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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ild who wrote (21929)	11/17/2004 7:04:22 PM
From: ild	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 17:31 trotsky (frustrated@dollar) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved true, they're really in a quandary here - everybody knows the current account deficit must come in, but no-one wants to experience any pain while that happens - which really makes no sense. it also suggests that ultimately, the market will take matters in its own hand ( read: crisis ) . debt monetization is bearish for the currency - since it increases the supply of it. Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 17:17 trotsky (@Walmart) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved furthermore, just why is Walmart so successful? has it held a gun at anybody's head and forced them to shop there? noooo...guess what, people go to shop there because they want to...because they get great deals there, and can buy more and have more choices than they would have elsewhere. but i realize of course that the envious demonization of success has a long tradition...we'll never be free of it. there are always some busybodies who think they must impose THEIR view of how things should be run and interfere with the voluntary transactions between economic agents. at is most extreme, this attitude produces philosophies like communism and fascism...the 'good old days' iow. Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 17:10 trotsky (goldfleeced, 14:51) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved "one of the topics covered in the program was a marketing technique developed by Sam Walton...drastically reducing the price of a lower quality item in a product line at the end of the aisle to attract consumers to the higher quality product the consumers actually wanted to buy....thus giving them the false impression that they were getting the lowest price in town on the better quality item which in fact in many cases they weren't. So, is the consumer actually saving money or are they a victim of hype?" apparently the makers of the program severely underestimate the intelligence of consumers. every economic transaction involves an opportunity cost. if you have enough money for either A or B, you can only buy one of them. are the makers of this program saying people are too stupid to make even these most basic decisions? or that we should force Walmart, Soviet-style, to NOT do anything to maximize its profits? Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 17:00 trotsky (P. Yorkie) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved i agree that oil is in a bull market until clearly proven otherwise...but i don't agree that commodity price rises, even if it's an important commodity such as oil, cause rising inflation ( in the sense of a rising aggregate price level ) . price inflation is caused by inflation of the money supply, not by price signals in a given market that advertise scarcity. broad money supply growth rates are however at 10 year lows - so it seems highly unlikely that inflation is in the cards, and the bond market knows it. of course, i also continue to disagree that gold necessarily requires inflation to do well. if that were true, then why has gold gone down for 20 years, while the Fed inflated the money supply by more than at any time before in history? obviously there are other forces important for gold prices...imo asset protection is THE major motive for buying gold during deflationary eras ( banks can go bankrupt, and bank deposits can disappear overnight...gold can't ) .