ATHELSTAN

20 Comments

    • ON: Sun Sep 21st 07:47 AM
      Commented on:
      Hank Paulson, Buy-Sider
      If nothing else, the Chinese and the Japanese will give a second thought about dumping U.S. Treasuries. With the 1.2 trillion dollar bail out, new Treasury issues will be generated and they will be extremely popular the world over. Bank stocks are going to continue to rise, but in the long run gold will come out the real winner.

      Poltically, it means the end of the McCain candidacy and the GOP because of its treasonous maladminstration of the US government , and its criminal neglect while bankers , hedge fund managers and other thieves fleeced the "system". Not to mention the American people and their economy.

      Mayor Mike Bloomberg can be as sanguine about New York City's ability to weather this mess as he wants to be, but the the truth is the financial hegemony of New York City as the money center of the universe is now history. It ended once and for all this past week.
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    • ON: Wed Aug 27th 10:53 AM
      Commented on:
      Another Depression?
      This depression has been in the making for some time now. It's characteristics will be a sort of Chinese water torture of drip, drip, drip as everything goes down, down, and down.

      The American family's wealth is built upon inflated home values going back to the 70s. These values were intoxicating to the point where the national mantra and cocktail chatter turned to how real estate can't fail!!! This, of course, led to greater borrowing, extended credit card commitments, and a tendency to eschew savings entirely. Real estate turned into a casino , a roulette wheel, and a Ponzi scheme at the same time.

      The crash is inevitable, inexorable, and ineluctable, but don't look for a "black Friday" event to kick it off. The same old groups will be blamed for it as those blamed in the last depression. You can see it now in the chat rooms.

      Until the crash blows over, I'm out of stocks and in cash, treasuries and gold.
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    • ON: Mon Aug 25th 14:27 PM
      Commented on:
      Obama Is Bad for the Economy - Barron's
      I have the utmost confidence in President Obama taking us back to the good old days of Jimmy Carter. Sell your stocks, buy gold, ,but dollar cost average into real estate. Because Ben Bernanke is putting the Fed's feet into cement. To solidify a Fortress Fed to withstand the buffetings of inflation.
      Bernanke won't increase interest rates this year or anytime soon in the new year. He's prepared to permit Obama to spend lavishly on a scale we haven't seen since the 1970s. It may be the only way to keep his job too.
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    • ON: Mon Aug 11th 14:26 PM
      Commented on:
      Gold: The Commodity Bull Market Isn't Over
      While the author undoubtedly has a vested interest in promoting gold, he makes a bunch of very sound arguments for holding it. With very few exceptions, tell me a stock analyst or investment advisor who doesn't have a vested interest in his or her recommendation. It is the rare guest on CNBC , Fox, or Bloomberg who hasn't a his , or his firm's money riding on their recommendations.
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    • ON: Sat Aug 9th 16:25 PM
      Commented on:
      This Recession Will Be Neither Short Nor Shallow
      The financial press and the business TV shows have lost all credibility, particularly the latter. They have deteriorated into nothing more than sounding boards for short-term traders who sing a different song every day, representatives of financial services who don't know what they're talking about, those who know how to lie with a smile and also have different stories to tell each day, and out and out liars.

      Only reliable news events and serious academic analysis should form the basis for any investment decision. Brokerage house based economists have become totally untrustworthy because they have become little more than toys in the hands of management.

      For the first time since the 1950s, I've moved out of stocks and into gold and 30 year Treasury bonds. To prepare for the greatest depression of all time.
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    • ON: Sat Aug 9th 15:55 PM
      Commented on:
      Please, Mr. Greenspan, Shut Up
      The old boy may be suffering from senile dementia. To add insult to injury Dr. Greenspan also charges his listeners big bucks to receive his advice. So, perhaps he hasn't lost all his marble.
      He is evidence of what happens when Republican presidents turn to someone they think is an expert.

      In Bush's case, "Allan, you're doing a great job." Sounds familiar doesn't it?

      Greenspan and Ben Bernanke are living proof the Federal Reserve should be abolished lock, stock, and barrel. The corrupt bargain that was created by bankers and the US Government in the Wilson era is a corporate socialist experiment which has proved to be an unmitigatged disaster. It may also lead to yet the greatest crash of all time.
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    • ON: Wed Aug 6th 14:18 PM
      Commented on:
      Greenspan: Still Almost Childlike in His Idealism
      There is nothing "child like" about the fees Allan Greenspan charges to groups to deliver his apologias for years of neglect at the Fed. The media obsession with this man is the equivalent of guru worship.
      All for a man who continued to bend over backwards to encourage home ownership during his years at the Fed, and did anything but "regulate" banks and the financial structure for providing housing credit.

      The American people have every right to be angry and should be deeply concerned for the future. It is no longer a matter of housing prices and when those prices improve, or when the supply of homes starts declining. It is now a question of how severe will the national ,systemic loss of family wealth be. Will it be in drips and drabs? The slow movement from affluence to poverty over time. Or will it come very suddenly with a 5000 point drop on the Dow? Something on the scale of October 1929.
      I have no confidence anyone in Washington, Wall Street, or Main Street has a clue of what lies out there and how to come to grips with it.
      A year from now, we may be witnessing a total social meltdown plunging the nation into civil war and anarchy.
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    • ON: Wed Aug 6th 13:52 PM
      Commented on:
      Careening Towards a Financial Crisis?
      The thought of the well-heeled, instant millionaires created since the early Reagan years losing their fortunes today may bring cheers to doctrinaire left wingers, but it is a scarey sign of ominous things to come for the rest of us. When one stops to think some guy and his wife are living in a $20,000,000 house in the Hamptons or in Fairfield County Connecticut, and now have had their credit cut off. Due, of course to plummeting wealth and declining mansion values.

      The rest of us may feel relieved to see the rich suffering. We tend to think somehow we are left off the hook, but be careful about celebrating the bad fortune of the rich or anyone else for that matter. Your turn may be coming soon.

      I can't help wondering, where and when does it all end?
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    • ON: Wed Jul 30th 15:05 PM
      Commented on:
      Home Prices in 20 Major Cities: You're OK If...
      Amazing how supposedly sophisticated investors and observers of the market and economy are so easily impressed with analyses like this. The entire financial services profession has deteriorated into a monument to deceit, plays to the gullibility of its followers, feeds naivete, and conducts fraud on a scale one might find in the side-show entertainments of a small 19th century traveling circus. Only fifty cents to see the Egress!!!

      Wall Street also proves time and time again there truly is one born every minute.
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Jun 24th 10:58 AM
      Commented on:
      Don’t Worry About a Return to ‘70s Stagflation
      The worse it gets the more I dollar cost average into financials, especially regional banks and S&Ls. What we are all witnessing now is the demise of New York City and Charlotte NC as financial centers.
      If the stand alone investment bank is history, and it may be, then the world will be looking for new financial money centers. London? Shanghai? Abu Dhabi?
      The short-sigtedness and stupidity of Greenspan and Bernanke are hastening that demise. The latter is now out of control of events and world markets sense it too. The former is left to collect $70,000 a speech talking about the past. What a pathetic sight.
      Poor John McCain has been dealt a terrible hand and he's going to take the Republican Party down to the worst defeat since 1932.

      While it's great to have more service sector jobs, you can't export them. Most high tech within 15 years will come from India, eastern europe, Israel, and the middle east . Our high tech centers, Raleigh-Durham, northern Virginia, Boston area, the west coast, are living on borrowed time. They are not price competitive and never were.
      Like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" ,we'll all wake up from our dream to discover our real roots as an economy now lie in Kansas, or some other agricultural setting.
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    • ON: Sun Jun 22nd 16:23 PM
      Commented on:
      Value in Regional Bank Stocks?
      Thank you for a most valuable analysis of regional banks as a subset of the financial sector. I still like FF (First Financial) and I intend to continue to buy it on weakness.
      View article »
    • ON: Sun Jun 22nd 16:13 PM
      Commented on:
      Financial Fears Sweeping the Globe
      Perhaps, the time has come for Bush to seize all national banks and their assets , in effect making the Fed our National Bank. Next, Bush needs to close the gold window, and for the Treasury Dept. to start selling gold.
      Could the Federal Reserve or the Paulson gang be any worse than the clowns in the private banking universe who endangered the economies of the planet with their willingness to play monkey see, monkey do? And their allies in the U.S. financial media acting as if they too are monkeys. I see no evil. I hear no evil. I speak no evil.
      Thanks to the failings of our private institutions, Bush and Bernanke will have no choice but to literally throw money at America's home owners in the form of a housing stimulus package, or see family wealth continue to erode. Thus igniting deflation on top of slowing demand.
      Raising interest rates in Europe, or in the US is an act of suicide!!

      Best to initiated this stimulus package before the depression starts and not during the early stages of it.
      View article »
    • ON: Sun Jun 22nd 13:19 PM
      Commented on:
      High Likelihood of a Market Crash
      The real crash coming isn't in the stock market, but the drip, drip, drip downward in housing values. That process is irreversible. Bernanke, Paulson and company were too slow and too late to prevent this inevitable slide into chaos. Republicans have a long history of being too slow. Coming to the banquet or funeral with inappropriate dress and no flowers.
      Now investors and the general public sense Bush is out of touch with reality, and McCain is taking the GOP down to defeat in November. What looms in the distance is the Obama Express speeding down the track at an awesome and a terrible pace to Carterville. That is to say the town named for the former president.
      Where inflation, high interest rates , "touchy feely", feel good politics , with protectionism added to it, and the prosecution of countless investment bankers and hedge fund managers will lead to financial panic. This means the real plunge comes later and after the elections.
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    • ON: Fri May 30th 12:42 PM
      Commented on:
      Senator Dodd's Housing Solution - Cramer's Mad Money (5/21/08)
      The Dodd proposal smells of private interest money working behind his bill. It is too little, too limited, and too late.
      Since nobody seems to know just how many ALT-A and higher mortgages are set to go up in the years 2010 to 2011, it is safe to say we are far from seeing the tail end of this housing and credit crisis.
      That being the case, the Congress and the administration must be ready to deal head on with the most extreme scenario ready to unfold between now and 2011. Massive middle and upper middle class housing failures across the country with dire prospects for the states and their ability to raise revenue from property taxes.
      Only a bailout by directing cash in the form of 35 to 50 year loans at low interest rates to help the broad middle class from going under will stave off the worst scenarios of the Bush depression now in the making.
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    • ON: Fri May 30th 12:22 PM
      Commented on:
      Bring on the Alt-A Downgrades
      This is a bad omen making fools of everyone from the rating agencies, the financial press which keeps giving us happy talk about the crisis being over and done with, to the Bush Treasury Department which continues to give the American people Chamber of Commerce style booster talk and beautiful scenarios about how well everything is going. The entire administration should resign today. From Bush on down.
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