Hal.P.

Beware the Current Bull Market in Derivatives

I wish the news media would target this area for closer inspection too, but I don't think anyone can wrap their heads around what the derivatives market is and how it relates to them. Heck I can hardly get my head around it. The world wide number is... well... it's a heck of a lot bigger.

FDIC's Latest Proposal Will Simply Help Big Banks Engineer Healthy Balance-Sheets

Kind of sorta sounds like a shell game. And the American public is the one trying to find the pea, supply the pea, and ain’t going to eat the pea.

Gold and Silver 'Bubble' Has Long Way to Go

I agree with your thoughts too. I don't think we anywhere close to a bursting bubble of gold. The debt our country is taking on and the printing of money, let alone the use of that money to buy our own debt is not something that bode's well for the dollar. So I think for now the precious metals are a good place to store the value of ones wealth.

Green Shoots Everywhere (Except They're Actually Weeds)

Yeah. I'm going to agree with a lot of what you are saying too, Ray. And Larry, I like the fertilizer metaphor. The trouble with that much fertilizer is it can seriously burn the plants.

What CIT's Troubles Really Mean

What makes you think the government won't cut it's nose off to spite it's face? It does that all the time. Of course anymore it seems the noses it prefers to cut have been the American public.

What's Behind This Bear Market Rally

Yeah. I saw that video this morning on ZH.

Scary.

It's hard to see stuff like that and not think market manipulation. Makes me wonder about that our government is directly involved in inflating the markets. At this point propaganda has become the big game in the market place.

It's more and more about how image and marketing psychologically affects the markets.

Of course I'm left wondering just how long that will work.


On May 19 07:12 AM CautiousInvestor wrote:

> Zero Hedge has posted a video of a Fox News interview with Doreen
> Morgavero and two other players. It's worth the trop over to ZH to
> watch this video which offers some shocking revelations and insight
> about recent market activity. From the transcript of the video:<br/>
>
> "Something strange happened during the last 7 or 8 weeks. Doreen
> you probably can concur on this -- there was a power underneath the
> market that kept holding it up and trading the futures. I watch the
> futures every day and every tick, and a tremendous amount of volume
> came in a several points during the last few weeks, when the market
> was just about ready to break and shot right up again. Usually toward
> the end of the day – it happened a week ago Friday, at 7 minutes
> to 4 o’clock, almost 100,000 S&amp;P futures contracts were traded,
> and then in the last 5 minutes, up to 4 o’clock, another 100,000
> contracts were traded, and lifted the Dow from being down 18 to up
> over 44 or 50 points in 7 minutes. That is 10 to 20 billion dollars
> to be able to move the market in such a way. Who has that kind of
> money to move this market?
>
> On top of that, the market has rallied up during the stress test
> uncertainty and moved the bank stocks up, and the bank stocks issues
> secondary – they issues stock – they raised capital into this rally.
> It was perfect text book setup of controlling the markets – now that
> the stock has been issued…”

The Banking Panic Isn't Over

Good article. I think we are yet to see the worse to come too. Like then, what is taking place is an attempt to not face the bad decisions head on and accept the consequences and let banks and investments fail. The hope is that by merging good with bad that the good will somehow heal or spread the failure across the system so that it won't hurt as much.

But that's not how it's going to work. Gangrene has set in and must be cut off. Merging is only going to spread the sickness and increase it bringing everyone down hard, just like it did back in the 1930's. It's one of the reasons that China is doing it's best to shore up their gold holdings and get rid of as much US debt holdings as they can. They see the dollar as a dead man walking.

GDP Report: Another Painful Quarter

It is good to see that the markets today are shrugging this news off. But as someone closer to main street then wall street I am left shaking my head. I and a good many of my compatriots are taking a good deal of our earnings and applying that to debt (mainly credit card) and savings. We don't quite see it as being out of the woods yet and I think there is an overall feel that another shoe is about to drop (credit cards and commercial mortgages).

I'm looking at widget ExactPrice right now and the fact that gold and silver remain fairly high tells me that others are still feeling a bit of wariness.

A Telling Tim Geithner Anecdote

There are too many politicians in DC and the Treasury. How do we get them out of there?

I'm sick of the double speak and wishy washy answers. In fact the more I see of DC moves the more I think their main game is to enslave fold through debt.

Banks And Consumers Say No to More Debt

Great article.

Totally agree that the consumer gets it and DC doesn't. The thing with DC is power, and debt equals power for them.

Gem Hudson said, "He who has the gold makes the rules."

Well, start getting some gold and savings and getting out of debt.

Debt Deflation, Money Creation and the Aftermath

One of the things this means is that you better have some gold and silver in hand to protect ones self till all this shakes out.

I've seen more talk this morning that China views the dollar as dead

moneynews.newsmax.com/...

Not good as they are one of our biggest buyers of debt supposedly helping to finance our recovery.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

This is crazy. Our free market society was supposed to liquidate these bad banks to begin with. That’s what it does with failed businesses. It’s what keeps the markets strong and thriving. Should have liquidated them to begin with. No business or country for that matter is too big to fail.

What’s too bad is I doubt that the advice of liquidating them will be heeded.

Another Reason Why Inflation Is a Good Idea

Yeah. I'm going to say that we are very much likely to see some not so targeted inflation coming down the pike. Hopefully it won't be so massive that it will kill us.

FDIC Watch: Agency's Insurance Commitments 34% Higher than Reported

Great insights here. Thanks for the in depth work on putting this together. It is indeed a giant Ponzi scheme. Legal of course because the government declares itself exempt from the law.

U.S. Debt Surpasses $11 Trillion But Day of Reckoning Is Still Ahead

This is exactly why gold skyrocketed something like $75 an ounce. I expect that the trend will be a steady rise. The new bubble is the dollar and when it's burst. Look out. Looking at the free ExactPrice widget ( www.learcapital.com/ex... ) right now the spot of gold is $956.50. Silver is continuing it's up tick too at $13.64.

I wonder how long till they retest last year's highs.