"yeah but what do dropping oil and rising dollars mean...."

exchange rates are changing.

dc1000

Oil is done going down, any strength in the dollar will be short lived...

CR,

I'm surprised you're not all over this one:

One Third of New Owners Owe More Than House Is Worth

dc1000

Put a fork in the downtrend...

and curiouser, you expect that world GDP trend line to continue shooting upwards to infinity? good luck!

Production is falling faster than anyone estimated... Look at XOM, CVX production. Not a good thing unless you have a pump in your backyard but its the truth.

dc100,

According to the CIA figures here

List of countries by GDP (nominal) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

China and India's contribution to the World GDP in 2007 was less than 4%, whereas the US alone contributed 26%.

In that chart on BP, the GDP curve still has a long way to go if China and India continue to expand towards their full potential. Good luck finding enough oil to match that expansion.

Interesting Times What is the etf?

long term they're dependent upon relative economic strength. Interest rates can tend to reflect that, though.
+1

Sorry, in my previous post, China and India's contribution to the World GDP should have been "less than 10%."

Well with UBS losses and Goldman down grade,,banks should get smacked, with the rising dollar, the dollar seems to be moderating the effect..?

So tell me dollar bulls...can you think of any country with more national debt, more of citizens with more outstanding debt + rising unemployment + falling wages, and a financial system on the brink of complete failure...who will out print Paulson?

Give me a fucking break!

I'm sure these very thoughts seemed absurd to the Germans too long ago....until it came to pass.

Peak Oil will always be unprovable without accurate supply information.

The famous bumper sticker reads "Please God just give me one more Boom...I won't blow all my money this time"

From dedicated reading of the postings on this site it is obvious that the world is coming to an end.

Mayan calender ends on December 21st, 2012 A.D we still have a couple years.

The problem with credit tightening now is that, with contraction going on, the appropriate economic response would be to loosen credit, spurring consumption. Now the exact opposite is happening and that is a not a good spiral to be in...lowered credit leading to lower spending leading to job contraction leading to lower spending....Of course the big losers here are the auto companies. I still think at least one of them is in BK before this is over. And Cerebus isn't going to turn around Chrysler period.

The second part about this is that the banks just might teach people that they don't really need all these things they've been buying if this continues for a while. That's also bad for the banks, and for spending. Some of your political bents may say that is good, but if I asked you if you'd sacrifice your own or your family's job or business to achieve this on a macro scale, I bet you wouldn't. I wouldn't.

On the economic front the US is still the biggest GDP contributor in the world, bar none. The EU comes close, but after that it drops to the floor. Whatever happens here happens everywhere for as long as we're alive. China and India (which is now slowing and contracting also and has massive internal issues) aren't going to even come close for many years. The ballpark where the game is played is here and in the EU for the foreseable future. Not that those two aren't important, but don't look for the scortching growth to continue.

The predictions on this blog have almost always been early. Early to call the bust, the recession...and now it appears early to call the bottoming.

Bunch of premature prognosticators!

Let me finish the sentence:

"more than Leveraged Speculation" creating an upward pricing aberation on a curve that is tested by increasing demand.

Bunch of premature prognosticators!

Well, I think there is a millenial contingency here to be sure. You have to just take those with a grain of salt. And there are the bulls like Sebastian and Ojoe. You have to do the same there. Reality is seldom as dire or seldom as sweet. You also have to let the data tell the story, not put on your political glasses and let them filter the data for you. That's the cause of these posts here. They have an agenda, and if the data doesn't fit, well...the data's bad and the government is fudging it! That way you get to be right. They're the same sort that will tell you there are no contradictions in the bible, and go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain them away.

But let's be clear here. There are huge problems. Earnings are going to suck, oil rolling back is NOT a good thing at all (because it means the economy is in recession) and we have massive asset deflation on a scale never seen before. So far, we're walking the line, and I think we'll continue to do that. But there is more pain to come. Not depression pain, just drawn-out pain. I think there will be around 1.2T of write-offs, that housing will drop another 10%, and that unemployment will keep rising until it hits around 6.7%. One automaker is BK, another IB is merged, a couple of more large banks will fail and a slew of little ones. That's not a very bullish position. I do think the dollar's only position is up, given the EU's state though.

What about China's financed US asset reflation via US govt. The ultimate import from China, the much despised socialism.

I can't help but think of the couple out there trying to send their son or daughter to a respectable tier 2 college. It's costing 30 grand a year. They don't have any money ("hey, we HAD to get a new flat screen"), and they can't HELOC the house. Student loans are drying up, and those put a huge burden on the new grad. It's a twisted cycle. Go into massive debt or work minimum wage.

Btw, I also had to listen to ridicule from the gold bugs (gold is a store of value that never goes down!) back in the spring when i said it was over. Hate to say this but that store is now worth a whole lot less and headed lower. But hey, it's shiny so who cares?

Anyone who thinks that China is going to equal or surpass the US or EU GDP in the next 10 to 15 years (if at all) doesn't understand the situation at all. Same goes for India. Manufacturing decisions were made on the assumption of cheap transportation costs. Those are gone, and probably forever. Or at least the perception that transportation will be cheap forever is gone and planning will have to account for that. So I'm thinking that China's ability to be the world's manufacturing will be diminished as wage costs there have no where to go but up, and transportation costs eat the old cost differential. So I'm not seeing it.

It is the rate of growth not the overall size that is attractive to investors in placing their bets. Developing countries are characterized with rapid growth rate, whereas, mature economies often show moderate to slow rate of growth. China represents the most stable developing country of the third world and attracts lots of FDI (foreign direct investments). In a way we are piggy backing China by way of cheap recylcled dollars. The problem is our financial sectors mis-allocate these cheap funds disproportionately into the housing and mortgage sectors.

I believe money is fake and the only true money is clamshells and rutabagas.