mdmrjsds

Ten Reasons to Invest in Malaysia

You forgot to mention the overt racism exhibited by the Malays against the Chinese and Indian minority. Probably similar to the attitude of Indians in India to tribals and dalits. It's even enshrined in their laws. There is a catch phrase for it, buma putra?, meaning 'sons of the soil'. Sort of like the Klu Klux Klan. Incidentally, it is the Chinese and Indian minority that contribute the lion's share to wealth in Malaysia. The discrimination isn't as bad as in Indonesia though; there you get the feeling they would drag Chinese out of their houses and lynch them with the slightest excuse.

And on balance, Islam has to be considered a negative for investment purposes. It's said that they practice a more relaxed form in Malaysia. However, the stories coming out of Malaysia don't support that view (40 lashes for drinking a beer!), the mastermind of the Bali bombing was Malaysian, and Saudi Arabia is exporting mad dog Islam everywhere.

Squid flu? Growing frustration over reports that Goldman Sachs (GS) (along with big employers including Citigroup (C) and Morgan Stanley (MS)) is receiving hundreds of H1N1 vaccines before many hospitals do. David Weidner has a reader's limerick: "As jobless rates keep getting worse/The bankers cut lines to the nurse/Bad debts they accrue/But when there's swine flu/They finally turn risk-averse." NYC's health commissioner defends the distribution.

On Nov 06 07:12 PM herbert hoover wrote:

> Let's hope that it wasn't flu vaccine but something really deadly
> and contagious

How can you say that? Don't you know that these are the most important people in America. At least that's the reason I heard for giving them billions of dollars.

So yes, all animals are purported to be equal. But it has been written since the creation of the Fed that pigs are more equal than others. And this is just a manifestation of that.

I bet you thought Animal Farm was a satire about communism.

:-)

Cause for Concern: No Change from the Fed

I see from the comments that other people are just as doubtful as I am about the words of the Fed. I don't understand why people hang on these words. During the height of the housing bubble, BB said, 'We are not in a housing bubble.' This is during a bubble that he helped create (some of the credit has to go to Alan Greenspan). From that I conclude he is either incompetent or dishonest. Or both.

A guy is walking down the street when he sees a man on fire. He rushes over and says, "Sir! Sir! You're on fire!" The burning man says, "On fire? Let me check. My models don't show anyone on fire. Therefore I can't be on fire." The passerby says, "Oh, a macro economist. Never mind."

What really puzzles me, though, is why he is still in his job. He created a disaster and then ignored or didn't recognize it. At the first opportunity he should be gone. Finding a replacement who isn't just as bad could be a problem, but we should at least try.

We're behaving like a battered woman. We know that statistics say that we are likely to die at the hands of our abuser, but we don't flee because we are more comfortable with the known abuse than the unknown.

The real problem isn't the chairman of the Fed however, it is that the Fed exists. Our system was designed by financial interests in order for the rich to steal from the poor. And it works great for that. Sort of like those programmers who used to take the fractions of pennies from interest calculations and put them in their own bank accounts. Except it uses inflation to steal from everyone else and give it to the banks. And the periodic blowups are also a result of that faulty design. The system is unstable because it is a positive feedback system; and it controls the wrong variable, interest instead of money supply.

Oh well, it is kind of fun to watch a slow motion train wreck like this. Something to tell my descendants about, a once in a lifetime occurrence. :-^

Don't Expect Amylin to Eat the Obesity Market's Lunch

I think there is another perspective to weight loss that hasn't been mentioned in the comments. It is off topic from your article and for that I apologize. However, it might provide some value to another reader, so I will give a short blurb.

For many people, food is their medication of choice when they feel bad. In our society (and most societies) food is part of all major celebrations and gatherings. So we associate food with good feelings. And parents use food to calm and reward their children. So it isn't surprising that when bad emotional times hit, people reach for the fatty, sweet, and salty munchies. Unfortunately, it only serves as a temporary palliative, and doesn't relieve the underlying emotional need.

There are many effective ways of dealing with that underlying emotional need. In my opinion the best of them are outside of conventional and mainstream psychiatric intervention. One of the best I have found is called EFT. Simple, fast, easy, and effective. If you are in the category that finds yourself eating to relieve/forget emotional pain, you might want to head on over to emofree.com or do a web search for EFT. I recommend you download the free eft manual, and also the free palace of possibilities manual. After that you can read some of the archived newsletters on the site to get a feel for how actual people have used it for a wide variety of issues.

It's free, what have you got to lose? Except a few pounds. And some emotional baggage. ;-)

Cause for Concern: No Change from the Fed

They're hoping the horse will talk.

Two thieves are brought before a king. He says, "Take them out and hang them". One of them says, "Wait, your Majesty. If you give me a year I can get your horse to talk. I swear it." The king say, "OK, you have your chance."

When they are alone again, the other thief says to the thief that said he can get the horse to talk, "What do you mean, you can get the horse to talk? You don't know anything about making horses talk." The first thief says, "A lot can happen in a year. The king might die, I might die, and who knows, maybe I can make the horse talk."

Prices of investment-grade commercial real estate rose 4.4% in Q3, according to MIT CRE's transaction-based index, possibly signaling an end to the sector's year-long downward spiral. "One quarter does not a trend make and we are still well below normal trading volume," David Geltner, director of research at MIT/CRE, said. "Nevertheless, this is the strongest sign of a bottom that we've had in two years."

This is just the beginning of the inflationary spiral. That is, in constant dollars (2007 dollars), these are still dropping, but because of the Fed's loose money policy, they give the appearance of going up in price.

This is the purpose for debasing the currency, and it appears to be working, both on prices, and the perceptions of people who follow those prices.

A Market with No Memory

On Nov 03 10:16 AM Tony Petroski wrote:
<snip>
> Open the Southern border as there are many more than 19 million who
> will buy those homes. Unfortunately, for a generation, they all
> vote Democratic. Still, we can handle that and then we have a Republican
> wave in 2044!

A lot of unskilled, uneducated serfs from latin america aren't going
to rescue america by buying all the houses and paying for social
security and medicare. And they bring with them the culture that
created and sustains the disastrous societies they came from, and
supplies lots of gangbangers and teenage unwed mothers and prison
inhabitants to the US. Oh, and I forgot 2 hr gang rapes.

Now, if you talk about opening the border to educated, skilled, asian
immigrants that's a different story! Unlike the latinos, in one
generation *their* children are excelling, exceeding the native born
by large margins. i.e. raising the average

I'm not saying that latinos have less *potential* than asians, I'm
saying that latino culture is a piece of ****. And if you program a
computer (human brain) with bad software, you get bad results, no
matter how good the computer is.

We've done a massive social experiment in this country using
California. About 1 in 4 residents of California are third world
serfs from Latin America at this point. And the state definitely has
that third world flavor to it now. So no, they don't automatically
reach their potential just by crossing the border. In fact they seem
to be very slow learners, taking multiple generations to realize that
their old culture is crap, and they need to get with the new program
(again, unlike Asians).

Your view is common among the PC crowd, that America can take all and
sundry and its innate power of transformation and goodness will
automatically work. (violin and organ music in background) That is,
after all, one of the myths of our country. But like any other
system, this one has limitations too. That view is just another
variation of the kool-aid that main stream economists drink, that
perpetual growth is possible in a finite system, and that the only
possible system is one of growth. Our whole system is predicated on
growth, whatever the cost.

Don't believe me? Imagine that tomorrow we opened the borders to
anyone who wanted to come to America from anywhere in the world. We
would probably have a billion people here within 3 to 5 years. Would
the system survive such a shock. No.

Am I saying that in a hundred or hundred and fifty years, when all
these latinos finally get with the program (if they do), they won't be
American? No. But that doesn't change things now, living in a
society with a large minority of third world serfs with all the
discordance that brings.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. money managers are bullish on stocks through the middle of next year, Barron's fall survey finds. Money managers expect three sectors to outperform: tech energy and health care. They're bearish on financials and consumer cyclicals, and netural on oil. Top stock pick: Microsoft (MSFT).

In July 2008, nearly three quarters of professional money managers were bullish on stocks through the first quarter of 2009. :-^

These guys really do live in another universe. And because they control so much money, their prophecy could be self fulfilling. Until it runs into reality. Hey, maybe it won't. These are the guys Ben and Tim are playing to. They don't understand anything about the economy, and don't want to. If Ben says it is good to go, it is good to go.

Boggles the mind. They're playing with *your* retirement money.

Why Spanish Economy Needs to Return to 2000 Wages and Prices

This is another way of reporting on the flaw in world financial systems. When money is created out of thin air because there is 'demand' for it, people treat that money as if it was real (represented value). But it doesn't. So when the house of cards collapses, someone has to pay for that assumption. That is the person left holding the bag. In the article above, the debt.

Adjusting wages and prices can't fix this, there is a real loss. It is much clearer if looked at from the perspective of money as energy / thermodynamics. It is obvious then why there has been a collapse.

In the US, Goldman-Sachs seem to understand this dynamic. So they got out of the markets they created that were ready to fail and left others holding the bag. From a certain perspective, this looks much like fraud, and from another perspective, savvy investing.

Cutting all wages and leaving prices the same is a solution that makes everyone pay for the excesses of the few. Cutting both wages and prices does nothing, and cutting prices in fact is impossible because they are determined externally, by the world market.

The central banks have decided to take the course of cutting all wages. They have decided to do it under the table by inflating all currencies in unison, so that nominal wages don't decline, but actual purchasing power does. Note that, because of the way financial systems are designed, this solution rewards the financial institutions that destroyed the system. What a world!

I haven't yet decided if the political class are complicit in this or are just ignorant.

With $770B of the $1.4T in commercial mortgages maturing in the next five years currently underwater, FDIC revises its rules (.pdf) to allow banks to keep loans on their books as 'performing' even when the underlying properties no longer cover the outlay.

I read the document and this is my emotional response.

Why does this document even exist? It seems to be a rehash of rules
that any prudent lender should be following anyway.

Why is the government doing this? These lenders should be paying a
third party to monitor their portfolio and publish ratings. Just as
they do with accounting firms.

The immediate response to that is probably, 'Look at the stock rating
agencies and how they failed'. And my response to that is, if they
don't do their job they should be liable for fraud charges and go to
prison. The firm goes under because it wasn't responsible. The
investors are responsible for their decisions and not a government
regulator. That is what got us in this mess in the first place.

This is all because of the faulty design of our financial system. We
control the dependent variable (interest rates) and let the
independent variable which should be closely controlled (money supply)
float freely. And we let the people controlling the money supply
(financial institutions) be the same people that are profiting by
money supply. What a disastrous control system design! It's why we
have blow ups in the economy every 5 years or so. Of course, there is
probaly no one at the Fed or in Congress who even understands control
theory and systems theory. :-)

So, my non emotional response after reading the document, is that I
agree with those who say this is yet another way to kick the can down
the road, hoping that the inflation currently being engineered by the
central banks will kick in in time to 'rescue' these financial
institutions. Never mind what it does to ordinary people, they don't
count, these large financial institutions must be coddled at all
costs.

This is another consequence of the way our financial system is
designed is that during periods of inflation, financial institutions
get money first when it is created out of thin air, so they use it
while it still has the old non inflated value. The rest of us pay for
that, it is like a tax on every member of society going directly to
the financial institutions. Can you tell that the financial system
was designed by the financial institutions? ;-)

The moral hazard this creates is that it rewards imprudent risk takers
at the expense of prudent investory. If these assets were liquidated
at current market rates, those who purchased them would be those who
were prudent enough to keep their assets through the meltdown. Our
current policy leaves those assets with the institutions who caused
the meltdown through their imprudent policies. Future disaster.

The Myth of Uncorrelated Return

The market is more than a nonlinear dynamic system.

Difficulty of systems can be roughly classified, from easy to hard,
as:

static linear
dynamic linear
static nonlinear
dynamic nonlinear
stochastic
time-varying
volitional

Our ability to model, even with petaflop supercomputers, is somewhere
around dynamic nonlinear and stochastic.

The stock market is actually a volitional system. And so it will
never be modeled, because any model will be wrong as soon as the next
innovation by a market participant occurs. While all the others are
closed, the volitional system is open. Even human psychology changes
over time.

All this is by way of saying that I agree with you that there can be
no hard and fast rules in the stock market.

Understanding Cap and Trade: Why It Has Been the Option of Choice

Ha!

In China, there are 300 million people living on less than $2 US per day. In India, there are 700 million people living on less than $2 US per day. Right now, not in some future scenario. And these are the people that are not controlling their fertility, having more babies than they can afford to raise properly, thus it is certain that the problem will grow into the future. Not even considering the other billion people around the world in the same situation.

Greenhouse gases might or might not be creating a problem that will occur in 50 to 100 years time. I know, I know, the models and statistics *prove* that this is happening. Sssuurrreeee they do. If you read the details, it isn't as cut and dried as it is made out to be. And we heard the same things from the economists about their models regarding risk and pricing. Every week I see journal articles that change the picture.

So their tradeoff is between starvation, social unrest and possibe rebellion now or a possible climate issue 50 to 100 years in the future. We're freezing to death, we can burn the fruit trees and maybe starve next year or freeze to death now. Hard question. Not!

We're (meaning humanity) going to burn every hydrocarbon resource available to us, until it becomes thermodynamically unfeasible.

On a positive note, I have seen reports here on SA that the worst scenario of the climate change alarmists is not possible because there aren't enough hydrocarbon resources for it to occur.

Another possible positive glimmer is that the number of people that are impacted under projections is in the hundreds of millions range. Over the course of the last century we added more than 4 billion people, and we are going to add another 3 billion by the middle of this century. So the migrations we are talking about are small potatoes in comparison.

But the bottom line is all this carbon talk is just noise. Those billions of people struggling for existence are going to use any and all means at their disposal, despite any long term consequences.

Economists to Congress: Give the Fed a break. Heavy criticism from lawmakers is putting "the independence of U.S. monetary policy ... at risk."

I was in grad school with one of the signature headliners. He's intelligent, hard working, driven, ambitious (need I say political?). And on this he is wrong.

I suppose their position corresponds to the saying that 'if you eat hot dogs, it is better not to know about how they are made'. But the Fed is the driver of the American economy. Congress outsourced its responsibility for the currency, but that doesn't absolve it of culpability. It is necessary that the inner workings be exposed, at least to Congress.

The Fed is not the private reserve of bankers and economists, it is the right of the general population to have some view of the inner workings of the Fed if they are interested.

"the independence of US monetary policy ... at risk". How can it be independent when it is controlled by financial interests? I would have much more sympathy for the 'leave the driving to us' argument if the US didn't experience a financial crash every 5 to 10 years. i.e. we're incompetent, but trust us.

So, audit the Fed!

Novellus and CSX: Impressive Earnings or Same Old Safety Dance?

Taking their cue from Ben Bernanke. He's predicted 6 of the last 0 recoveries. Eventually he'll be right. :-)

America is in a liquidity trap, Pimco's Paul McCulley says, driven by private sector deleveraging borne of asset price deflation. His solution, like Krugman's: The Fed must be irresponsible.

Leeches! We must apply leeches!

The pressure on the brain must be relieved. Remove part of the skull!

There is too much air humor in the body, the patient must ingest large quantities of mud to balance it!

An ice pick must be inserted through the eye socket and the frontal lobes of the brain must be scrambled!

The last one was used as recently as the 1960s as a 'cure' for schizophrenia.

Tribal witch doctors (no insult meant to them) prescribing their remedies. ;-)

I wish these economists had enough humility to admit they don't have a clue, and are just making suggestions based on ignorance, and aggravating the problem. It is time to let the system settle before making any more adjustments.

In the mean time they can study some systems and control theory so they at least have the background to understand what they are trying to do.

My recommendation. Every month for the next 5 years, the fed raises the interest rate by .05%. This gives the system time to respond and stabilize, as well as removing the bad elements from the system in an orderly manner over time. All participants know what is happening, and can then plan accordingly. The worst problems are removed first, allowing their assets to contribute to recovery instead of being a black hole for stimulus. Slow motion creative destruction with predictability.

While this is going on, we need to design a new financial system. The current one is controlling based on a dependent variable using the wrong feedback mechanism. And it is a positive feedback system (inherently unstable). The banks create the money supply and regulate the money supply. This whole thing is insane. At the time it was designed, the designers were ignorant of all of the developments over the last century. It is time to use those advances in knowledge to remove the banks (and federal reserve) from the money creation loop (this should be done using the actual production of the economy, feasible now because of computers and thermodynamics).

We (meaning competent skilled experts) could do it so much better now. It needs to be clean room though, designed by people who haven't been exposed to the flawed current economic orthodoxy.