Damian

UltraShort ETFs: At a Tipping Point?

TA on 2x inverse funds is stupid. QID will hit triple digits within the next 45 days.

U.S. Mint Makes Drastic Cuts to Its Collector Gold and Platinum Coin Offerings

This lack of available gold has been a real pain, and it seems like it's about to get worse. I've been finding some here and there on eBay and Bullion Direct's Nucleo Exchange, but it's getting tougher. When the inflationary effects of all of this currency debasement hits home, PMs should skyrocket.

The Free Lunch Approach to Finance

Any credit card bailout is pure BS. It's hard to think of a more transparent shifting of risk and losses from credit card companies to the taxpayer than that. Having a lot of debt that can't be collected is a cost of doing business. Claiming that bailing out those idiots is good for the country is a bald-faced lie -- it's just an attempt by the credit card companies to get on the free lunch train.

Those of us in the middle -- who make enough money to pay their bills, but who aren't rich -- are being screwed six ways to Sunday. Basically, we lose in the market (the real world), decreasing our assets, and then we are forced to give a higher share of those assets in taxes to bail out the Wall Street elites, on the one hand, and the irresponsible consumer, on the other.

Many readers of this article are probably in similar situations, so they may find this example unremarkable, but my wife and I worked our tails off to pay off all of our consumer debt during our first few years after getting out of school. We didn't take vacations, and I sold assets and put huge chunks of my money toward it (it was left over from college and law school). Our goal was to be financially secure before having children and to establish college funds, a nice start on retirement planning, and all the other stuff that constitutes the "right thing" to do.

Now, with our first child on the way, our equity holdings have been hammered by between 40-50%, our house has decreased in value by about 25%, and all of my taxes are going up and have done so over the past year. The little credit card debt that we have certainly isn't going to be written off, because I am a "rich" attorney who makes a decent 6-figure salary in an expensive city, but I get to take it in the shorts in the market, in the lost value of my house, in interest charges on my credit cards, in increased rates on loans due to bank hoarding, in increased cap gains taxes if I ever actually sell any of these investments for a profit, in higher fees and charges from banks in order to finance their irresponsibility (and that of many of their loan customers), and in increased taxes, borne by my children and I, for the bailout so that Goldman Sachs partners can use bailout funds for $3m bonuses.

Further, if I sell any stocks in the future at a profit, I'll pay more taxes on them still.

I also get to hear about how I am "rich" and how it has come time for me to pay the piper. Well sorry, but I paid my own way through public schools, earning scholarships and taking out loans.

I'm tired of getting screwed over. It's enough to want to max out the $150,000 or so that I have in available credit on gold and in cash advances, to rathole those assets, and then to piss and moan about the unbearable credit card debt until it is borne at others' expense. I won't do that, but many others have done so -- although they bought Fubu jackets, motorcycles, and gold wheels, not gold -- and many, many, MANY others will do so once the word of any kind of credit card amnesty gets out.

SEC Will Ban Short Selling: America's Leaders Break Down

The limits on shorting are just limited to the financial sector -- those who are sufficiently well-connected with the SEC, the Fed, and Paulson. With this, coupled with the plan for the U.S. taxpayer being forced to buy all of their buddies' bad debt, they really are are protecting their friends at our expense. If you don't like this, you better get the word out fast.