a new one.


On Nov 13 07:13 AM Michael Clark wrote:

> As many have pointed out on this site, Japan's lost 18 years came
> when the rest of the world was firing mostly on all cylinders, when
> Americans and Europeans were saddling themselves gladly to the Debt
> Rack...Japan continued selling manufactured products during its deflation
> decline. But now no one is really buy on full cylinders, and I can't
> imagine anyone ever buying on the same full throttle program as 2007-8.
> People in the world took on debt like it was a religion, that debt
> slavery brought them closer to God.
>
> It will be a lot worse now for the entire world (Japan also) as exports
> are going to dry up and return to the seed: exports will be the size
> of the pit before they are the size of the watermelon again.

Market Destruction: Mass Media Finally Catching On?

I gave you a thumbs down for the foolish comment that this political economy and structure has nothing to do with shrewd investing.

Let me net out for other potential investors reading this: The USA is now a Banana Republic so trade accordingly.

You should start buying land with your carry trade profits and consider bloviating less. Do you have a self-esteem issue as to the reason for all of your vanity pontifications here at SA? Talk about wasting time.

But there was nothing wrong with your comments on Carry Trade in general although I may not completely agree with your investment strategy.


On Nov 13 03:28 PM Mark Anthony wrote:

> On Nov 13 03:04 PM Wildebeest wrote:

Market Destruction: Mass Media Finally Catching On?

I know Karl Denninger. I very much doubt he will provide people like Mark Anthony a defensible position. He does not require one.


On Nov 13 02:16 PM jambo wrote:

> Mark Anthony! How do you with a straight face manage to castigate
> other's viewpoint as being political while in essence you are doing
> exactly that yourself?
> You seem to think you can exist in some amoral zone that's all about
> "making money'". Are you the man who worked for Enron, Bernie Madoff,
> Hitler, etc.? Head down, pursuing your own narrow goal rather than
> looking at your own complicity in the destruction of others wealth
> and then hollering when someone calls bullshit.
>
> I quote you:
> "SeekingAlpha, after all, is not a platform for political debate.
> It is a platform for people to exchange thoughts and ideas on how
> to make money and how to avoid losses. Has any of your political
> rants helped any one make money? "
>
> I'm sure you'll agree MARK A, that this lofty stated goal of yours
> would be best served in a financially stable environment. The whole
> underlying point of Karl's piece was that this fiscal policy is absolutely
> (not politically) unsustainable. Do you not see that knowing this
> is at the very core of our investment strategy? Do you view it as
> political because it differs with what you think? Make your point
> and let us decide. You dont have to take Karl down to do that do
> you?

The FHA Is Broke

Excellent article John. I agree with Woolly about his sentiment of the situation.

Allow me to frame the macro situation with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

I am long the American people.