'The left side of the balance sheet has nothing right
and the right side of the balance sheet has nothing left.
But they are equal to each other.
So accounting-wise we are fine.'
AIG vice-chairman - Message 25057389
Lots more of us with those blind spots koan, i absolutely did not see this coming, got 'slaughtered' and that's the word for it too, pretty much all '06 and '07 gains wiped out, maybe more than that, haven't figured it out but i have a vague memory of one rrsp account that's had no recent deposits or withdrawals being at one point over double what it shows today ... worse than divorce they say, you lose half your net worth but still have a wife, lol ... on top of this, the hunting and gathering of cash has become real hard, had one job fall through and one postponed another year, went from busy to nothing, poof
We knew that they'd throw big money at problems with the uptown financials, we know that doing so will debase the currency and ultimately make gold the least worst hold in the money field, we didn't realise that there could be a lag for the effect to work though, with meanwhile the US dollar as 'safe haven'[!] ... we didn't know how canny they'd be about it either, to engineer a commodities crash and get rolling a vicious cycle of de-leveraging [Coxe's take on that quite interesting, in re the mid-july massacre] ... probably shoulda anticipated that, and the possibility of deep recession getting started on its own even
So, what now ... how long does this last, and what resource leads in the recovery? ... i just don't know, sticking heavy to golds so far just as default position, and because that was the Plan ... energy, with maybe some high-leverage oilsands stuff, thinking about that - what are the chances that a little 'gentle guidance' has aided the crash of crude, bringing pump prices down for the US election, and after that it won't matter? ... hard to imagine worldwide consumption dropping by very much for very long, and we're unlikely to see much for supply increases ever again ... fifty-dollar oil will turn out to be the cure for fifty-dollar oil, just as the one-forties was for the one-forties variety
Doctor Copper broke 2.00 overseas tonight, 1.97 now, Zn .48, Ni 4.59 ... those are shut-down prices, clear message to miners that the world doesn't want metal, probably means it's the perfect time to begin mine construction because when you're producing in two or three years the cycle will be on an upswing, but also means you can't get financed, so another good idea bites the dust
Two of my gold faves du jour are actually heavy to copper, ngd.to and trx.v, both with deep-pocketted people behind them but that doesn't have to mean their shareprices recover any time soon
If everything really does work out faster in this modern age, due to speedy transport and instant communications, then we should see the trough and upswing sooner than traditional cycles ... wonder if it's possible to speed up the old animal spirits of the species though, might be more about psychology |
