If they aren't laughing AT you then you aren't telling the truth. --Confucius If they don't laugh at your jokes then they don't want to hear the truth you are trying to tell them. --Lenny Bruce If they SHOOT you for telling a joke then you are living in a totalitarian regime. --Charlie Chaplin
If the world was a rational place and all the men and women lived happily together at the Playboy mansion, oil would climb to a $1,000 a barrel.
But people would soon notice that there was little need to leave the mansion, except to send the servants out for supplies once a week and that would cause oil to plunge back to about $2 a barrel.
That's why it's so hard to make money in the futures market.
Brooke's Law says it this way:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Faces of Death: The U.S. Dollar in Crisis [View article]
It doesn't look to me as if there is any country or region on earth that is less corrupt, venal and inefficient than the United States.
Humanity itself is facing a huge crisis and since every individual sees everything from the perspective of his own family, social circle, region and finally country, we tend to blame our own country for everything.
In the 1930's, when the United States seemed to be falling into economic ruin, a very large percentage of Americans, including Joseph Kennedy, the Bush family, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and many, many other prominent figures thought that Nazi Germany was the best hope of the world.
During that same period another very large percentage of Americans, including many other very prominent people, thought that Russian Communism was the best hope of the world.
We need to keep a little historical perspective, I think.
The value of a nation's currency is determined not only by economic factors but by cultural and historical factors, which is another way of saying that economics rests on more than simply the amount of goods and services exchanged by a nation's citizens.
If we look at the history of European unity we see that, for example, the Spanish Empire was definitively displaced by the American Empire with the defeat of Mexico in 1845 and the annexation of the Western United States. After that, Spain never succeeded in becoming a truly unified empire. In the Spanish mainland, at least four language groups, including Spanish, exist along with their independent traditions. Until recently, after the Civil War of the Anarchists, the only force capable of holding anarchist Spain together was the military dictatorship of Franco.
Italy is also divided into incompatible regions and usually wavers between de facto dictatorship (Berlusconi) and anarchy (rule by family and mafia.)
Both Germany and Italy only became countries in the late 19th century and Germany, after a long history of a patchwork of dictators and republics, is still a patchwork of dialects and loosely connected regions and traditions which include Austria, Switzerland, East Germany and West Germany and the regions each country contains.
Compared with the United States, France has been in a state of anarchy since the defeat of Napoleon and has been described by one of its leading sociologists as a Blocked Society, constantly at war with itself and its own interests.
After factoring in Germany's disastrous early 20th century history, it is not easy to believe that the Euro will become a world currency because it is far from clear that Europe CAN unify, not to mention whether Germany, Italy, France and Spain can unify themselves.
America represents Anglo-Saxon civilization which has dominated the world in the form of the British Empire since the defeat of Napoleon. The American Revolution placed America in a position to exploit the massive resources of the North American continent and to surpass Britain itself in economic output by the beginning of the twentieth century.
World War I and II weakened Britain's colonial empire and, to Britain's shock and humiliation, gave America the opportunity to take over Britain's role as ruler of the world, which of course we did. After the defeat of communism, America has had no other rival or enemy on earth OTHER THAN HERSELF.
It makes no historical sense to think that a currency of one of our former mortal enemies, Russia or China would be able, and much less allowed, to take on the role of a world reserve currency.
America is now the leader of the civilization "inherited" from the British and it includes England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, not to mention other English speaking parts of the world such as South Africa.
America has lost its "spiritual" way which can (very briefly) be summarized as individual liberty combined with equal opportunity for advancement of all ("the pursuit of happiness.")
The American plutocracy has closed its ranks and has barely noticed the resulting impoverishment of the ordinary American below, and the shrinking of the American middle class.
The rest of the world is observing us closely and preparing for what looks like a perfect American storm. What form this storm will take is impossible to predict.
Reserve Bank of Australia Raises Rates - Will Others Follow? [View article]
Being somewhat contrary to my own previous thoughts about the impossibility of predicting or knowing the future fair value of currencies (which is the best argument for the governments NOT to make agreements to set the relative value of their currencies), it is true that most of the world is now bearish on the Australian dollar which they believe has risen beyond its "reasonable" value.
At least in the light of all this bearish sentiment, I don't think it takes much courage for Australia to lead the pack in the effort to put the brakes on world inflation.
It's a little bit like tacking your sailboat across the wind.
Many people have noticed that the United States Treasury Department might secretly be trying to bring about high inflation in the United States to make it easier to pay off the massive debt.
A weak dollar against any or all currencies would help.
Is this the first step in an attempt to raise world interest rates relative to American interest rates to try to force the dollar down further?
But isn't a weaker dollar bearish for the US GDP?
And isn't a weak American GDP deflationary?
And doesn't financial history prove that it is impossible for governments to set the "real" relative value of currencies (whatever "real" means.)
I have too many questions that I can't answer.
I suspect that the real problem comes from subconsciously relying on a few simple mathematical formulas to determine various financial values such as prices, GDP, incomes, bond yields, fair value of stocks, and commodities, etc.
As the Quantization Revision of Murphy's Law states: "Everything goes wrong all at once."
The Android Army: Verizon Wireless, Google Ink Collaboration Pact [View article]
I think the government could play a useful roll at this time, but saying so, on this site, is like saying communism is good.
The Internet itself came from the Arpanet project which was completely developed by academics who were sponsored by the Department of Defense.
But of course, as everyone knows, the government is only useful when when we are defending the American Way of Life from Evil forces plotting to destroy us.
Ever heard of Dvorak or fiber optic networks, for example? In the early 1990's everyone thought the "Internet" was just as Utopian.
There comes a point in the development of any industry when excessive innovation is simply a wasteful attempt to make more money than one's competitor.
Can anyone provide the name(s) of anyone or group who has successfully predicted relative currency values, with excellent timing, during the last ten years?
Proof of these successful, well-timed predictions must be provided of course.
Obviously there is always someone or some group who predicted the LAST relative positions of most world currencies for a given period (say six months) but their track record always seems to return to the mean after a few of these stipulated prediction periods, or proves disastrously wrong in the end IF they manage a relatively long string of correct predictions, say for five or six.
The currency market, like human history itself seems, therefore, to be a random walk taken by a large group of people who don't govern their behavior by reason but by other irrational impulses such as greed, pride, fear, ambition and other animal impulses.
I know in advance that there will always be a very small amount of people who DID predict currency markets with success, for a much longer than average periods, because there are a small amount of exceptional people who win the lottery and other games of chance also. But a tiny group of people who have made fortunes in currency markets, and who no longer risk more than a fraction of their winnings, is not a counter example but is, in fact, further proof.
If consistent success in predicting the future relative value of currencies (and I'm not talking about day trading but relatively long periods such as three months) can't be done, doesn't it make all of this talk about a future devaluation of the dollar moot?
> carey_jim, it is not true that Libertarians are anarchists. It is > YOU who say they are. That is all. We make no such claim. I look > at Libertarians as being those who believe people can make their > own free decisions about how to improve their life, and wish to do > so in a free society, free of unreasonable impositions of others. > I do not believe in no government, just limited government, in line > with the original ideals of most of the Founding Fathers. > > The Democrats believe in freedom of person but intervention in how > I make a living. Republican believe in freedom for making a living, > but too often want to impose their social agenda. Libertarians take > the best of both parties (and actually pushing those traits even > further into the freedom category) and reject the worst. > > Ron Paul actually STANDS for something and it is not anarchy, it > is freedom. But I can see why such freedom might be scary to those > who think a few hundred people in a swamp on the Potomac have more > knowledge about how I and others should run our lives than we do. > Freedom scares some because they don't know if they can bear the > responsibility of failure if they mess up. They want protection and > security and the power to make others pay for their mistakes. I want > liberty!!!
I keep getting the feeling that the stock markets are a game of musical chairs and when the music stops there will not only be a lot of people standing around looking for a non-existent empty chair but the floor will be gone also.
Bearish on Banks - Why Now Is the Time to Sell [View article]
Martin Weiss has just pointed out that Congressional Budget Office itself issued a report that included this information:
1. Last year, banks provided new credit at the annual pace of $472.4 billion in the first quarter and $86.7 billion in the second. This year, they're not providing ANY new credit — they're actually LIQUIDATING loans at the rate of $857.2 billion in the first quarter and $931.3 billion in the second. So if you're running a business, you may want to think twice before asking your bank for more money. Instead, they may decide to TAKE BACK the money they've already loaned you!
2. Ditto for mortgages. Last year, mortgages were being created at the annual clip of $522.5 billion and $124 billion in the first and second quarters, respectively. This year, on a net basis, mortgages haven't been created at all. Quite the contrary, the Fed reports that, on a net basis, they've been liquidated at an annual pace of $39.3 billion in the first quarter and $239.5 billion in the second.
3. The U.S. is deep in debt to the rest of the world, and on page 48, it provides the evidence: total liabilities to foreigners of $7,898,435 million (nearly $7.9 trillion)!
4. This isn't a new record. It was actually slightly more last year. But the fact is NOTHING has been done to reduce our debt to foreigners. Quite the contrary, it is the deliberate policy of our government to pile up more — to sell foreign investors and central banks on the idea that they must continue to lend us money.
John, your articles will continue to be interesting as long as you don't CARE what your readers think (humbly or otherwise) and continue to write what YOU think.
A note on Nietzsche:
Nietzsche announced that God is dead. He didn't say that he, Nietzsche, had killed God. He simply said that he looked around and noticed that the best human beings no longer thought of God as a living concept.
When Nietzsche said that God is, in fact dead, he was saying that we can no longer believe in a set of immutable laws that govern the universe and that we human beings can no longer have the luxury of thinking that if we discover these immutable laws of God and live by them we will be saved, either individually or collectively.
He also said that from now on we human beings will have to rely on ourselves for our salvation and, what is even more profound, our salvation is not guaranteed.
He said, from now on out, there is nothing higher than man on earth.
He told us that we can rejoice over the fact that man is only a naked ape if we see him as a rope stretched over the abyss leading to an ideal man of the future, or we can despair over the fact that man is an only ape and wait for the end.
Paul Craig Roberts: Balance Trade and Budgets Now [View article]
It was getting interesting until that unstoppable popup showed up.
Updating Our Outlook on Housing (Four Potential Scenarios) [View article]
You said, "I highly doubt the government will allow such a scenario to unfold at this point."
The government isn't powerless but it doesn't have the power to allow or not allow economic scenarios to unfold.
They unfold by their own logic, obscure or not.
Is Crude Oil Breaking Out? [View article]
--Confucius
If they don't laugh at your jokes then they don't want to hear the truth you are trying to tell them.
--Lenny Bruce
If they SHOOT you for telling a joke then you are living in a totalitarian regime.
--Charlie Chaplin
Is Crude Oil Breaking Out? [View article]
But people would soon notice that there was little need to leave the mansion, except to send the servants out for supplies once a week and that would cause oil to plunge back to about $2 a barrel.
That's why it's so hard to make money in the futures market.
Brooke's Law says it this way:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Faces of Death: The U.S. Dollar in Crisis [View article]
Humanity itself is facing a huge crisis and since every individual sees everything from the perspective of his own family, social circle, region and finally country, we tend to blame our own country for everything.
In the 1930's, when the United States seemed to be falling into economic ruin, a very large percentage of Americans, including Joseph Kennedy, the Bush family, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and many, many other prominent figures thought that Nazi Germany was the best hope of the world.
During that same period another very large percentage of Americans, including many other very prominent people, thought that Russian Communism was the best hope of the world.
We need to keep a little historical perspective, I think.
US Dollar: "I'm Not Dead Yet!" [View article]
If we look at the history of European unity we see that, for example, the Spanish Empire was definitively displaced by the American Empire with the defeat of Mexico in 1845 and the annexation of the Western United States. After that, Spain never succeeded in becoming a truly unified empire. In the Spanish mainland, at least four language groups, including Spanish, exist along with their independent traditions. Until recently, after the Civil War of the Anarchists, the only force capable of holding anarchist Spain together was the military dictatorship of Franco.
Italy is also divided into incompatible regions and usually wavers between de facto dictatorship (Berlusconi) and anarchy (rule by family and mafia.)
Both Germany and Italy only became countries in the late 19th century and Germany, after a long history of a patchwork of dictators and republics, is still a patchwork of dialects and loosely connected regions and traditions which include Austria, Switzerland, East Germany and West Germany and the regions each country contains.
Compared with the United States, France has been in a state of anarchy since the defeat of Napoleon and has been described by one of its leading sociologists as a Blocked Society, constantly at war with itself and its own interests.
After factoring in Germany's disastrous early 20th century history, it is not easy to believe that the Euro will become a world currency because it is far from clear that Europe CAN unify, not to mention whether Germany, Italy, France and Spain can unify themselves.
America represents Anglo-Saxon civilization which has dominated the world in the form of the British Empire since the defeat of Napoleon. The American Revolution placed America in a position to exploit the massive resources of the North American continent and to surpass Britain itself in economic output by the beginning of the twentieth century.
World War I and II weakened Britain's colonial empire and, to Britain's shock and humiliation, gave America the opportunity to take over Britain's role as ruler of the world, which of course we did. After the defeat of communism, America has had no other rival or enemy on earth OTHER THAN HERSELF.
It makes no historical sense to think that a currency of one of our former mortal enemies, Russia or China would be able, and much less allowed, to take on the role of a world reserve currency.
America is now the leader of the civilization "inherited" from the British and it includes England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, not to mention other English speaking parts of the world such as South Africa.
America has lost its "spiritual" way which can (very briefly) be summarized as individual liberty combined with equal opportunity for advancement of all ("the pursuit of happiness.")
The American plutocracy has closed its ranks and has barely noticed the resulting impoverishment of the ordinary American below, and the shrinking of the American middle class.
The rest of the world is observing us closely and preparing for what looks like a perfect American storm. What form this storm will take is impossible to predict.
Reserve Bank of Australia Raises Rates - Will Others Follow? [View article]
At least in the light of all this bearish sentiment, I don't think it takes much courage for Australia to lead the pack in the effort to put the brakes on world inflation.
It's a little bit like tacking your sailboat across the wind.
Many people have noticed that the United States Treasury Department might secretly be trying to bring about high inflation in the United States to make it easier to pay off the massive debt.
A weak dollar against any or all currencies would help.
Is this the first step in an attempt to raise world interest rates relative to American interest rates to try to force the dollar down further?
But isn't a weaker dollar bearish for the US GDP?
And isn't a weak American GDP deflationary?
And doesn't financial history prove that it is impossible for governments to set the "real" relative value of currencies (whatever "real" means.)
I have too many questions that I can't answer.
I suspect that the real problem comes from subconsciously relying on a few simple mathematical formulas to determine various financial values such as prices, GDP, incomes, bond yields, fair value of stocks, and commodities, etc.
As the Quantization Revision of Murphy's Law states: "Everything goes wrong all at once."
The Android Army: Verizon Wireless, Google Ink Collaboration Pact [View article]
The Internet itself came from the Arpanet project which was completely developed by academics who were sponsored by the Department of Defense.
But of course, as everyone knows, the government is only useful when when we are defending the American Way of Life from Evil forces plotting to destroy us.
Ever heard of Dvorak or fiber optic networks, for example? In the early 1990's everyone thought the "Internet" was just as Utopian.
There comes a point in the development of any industry when excessive innovation is simply a wasteful attempt to make more money than one's competitor.
The automobile industry proves that: www.earlyamericanautom...
Is Dollar Revulsion for Real? [View article]
Proof of these successful, well-timed predictions must be provided of course.
Obviously there is always someone or some group who predicted the LAST relative positions of most world currencies for a given period (say six months) but their track record always seems to return to the mean after a few of these stipulated prediction periods, or proves disastrously wrong in the end IF they manage a relatively long string of correct predictions, say for five or six.
The currency market, like human history itself seems, therefore, to be a random walk taken by a large group of people who don't govern their behavior by reason but by other irrational impulses such as greed, pride, fear, ambition and other animal impulses.
I know in advance that there will always be a very small amount of people who DID predict currency markets with success, for a much longer than average periods, because there are a small amount of exceptional people who win the lottery and other games of chance also. But a tiny group of people who have made fortunes in currency markets, and who no longer risk more than a fraction of their winnings, is not a counter example but is, in fact, further proof.
If consistent success in predicting the future relative value of currencies (and I'm not talking about day trading but relatively long periods such as three months) can't be done, doesn't it make all of this talk about a future devaluation of the dollar moot?
'End the Fed' Author Ron Paul's NY Victory Lap [View article]
On Oct 05 04:38 AM roy piper wrote:
> carey_jim, it is not true that Libertarians are anarchists. It is
> YOU who say they are. That is all. We make no such claim. I look
> at Libertarians as being those who believe people can make their
> own free decisions about how to improve their life, and wish to do
> so in a free society, free of unreasonable impositions of others.
> I do not believe in no government, just limited government, in line
> with the original ideals of most of the Founding Fathers.
>
> The Democrats believe in freedom of person but intervention in how
> I make a living. Republican believe in freedom for making a living,
> but too often want to impose their social agenda. Libertarians take
> the best of both parties (and actually pushing those traits even
> further into the freedom category) and reject the worst.
>
> Ron Paul actually STANDS for something and it is not anarchy, it
> is freedom. But I can see why such freedom might be scary to those
> who think a few hundred people in a swamp on the Potomac have more
> knowledge about how I and others should run our lives than we do.
> Freedom scares some because they don't know if they can bear the
> responsibility of failure if they mess up. They want protection and
> security and the power to make others pay for their mistakes. I want
> liberty!!!
Options Trader: Monday Outlook [View article]
Bearish on Banks - Why Now Is the Time to Sell [View article]
1. Last year, banks provided new credit at the annual pace of $472.4 billion in the first quarter and $86.7 billion in the second. This year, they're not providing ANY new credit — they're actually LIQUIDATING loans at the rate of $857.2 billion in the first quarter and $931.3 billion in the second. So if you're running a business, you may want to think twice before asking your bank for more money. Instead, they may decide to TAKE BACK the money they've already loaned you!
2. Ditto for mortgages. Last year, mortgages were being created at the annual clip of $522.5 billion and $124 billion in the first and second quarters, respectively. This year, on a net basis, mortgages haven't been created at all. Quite the contrary, the Fed reports that, on a net basis, they've been liquidated at an annual pace of $39.3 billion in the first quarter and $239.5 billion in the second.
3. The U.S. is deep in debt to the rest of the world, and on page 48, it provides the evidence: total liabilities to foreigners of $7,898,435 million (nearly $7.9 trillion)!
4. This isn't a new record. It was actually slightly more last year. But the fact is NOTHING has been done to reduce our debt to foreigners. Quite the contrary, it is the deliberate policy of our government to pile up more — to sell foreign investors and central banks on the idea that they must continue to lend us money.
www.moneyandmarkets.co...
Shorting the Double Dip [View article]
That's why doctors have been coating medicine for so long.
Sentiment Overview: Surprising Increase in Optimism [View article]
I can see the rug rising off the ground. I can see the swami sitting on the rug wearing only a loin cloth.
I can't see any wires, but I'm looking for them.
Yet Another Finger of Instability [View article]
A note on Nietzsche:
Nietzsche announced that God is dead. He didn't say that he, Nietzsche, had killed God. He simply said that he looked around and noticed that the best human beings no longer thought of God as a living concept.
When Nietzsche said that God is, in fact dead, he was saying that we can no longer believe in a set of immutable laws that govern the universe and that we human beings can no longer have the luxury of thinking that if we discover these immutable laws of God and live by them we will be saved, either individually or collectively.
He also said that from now on we human beings will have to rely on ourselves for our salvation and, what is even more profound, our salvation is not guaranteed.
He said, from now on out, there is nothing higher than man on earth.
He told us that we can rejoice over the fact that man is only a naked ape if we see him as a rope stretched over the abyss leading to an ideal man of the future, or we can despair over the fact that man is an only ape and wait for the end.