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

To: russwinter who wrote (23927)	12/31/2004 12:48:27 PM
From: philv	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

I think everybody including the FED realizes the housing bubble cannot be allowed to collapse because of the obvious swift adverse reaction in financial markets including the dollar. So, the game must go on. But what this does is create a kind of moral dilemma, as the participants keep pumping, assured that the FED will not pull the plug, and the FED itself powerless to stop it, and afraid to even admit there is a problem. It reminds me of the NASDAQ internet bubble. People invested in it heard all the warnings for months and even years. Some probably thought they could get out in time before the inevitable collapse, others who were early in its recognition never partook, never profited, and may even have lost. I see the same kind of thing going on again in various markets. But this time the consequences of a collapse are more severe than ever, and few will escape. In my opinion we are seeing the stalling of the inevitable, whilst all along hoping for a miracle which would save the world from economic collapse. And a problem downplayed, ignored, and unreported simply doesn't exist. This has been going on for a long time, and will probably go on much much longer. There is a big ship out in the ocean, and some of the passengers on this ship can glimpse big rocks through the fog. But the Captain and crew refuse to sound the alarm, and continue to steer the boat straight ahead. Some are shivering on deck, looking for lifeboats, while most are partying downstairs. It's no fun on deck.

To: russwinter who wrote (23927)	1/1/2005 9:10:39 AM
From: el_gaviero	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

Russ, I would like to add my voice to those who have said how much they appreciate the energy and intelligence of your many posts. You have a wonderful ability to assimilate information, and communicate what you have discovered with flair and passion. “MoP....OMCs .... Bully-economics....” Good stuff, far beyond what I am capable of, so why use up bandwidth? Although I was trained in economics, my mind and vision of the world is attuned to political matters. Not so much the economy --- the flows of money and stuff --- but the political economy, the intersection of economics and politics, seems to attract my attention. For this reason, I find it hard to pay attention to ripples moving across the surface of the ocean. To be sure, one of the ripples that comes along, picking up and dropping my boat two inches, proceeds to roll into shore and turn into a 40 foot tsunami. But there is no way for me to know when such is going to be case from my vantage point out there in open water. If I have one (minor) critique of your style, it is to suggest that maybe you are too focused on trying to discern the one ripple that is the tsunami from the million ripples that are just ripples. I’m not sure such discernment is possible, and the effort may leave you less prepared for the wall of water when it arrives. Let me be just a little less poetic. I assume that if something bad happens, the chance is good of a market upheaval. (By “bad” I mean a LTCM type meltdown that isn’t contained and actually does some serious melting, or an extension of the “war on terror” into Iran, or a successful strike against the House of Saud, or a successful strike against Saudi oil facilities .... etc). My assumption is that any seriously “bad event” will cause the markets to sell off chaotically as they did in the fall of 1987. Those who lived through that event will remember that for all practical purposes the markets were shut down. Whatever position you had in the morning at open, you had in the afternoon at close. There was no getting in. This particular way of viewing the world makes me not want to be overly committed to short term trading positions. Rather, I make investment decisions under the influence of a question in the back of my mind that in fact I actually wish were a little less insistent: how do I want to be positioned if we get a 1987 type market event? I am not at all sure my style is a good way to proceed. It's just that I can't seem to commit to anything else.