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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 1:09:07 PM
From: Chispas	Respond to of 116555

Russell does stimulate "new ideas"...like, "If you can't carry your debt, you're facing bankruptcy. This is the reason I call debt a short against the dollar." This is the first time I've seen it expressed, but he's right

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 1:24:59 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Heinz on the RMB Date: Tue Mar 30 2004 10:13 trotsky (frustrated, 8:50) ID#377387: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved everybody's so dead sure the Yuan will rise if/when it's unpegged, so rise it must, right? the only problem with this theory is that it flies into the face of logic. Chinese money supply growth is over 3 times as large as European, 4 times as large as US, and 10 times as large as Japanese money supply growth. in short, if the Yuan were made convertible, it would probably fall dramatically ( perhaps after an initial rally based on , well, the current confusion of a consensus ) .

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 3:12:49 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

Kerry vows action to lower gas prices - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:01:21 PM WASHINGTON (AFX) -- Citing soaring gasoline prices, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said Tuesday he'd put pressure on foreign oil producers and use the nation's strategic oil reserve program to lower prices "I'll use real diplomacy to do what George Bush hasn't - pressure OPEC to start providing more oil," Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery at a rally in San Diego. "We'll stop diverting oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until gas prices get back to normal. We'll simplify the patchwork of rules on gas all over this country so that we can reduce costs and make fuel supplies while keeping our air clean." Gasoline prices have soared to record highs across the country. With the summer driving season around the corner, Democrats see the situation as a potential hot-button issue come November. The Bush-Cheney campaign, meanwhile, has blasted Kerry on the stump and in television ads for having expressed support for a rise in the gas tax in the past The Bush administration has refused to curtail deliveries of oil into the SPR, saying the effect on gas prices would be negligible Halting deliveries into the SPR would probably have a short-term psychological effect, but it would be unlikely to substantially alter domestic crude oil inventory, some market analysts say. Meanwhile, the larger the reserve, the better prepared the United States is to mitigate any major price spikes that could follow large-scale supply disruptions, they contend. The Senate earlier this month approved a nonbinding amendment to its fiscal 2005 budget outline calling on the Bush administration to sell 53 million barrels of crude set to be used to top up the 700 million-barrel SPR, which now holds a record 648.2 million barrels Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, sponsored the amendment. Proponents contend it would boost supplies by 100,000 to 200,000 barrels a day and shave up to 25 cents off the price of a gallon of gas. The change won't occur, however, unless separate legislation clears Congress and is signed by Bush House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters Tuesday that such a proposal wouldn't pass the lower chamber if introduced DeLay said it was hypocritical of Kerry to blame Bush for rising gas prices after the Massachusetts senator cast a vote against a procedural Senate motion last fall that has stalled a wide-ranging energy bill Top Senate Democrats have put the blame on House Republicans, particularly DeLay, saying his insistence on liability protections for MTBE, a petroleum-based fuel additive, have been the primary reason the bill has failed to clear the Senate. Kerry and other Democrats, however, contend the bill puts too much emphasis on increased domestic production of fossil fuels while doing too little to rein in surging domestic fuel demand In a new Bush-Cheney ad unveiled on Tuesday morning, a narrator says of Kerry: "He supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax. If Kerry's tax increase were law, the average family would pay $657 more a year." Kerry in 1994 said he supported a 50-cent rise in the gas tax as a deficit-reduction measure. The Kerry campaign contends the candidate has never sponsored or voted for a half-cent rise in the gas tax and on Monday night charged that Bush had reneged on a campaign promise to lower the tax The gas tax "has not changed one penny under George Bush.Â Gas prices, on the other hand, have increased dramatically, reaching their highest level in history and taxing families by $24 billion this year alone," said Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter fxstreet.com

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 3:29:16 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

U.S. better off with outsourcing, industry study says [Of course they say that, their profits rise for every job we lose - mish] Tuesday, March 30, 2004 8:07:36 PM WASHINGTON (AFX) -- The U.S. economy will be stronger, with more jobs and higher wages if global outsourcing trends are allowed to continue, according to an economists' study funded by an industry group "The benefits of free trade clearly provide a boost to the U.S. economy," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for Global Insights, which produced the report released Tuesday by the Information Technology Association of America. "Using offshore resources reduces costs, dampens inflation, lowers interest rates, increases spending and creates additional jobs," Behravesh said However, the study concludes that outsourcing is responsible for about 104,000 of the 372,000 software jobs lost between 2000 and 2003 and will further reduce U.S. employment in the software industry by about 50,000 jobs by 2008 Most of the job losses in the industry since 2000 have been due to the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the recessionary impact of spending in other sectors and the huge productivity gains that allow companies to get more output out of each worker, the study concluded Outsourcing will create many more jobs in other sectors over the next four years, the study says. Outsourcing created about 90,000 American jobs in 2003 and 317,000 total net new jobs by 2008, the study says. Overall, the economy lost 61,000 jobs in 2003 [Outsourcing created 90,000 new jobs?! and will create 317,000 by 2008?! - Gee that's 80,000 jobs a year. BFD. IF it even happens. How many potential new wage earners based on demographics will there be in the next 4 years. Where will these jobs be created? These idiots never say. They just assume they will be there - mish] By 2008, the U.S. gross domestic product will be $124.2 billion larger with outsourcing than it would be without, according to the Global Insights/ITAA study. U.S. GDP was about $11 trillion in 2003 Earlier in the day, Federal Reserve Gov. Ben Bernanke came to similar conclusions about the value of global trade and outsourcing in a speech at Duke University. Global IT outsourcing -- in which U.S. companies buy computer services and software from overseas suppliers -- has become a hot-button issue as the U.S. economy recovers slowly from the 2001 recession President Bush's top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, set off a frenzied debate when he wrote that outsourcing is merely a new form of trade. Bush and other politicians of both parties distanced themselves from the tone of Mankiw's remarks, but not necessarily from the content Agricultural, mining and manufacturing jobs have been lost to trade and "outsourcing" for centuries, but only recently have significant numbers of service and professional jobs been threatened [How do you lose mining jobs if the mine is in your own country? - Are they talking about mines on pluto lost by plutonians to martians? or are they talking about mines on pluto owned by mars and martians did the labor before but now plutonians will do the work? mish] fxstreet.com

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 3:35:45 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

Fed's Poole: Fed Remains Vigilant on Inflation Front Tuesday, March 30, 2004 6:00:00 PM --Praises U.S. Entrepreneurial Spirit WASHINGTON (MktNews) - The Federal Reserve has managed to keep U.S. inflation in check for decades and remains "vigilant" on that front -- helping to create an environment promoting American entrepreneurship, St. Louis Fed President William Poole said Tuesday. In remarks prepared for the Evansville Rotary Club in Indiana, Poole sang the praises of the entrepreneurial spirit in the United States and said it will continue to be important on the success in this aspect of the economy. "We are extremely fortunate in the United States that people here have an abundance of entrepreneurial spirit. "For the most part, the issue we face is that of removing impediments and disincentives. We do a pretty good job with public policies favorable to economic growth. I won't dwell on what we can do better, but improvements are certainly possible," Poole said. Poole noted that studies show that Americans are "much more willing" to become entrepreneurs than residents of most other countries. And he said lower regulatory barriers are not necessarily the main driver behind this tendency. Citing Scandinavia as an example, Poole said, those countries are judged by the World Bank to have "among the best institutional arrangements to allow entrepreneurship to thrive," but that a far lower percentage of residents there would prefer to be entrepreneurs. Poole generally described Americans as much less risk-averse than Europeans. A good example of this mindset is the late 1970s-early 1980s innovation of the high risk/high yield "junk bond" allowing new firms to raise substantial amounts of capital, Poole said. Though junk bonds were disparaged after scandals in the 1980s, "they fueled a great deal of investment then and continue to do so today," Poole said. As for the Fed's role in promoting an atmosphere of entrepreneur- ship, Poole said a key has been maintaining price stability: "Inflation has been kept in check for more than two decades, and you can rest assured that the Fed remains vigilant on that front." fxstreet.com

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 4:41:50 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Poole says Fed must be preemptive on inflation Tuesday March 30, 2:54 pm ET EVANSVILLE, Ind., March 30 (Reuters) - Low U.S. interest rates risk inflation in the future, but the Federal Reserve will stop this from happening, a top Fed policymaker said on Tuesday. "If you leave them (interest rates) too low, too long you can create an inflation problem, so we want to be preemptive. If we already see substantial increases in inflation, then we've fallen behind," Poole told reporters following a speech. Asked when Fed funds rates would start to rise from their post-1958 low of 1 percent, Poole said: "They are going to start going up when we have an upside surprise. an upside confirmation that the economy is picking up steam."

To: NOW who wrote (3133)	3/30/2004 8:53:30 PM
From: FiveFour	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

short the dollar? ... basic Fx: take debt in dollars = short dollar put debt proceeds in dollar currency or assets = long dollar net position = even dollar position or... convert the debt proceeds into another currency or other currency assets and you are short dollar and long other currency or other currency assets. take debt in dollars = short dollar put debt proceeds in other currency or assets = long other currency net position = short dollar position / long other currency