SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Secret_Agent_Man who wrote (155226)3/10/2002 10:25:00 AM
From: Secret_Agent_Man  Respond to of 436258
 
Investors put $3.61 billion into money market funds last
week, bring total assets to $2.290 trillion. Institutions added
$5.61 billion and investors withdrew $2 billion. The average
7-day compounded yield fell to 1.40% from 1.41% and the
30-day compounded was 1.41% from 1.42%. A $2 billion
outflow from investors that may have gone into the stock
market was small and institutional money wasn’t flowing
from funds in the money market into the general market.
That leaves foundations, trusts and the Plunge Protection
Team.

Freddie Mac has fired Arthur Andersen after a 30-year
relationship. They follow Merck, Delta Airlines, Ford and
Sun Trust banks. Freddie Mac will now retain
Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

Enron has taught us that retirement accounts are not as safe as we think
they are. Congress is considering new legislation to remedy the problem.
Only 20% of companies require the purchase of company stock in 401
(k) programs. A bigger issue is about one-half of workers on private
payrolls don’t have any employer-sponsored retirement plans at all.
Seventy-four percent of the best paid fifth of American workers
participate in some kind of plan, but only 17% of the worst paid do. In
1999, 85% of retirement savings went into accounts over which workers
had control versus 64% in 1980. Finally, Americans are realizing they
can’t trust or believe their management, politicians, Wall Street and the
media and that they can’t count on double-digit stock market gains
forever.

The FED says we are having a luke-warm recovery or widespread minor
improvement. The beige book for January and February sees sluggish
weakness and widespread weakness in the commercial real estate
market. They see no wage pressures, but they envision them if the
economy picks up. Manufacturing costs are flat or declining, but
services and health-insurance costs are rising. There has been moderate
improvement in retail sales and factory orders are up slightly. The FED
has a wait and see attitude and is cautiously optimistic. Thus, what we
see is a blip. Can it continue? We don’t think so. Congress is considering
an extension of 13 weeks of unemployment benefits, which is a good idea.
They also are looking at a three-year 30% bonus write-off for new
capital investments, which we believe is a waste. Extension of two years
to five for the period that companies can carry back net operating losses
into prior years, which is a good idea. Renewal of temporary tax breaks
for multinational corporations, which should be terminated immediately.
The real problem is free trade. As long as we destroy what made
America great America will continue its downward slide.

As we reported before, corporations may be forced to spend at least $100
billion buying their own and other companies stocks because of
agreements made during the Goldilocks bubble market. GM, Telecom
Ilalia, AOL-Time and Kirch Holdings to name a few granted puts
options contracts that give some the right to sell and others the
obligation to buy shares in certain circumstances. This comes as
companies try to preserve their credit ratings, reduce debt or simply
stay in business. France Telecom’s debt of $57 billion could rise another
$6 billion. JP Morgan chase can sell 711 million shares of Telecom Italia
at 3.40 euros. It is now quoted at 85 euros a share. Krispy Kreme
Doughnuts has $35 million in leases it has to put on the books and
Symantec has to add $115.2 million. This was all accounting subterfuge.
It will hit companies who fiddled hard and the biggest impact will come
via real estate values. They have to book values at current market that
could be 5-30% below carried off-balance sheet levels. This involves
2,000 plus companies. Can you believe the stock market is going up and
corporate earnings are going to take a terrible hit?

President Bush doesn’t want to raise FDIC insurance from $100,000 an
account to $130,000 as recommended by the Senate and the House.
Senate and House proposals for IRA’s would move from $100,000 to
$250,000. If not passed we would think depositors would mimic the
Japanese and buy gold coins, bullion and shares for safety.

The Peoples Republic of California now has a clear choice in the next
governor’s race, Gray Davis, incumbent socialist and Bill Simon,
establishment moderate. California is a socialist/Marxist state and we
expect as horrible a governor as Gray Davis has been, he’ll be reelected.
That is how Comintern politics works.

Arthur Andersen will have to pay $11 million for a botched
computer-consulting job for Department 56 Inc. It sounds like the group
who couldn’t shoot straight.

In three days Alan Greenspan went from being cautiously optimistic on
the economy to being a media cheerleader. It sounds strange to us.

The US is not fighting terrorism it is advancing American transnational
business interests. Congress has not declared war, so there is no war. We
are witnessing a unilateral police action by George W. Bush in
Afghanistan to make that country safe for oil and gas pipelines and to
capture distribution of the heroin trade. This is what our young men are
dying for. Just like in Vietnam, it’s all about money. We are invaders for
commercial interests in a war on terrorism so ambiguous it defies
description. Mr. Bush’s action also gives a green light to every
repressive government on earth to kill off its opposition under the guise
of fighting terrorism. All this is being done in our name. George
declares it and the CIA swears to it. We are killing people who might
happen to be an enemy in the future. That’s not self-defense that’s
tyranny. Of course if you discuss the issue you are un-American and
unpatriotic. Remember we are far to the right of center, but a spade is a
spade. The invasion of Afghanistan is a criminal business enterprise
used as a distraction, so that you don’t realize that your economy is
being deliberately destroyed. We also find it disturbing that Americans
in their most fiercely patriotic moods are willing to set aside their
Constitution, which guarantees their freedom to prosecute an undeclared
war, yet they insist their war is for freedom. They also accept the
curtailment of freedoms as a necessity of security, so we may pursue a
nebulous "axis of evil". Our President has skipped the Constitution in
pursuing foreign conflict while conveniently nullifying our Constitution
to enslave us?



To: Secret_Agent_Man who wrote (155226)3/10/2002 10:25:48 AM
From: Secret_Agent_Man  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 436258
 
A local Internet system in Fallon, Nevada, the home of the Fallon NAS
"Top Gun" fighter training facility, a high value military installation,
was hacked into from Brazil. It could be the Chinese, who have a strong
presence in Brazil were trying to see if they could penetrate or disrupt
the local military base.

President Bush and certain Congressmen will attempt to ram through
congress 245(i) passage of which would amnesty 11 million illegal aliens.
These lawbreakers would be given legal resident status without adequate
background or health checks. Write your congressmen and Senators
and tell them to reject any amnesty bill, regularization or guest worker
bills. We shouldn’t reward these people for their illegal behavior and we
don’t want to pay their bills. We want a total moratorium on mass
immigration by sponsoring and voting for HR 2712, the Mass
immigration Reduction Act of 2001, with an amendment enacting al
all-inclusive immigration ceiling of 100,000 per year for five years.

The Justice Department and the IRS are close to an agreement with
American Express to turn over records from customers who pay their
bills through banks in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and other tax
havens. MasterCard is also in negotiations. For the Bush administration,
the credit card crackdown serves a purpose beyond increasing revenue
without raising taxes.

According to Daniel Hopsicker (www.madcowprod.com), a former
investigative reporter for NBC, the Venice Florida based flight school at
Huffman Aviation, which trained two of the suspected 9/11 hijacker
pilots has links to a company called Britannia Aviation, suspected of
being a CIA operation.

As we predicted full-scale warfare is about to break out between the
nation’s banking and real estate cartels. The question faced by the FED
and the US Treasury is whether real estate brokerage and management
are financial services, which are in nature or incidental to financial
activities? The banks are ready to move in and begin the slaughter and
the real estate industry is trying to get Congress to block the FED’s
rulemaking authority. Legislation introduced into the House would
effectively separate banking and commerce undermining the FED’s
effort to expand banking powers. Needless to say, allowing banks’ to
monopolize real estate would deeply harm consumers. As far as we are
concerned the FED does not have the power to let bankers into real
estate. The exercise shows you how unbelievably greedy bankers are.

What goes around comes around and George W. Bush is going to find
that out in spades. He is totally out of control and he has made America
the ultimate rogue nation. Terrorism has become a pretext for bombing
anyone who disagrees in George’s elitist programs. As president of the
US he has assumed what amounts to dictatorial power. He has dismissed
the principles of law and the rules of evidence that undergrid America’s
system of justice. He has created power to seize and circumvent the
courts and has set up his own tribunals, panels of officers who sit in
judgment of non-citizens, who the president claims are terrorists, thus
depriving them of their rights under the Geneva Convention. That is
why when our men were captured in Afghanistan they were brutally
murdered. Under George’s code there are no prisoners of war and that
may well cost him his own life. George is a bloodthirsty megalomaniac
who prefers bombing entire populations into submission rather than
tackling terrorists’ root causes. But, he can’t go to root causes. What will
he tell them? I’m here so transnational oil companies can steal your oil
and gas and to make sure the CIA distributes your heroin? We’ve
traded a pervert for a half-wit nut case.

We are not at all surprised that Rep. Henry Waxman (D.Ca), the
ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform,
expressed outrage that Prince Charles had accepted $1 million from
Enron. Either Henry is out of the loop, and not an elitist, or he is
preparing a stage show he knows will never take place. It is laughable to
think Price Charles would appear even having been subpoenaed.
Despite the political posturing it is evident Mr. Lay was displaying
servitude to one of the major world conspirators, who was well schooled
by his father Phil the Greek, as he is best known in Britain.

Never before has a nation such as the US been called upon to lead the
world out of recession with a current account deficit of over 4% of GDP.
If America is again to be the engine of recovery then this massive deficit
can only get larger and more unsustainable. Statistically most indicators,
whether doctored or not, point to a recovery of some kind. Most of that
recovery, we may add, has already been discounted in the stock market.
Before the investing world runs off half-cocked we should point out why
we haven’t covered our shorts. Business has been very good in January,
but a very important factor was the warmest January in 106 years,
which allowed unusual economic activity. This is a real statistics’
bender. As an example, the actual data for home sales fell in January.
Due to January’s good unseasonable weather and the fall off in
December due to normal weather and the 9/11 effect, terrible distortion
took place in the numbers. This, of course, was accompanied by a
barrage of propaganda off of Madison Avenue, Wall Street and off the
Beltway. Over the past few months’ results out of Asia have been
improving, but they are mixed. China and India had excellent growth
because their slave labor is the cheapest, but the remainder was
dreadful. The debt overhang in the US is so monstrous that no sustained
recovery can be achieved. The structural excesses of the 1990s have still
not been purged. The three remaining bubbles, debt, real estate and
derivatives are still in place. The key again, of course, is the consumer.
Will he or she continue to incur more debt to pull the world economy out
of recession? We don’t think so. What keeps America afloat is not
foreign direct investment and that has stopped dead in its tracks, off
some 83%. Can foreigners keep taking our bonds? Their purchases
cover 90% of our current account deficit. When the dollar goes down
this will all end, as foreigners decouple from the dollar. The recovery
will be anemic and brief, the dollar will fall and we will resume
recession, which could well become depression.

Analysts predict that earnings for the S&P 500 will be up 17% this year.
Since 9/11 the S&P is up 21%, the Dow 28% and Nasdaq 36%. For 2002
the Dow is up 5% and S&P 1.5%. The vastly overpriced markets are
going to have to deal with higher interest rates. It was but a few weeks
ago we predicted the 10-year Treasury at 5.5% by yearend. It is already
up to 5.33% and the 30-year is 5.71%. We see that at 6%. We may be
very conservative. The FED hasn’t even raised rates yet. Taking all into
consideration the market, particularly the S&P, is discounting 35%
increases in earnings. Whatever the gains they have already been
discounted. This bear market rally has been far stronger than we
anticipated due to persistent low interest rates and a $2 trillion infusion
into the economy by the FED, Fannie and Freddie. In addition, it is hard
to find a bear anywhere and from a contrarian point of view that is
delicious. The trailing S&P price earnings ratio is 41 and the 25-year
average is 17.1% and longer-term average is 14.5%. Besides S&P
earnings will not be $52.57 this year. Try $40.00. This puts the P/E
overvaluation at 17% and yield valuation even higher. This means by
Wall Street’s own figures the Dow should be selling at 8,450. If you use
our projections the figures for indexes would be considerably lower. Not
only is the market going sharply lower again, but also it will achieve new
lows. Thus, all those shorts we released short should be re-shorted. This
is a sucker rally.