Praise the loans and pass the ammunition to the Unabankers, so they watch over it for us.

All you have to do is promise to give me that Old Tyme Recovery...

Tim waiting for 2012 wrote:

Instead we will be getting one of those new game-ending Japanese style recessions

Oh, no, we won't be that lucky.

TJ and The Bear wrote:

Oh, no, we won't be that lucky.

Would you please stop that?

MLM wrote:

TJ and The Bear wrote:
Oh, no, we won't be that lucky.
Would you please stop that?

Too late to stop that. We're the coyote but this is not a cartoon.

Everywhere and me (and TJ) out of

Hey, I don't want what's coming, but I'm not going to let anyone soft-pedal it just to feel better. This is serious shit, and mp's the only one I know of that's anywhere near prepared for what's ahead.

Sure, I'm positioned for the storm PM-wise, but were conditions better I could make far more money the usual way -- working. I'm not into gold to make money so much as preserve what little I have.

Otherwise... gotta make the most of life regardless, so I'll never lose my sense of humor (dark or not).

TJ and The Bear wrote:

This is serious shit, and mp's the only one I know of that's anywhere near prepared for what's ahead.

Can I put you down for a fractional interest in the new Dawg, Dryfly and Energyecon Defense Squadron?

F-35 is far behind schedule and over budget, reports show | Fort Worth | Star-Telegram.com

"Reports prepared by the Defense Contract Management Agency for Defense Department officials show that Lockheed and other contractors are months late on deliveries of test airplanes and components for future production aircraft.

The program is even farther behind on testing, and the reports say Lockheed could exhaust its development budget within a year.

...Lockheed has had significant difficulty assembling the wing and major components.

Suppliers are late delivering finished parts and components not only because of manufacturing problems but also because of repeated design and engineering changes."

Sounds like they sold the airplane based on a sketch figuring they could actually design the aircraft later. The corruption and incompetence in the US defense industry is as significant a problem as the cost of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

MLM wrote:

He's out in the country somewhere, surrounded by lots of concrete and machine tools, with his own Coke machine.

I wonder if his stores include a year's supply of soda & syrup. That would be mondo-prepared.

TJ and The Bear wrote:

I wonder if his stores include a year's supply of soda & syrup.

My guess is two years supply of syrup and his own carbonation machine. No telling how long that will last if Conjure develops a taste for it though.

He'll probably want to join the Defense Squadron. I just want a lift to somewhere quiet where they aren't contemplating any Soylent Green activity.

MLM wrote:

He'll probably want to join the Defense Squadron.

Yeah great, Conjure hopped up on caffeinated sugar syrup running around the hangar with all those rolling airframe missiles loaded and hot. We'll probably find him behind the depleted uranium rounds passed out from taking hits off the nitrous oxide cooling bottles.

Hoopajoops LTD wrote:

Let me get your loan paperwork ready...

LOL!!!

Asia Stocks Drop, Commodities Fall as Bernanke Sees Challenges - Bloomberg.com

Bernanke concerned, dollar rallies? That makes no sense, sounds like more QE and Stimpack II.

"..........with his own Coke machine."

....Damn.....He's got a coke machine?? Does it run on solar panels?

Rob Dawg wrote:

We'll probably find him behind the depleted uranium rounds passed out from taking hits off the nitrous oxide cooling bottles.

At least you wouldn't have to worry about rodents in the hangar.

dawg rogers, you can't find the ignore button? Whadduz one expect. 2-3 days out, I'll take the 18 pts and you keep hittin' that button. I don't ask a soul to trade my positions. The mirror confirms my bets, and the payoff shows up in the ole' commodity acct. If you're carping for cheese, ask Eric to share what he has comin'. You know where and when, 5:30 pm. Bring your lead shit to show off your piece's. In that chicano town, you show it and you're gonna be like that guy in the Watts Riots. Bring 'em; no sense crowding the world any more. As I close out my nite, it's 1136.

Again, try to distinguish between your need to belch unendingly and the ignore button. You want out? Get out.

Black Star Ranch wrote:

I don't think I've ever heard a "louder" trader

It's a lot quieter after the ignore button. And just when I'd cleared out my list to see what I might be missing.

Black Star Ranch wrote:

......Hmmmm..........I don't think I've ever heard a "louder" trader.....

Damn. Now I'm going to have to peek....
.
.
.
.
OMG, it's worse than I thought and not just his lies about his trade outcomes. Now he's race baiting and calling out people personally. Ignore ain't good enough IMO.

Financialization and the World-System
'The Centrality of Finance' (2007)
-'...systemic risk with attention to the future of the dollar.'
-'...most analysts see a dangerous high stakes game being played.'
-'If the dollar loses its safe haven function and its status as a reserve currency to any significant degree, both unthinkable even a short while ago, the dollar would decline precipitously...this cannot be ruled out. The only response would be to raise interest rates.'
-William K. Tabb, Dept. of Economics, City Univ. of New York
http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol13/Tabb-vol13n1.pdf
But if the economic policy is to continue QE and massive spending and not raise interest rates, that policy response would be a decision to let the dollar devalue precipitously...

RGE - Let's Look at China's Liabilities Again

"the Chinese government is also good at hiding its various liabilities (in the accounting sense) through various entities and strategies. Let's ignore human costs like reduced life expectancy from the environment, lack of social services and work safety for the moment and only focus on financial liabilities. Among the OECD countries, we see that public debt escalated tremendously due to stimulus programs and financial bailouts. However, it would be mistaken to argue that China accomplished 9% growth without getting into massive debt. In fact, it got into much more de facto public debt as a share of GDP than the US or Europe did."

Gotta look at both sides of the balance sheet. And I expect those human costs Shih glosses over are going to prove to be large.

El Lurko,
This credit bubble was allowed to go on too long for 'good ideas' now...now it's a planted bomb that has to blow up...from the 'weapons of financial destruction'...

I just read the Fall of Mexico stuff TJ linked 2 threads ago and it scared the hell out of me. I'm trying to picture what the continent is going to look like with a narco-millitary-ruled Mexico and a bankrupt US with sky high unemployment and a fraying social fabric. The jokes about being Tijuana-adjacent probably won't be as funny then.

Oxtail,
Most people in Third World countries live simple lives and have families and get by somehow...they basically ignore the militaries who are after the crooks...not the peasant families...but the U.S. will be in a state of shock and middle-class folks are not used to living like rural or urban peasants...the anger of losing a lot of savings, pensions and 401K's in dollars will be tough for many people...

Dawg, "Now he's race baiting and calling out people personally"
When one can't distinguish between fact (Oxnard is 90% Mexican and hispanic) and your desire to project fact (aka cognitively dissonant), then the next best thing is to keep posting unactionable opinion, as the wasted beneficiary of the academe running their own 2nd rate sniping comedy show, then it's time for folks who are doing the deals to skip the posts. I've never hit the ignore button 'cause I've thought it wiser to know the reality than to be in LaPuta. PutaDawg, a nice new moniker. I'm outta here for the nite with enuf vig to cover the commisions at now 1135.

MLM... Loud? If you listened when I joined the posters in 05 to buy in at 500 and then 600 and all the way up, you'd be saying a different word. If you listened to me rip a CRE strip mall holder to pieces in '05 or '0t6 over his arrogance that he was set, and tell A0 in '06 that his house in that college town and all the residential RE would be an albatross around the necks of their holders, stating the prices would drop 50%, again you'd be a bit more hesitant to say, "loud", and when I called the nearly exact top of the DJIA and the bottom, well beforehand, and the list goes on and on, with the last large win the trading position (not the FU world, I'm armored in PM's and lots of commitments of junk USD commitments for commodities well into the mid future; that's not the game; nor is it when I told BS that SRS was way too dangerous to be long in, or called 12000 in the DJIA which I would not trade as the probabilities weren't high enough), but the recent trading in at 990-995 and out at 1085 move; that was really free money. And now, I'd like a few more points on the downside before the rally resumes. Here's how I see it... it's never easy to take the positions I do; most think they're nuts, and they lose; when it's so obvious, it's a set up. I wish gold was going straight up to the Great Doubling, which I called after gold hit what I described for a year as The Big Round Number in the Sky, 1000. It ain't. I called 1200 after that. It's going there. But there's gonna be a clean up on aisle 5; the newbies are going to get smashed. I want in on that feast. Even though Sinclair warns about going short now, today, and I respect that guy, this is way too scrumptious, with a tight stop on the upside, not to stand with an open sack to catch the renderings of those ignorant weak-handed long pigs. Do appreciate that I despise the gold banks and their shorts. But when it's time to bleed the pigs, one's gotta stand in line. 1118 is the target.

Secrecy just brings out the snoop in me

He let drop a general area once - I pinpointed him within a 500 mi radius.

merchants of fear wrote:

where either policy direction now can lead to systemic collapse

Exactly, and the "extend & pretend" only serves to aggravate the circumstances of eventual denouement.

Slumdog,
Where are you going to hide your gold when social/economic conditions deteriorate? Not in Oxnard. Right? Jes' wondering? Probably burying the stuff is best. You just have to remember where.

Gaudia Ray, at Curevents.com, now defunct. There are still people who occasionally email me thanking me profusely for kicking their butts into gold at 500. I was carefully watching pandemic flu at the time. Ever since Tommy Thompson said it was the greatest threat to the USA, it being then what he thought would be H5N1, I started very actively posting in 2004 and 05. Niman saw the answer, SNP recombinations. I literally bought into that belief, and have been armed to the teeth in response to what the Ukraine is experiencing now as a mild form of H1N1 recombination. I say mild because the mortality rate is very low, even though pandemic flu is now in H1N1 showing itself to be hemorrhagic, just like 1918.

Slumdog,
I know you talked about the evolution of flu viruses...recombination...and had some interested followers for the info...scared some people...some of this flu pandemic stuff is disinfo because I checked some sources who promote The End of the World from swine flu and the links went back to UFOs...

rosethorn wrote:

F-35 is far behind schedule and over budget, reports show | Fort Worth | Star-Telegram.com

Questions over F-35's stealth capability - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
I'm not sure if the Russians are making stuff up, or if this is for real.

I believe it is time for Samuel Smith to make an appearance, stage right....welcome, Taddy Porter.

REBear wrote:

I'm not sure if the Russians are making stuff up, or if this is for real.

I don't think the Russians were unduly frightened of the Australians. I suspect, (were I Australian), I'd support a prop based aircraft for local use and avoid getting caught up in global air warfare.

Totally agree, but the whole system is now designed to keep them in oblivion. Hence, we end up with idiotic policy like the homebuyer credit, which is essentially not much different than the scratch and win lotteries, since most of these people are being set up to fund the banksters. And the thing is, they wont ever figure it out. It makes me want to cry, but Im going to be manly and drunken tonight, not a sissy. Bwahahahaha...

GDD9000, there's an old saying in politics: "never waste a good crisis". I suppose if you have some financial patriot act you want passed you'll need a financial crisis. If you don't have one, just make one.

For a while I'd hoped that O's plan was to hide Volcker away to write such a "clean up" bill since it will take a crisis to force the issue of cleaning up the country's finances and banking system. Given the complexity of the subject, you almost have to have what amounts to a prepackaged national bankruptcy ready and printed ahead of time. The real question is who's working on one now?

GDD9000,
'we let them lead us to oblivion'
Yeah what else to do?

MoF, as to pandemic flu, it doesn't matter what is the initial cause. It matters how it transmits. The Ukraine is not a joke. Mexico was not a joke. It took 3 months to go from tiny in Mexico to being in pockets in the USA, and 6 months in total to be globally pandemic. However and whoever sets the spark, it burns through the human population on the trade and air routes. There's a great map showing the 1918 flu spreading in the USA over time, or there used to be. It shows the truth of what will be the behavior of pandemic flu. And as a clarifying fact, in the Ukraine, that doc's claim in the translated article, that 1 in 3 have it is BS. I worked it out with a doc at curevents, and the max at one time is 20% of the population, not 33%.

And my donation to this group is the advice of "Watch at the bleeding edge for hemorrhagic deaths. Watch the mortality rate of that sub-population of those in the geographic vicinity of those deaths, including the mortality in health care professionals. If it jumps significantly, that is the tell. And the second donation is that Tamiflu imo probably won't be effective in enough cases to make it a high probability viral block. Think Relenza, and think nothing else.

Well aware of that statement, but this one appears to be so, not just wasted, but designed to set up a much bigger crisis in the future. What bothered me in the last administration, amongst many things, but in particular, was the chilidishness. The failure for anyone to take responsibility, admit wrongdoing, issue a mea culpa. It just rarely if ever happened, and now....it's worse. We have our dear beloved leader apologizing for the previous administration, while his minions go forward making the same stupid mistakes, except they are much more costly when you should have learned the lesson and ignored it. OF course, cost is what you make of it...and who have they pawned this off on? Well, the underclass...ive seen how most people live who are unscathed. To them, it's a trifle. But to the poor, the uneducated, the lower skilled, the blue collar, the young....we are debilitating masses beyond belief. When I pulled the employment to population ratio data by age and race today, and then the employment by education, it was shocking. We are going to create an even more stratified society...taking one giant leap for mankind, that much closer to revolution. How much SOMA can we possibly have with which to appease the masses???

GD9000, we'll see the next tab being prescribed on Monday? when Obama talks about his jobs creation plan. I'm actually giddy about it because it may mean a huge boost to biz I'm in. I would love the windfall. So many opportunities; so little time.

But think about this, "What if the drop in the USD made the country competitive to all, including the Chinese as the cost of fuel goes way up and the cost of labor goes way down?" China will be closer toparity due to the cost of transportation when the labor/energy ratio becomes more extreme.

Further, even though for the moment, as a populist, the concentration of wealth is tragic, one thing always occurs... the wealth of the vast majority of the plutocrats gets demolished over time. Those holding USD's and Treasuries, Muni's and Bonds are rapidly losing their purchasing power. It goes to money heaven. When the top RE drops, finally, and CRE drops, the destruction of wealth in the hands in which it's concentrated will be real. Only a small percentage of the wealthy will survive this unscathed, and time, as in generational time, will again with rare exception, dissipate that wealth as well.

"We're all maroons now."

Slumdog
What about the bible's 10th plague, what about that flu made it kill only first born sons? From a light search of the internet, your online persona has been calling for a biblical pandemic of disease since 2005 but I see no corrections for when the Avian flu didn't pan out in initiating a new intifada in Palestine that draws the Muslim world into a global war. Nor did your prediction of DOW 6000s imminently within weeks take place around mid November 2008. The mentions of inflation were just lagging reactions to the price of oil.
I'm willing to take your opinions on their own merits, but strongly appealing to the authority of your historical online presence as primary justification, in a manner that is so selective it might be called deceitful, is not conducive to any conversational progress.
Perhaps it would help if you could further deconstruct the reasoning behind your opinions of timing. If you can do that, I don't think any posters here would hold any past differences against you forever.
You're a flu-bug, you might even be more comfortable sticking just to that instead of having confusing conflations involving gold
Those are just some suggestions, cheers

Swine flu started in Mexico City at Easter week I believe...the busiest time of the year with thousands flying out every day...there was no swine flu found in the hog farms around Mexico City but EHP provided links about possible transmission from pork distributors...too many accidents of released viruses by pharma companies and missing samples from govt. labs...plus lab experimentation was done with preserved and dug up samples of the 1918 pandemic...still some sources can be unreliable sometimes...

Id like to believe you guys, that there will be some come uppance, but I dont see it. I see the system manipulated every step of the way to make sure these people are the most insulated. Can you say this is not so?

So what you are saying is that somehow, the rich, this time, will finally meet their undoing? Last I checked, it's just as ridiculous if not worse than it has ever been historically, in terms of the few taking most of the wealth of the globe from the masses. We might as well call our leaders Pharoahs and bury them in Ft Knox.

bring it! Late night rumble!

GDD,
Don't listen to the apologists and the spin for the winners...

Slumdog,
You might get the wrong person into gold and he'll lose his ass cause maybe he doesn't know all the trading tricks...

I, not unlike like 4 out of 5 dentists, can recommend gold to my patient who chew gum.

GDD9000
No, no fighting. I have nothing against Slumdog, and I think he/she could certainly contribute to the entire community's benefit. I just stepped in because I have seen significant and persistent conflicts. I did come out on the side of the 'regulars' because of familiarity and I felt Slumdog was a brash newcomer. You'll notice I didn't take any stand on where Gold or anything else is going when, where, or how -- because that's not the point. How those opinions are presented, argued, and otherwise discussed was my point. If I felt the differences were irreconcilable, I would have just kept on ignoring the whole thing until one party left or was banned

You're probably right, it's probably 90 years.

EHP, no worries. Im just teasing, totally. I think most folks know here that I get upset only existentially, and almost never at other posters. (although a certain Mr. S made my eyes roll into the dark zone.

Slumdog
eh, good job at keeping cool to my initial post which wasn't the easiest choice, hopefully when we're on at the same time next, the waters aren't so stormy

Mortgage delinquencies hit another record in 3Q - Yahoo! Finance

My day starts in 5 1/2 hours. So, I'm out for the nite. GDD9000, "How those opinions are presented, argued, and otherwise discussed was my point" is what I had hoped for too, though I have been brash about what's happening because this is the moment I've spent a lifetime prepping for. So, it's sort'a unfair as while everyone else was having fun, I was praying over huge portions of the body of work called Depression and Hyperinflation. I've wanted to know what it felt like, what panic really is, what triggers it, how it spreads, what happened as it expanded, and in doing so,what I should look for and think about as it did. This experience of the reality for all of us for me is more like a PacMan game. I've played this easily a thousand times before. So, I'm always trying to see what's next, yet again, but I have a pile of data in my mind, and charts describing this experience. When I entered into the Mish world, I spoke with him and said I expected to see hyperinflation and a rise in gold. He saw deflation and a rise in gold. This time, hyperinflation still portends and it's being expressed via the buying power of the USD declining back to 08 numbers.

There's one hitch here. This is musical chairs, and in Weimar, the biggest industrialists as a group got caught at the end by being extended when the money debt became real again. I continue to noodle who will get caught and why. I'm positive it won't be the PM holders. But I work for an avo- and vocation. So, I'm wary about my receivables as the collapse of currency would punish me vis a vis the receivables. And I'm wary about the economic system freezing in which case all my inventories would be at value adjustment risk. And, and, and. But in the end, there will be some one thing that will Black Swan all but the very few who continue to watch for "the" event. And, to tie this into a bow, one of those Swans can be severe pandemic flu. Hence, I watch that closely as well.

Mish it too confident of his own worldview IMO. I really appreciate CRs style. I'll stick with my manta; inflation in the things you need, deflation in the things you cannot afford.

Dawg, Im largely with you on the inf.defl front. The one good thing about this view, is that any time anyone brings up inflation generally, I just ignore it. The whole way we look at prices of various things is hopelessly outdated.

Rob Dawg wrote:

I'll stick with my manta
An Opel fan? Hoowoodanode?

H-D has a billion in debt at 15%? And the stock trades?

It's one thing to talk in generalities but when you look at specific companies; Harley, the HBs, REITs then you realize just how insane current stock indices truly are.

I think with the latest quarter earnings are something like 145. Might as well be negative. If earnings double in six months and stock prices halve then we'll merely be wildly overvalued.

broward wrote:

Mish is too confident of deflation for my taste

Mish has a number of beliefs which are simply assertions. However, I agree that cost of living type deflation will continue for another couple of years. US assets, valued in dollars, could move either direction. When valued in Euros, they will move down.

The one good thing about this view, is that any time anyone brings up inflation generally, I just ignore it. The whole way we look at prices of various things is hopelessly outdated.

Hear, hear!, here.

The one world open-source currency won't cure cancer. But it will enable better pricing of research and development, and free up resources for work producing actual value.

So if the Fed is supposed to be "independent" ( ) what happens when its primary dealers and all the TBTF have leveraged bets on the direction of interest rates so large that an unanticipated movement would ?

Bankers wouldn't have "political" interests aligned separately from non-bankers, would they?

rd, earlier:

The President of The United States of America bows to no one and the US Flag is dipped in deference to none. It isn't arrogance or hubris or bravado. It is homage to and acknowledgment of a revolutionary concept that has changed the face of the world several times over.

That this fundamental precept of our raison d'etre has been abandoned by the office holder of the moment is personally deeply painful.

Well said.

As a child, I was taught that [Jewish] custom was to bow [if one chose] only to God. Although I observe very few rituals and don't believe in a god with any material form, I observe the custom. It obviously doesn't come up much-- in a martial arts class, the 'sensei' understood 100%-- but I too was disgusted by Obama's gesture.

Good morning everyone. WHO has an update:

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_11_16/en/index.html

Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, Ukraine - update 2

17 November 2009 -- Preliminary tests reveal no significant changes in the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus based on investigations of samples taken from patients in Ukraine. Analyses are being performed by two WHO influenza collaborating centres as part of the global influenza surveillance network.

Preliminary genetic sequencing shows that the virus is similar to the virus used for production of the pandemic influenza vaccine, reconfirming the vaccine's efficacy at this time.

Additional questions about the pandemic virus circulating in Ukraine will be answered as more data is available.

WHO commends the government of Ukraine for its open sharing of samples to inform global monitoring of the virus for signs of change.

A total of 34 samples were analysed independently by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Mill Hill in London, UK, and the WHO Collaborating Centre for the Surveillance, Epidemiology and Control of Influenza in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

warning PDF document....and remember everyone, there is no inflation.

Abstract
Eighty-fi ve percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year
in 2008, meaning that they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life
for all household members. The remaining households (14.6 percent) were food insecure
at least some time during the year, including 5.7 percent with very low food security—
meaning that the food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their
eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money
and other resources for food. Prevalence rates of food insecurity and very low food security
were up from 11.1 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively, in 2007, and were the highest
recorded since 1995, when the fi rst national food security survey was conducted. The
typical food-secure household spent 31 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure
household of the same size and household composition. Fifty-fi ve percent of all food-insecure
households participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food and nutrition
assistance programs during the month prior to the 2008 survey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/usda_report_household_food_security_2008.pdf?sid=ST2009111601621

“I was pleased to note the Chinese commitment, made in past statements, to move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time,” Obama said during a joint appearance with Hu after a meeting in Beijing today. “Doing so based on economic fundamentals would make an essential contribution to the global rebalancing effort.”

...

Hu Silent on Yuan

Hu, in his remarks, made no mention of the yuan peg to a weakening dollar,

Obama Urges China to Heed Commitment on Currency Appreciation - Bloomberg

Translation:
Obama: "Look, we now owe you several thousands of billions of dollars. How could you let our account get so imbalanced? You need to let us promise to pay you back with coins that have half the silver of our old ones, as is historical custom. You can't have government intervention in currency supply, you must base it on "economic fundamentals", that's fundamental Economics."

Hu: "No comment."

China is one vast hopium den.

Its a guess yogi and I suspect yours is a rhetorical question Probably not unless they are fortunate enough to be in a shelter, even then, I'm not sure they would count as a 'household'. The semantics game IS always interesting when assessing data.

Maybe we've been going about economics in entirely the wrong fashion?

If we were to make it more in the style of religion, all the tough questions would be a moot point, and the Unabanlers could just say a lot of stuff about the hereafter-and how glorious it is, blah blah blah.

Wait a second, they are already doing it...

Economics is a religion.

Only faith explains our repeated tendency to air the views of the chronically incorrect.

,rad Slumdog,

Your trading style is reminiscent of a "Show-Plunger"

A Show-Plunger looks for short fields and an overwhelming favorite that is a can't miss proposition to at least come in 3rd place, @ the horse races. The right set-up can actually cause what's called a "minus show-pool' as the track has to pay $2.10 for any nag that comes in 3rd on a $2.00 ticket, if somebody dumps $250k to make 5% for a couple of minutes worth of watching horseflesh going around the oval.

There's precious little upside to being a show-plunger, but the downside potential is tremendous, should shit happen.

Terrorists don't care about national interests. Terrorists only care about their agenda and their agenda alone, it doesn't matter if they kill their own if it forwards their agenda. Financial terrorists are no different.

Lake Tahoe. I remember reading about Jackson Hole area and the need for teachers. No one could afford housing so restrictive condos were subsided for teachers, the square footage depending on the size of the 'family'. I worry that where I live will see the same. UBER rich pricing everyone out, taxation so high and valuations so high that there is no affordable housing, cost of living too high, for those who actually work and produce.

....

Bernanke said “significant economic challenges remain,” with lending constrained and the jobless rate above 10 percent. Speaking in New York yesterday, he said U.S. asset prices aren’t out of line with underlying values, and central bank policy will ensure that the “dollar is strong.”

.....

“It is inherently extraordinarily difficult to know whether an asset’s price is in line with its fundamental value,” Bernanke said. “It’s not obvious to me in any case that there’s any large misalignments currently in the U.S. financial system.”

Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, in a speech yesterday evening, echoed those remarks.

“The prices of assets in U.S. financial markets do not appear to be clearly out of line with the outlook for the economy and business prospects as well as the level of risk-free interest rates,” Kohn said at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a3BlApikRmTY](- Bloomberg.com
sid=a3BlApikRmTY)

So UE matters but it doesn't. LOL.

There's precious little upside to being a show-plunger, but the downside potential is tremendous, should shit happen.

The show plungers buy "insurance" so they can leverage their upside, priced on the mathematically proven fact that shit never happens. The insurance company sells a few trillion in policies, because bonuses are paid in sales. Shit, in fact, happens, but the insurance company is then too big to fail, and gets their man at the track to take the next (bigger) plunge bets on credit, until they catch up. After all, most bettors have used the insurance illusion to up their volume...

Madoff's Martingale in the high stakes race-- to win, place and show.

"mathematically proven fact that shit never happens."

I believe Talub's black swan discussion demonstrates that "fat tail" events, that is, infrequently occurring events, happen more frequently than a bell curve distribution would predict. That's one big reason why AIG got in trouble.

This kind of says a lot.

VW flooded with applications for jobs at Chattanooga plant | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

ETF = Extraneous Tungsten Fund

So the price of factors the risk of finding a solvent [ ] buyer who thinks digital x-rays are fool-proof?

What exactly are the advantages of putting your lucre in a metals ETF with 0% custody, as opposed to buying the real deal, and sticking it in a safe-deposit box, and having 100% custody?

If the current economic paradigm survives, I gotta wonder if the super wealthy elite are going to find people are willing to nurse them when they are ill, care for their children while they are in Paris, etc., etc. Perhaps those people instead would rather just burn their estates down and call that good work for the day? This reminds me of the turn of the century and the 'robber barons'. The PR then was they were servicing their communities and to be admired for hiring children as laborers so they could eat a meal and sleep in a warm bed at night. The parallels to the great depression I and today are remarkable.

The difference between then and today is information flows. I'm detecting a lot of dis-information out there beyond the CNBS and Murdoch hype. Control of information is probably the battle being waged. Can you have a super-regulator who has a gigantic balance sheet responsible for oversight for 'public good' while maintaining a secretive and vast pool of private money and businesses? I don't think so.

The federal reserve isn't 'government'; therefore, public utilities shouldn't be regulated by them. Their data and analysis serves their purpose which may or may not be in the interest of the nation as a whole. I think its clear now that controlling interest rates and the broad economy through a secretive and private non-governmental body is structurally not sound. One voice shouldn't be weighed so heavily when corresponding data reflects the opposite and is gathered by government. Greenspan became a 'rock star' and moved markets with whispers. This is diseased state of affairs which does not allow the necessary checks and balances for opposing points of view in national economic affairs.

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, posted third-quarter profit that exceeded some analysts’ estimates after cutting expenses, and boosted its annual profit forecast.

Net income dropped 8.9 percent to $689 million, or 41 cents a share, in the three months ended Nov. 1 from $756 million, or 45 cents, a year earlier, the Atlanta-based company said today in a statement. Analysts projected profit of 36 cents, the average of 27 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Home Depot reduced selling, general and administrative expenses by 8.4 percent to $3.87 billion. Customer transactions at the company, led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake, slowed amid sinking home values and the highest U.S. unemployment in 26 years.

full article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoD5HlqHNYnY&pos=5

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

Where'd the real deal go?

Into Goldman's Sacks? hehehe

Silverdome fetches $583,000
Silverdome fetches $583,000 | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Cost about $55.7 million to build and was completed in 1975.

NervousRex wrote:

Silverdome fetches $583,000

Cost to build: $55 million. Real Estate always goes up in price.

Question of the day:

Is Detroit our future?

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

Is Detroit our future?

Someplaces, undoubtedly. Natural selection will determine the ones that survive and reproduce. Some will become extinct, of course.

The PR then was they were servicing their communities and to be admired for hiring children as laborers so they could eat a meal and sleep in a warm bed at night.

In the past month, I've actually seen a so-called economist on Bloomberg TV propose to eliminate the minimum wage, and another argue that bonuses are good for the "economy" because consumers in the high income brackets spend more than others.

$583k would currently buy you a home built in the 1960's in a decent neighborhood in the City of Angles, but within 5 miles of it, there'd be a sketchy neighborhood you'd want to avoid.

Comparing oranges and lemons...

The city of Pontiac accepting a bid for $583k tells you a lot about the state of municipal finance in MI, and probably elsewhere. About 1% of the original cost.

Suggested new name:

Pontiac Sliverdome

Mortgage delinquencies hit another record in 3Q

The pace at which people fell behind on their mortgages slowed during the summer for the third consecutive quarter, but the overall delinquency rate hit another record, a new report shows.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, 6.25 percent of U.S. mortgage loans were 60 or more days past due, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion. That's up 58 percent from 3.96 percent a year ago.

C'mon Mish, tell us what you really think
GE CEO Plays Kiss Ass With Obama

GE, the financial company masquerading as a manufacturer, has its eyes on the Pot of Government Stimulus Gold.

The financial crisis hasn't been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.

But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation's corner offices: "We're all Democrats now."

JD<

How was the rafting/ soak trip?