alajac

Wall Street: Dumb as It Ever Was

ALL human activity (including "investing") involves speculation. Determining what is a "probabliity" entails ruling out many other "possibilities" (like that "the world might end tomorrow, so why am I saving my money anyway?")

The ongoing Industrial/Cybernetic Revolution is going to keep replacing (world-wide) human labor with automation, increasingly faster than human labor-required tasks can be produced. Thus we need either a revolution in "economic resource distribution" or else there will need to be a lot less people. If you don't help me with the former, the latter will be the result.

Let me know asap: time grows short.

Grantham: Overvalued Markets Due for an Adjustment

You're getting ripped off: milk in Detroit is $1.75 a gallon. And the only ones carrying bags around here are living on the street.


On Oct 28 04:29 PM rennert wrote:

> But here is the latest: People in the Malls are carrying shopping
> bags again. Not 3and 4 bags but 1-3bags.Everyone on my street here
> in Florida is working. No houses for sale on my street either. Milk
> going for $8.50 a gallon. Fed needs to raise at least 1%. That will
> not derail the economy. I can not find a handyman or tree trimmer
> they are all too busy, they have work stacked up for weeks. Fed needs
> to raise Now. Silent Inflation is upon us.

Ten Reasons for an Imminent Stock Market Crash

A Black Swan doesn't have to be something you didn't know about: it can be something you are vaguely aware of but to which you are not attaching enough signifigance. To wit, the obsolescence of the need for human labor by the ongoing Cybernetic/Industrial Revolution. The job pool is shrinking like a pond of water in the savannah during the dry season; the animals will soon turn on each other unless we come up with a new way to distribute economic resources. Tom Paine suggested compensating everyone equally for the impairment of their right to free access to all land; sounds good to me (if the bailout money given to the banks had first gone in the form of equal-dollar distributions to every legal U.S. resident, it would have been many years before we would be having this conversation), and there really is no other GOOD choice. What Paine missed was that governments are the de facto owners of all the people and property and wealth within their domain (as long as it IS their domain), establishing de jure ownership as suits their liking, and that the compensation should come from the government rather than from the de jure owners as he suggested. He also missed that governments, being owners of all, never need to borrow anything to meet their obligations; the only reason they borrow is to funnel money into the pockets of those they serve, in the U.S. case (since the counter-revolution of 1789), that is obviously the banking industry; as recent events have exposed, the U.S. Federal government is "of, by , and for the banks". The only way we can get the government to serve OUR needs (and become, for the first time, a government "of , by, and for The People") is to take over the House of Representatives with candidates pledged to replace the Fed dollar with our own money and to institute equi-dollar compensation to every legal resident.

Read more on the classmates dot com profile page of "alan jacquemotte". also on "alajac" on the u4prez dot com website.

Jobless Recovery Can Be Avoided

I don't understand why so many smart people can't see the forest for the trees. The jobs are going away permanently because a destructive technology is devouring them. You can either fight other countries for the scraps or you can figure out that the current economic resource distribution system has actually been broken for hundreds of years and that we now have the technology in place to replace it with something sustainable and fair.

Whoever owns the money owns the government and that is not "We, the People" since at least 1913. If we take back ownership of the money and the government, and start putting all new money into circulation via equal-dollar distributions to every legal resident, the coming Depression will be forestalled for many years.

If we ALSO compensate everyone (at least $1000/month) for the government's impairment of their right to free access to all land (similar to Tom Paine's suggestion in his "Agrarian Justice" plan), replace all income-based taxation with a small, flat "infrastructure maintenance fee" on all electronic debit transactions, and get government to get it's nose out of everything else it currently has its nose in (ending or phasing out ANY AND ALL other corporate and personal subsidies and regulation), we will start the next 200 year upswing (with no more manic booms and busts), reduce poverty, crime and market speculation, creating a totally stable economic regime based on liberty and personal responsibility.

Economic History Doesn't Always Repeat Itself, But Sometimes It Rhymes

If a caged canary in your mineshaft keels over do you say "It doesn't matter"? I would say it matters a great deal.

Regarding Kahn's comment that "a traditional measuring of a target for a completed double top would yield a negative number", if he knew ANYTHING about what he's talking about (technical analysis, in this case), he'd know to use LOGARITHMIC SCALING and that the result of that would be a target a little below 400. (That's not MY target, just what the "completed double top" TA would seem to indicate. My target would be a lot closer to the negative he says is impossible. The reason I believe that to be the case is that we are not yet treating the actual disease (which would be the ongoing Cybernetic/Industrial Revolution - destroying the need for human labor in most industries - running into our archaic economic resource distribution system) and we won't even START to get actaully better until (as on the TV show "House") the actual cause of the symptoms is discovered and agreed upon and effectively treated. We are WAY not even close to that point yet.

ps. I called the crash on 6-3-2008, and the tops on oil and gold on 7-24-08; documentation available. See my other comments for the correct diagnosis and the cure.

On Mar 04 07:34 AM basehitz wrote:

> Barron's Michael Kahn in his article "Of Mice and Bears" offered
> this comment:
>
> "Much has been said about a potential double top in the S&P 500
> using the March 2000 and October 2007 peaks. A double top is a pattern
> with twin peaks and a discernable low in between. Technical theory
> says that a move below that interim low -- the 2002 low, in this
> case -- completes the pattern and confirms a change in trend from
> bull to bear. With the index now below the 2002 low, a very long-term
> trend has officially changed for the worse.
> Let's assume for a moment that this is true. Traditional measuring
> techniques tell us to measure the distance between the low and the
> twin highs and then project that down from the breakdown point. In
> this case, the result would be a negative number. Obviously, that
> is impossible."
>
> His concluding remarks are:
> "If our assumptions about the market are no longer valid then we
> cannot craft a strategy until we find some new assumptions. We certainly
> cannot take action on the basis of a single price level being violated
> or a chart pattern forming.
> There is no shame in simply sitting it out and preserving capital
> until such time as normalcy, whatever that is, returns."
>
> I respect Louise Yamada's analysis, as well as Michael Kahn and Carter
> Worth, who last night (same show) maintained his view for a bottoming
> process.
>
> I am taking a cautious approach. My largest holdings are in energy
> and cash, but have started to add stocks. So far, WFT CSCO FWLT and
> ENER. Looking at historical valuations and exceptional balance sheets,
> it seems risk/reward heavily favors going long here with the caveat
> therre could be some really volatile periods ahead. I am hoping Obama
> and company get this right though I have concerns on some policy
> details as to unintended consequences (like WFT moving off shore
> because of expected tax policy changes). And he and Bernanke have
> made it clear they do whatever it takes to right the ship, mostly
> by printing money. Why investors keep buying Treasuries and the USD
> is unclear, but it doesn't matter. They are. And the wad of cash
> remaining is for leveraged ETFs if we have another major woosh downside.
>
>
> Trader Mark, really enjoy your work. Thank you,

Margin Debt Catharsis?

I'm curious how the chartmaker drew the last leg of that BEV chart: How do they know that -20% from the last top of Margin Debt isn't the actual top of this leg?

Imagine This Scenario for Earnings Estimates

Reality doesn't matter to the herd. And if you stand in the herd's way you will become "roadkill". They're buyin' until they're sellin', and right now they're buyin': reason is irrelevant, as are those "fundamental" lies companies seem to like to twist around.

Today's Market vs. 1938

The actual correspondence is the modern NDX to the 1930's DJ-30 (see 1929-1939 vs 1999-2009, a comparison I have been making since at least 2006 and which allowed me to call the crash ("here comes the crash, go to cash") on June 3rd, 2008 (documentation available). the 1939 pullback held the bottom of the uptrend, but is unlikely to do the same this time. Even if they decide to "create" another war to get out of it, there is just not enough need for human labor in a cyberneticized world for even a war to fix the systemic problem (short of killing off BILLIONS of no-longer-required laborers).

A fix is very easy though: replace Fed dollars with our own non-debt money and compensate everyone $1000 per month for the loss of the right to free access to land that Tom Paine described in his Agrarian Justice plan (which see at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). I differ with Paine in contending that EVERY GOVERNMENT is the "de facto" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) owner of all the property (natural, human, etc.) within its domain, and should therefore be the entity liable for payment of compensation to all those whose free access to land it has impaired.

The plan that will fix everything (including unemployment, decent treatment for our vets, most crime, illegal immigration, etc, etc) is on the "alajac" page of u4prez.com. Until something like it gets implemented, the overall trend of prices for ALL assets classes will be DOWN. In a world where Money=Debt, the destruction of $30 trillion dollars worth of debt is not going to be made up for by running the Fed's printing presses for even a good bit. So far they are spitting into an ocean of destroyed credit.

We may see a bottom in 2012 (after this "slowdown in the crash" that will probably last into 2010), but, rather than holding my breath, I'm doing something about it. Take a look at the "alajac" page to see what that "something" is.

Is Socialism Coming Back to Haunt U.S.?

You can have a strong currency (and cheap imported goods and resources like oil) or you can have cheap labor that capitalists will be willing to use, but you can't have both.

The only problem there ever was is that, as governments "manifest their destiny", they privatize all land within their domain (abrogating everyone's right of "free access to land" that is a prerequisite to maintaining the "unalienableness" of a "right to life"), leaving the capital-poor to choose between wage-slavery and extinction. Thus wages are too low, thus people wind up in debt, thus the big mess. Compensate everyone $1000 per month (of new, debt-free US govt money backed by all the property of which the USG is the actual de facto owner; actually that includes all us peons also) for the impairment and all the socialism becomes completely unnecessary. See the plan on the "alajac" page at u4prez.com.

The Economic Pain Ain't Over Yet

The banking industry PACKED the U.S. Constitutional convention and, for all practical purposes, took over the US Federal government in 1787; we've all been putting money into their pockets ever since, the ripoff getting more and more blatant lately, but not really any different. Consequently, the U.S. "national debt" should be considered "odious" (see "odious debt" on wikipedia) and due and payable by the government administrators and the owners of the banking industry (or their heirs) for whose benefit the debt was created.

The real problem is that "cybernation" (computer and automation technologies), replacing both manufacturing and service positions by the millions (a trend that will be accelerating as companies look to cut costs during this Depression), is putting more people out of work than creating opportunities for their employment. The "easy Fed money" was covering up a systemic disease that appears to be terminal for our present way of distributing economic resources; unemployment is going to continue to creep higher until the actual disease gets "cured". Like a marathon runner who drops dead and was found to have had a bad heart, cybernation, rather than being the disease, is merely the activity that caused led to the uncovering of the underlying illness (so we won't need to throw all those PCs, laptops, cell phones and iPods into big bonfires just yet).

The actual cause of the whole mess (as Tom Paine pointed out in his "Agrarian Justice" plan which proposed the original Social Security scheme) is that governments cut off everyone's FREE access to land without providing any compensation for that impairment: a unalienable "right to life" necessarily requires a right to constant and unhindered access to land, or else an equivalent amount of government-supplied compensation in its place. Without such access or sufficient replacement compensation, those with less capital are left at an unjustified disadvantage to those with more.

Why "government-supplied"? Because every government (which I define as "one or more persons who claim certain natural resources, are willing and able to defend their claim on those resources, and who make and enforce decisions regarding the allocation of those resources") is the ACTUAL owner of all the natural resources (including human beings) within its defendable domain. Anyone who tells you different is just trying to get your labor "on the cheap" by denying your right to compensation for the government "taking".

Luckily, the cure for all of this big mess is easy:

1. Replace (to whatever degree is politically feasible) Federal Reserve money with new debt-free U.S. Federal Government money (backed by the 340 Trillion dollars of total U.S. wealth);

2. Every month, give every legal resident an equal amount of the new, debt-free money as compensation for the government's impairment of their free access to land (we suggest starting with $1000, but a larger amount may well be determined to be more appropriate);

3. Replace all Federal income-based taxes with a half percent (or so, whatever is required to negate inflation) "infrastructure maintenance fee" on EVERY electronic transfer of money (cash and barter are to be completely untaxed); and get rid of all the "safety nets" (including ALL personal and corporate subsidies that really just camouflage the ripoffs and the insurance programs (like FDIC) that hide banking's systemic risk behind a promise to socialize losses.

Everyone gets the same ration, everyone pays the same %, everyone can work or invest to make as much money as they are able with no penalty; the people who enact this program will also be eager to dismantle the 4200 other Federal programs, agencies and laws that distort the free market to the benefit of the banking industry and all their myriad "virtual subsidiary" corporations.

And finally, whenever it seems appropriate:

4. Apply the above (replacing the $1000 with an amount appropriate to the local cost-of-living) to countries who apply for and are accepted for U.S. statehood.

Why This Isn't Financial Armageddon

"inexistence"?

Aren't there any standards for SeekingAlpha contributors?

Our Coming Depression

It is not the banks that were stupid. We are the stupid ones for leaving in place a system that systematically allows banks to steal our accumulated wealth.

The problem is that we pay trillions of dollars (government and personal) to do what we could easily do for ourselves ABSOLUTELY FREE: that is, to supply ourselves with money to exchange with each other and with workers in other countries.

Replace the Fed dollar with our own money, put it into circulation via equal-dollar distribution=End of Depression.

Replace the FederaI Income tax with a flat, one-half percent electronic transfer fee (and get rid of all corporate and personal subsidies and 4000 Federal laws), and the next 200-year boom will start.

Upping the Stimulus Dosage

Debt is the cause and government cover for fraud is the problem. We can create our own money out of thin air a helluva lot cheaper.

PROTEST THE FED`S EXTORTION RACKET

A WRITE-IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN

TO REVOLUTIONIZE RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION AND TAXATION

The `HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY` plan addresses three problems with America`s economic system which are destroying our financial security.

Problem 1.

America`s National Debt is approaching 10 trillion dollars and the system is less than 100 years old. Nice work. If human bodies worked like America's currency supply, every time a kid grew a little he would need to take out a loan to buy a transfusion of new blood. We can easily replace the bankrupt Federal Reserve with debt-free U.S. money and non-FDIC-backed private banks.

Problem 2.

The Income Tax law was drafted by the same rich guys who invented the Federal Reserve system. They came up with a way to tax us `cash cows` while simultaneously avoiding paying taxes on their own wealth. A kid right out of college shouldn`t be paying a greater percentage of his accumulated wealth in taxes than Bill Gates. We need a flat, transparent, automatically-collecte... tax that produces results corresponding closely to `benefits previously received`.

Problem 3.

Thanks to automation, robotics and computers, the days of plentiful, highly-paid jobs employing vast numbers of manual and mental laborers are gone. Remember the days when there were millions of jobs that paid well enough to buy a house, two cars, an RV and a cottage on the lake...and still save plenty for retirement? If you do, then you`re pretty old. For most of us, those days are gone and they`re not coming back. To address this problem we need to either `kill off a lot of people` or else develop a new resource distribution model suitable for a world where jobs are rapidly going the way of `the buggy whip`.

**********************...

Tell Congress we need a TOTALLY NEW DEAL!

VOTE TO

Replace the Federal Reserve System

with U.S. Government Debt-Free Money

Replace the Income Tax with a tiny, automatically-collecte... flat tax

and Create Better Social Security for ALL

BY WRITING-IN

Alan Jacquemotte for U.S. President

(in states which allow write-in voting)

WRITE-IN VOTES CAN`T BE HACKED!

Make them hand-count your vote

Send no money

JUST MAKE COPIES OF THIS PLAN AND HAND THEM OUT.

HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY

a plan to stimulate the economy, lower taxes, start paying off the National Debt, alleviate poverty and decrease crime

by replacing our OLD economic system with a NEW system based on

a new and debt-free U.S. currency to replace Federal Reserve Debt-Money,

a 0.5% tax on electronic transfers to replace the Federal Income Tax and the IRS,

and $1000 per month government privatization compensation for legal U.S. residents

The problem is always THE SYSTEM, never just `the people who screwed up`. Until we fix THE SYSTEM, similar bad things will keep on happening. Fault for the credit scam lies not with the banks and borrowers who lost their shirts and homes, but with our predecessors for allowing this SYSTEM to become and remain law, and with ourselves for not getting rid of it earlier.

The primary problem with the OLD SYSTEM is that `our` money (actually the Federal Reserve`s Debt-Money) leaks its purchasing power like a bucket with a hole in the bottom leaks water. The Fed dollar currently buys less than 5% of what it bought in 1913. (To view a video that makes the problems inherent in our use of the Fed`s Debt-Money much clearer, do an online search for `Zeitgeist Fed`.) There is NO BENEFIT AT ALL in having a Central Bank (well, none for us) compared to having the U.S. Treasury print and distribute to ourselves our own debt-free money, and THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between having a central bank (like the Federal Reserve System) or not, is that ``One system costs us 95% of our wealth every hundred years and puts us and our posterity into mind-boggling debt until the end of time``... and the other one doesn`t. So the first thing we need for our NEW SYSTEM is our own, debt-free U.S. Government currency, backed by the value of all of the property within the nation`s borders. Bankers will tell you this will cause `the end of civilization as we know it`. It will certainly end it as THEY knew it.

Another problem is that the OLD SYSTEM`s income-based taxation creates wasteful tax avoidance behavior, requires an expensive tax reporting industry and an intrusive collection bureaucracy, and is, arguably, a form of `involuntary servitude`. Under a NEW SYSTEM, we could replace all income-related taxes with a one-half percent, automatically-collecte... electronic transfer tax (also known as a `debit tax`) which would be avoidable by business transactions that used only cash or barter. This change will not only rid us of the IRS (saving us the billions of dollars that are currently spent on `tax reporting`), it will also end the OLD SYSTEM`s penalization of work and entrepreneurism, as well as freeing up further untold billions currently spent on `tax avoidance`. (Also inhibits market speculation.)

The third problem with the OLD SYSTEM is that, because governments privatize all of their claimed property (allocating it however they like), everyone winds up being denied their natural right to free access to all property without being compensated for that loss. That`s not a problem for those with access to capital and property ownership, but for the rest of us, it is totally unfair and creates a slanted playing field upon which wealth tends to gravitate to the rich and well-connected. Free-market or socialist, every government`s allocation method results in `denial to everyone of free access to all land`, for which ALL governments should provide compensation.

Consequently, our NEW SYSTEM should pay to every legal adult resident $1000 per month (of the new, non-Fed, non-Debt-Money) which can REPLACE ALL FORMS OF PERSONAL AND CORPORATE WELFARE AND SUBSIDIES, no financial qualification required and no restriction on earning additional income (saving us billons in Social Security and Welfare bureauracracy costs and leaving Congress very little to do). Compensation for minors should be held in a trust fund to avoid incentivizing `baby factories`. Since everyone gets the same amount of compensation, this plan does NOT redistribute wealth, but will be of most help to those with the least accumulated wealth.

Besides its immediate and direct assault on poverty, the benefits of this part of our NEW SYSTEM should include a reduction in crimes of all sorts, more jobs at better pay, better childcare, more rural homesteading, better maintained urban areas, no more `homeless veterans`, less intrusive and cheaper government with lower military-related expenses and a safer world in general. We can expect residents of other countries to insist their governments either copy our NEW SYSTEM or else apply for U.S. statehood (as Texas did in 1845) as soon as the see how well this NEW SYSTEM works.

HEALTH CARE...the AMA and FDA work to constrain competition in order to maximize the medical and pharmaceutical industries` ability to extort unconscionable prices for services and substances that should be affordable out-of-pocket. We need to train up thousands more doctors and other healthcare professionals and to decriminalize and unbridle access for adults to WHATEVER drugs adults feel they need and let the market work to make prices of normal medical help and pharmacology affordable.

TO KICK OUR CRUDE (OIL) HABIT, Congress could add on a 10% surcharge at the gas pump, bump it up another 10% every 6 months, and rebate the surcharge revenue in monthly equi-dollar amounts to every registered car OWNER, regardless of how much they drive. The surcharge will incentivize cheaper alternatives which will rapidly come to market, no government subsidies or mandates required.

HELP ME SEND THIS MESSAGE to candidates running for Congress in 2010 and 2012. In order to get elected, you will need to pledge to help us THROW OFF the predatory Federal Reserve System and devise a NEW SYSTEM, one that ``provides new Guards for our future Security``. We can send a very clear message to those candidates with a MASS WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN for an unknown candidate running for no other purpose than to send that message. (That`s where I come in.) With the major parties fielding candidates who seem to be decent people but who are apparently unaware of the damage the present system is causing to us NORMAL folk, and with the 3rd parties addressing only symptoms rather than the BAD SYSTEM at cause, this election is the ideal time to vote for REAL CHANGE, not just new faces. I will register as a write-in candidate in every state that allows write-in votes from which I get emails expressing support. Pass this message along to several people every day (or, even better, to everyone you know today, and to everyone you meet from now on). IF EACH OF US EVERY DAY CONVINCE EVEN ONE OTHER PERSON TO JOIN US, OVER ONE BILLION PEOPLE CAN BE `ON BOARD` IN 30 DAYS. Get out (and online) and DO IT! For questions or more info, email alan_jacquemotte@yahoo...

Protest the Bailout! Remember The Tea Party!

WRITE-IN Alan Jacquemotte for U.S. President

Send no money

JUST MAKE COPIES OF THE PLAN AND HAND THEM OUT

How Will We Know When the Markets Hit Bottom?

And like I said in mid-July that oil would see $20 before $200.

How Will We Know When the Markets Hit Bottom?

Pessimistic Optimist- The yield only goes up for new buys at the lower prices. Your yield (based on your buy price) doesn't change.

We are going to keep going down until the current broken system is replaced. See my HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY plan in my other comments.

I'll call the bottom just like I called the crash in an email sent out on June 3rd.