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

To: Chispas who wrote (53255)	7/11/2006 2:43:51 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 116555

Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 14:03 trotsky (WilE 13:19) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved certainly true, but don't forget that China has ALSO seen a huge credit expansion - money supply growth of well over 20% annually. the BoC is about to rein that in somewhat by raising reserve requirements. imo this is a big deal, as the 50 bps. in higher reserve requirements are after all not only for new lending but also all existing outstanding loans. iow, there's a lot of excess liquidity being sucked away. just something to keep an eye on - if China's money growth slows, lots of malinvestments will probably be exposed. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 13:27 trotsky (BG re. copper) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved i might add, as long as copper futures remain in steep backwardation, there is good reason to expect the bull trend to continue. we can argue about fundamentals all day long, but the most important information hides in plain sight in the market's structure. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 12:52 trotsky (Alberich) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved "Everybody who made it to the border and could articulate the word "amnesty" had immediately the right to receive generous social benefits" like i said, this seems to be a problem created by socialism rather than by immigration. as to immigrants contribution to economic growth, i don't think it has anything to do with ethnicity. it is the simple fact of a growing population that is of essence here. more producers and consumers means economic growth is going to happen, regardless of where they come from. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 12:48 trotsky (Bizarro@copper, 11:51) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved certainly a good point, especially as we know for a fact that a number of banksters are in deep doo-doo on the LME for having shorted too much near term copper and trying to offset those positions with the longer dated futures. a lose-lose trade if ever there was one. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 11:43 trotsky (Bizarro@Jack Crooks) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved you must admit that the question has merit. the recent sharp decline in housing demand will inevitably lead to a slowdown in construction ( it has not happened YET, but it will ) , and that will remove quite a bit of marginal demand for stuff such as copper. the slowdown in retail is also accelerating ( to wit, WMT's tepid sales growth rates, and sharply falling employment in the retail trade ) , presumably a side-effect of the imploding housing bubble. a slowdown in retail in turn can't be good for China's export sector.admittedly the long range effects of the tightening cycle don't become obvious all at once, and there will be considerable differences in the lag effect for different sectors. recall the tech sector bust of 2000. the closer to the consumer a company was, the earlier its stock price peaked ( e.g. the internuts and the telcos were the first sectors to peak ) . otoh, the infrastructure builders were the last ones to peak, in fact putting in higher highs in August of 2000 ( such as the optical networking sector for instance ) . if we look for an analogy today, we have seen the homebuilders peak and decline, whereas the uptrends in financials and commodity producers remain still intact. they will likely peak with a lag. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 11:13 trotsky (frustrated, 10:35) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved this strikes me as a cost of socialism rather than a cost of immigration. if health care were a free market, costs for health care services themselves as well as the associated insurance premia would likely fall dramatically - to the point that everybody could afford them, including poor immigrants. imo the fact that the US attracts so many immigrants is one of the major reasons for its economic growth. critics tend to forget that if there were no market demand for immigrant labor, such immigration would not occur. it's a good sign that it does - once immigrants begin to shun you, you know that things are going seriously wrong. the fact is, sans immigrants, a lot of supposed entitlements disappear into the blue yonder for sure. not one of the industrialized nations can escape the greying of society and the associated soaring costs of entitlements without immigration. the US are extraordinarily lucky for having a source of willing immigrants nearby. the European Union which keeps immigrants away with teutonic efficiency has a real problem by comparison. Date: Tue Jul 11 2006 10:01 trotsky (@North Korea) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved it's really funny how everybody's so 'worried' about the Stalinist hermit kingdom all of a sudden - to the extent that in fact two former Clinton ( yes, Clinton ) administration types demanded a pre-emptive attack ( 'we'll just attack the missile' ) on the place. the lesson from the sudden collapse of the Soviet empire seems to have been forgotten - communist states are so rotten at the core, their economy in tatters, their technology primitive and in constant danger of malfunction ( the former Warszaw Pact's tank commanders had to run in circles in their T-72's when they moved the barrel in order to avoid getting crushed inside their own tanks ) , that they simply represent no credible military threat. if NK is left alone, it'll eventually implode all on its own - unless it becomes a capitalist country first, in which case it would have to open up and abandon its posturing. the often mentioned rusting artillery pieces trained on Seoul certainly DO represent a threat, but using them would incur a heavy price. not only would they be used on fellow Koreans - by itself a big deterrent - but NK wouldn't survive the subsequent retaliation. in short, even if they keep sending up a few firecrackers now and then ( the most impressive of which failed to work as it were ) to attract attention, this should be greeted with the collective yawn it so richly deserves.