Hi Selva, Today is a strangely quiet and steely gray day in Hong Kong, of simultaneous rain and sunshine. The cicadas are unusually quiet. The sky and the water are of one color, with no delineating separation. The foliage, under bizarrely bright sunlight, in sharp contrast to the steel gray water and sky, is moistly green.
My wife has wandered off to her jazz dancing lesson and cooking lesson, part of her WomeninMedia womeninmedia.com activities. No more weird questions and strange fancies to disturb my peace until 6pm.
I have got Diana Krall’s jazz and Bossa Nova’s soothing sounds of Brazil on continuous looped play.
I got my second bottle of Starbucks Iced coffee next to the PC keyboard.
Heaven.
I am sit here, moodily, in trepidation, looking at the investment options, weighing against the speculation choices, pondering on the escape alternatives, as an international investor electorate who has been lied to, conned, and now transformed into a financial refugee, I ask myself, as you do, ‘where to now?’.
My money manager friends are mostly declaring shaken but still faithful adoration for Greenspud’s ability to hold the fiat paper money foundation with the digital equity script construct together, with ultra-low interest rate glue.
The faithful are hoping that Greensputin’s magic will have effect soon enough for fast disappearing investment to turn up, while still strong consumer and ever euphoric construction to hold course, so as to (a) twist the equity market upward, (b) boost already high confidence, and (c) reconstitute the miraculous virtuous circle of up, everything good up, and down, everything bad down.
If only matters were so simple as ACF Mike and Maurice prefer to believe. You know, sin, and repent, commit crime, and apologize, followed by forgiveness and another chance, sidestepping punishment and without skipping a heartbeat.
The details are not important, but “It was Only Yesterday” …
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… that another decade long bubble blew up, and the world paid. The form of payment (inflation, deflation, stagflation, depression …) is also not important, only that payment was extracted.
The most dangerous advise in this hard to predict environment are those offered by folks who claim to have a map of where to go, and a script of what to do, unless they preface their words with “I do not know about the uncharted terrain into which we must walk through. I am doing like thus … , and if I am wrong, I should still do OK, as in better than most”.
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I intend to decrease USD, increase CAN dollar, add to Paper Gold cash, add to resource shares, and if the world goes happily bright, resources go up, and if sadly dark, cash goes shopping. The simplicity is elegant, and return-to-mean is symmetrical.
<<I was left unconvinced that … ordinary citizen could make a difference to the recent trend of lower gold prices>>
… ordinary citizens can be counted on to do the most strange of acts, like paying ever higher prices for totally bankrupt companies with no profit and even ever decreasing hope of revenue.
<<I think central banks are too big a guerilla factor in this, so individual investors can't go against their constant, persistent intervention>>
… imagine just for one moment what it would mean if it turns out, as events had always, without fail, turned out that ‘this time it is different’?
<<another Japan 'factor'>>
… OTOH, Japan has acted in a negative fashion for the last 12 years, and can perhaps be counted on to act so for another 12 years. If so, the world will have that much more paper to buy limited things with.
<<a major terrorist attack bigger than Sept 11 (inconceivable, imho)>>
… while there are not many reasons to think that an attack bigger than Sept 11 will succeed if launched, but what about a pervasive series of much smaller attacks, sorties, forays, and explosions. How would the productivity enhanced and faith paper financed equity culture react?
<<a mega accounting crookedness at a company not smaller than GE (again, imho, unlikely)>>
… I am counting on GE, AIG, JPM, Fannie and Freddie, and even uncle Sam to make their appearance in the Script of Collapse. I am figuring on Iraq, North Korea, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Philippines, India, Pakistan, the entire Middle East, plus Indonesia to do what is called for in the Axis of Evil WAT and Matrix of Malevolence Play.
... and I am afraid of what the wealth disenfranchised US electorates would do when they, in the majority, start ranting, 'I am not going to take this any more' and then discover they have to.
Selva, think back on the Asian Financial Crisis, and know that when the system is weak, the sickness comes to fore.
<<gold is heading to sub-300 again>>
… I hope this is true.
<<Swiss private bankers told me … I am the ONLY individual to have gold content in my portfolio … as almost all of them are holding solely ST money-market instruments, earning max. 3%>>
… what are they fearful of, and thus guarding against? Not a return to boom times. It sounds like they are simply waiting, as most of this thread is, for something, what ever is making the rumbling noises, to become visible.
<<By the way, there does not seem to be any crisis mindset among any of the people I've talked to in the last 40 odd hours>>
… Have they lost money, net net, during the past 36 months? 48, and/or 60 months?
<< ... they're all convinced I'm crazy>>
... it is likely better to be ecentrically crazy rich than hope-induced sane poor:0)
Chugs, Jay |
