dr.doolittle

Teck Gives a Lesson in Timely Tactics

still listening. the incredible rise and collapse of commodity prices cannot be explained simply by supply and demand. It says yet another speculative bubble has burst. "crisis of confidence" is nothing more than a euphemism for "there's no money." demand is drying up because of what the old time bankers called "forced savings." in other words, since people don't save money themselves, governments through Social Security and the like, save for them. Of course this must come through taxing the productive. So who does have money and spends it? Seniors. And what do they buy? Bonds, if anything as an asset class, although more than likely healthcare and food. What stocks have survived this incredible collapse? Wal-mart, Mcdonalds, Medco. Who's been killed? Reits and the entire manufacturing industry save a few defense contractors. I don't see how this helps in creating demand for speciality or "semi-precious" metals. Precious coins interest me because their value can never go to zero. Paper based assets? Only truly need based ones seems plausible as individual stocks for the time being. Insosfar as growth is concerned, big pharma and philip morris and for some reason telecom--slow and steady wins the race I guess. some foreign stocks seem interesting, especially ones closely related the US econcomy--perhaps in that sense Teck is a good buy. Right now Brazil, South Korea and Hong Kong have been included as part of "America's new economic order" as they are the "low cost leaders" in all the right ways--great products at a dirt cheap price sold direct to cash strapped American consumers. I'm still not hunkering down for the Apocolypse, but it seems to me the past two months have been more significant than say a "Titanic" moment. The US government has categorized it more along the lines of a "Pearl Harbor" type incident, a time when industrial production was absolutely huge but base metal prices were quite low. I think this makes throwing caution to wind in the metal space very risky indeed.