tuckfinitee

No Economic Joy for Joe Six-Pack

This is an outrage sir. How dare you look at money flows? And why do you omit the tremendously positive money flows to gov?

353732 I think you underestimate the influence of the infantryman's philosophy. You overestimate the public's ability to understand or adhere to a hierarchy of values. The infinite wish list cherry picking game has been trotted out what a gazillion times? It still gets the desired kid in a candy store responses.

Have You Learned Anything from the Crisis?

If by crisis you mean the last two years, I would say I've learned some. If you mean the real crisis starting with LBJ then I would say a lot. At the gut level I knew it was game, set, and match with the decoupling of the dollar and the all volunteer army. Or actually it might be more accurate to say it was GAME ON.

The Bernanke Circus: What Does It Mean for Investors?

What's the value? What's the value of anything?

What's the value for example of RE in the context of the Feds recent and long term actions.

What's the value in the context of gov central planning(its not central if you call it policies)and accounting fraud? What's the value of GM or Chrysler bonds? What's the value of anything when taxes and laws are changed at the whim of political "goals" or junk science?

What's the value in the context of BLS stats?

What's the value when 90% of the people you invest in(hire)are a losing proposition? But hey the rainmakers can't do everything. Can you say outsourcing?

What's the value when it's always better to be a borrower than a saver or lender(except for certain lenders of course)?

It's possible that perceived values might be a little high from time to time. The US produces a lot of stuff. It also has a huge overhead. How huge? No one knows.

I know I want to sell mainstream and buy off the grid whenever possible.

Big Money Is Bullish While Small Money Is Bearish

Well right now I'm looking at a sea of red except for the dollar and tbonds. I'm holding dollars and PMs. I'm not worried about PMs for obvious reasons.

What I'm curious about is if you have any non-circular ideas about developments today for example? Or is your implied advice to draw our own conclusions about everything?

I have a couple of ideas. Maybe more shoes dropping in Europe that haven't hit the media yet? V shaped pricing colliding with a lazy U?

Federal Government: Completely Out of Control?

Get a job in gov or fin. Get a job overseas. Learn to work the system. Start you own "thing". Do you think Gore, Jackson, Edwards, Clinton are accidental multi-millionaires? Like GS they do God's work.

People who don't understand the crime syndicate model whine and snivel instead of educating themselves and getting a piece of the action.

Individual Investor Challenge: Can You Succeed by Going It Alone?

China is the leading economic power. They have a better attitude.

If you like to play card games for money that require skill, I have a couple of suggestions you might try. Stuy Unger and I played an interesting variation of gin. After we looked at our hands we wrote on slip of paper what discard we would knock on. You could only score if you knocked on that discard or undercut. Not a great money game though.
English Stud hi/low split no qualifier bet declare bet is an excellent heads up money game. There's always rubber bridge but there's a lot more luck in it.

Government Action: Mission Not Accomplished

Obama and Bernanke promoting bank lending is a complete fraud, strictly for public consumption. The private marching orders are vastly different.

They are planning controlled burn inflation not a forest fire. The cash the banks have been given are to be used for propping up asset prices(stocks and tsys). The money flows are being carefully directed by and to the OPM mafia and asset prices. Lending will continue to be restricted for the broader public. Gaps between the the two tiered economy will be filled not by more credit to the masses but by gov subsidies as needed.

What Are Some Market Risks for 2010?

This is not the big mystery it's made out to be. I won't repeat myself about the true cost of high debt. But it should be obvious that there is an inherent commitment to the status quo or a given plan of action or come combination. In this instance most of the commitment is to maintaining the status quo. This is a long term losing strategy. It can lead to a long term gradual decline. However the loss of flexibility carries great short term risks.

Recognizing the high risk environment is correct, but betting on the crash scenario doesn't automatically follow.
Outside the mainstream niche type strategies are working fairly well based on what I can see. Paulson is betting on gold and bailouts. Not exactly mainstream. It's hard to see how he could lose on both but he could easily win on both.

Capitalism Gone Wild

Details, details, details. Leave out the details and you get fairy tales.

Stealing wealth has been a very good business for a very long time. Now anyone can steal. But who's likely to be the most frequent and worst offenders. Middlemen(like gov/fin)with little skin in the game backed by well organized heavily armed men or someone who has to hit the floor running every morning to produce something?

Don is a nice guy who really, really wants to believe in holier than god gov. Forget history, forget score keeping, even forget science and the theoretical limits of objectivity much less objectivity of the limited/flawed human perspective. Holy gov would never have a bias towards politicians, bureaucrats, and their biggest allies and clients would it? Are you sure Don is a nice guy?

The Financial Meltdown: Absolutely Nothing Has Been Fixed

As I've pointed out health care has already been socialized. The retail consumer model hasn't been the driver of this market for decades. By an amazing coincidence prices started going up faster than other areas, most notably wages. It has been a very indulgent and corrupt version of collectivization. Now the hammer is coming down. Not on the middlemen/commissars however. The young and healthy are going to be forced to pay into the system. The public will pay more or do with less or likely both.

One of the first stated and acted on goals of the new administration was to revive the securitization market. Why so anxious to roll out programs to jump start something that caused so much trouble? Because it generated enormous money flows to the OPM mafia.

Cap and trade? Why the panic to add new costs to an economy that's reeling. It has nothing to do with an eco disaster. It's about a huge new derivatives market that can be easily gamed and adds more control levers to an already impressive array.

Now you should notice a common theme. How can you say things aren't being fixed? Moralists seem to like to believe that a collapse will occur from the weight of corruption. An interesting theory but not necessarily true. But so what if there is a collapse. Europe suffered three distinct collapses in the 20th century. The imperialist order, the fascist order, and the communist order. With what result? Smarter predators were evolving as they were failing.

The Real Reason So Many Home Loan Modifications Fail

Humor me for just a minute.

Crime syndicates are bottom up not just top down. They're omnivores. Two crime groups working at cross purposes. So what if they're both making money. They have a vast array of criminal associates. They work great with gamblers, parasites, fly by night promotions. Fraud, deception, manipulation are at the heart of what they do.

Remember that all this debate about economic schools, fairness, logic are only of theoretical interest. The feeding turned into a frenzy in the mid 90s and you're only recently becoming aware. Be aware of a logic that works for wise guys.

Did Weekly Jobless Claims Really Fall Below 500k?

The problem with tax data is that people are going underground. More off the books cash and barter.

The Real Problem with Washington's Jobs Policy

Wealth creation. Duh? Three examples so easy they invite solipsism.

1. Build nuclear power plants
2. Drill for oil
3. Upgrade primitive water management

You should notice that all 3 are upstream and facilitate other economic activity, create high paying jobs, and can't be outsourced(you can use foreign co. but they still have operate domestically). In the first 2 output exceeding input is clear. 3. will have immediate and long term economic benefits.

Looking at domestic supplies it's possible more energy might even be more useful than more houses.

The Truth Behind the U.S Government's Stealth Stimulus Plan

I've resisted pointing this out but maybe the time is right.

The true cost of debt is mostly front loaded. This includes long term instruments and roll over. Most of the true cost is in the present and near term. This is not say that bad decision making and allocation of resources can't have an adverse domino effect far into the future. But in the economic sense you pay sooner not later.

If you start with the assumption that existing in this universe is a fixed cost you can work it out.

Another Crisis Looms Right Around the Corner

RE: James Goldsmith. Goldsmith realizes something is very wrong but he is very much off target. Global trade, economic growth, science and technology, nuclear power are not inherently bad. Yes there are problems and dislocations but they can be overcome and we can all be better and better off as a result.

I can summarize where the real heart of darkness is.

1.The fraudulent and manipulative control of money flows.

2.Gradual but overt political oppression. Now I don't have the time and space to detail all the propaganda, deceptions, and crime syndicate methodologies that go into both 1 and 2. However the foundation of 2. is childishly simple. An infinite wish list and the abolition of the hierarchy of values. If you walk into a law library you can find the results of centuries of effort(and thousands of years of hard lessons) to prioritize "goods"(rights being a subset), to resolve conflicts among goods and to interface with reality(for example freedom of speech is a high priority good but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Rights vary from your home, to a park, to a workplace). Unfortunately people are weak and ignorant. The constitution guarantees limited gov and encourages maximizing individual choice. But we have arrived at the opposite by the simple expedient of saying wouldn't this or that be good.