kiers

Dubai: The Economically Impossible Dream Is Over

The underpinning of the Dobai economy is SOUTH ASIA. They provide the great VOLUME, the MIDDLE CLASS-LOWER MIDDLE CLASS. They are the (mildly) exploited who pay the rents, occupy the apartments, take out the personal bank loans deducted from salaries, shop at the malls, work in skilled jobs providing still higher level goods to the resident arabs etc etc etc. [Lately There are also many (but not as many as S Asians) expats in this category as developed world's economy has taken a beating so they have flocked to Dobai].

Then there are the laborers (also mostly from S Asia). Arabs are very cruel to them but they need jobs. They do the work.

What happens when S ASIAN economy starts to take off. (Take a look at FDI into S Asia from UNCTAD website). You will get the picture. Doobai is depopulated. People vote with their feet. eVen though s asia is not as developed as doobai, there are still enough better compensation for them to make the switch.

Add on global economic crisis to this situation and there you have it: the doobai crunch. THIS is what you should EXPLAIN TO YOUR FATHER.

YOU COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT. IF your father is as smart as you say, he would have ignored your grouphtink economics you nincompoop.

Our Current Economic Illusions

you should realize Gormint spending on welfare, subsidies, hand-outs is NOT in the definition of GDP. Neither is MOST of the activities of Goldman Sux, such as buying low and selling high.


On Dec 04 09:24 AM mineralt wrote:

> Here's a definition that will help you understand why GDP is going
> up.
>
> "Gross Domestic Product. The total market value of all final goods
> and services produced in a country in a given year, equal to total
> consumer, investment and government spending, plus the value of exports,
> minus the value of imports."
>
> The gov't is making GDP go up by their own spending.
>
> Productivity per worker is going up because the same amount of work
> has to be done, just with less people.

Our Current Economic Illusions

in a nutshell our GDP numbers ARE FAKE. the gormint has NEVER had more incentive to fake it than the present situation. Author is bang on target. there is no new whizz bang invention that could account for it. Our bankers, China and India and Sauds are getting impatient. We are the Enron Economy. I wish the author would teach us how to get our money safely into a haven!!

More Fakery: The US WANTS China to keep the Yuan LOW. that's right. cause that way Our Co's can bring cheap imported sh*t here and stuff it to us at retail madison avenue prices with token discounts. And then the Gormint gets what it wants: China lending still more to US gormint whilst the media blames profligate joe the consumer. that's the "engine" of growth. No way does US want China to revalue Yuan! Not for next 3 years. NNON STOP LIES come out of MSM. China fakes GDP as well.

What Dubai's Financial Crisis Means for Emerging Markets

PS. another grounds eye view:

www.timeoutdubai.com/k...

You're late on credit card payments? a red corner notice is put out at all border crossings and airport to prevent you from leaving....this is like that cartoon strip. Now we will see the emir give "debt amnesty" to the working serfs on "Eid" holidays which will be plastered in all its munificent glory on newspapers! what IRONY.

Business reporting in the emirate is a joke. There is NO tax system to speak of. I don't see why Emirates airline is NOT tapped into to make DubaiWorld's obligations whole?

What Dubai's Financial Crisis Means for Emerging Markets

You know, the Daily Telegraph ran an article a while back called "The Dark Side of Dubai" in which the lead in to the story was how anyone in the emirate who defaults on their debts is put in PRISON (resident expats included)! The near shariah compliant hybrid "legal system" does not recognize debt distress....and YET HERE WE ARE. is sheikh Maktoum going to prison? any penalties at all? all those skyscrapers built from slave labor denied their wages...? anything? nope. Hooray for Barclays, Citigroup

How Warren Buffett Is Smarter than the G20

agree ABSOLUTELY. BTW where do u live with Milk at 8.50/gallon? I thought only NYC was that bad. Milk typifies the screwing of the public. Work it out! Gasoline at (tops) $4/gallon and Milk at $8/gallon. Hmmm

"Gasoline" requires (believe me on this) teams of seismologists, electrical engineers to do digital signal processing of the echo signal. geologists to interpret the results, test rigs and wells to confirm data in statistically meaningful way. Followed by production of oil. Its bulk transport to a refinery. At the refinery (which u can NEVER really TURN OFF), the oil is filtered from the accompanying crud, heated, volatile pollutants removed. Additives are put into the car fuel. it is transported to a retail networks underground tank which must comply with (weak) EPA standards. then pumped into your tank using standardized callibrated dispensing nozzles. And u pay $4/gallon.

MILK is a crime. Bloated Americans can't afford their own labor anymore. Here in NYC buses run at a crawling pace because people have to QUEUE UP inside the entrance at the front of the bus to pay fare.(!) WHAT A JOKE. In a 15Trillion economy we can't hire a "ticket collector" for each bus, to roam inside and collect fare whilst seating people quickly as they board. I swear, once over a distance of 2 miles, I walked at even pace parallel to a bus route, and kept pace with the same bus. WHAT A JOKE.


On Nov 08 10:18 AM rennert wrote:

> 88% of Americans are working. Everyone on my street goes to work
> every day. What is this article supposed to show?? That we have a
> reason to keep interest rates on Zero and debase our currency to
> keep Wallstreets coffer filled. Don't drink the KoolAid. Unemployment
> and deflation taks and scares are the new KoolAid. They are trying
> to distract us from the real thing. That they are feeding Banks and
> Wallstreet cheap money hand over fist while many Americans do not
> get enough return on their savings to feed their family's. And now
> they are trying to justify it with these scare stories . Milk at
> $8.50 a gallon and rising. 88% of people are working. Vote for the
> man that has the back bone to defend our money and raises rates by
> at least 1-2%. Look to vote for the person that defends our notional
> security from Vultures.

How Warren Buffett Is Smarter than the G20

NO lalsai, ! it is actually very interesting ! warren buffet's bet
on railroad is the following logic:

The future world will be MultiPolar.
these Poles include China, US, and Europe common market.
Commodities, not currencies will be king.

THE BNSF railroad LINKS cheaply, CHINA with EUROPE in a multimodal transport link. NEAT.

On Nov 08 08:36 AM lalsai wrote:

> I agree that emerging markets will do better; but how does investing
> in BNSF co-relate to investing in emerging market railroads etc.
> BRK will benefit from all the different investments --- but BNSF
> is only good if the US recovers ---- which may be a long time coming.
> The only way the US improves fast is: 1) Constrictional control in
> Government spending (excluding Social Security, Medicare, Defense)
> 2) 15% & 25% Flat Income Tax 3) No more expansion of Government
> Programs.
> But they just passed the TRILLION Dollar Health Care Reform; fat
> chance this Government Administration (which is supported by Buffett)
> is in any deficit reduction, controlled spending mode.

The Complexities of 'Dark Pools' and Competition

article is long winded. please speak more plainly, unless you have to meet a minimum word count.

Growth in Money supply has overwhelmed exchange trading given adverse selection. The start of the era of the American Carry Trade will only help dark pools.

But i am skeptical that dark pools only cater to "uninformed" traders! that too BLOCK traders or algorithmic traders!

periodic crossing? what a fluff argument? what is the "period"? the finer it is the more irrelevant the "uninformed" argument becomes.

dark pools only launder money, support insider trading, and ponzi schemes. brokerages can now MAKE UP prices, hide the counterparty, even trade with "themselves"(!) and it is all legal. Madoff must be creaming in his pants. And to think we dictate terms to Swiss Bank Privacy Laws.

But I'm sure those ivy tower think tank types will come up with silky economic arguments to pocket advertising & promotion budget of the dark pools.

The Arithmetic of Gold: Why Its Price Has No Ceiling

I pity the foo who buys Au at $1K per oz. OUCH. pity the foo. one born evry minute

Here's Why Asia Must Eventually Ditch the Dollar

Paul Krugman laid out some "essential" characteristics of a global reserve ccy:

1) Trade takes it everywhere. (China fits the bill, it's imports or exports touch many many nations around the world; it is hammering out FTAs left and right)

2) it is perceived to be of hard value. (China fits the bill. the Yuan is not seen as weak)

3) it is a central bankers ccy (not yet, they have not liberalized exchange controls)

4) commodities are priced in this ccy (hmmm...China is the biggest consumer/producer of commodities ore, steel, copper, zinc, exporter of rare earths, they practically own australia...close call on this one but doable.)

5) It is a corporate reporting currency. (China does not have enough high level foreign corporate presence where 10Qs or such are printed in Yuan.. so NO on this count)

Final Marks: (2.0 + 0.5 + 0.5)/5.0 = 60%....

I DON'T THINK THE EURO comes anywhere this close on the real hard work of being a reserve ccy. (there is always the sense that some countries are falling out of line from the ERM mechanism...it could also be the main stream media hyping it ...but generally does not inspire confidence. Spain is currently bleeding euro for eg. Italy...less said better; geopolitically euro is more socialist and competing with US whereeas Yuan owns the US congress, politicians have already ceded Taiwan no questions etc.)

Soon we will all want Yuan.

Here's Why Asia Must Eventually Ditch the Dollar

while China is trying to hammer out FTAs with rest of asean it is HAMMERING India militarily and throwing its weight around on India. It has strung a RING around the Indian ocean for access to its navy at various ports from Burma to Bangladesh to Madagascar to Pakistan to Sri Lanka. Indians have LOST that battle. China is claiming an ENTIRE STATE from India: Arunachal Pradesh. Corrupt Indian pols too busy squabbling/bribing each other to have done anything in time. LOL. So the point mentioned in about India NOT wanting the Yuan as a trade CCY is MOOT. With India, there is NO resistance. China just has to tell: take it or leave it.

Here's Why Asia Must Eventually Ditch the Dollar

U are missing the big picture mad hedge fund trader! ON THE MARGINS, china will stop buying US treasuries. US Demand for chinese goods is NEVER NEVER (get it, NEVER) coming back to the go-go days. (This has implications for future lustful US war appetites, and deficit spending). It means it continues to hold what it has (no choice there) BUT china will NOT NOT (get it, NOT) be cycling new earnings into treasuries like the go-go days. It has embarked on fiscal deficit of its own, it is being spurred to spend on its own social "safety nets" to reduce savings.


On Oct 26 02:43 PM Mad Hedge Fund Trader wrote:

> bdc Will people pleeease stop incessantly talking about the possibility
> of China dropping the dollar as a reserve currency? What else are
> they going to use? Monopoly money? Taiwanese dollars? Collectable
> postage stamps? At nearly $2 trillion, the Middle Kingdom’s reserves
> are so enormous that no other currency in the world could accommodate
> the switch, and no other security offers the necessary depth and
> liquidity but Treasury bills. Chinese attempts to buy anything in
> size causes its price to immediately skyrocket, such as we saw in
> the relatively Lilliputian commodity markets last year. And really,
> how like is it that China embarks on policies that quickly halve
> the earnings of the country’s exporters, as well as its 30 year
> hoard of accumulated savings? The demise of the dollar has been predicted
> more often than the ditching of Microsoft’s Windows as the global
> PC operating system, and is just as likely. Hate the greenback as
> much as you like, but there just isn’t any other alternative. I have
> been hearing these arguments ever since the US went off the gold
> standard in 1973. First there was a perennial Arab threat to price
> crude in a basket of currencies. Gee, they never seem to complain
> when the buck is going up. Then there was the speculated emergence
> of the “Yen Block”, in the eighties, back when Japan was dominating
> international trade and the yen was bumping up against ¥80 to the
> dollar. Remember the book “Japan as Number One? Ha! Double Ha! Then
> we got all that European whining after the launch of the euro when
> the weak dollar was everyone’s one way trade. Let’s face it, Europeans
> hate using someone else’s currency as the primary reserve instrument.
> Before the dollar, sterling was in widespread use and was equally
> despised. So rather than waste time discussing this issue anymore,
> let’s talk about something more important, like which of those two
> flies over there will jump off the wall first.

Top Foreign Holders of U.S. Treasuries

little surprised by UK of all places. what is their need to hold Treasuries? also surprised by caribbean banking centers & Luxembourg!! must represent illicit US money held abroad in Carib/Luxembourg. heh heh.

Three Asset Classes that Can Actually Outpace Coming Inflationary Price Increases

it is already happening: IMF/World BAnk "special drawing rights" as in central bankers' dollars are not really in dollars anymore. but you and i get stuck wtih the billl


On Oct 19 03:45 PM Swashbuckler wrote:

> "No, there is a fourth phase to this economic storm: foreign creditors
> begin to abandon U.S. Treasuries,....". About a year ago I figured
> that China would be committing economic suicide by not buying our
> debt. I have since revised my thinking with a few minor modifications,
> aggregating approximately 180 degrees. I believe now that there is
> NO WAY THEY WON'T pull the plug. IMO, all that remains is for them
> to fine tune their strategy. When they bail, we will be in a world
> of sh#t and they know it. And when we collapse economically, we collapse
> socially. I'm talking government exchange controls, seizure of personal
> property(gold), the works. Our economic demise is in the Chinese
> long term interest of being the world's soul superpower. They will
> sacrifice some short term comfort to reach this long term goal. IMO.

The Saudis' Odd Plan

....get paid....or else? they will send teh wahabi warriors over?????