Hi Jay: if you have mental indigestion because of Charlies Angels, here's a good reading to offset it - just in case you missed it (mogambo Guru's rant for this week):
dailyreckoning.com
... there is much to be said for the growing derivatives market, and for all I know, when the Members and Specialists buy or sell a stock it is hedged with a derivative, and that leveraged liability is offset with another derivative play, and maybe the asset fraction is separated from the income stream fraction and each tranche is sold off, and the income stream is collateralized and sold for the net present value of the income stream, which is invested in an income stream from a municipal bond fund, which offsets a tax liability which, which, which, I mean, who the hell knows? The potential schemes are only limited by the human imagination. Well, that and money. But the money comes from the Fed, and unbelievable amounts of money is yours for the asking, so all it takes is human imagination.
- Part of the standard lore of the stock market, and any market as far as I know, is that at the end of a boom there is a huge blow-off rally. In other genre, it is the Titanic rising one last time before sinking forever beneath the cold, dark waves. In the book "Moby Dick," it is the mortally wounded white whale heaving itself out the water for one last time, Captain Ahab entangled in the ropes of the harpoons stuck in its mighty side, beckoning with his arm for us to follow him, and the whale, to our doom.
In the story of Titanic, the passengers in the lifeboats did not swim back over to the sinking vessel and climb back aboard. In the book "Moby Dick" the seamen did not swim over to the whale and voluntarily entangle themselves in the ropes.
I bring up this absolutely fascinating and priceless pearl of symbolism when I note the graph of the breadth of the NYSE, lo these many months. It seems to rise like an archetypical final market blow-off, up, up into the sky! Blocking out the sun! A final breaching of whale, a final heaving of a sinking ship. Yet, only in the stock market example are the people figuratively climbing back onto the Titanic, or swimming over to cling to the carcass of Moby Dick.
The Dog That Didn't Bark
- Marshall Auerback, in a very interesting essay entitled "Argentina, Not Japan," an essay that I am sure will be referenced on many a website, says something that I have long said, but somehow when he says it I have a bigger sense of doom.
We both agree that China is the new Big Boy On The Block. And, he reminds us, these guys are Confucian.
So what are Confucians? I'm not sure, but I remember that this Confucius fella said a lot of funny and off-color one-liners when I was a kid. I know that much, anyway. And they always started off with "Confucius say..." and then it usually had him saying something that pertained either to sex, genitalia or excrement, for the most part. But I have a feeling that there is more to old Confucius than that, as I had never heard that the Chinese had adopted dirty jokes as a political organization.
And it turns out that there IS more to Confucius than that, as I gather from reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica in my usual superficial way. They are, for all practical purposes, the archetypical Jews. Namely, strong sense of reverence for family, strong sense of reverence for history, big-time believers in education and self-improvement, hard work, and generally prospering as such. In fact, the book even says, "Historical consciousness is a defining characteristic of Confucian thought."
So, we have a smart, educated Chinese with strong nationalist, traditionalist and familial fervor. They also have, in case you were wondering, a few thousands of years of pleasantly positive experience with gold. I will soon reveal to you why I make that interesting and cogent observation.
.... |
