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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (70820)	12/7/2008 9:47:25 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Speaking of redistribution and spreading wealth, in this instance with pitchforks. biz.yahoo.com Workers occupied a factory from which they had been fired. It was a peaceable occupation, but presumably because there was no opposition. One swallow doesn't make a summer, but it's a trend worth watching. When helicopters loaded with money are buzzing hither and yon, it's easy to visualize hungry, envious crowds getting angry when the deliveries are not going their way. It reminds me of hungry people in Africa crowding around a food aid truck, fighting and grabbing for bags of rice and whatever is on offer. Throwing citizens' and taxpayers' money to politicians' friends could be more destabilizing than stabilizing. Desperate people do desperate things, especially when the opposition is overwhelmed and it's only their own ethical standards keeping themselves in check. how many guns are there in the USA? People will start defending their property when push comes to shove. The question is whose property is it? The workers obviously think it's their's. < CHICAGO (AP) -- Workers who got three days' notice that their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and say they won't go home without assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay. About 250 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind. Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down. During the two-day peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said. "We're doing something we haven't done since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," she said, referring to a tactic most famously used in 1936-37 by General Motors factory workers in Flint, Mich., to help unionize the U.S. auto industry. Fried said the company can't pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them. Crain's Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows' monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors." Bank of America received $25 billion from the government's financial bailout package. The company said in a statement Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees. "Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country." Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out." The Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a civil rights group, announced in a news release Saturday that Jesse Jackson planned to visit the workers Sunday morning to offer his support. Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, said the peaceful action will add to Chicago's rich history in the labor movement, which includes the 1886 Haymarket affair, when Chicago laborers and anarchists gathering in a square on the city's west side drew national attention after an unidentified person threw a bomb at police....> Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (70820)	12/12/2008 2:46:56 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Gold now worth more than platinum. That's interesting. Platinum down from $2000 to $800 - lucky lucky platinum buyers who can now buy even more, if they didn't blow their wad already at $2000. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (70820)	12/12/2008 9:09:13 PM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Respond to of 74559

TJ, in reply to the post you sent me via ElM's defended zone, regarding QCOM as savings vs gold and platinum, QCOM isn't for savings and time travel of value in cryogenic state to a time I or descendants might require the value. QCOM is investment and productive enterprise, inventing and developing the New World Order, which China is buying flat out and you love using too as do people around the world. My saving programme ended last century. The Five Financial Factors For Freedom [copyright/TM] of Virtuous Victorian Values [copyright/TM], namely; Learn, Work, Save, Invest, Spend,[copyright/TM] have been my bywords for decades. I've done the first 3, am working on the 4th, while making progress on the 5th. Having been compulsive on the first 4 for several decades, I find the transition to the 5th difficult and tend to spend on high risk investments which might or might not turn out to be useful and profitable. I have succeeded in spending some money and can, I have found, spend a LOT like that. Far more than if I bought trinkets like Lexus SUV, boats, booze and holidays in hotels in exotic locations. Thanks for the graphs on QCOM vs GLD. They look like entwined DNA rather than separate entities with one a clear winner. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (70820)	12/21/2008 9:01:26 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Merry Xmas and Ho Ho Ho to you TJ. May your sojourn on Bali be a happy finale to 2008. Much awaits us in 2009. Regarding your: Message 25270310 Yes, platinum, gold, QCOM GLD US$ yen, Kiwi$ and all the rest continue to drift in the wind and waves of financial relativity theory like flotsam in a Force 5 hurricane. So far so good, for me. Yes, it could have been better still if I had done the big short of HOV, TOL, FNM etc in 2007 as was highly tempting but that's life. It's fun to see the bouncing. NZ$ bounced up 15% in one go as US$ bounced down [though "bounce" is used as in dead cat]. Backing state-run fiat currencies has not seemed a good idea to me for over a decade though I have found myself in that position for 8 years now and not a bad thing it has been either. I'm working on their demise and my prototype is coming along nicely. Yes, it does seem that Taiwan and China are more likely to swap assets than explosives and that is an excellent thing to be encouraged. I suspect that Chen is not as criminal as is made out. It seems more likely to be "Victor's Laws" than real crimes, though given the propensity of those who seek power to leap any bounds, it wouldn't surprise me if he did pocket some change. Meanwhile, China should continue to enjoy some growth in 2008 as the competition for oil, coal, uranium, steel, timber and other resources and products reduces and the population continues to operate in relatively capitalist ways compared with the shambles of Mao's Maelstrom and the subsequent decades. China's main economic impetus has come from deciding to work for low pay for Foreign Devils again after nearly a century of chaos, war and communism, just as I got a personal GDP per capita increase when I decided to work for low pay for foreigners [in Canada, UK, Belgium]. It's an excellent strategy. Having done that, China now has sufficient productive capacity and knowledge base to produce for themselves, which is fortunate now that their main customer has gone bung. So yes, GDP growth should continue apace in China [even if not as apace as when debt was piling up wall to wall in the "rich" West]. That's a good thing because apart from wealth being inherently a good thing, they will be disposed to, and able to, buy loads of 450MHz and other OFDM/CDMA phragmented photon mobile cyberspace from me. It would NOT be a good thing if China and Taiwan were doing stupid things with explosives [or even just trade restrictions]. Incidentally, RoamAD [a little NZ company I invested in] has sold a Wi-Fi system to a nuclear power station in Taiwan. I much prefer to be selling such things than seeing the power station bombed. Life is better when megalomaniacs like China's bosses avoid going totally feral. Even if totally wealthy, drinking gold leaf seems a dopey thing to do, but each to their own. I have been known to spend a lot more than one QCOM share on equally pointless things - it's the curse of humans to do dopey things in the interest of "fun". It's annoying to see the "stimulus" and "rescue" and "free car factory" ideas of wastrel politicians as though them spending money will achieve anything worthwhile. Having wrecked things, they now presume to fix them. Expecting a bull in a China shop to make good the damage it did is foolish. Ironically, socialists of the world are ranting "See, capitalism doesn't work. We need regulation by we socialists and then things will be great. We told you so. Nyah, nyah, nyah." They don't see the nexus of their ideologies to the failures. Also, amusingly, people are saying that our great and estimable idol Alan Green$pan KBE admitted he got it wrong. But they don't read the fine print and all he said was he was shocked that shareholders and others with capital at risk took such little interest in not having their capital destroyed by excessive risk. It's not possible to legislate against people going nuts and destroying their capital through risky ideas, especially when the riskiness is largely inflicted by governments, compulsorily. But socialists will give it a go, and thereby make things even worse, leading inexorably to the dark interregnum you mention, if we are unlucky, which seems increasingly likely. Gung Ho, Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (70820)	12/21/2008 9:46:49 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Good evening TJ, I see that China Inc. is buying up some useful shiny pebbles... China launches metal stock build with first indium buy malaysia.news.yahoo.com Reuters - Saturday, December 20 By Polly Yam HONG KONG, Dec 19 - China launched its drive to dramatically expand government metal stockpiles this week, buying indium for the first time ever and starting negotiations to add to zinc and aluminium inventories, sources said on Friday. The campaign may gather pace in the coming days as the State Reserves Bureau, which is responsible for buying and managing the country's metals reserves, aims to soak up domestic surpluses and keep Chinese smelters operating as a sharp economic slowdown quashes demand. The SRB bought 30 tonnes of indium -- a minor metal used in making LCD screens -- from a large Chinese smelter on Wednesday, a trade source familiar with the deal said on Friday. China is the world's top producer of indium, a by-product of zinc output. Smelter officials said the SRB is expected to start buying zinc and aluminium soon from Chinese smelters and the domestic spot market, given prices were touching the bottom. That spurred growing speculation that copper could be next. "The SRB has informed smelters of the buying plan," an official at a large zinc smelter said. "We understand that the SRB plans to buy 300,000 tonnes." The indium deal, a first for the SRB, represents the equivalent of about 6 percent of the 510 tonnes of global indium output last year, figures from the U.S. Geological Survey showed. Spot indium in Shanghai traded at about 2,000 yuan a kg, or about 2 million yuan per tonne on Friday. The SRB is expected to buy more indium from smelters or the domestic spot market in coming weeks, the source said. Top zinc smelters Zhuzhou Smelter <600961.SS> and Huludao Zinc <000751.SZ> are also the two biggest indium producers in the country. Zinc is up next, potentially bringing relief to smelters who have failed to shore up prices since they began cutting production since October. But demand has fallen even quicker, causing a commercial inventories to rise as high as 300,000 tonnes, nearly one month's production in the world's top producer. "The plan has been kicked off," the source said. "Smelters are entering into a stage of signing contracts ." The National Development and Reform Commission, which controls the SRB, is believed to have agreed to buy primary aluminium from smelters in principle, industry sources said. The state planner has requested large aluminium smelters to enlarge their production cuts to help trim the surplus, in return the SRB could buy between 1 and 2 million tonnes of metal in coming months, a smelter official said. About 1.4 million tonnes of primary aluminium are estimated to be sitting at private and public warehouses and smelters' yards, smelter officials and traders have said. The stocks may rise to 2 million tonnes in February, given the weaker demand in January as many end-users close or slow production during the Chinese New Year, which falls on Jan 26. Copper may be the next metal the SRB would buy, given the surplus is smaller than zinc and aluminium, while a copper smelter source said such purchase, if proceeded, could reach at least 700,000 tonnes. He added 400,000 tonnes of the total might come from Jiangxi Copper <0358.HK><600362.SS>. Pan Qifang, Jiangxi Copper's spokesman, said the largest copper producer in China had not received a written request for the state buying, but encouraged the central government to buy copper as the country was short of the resource. "We believe now is the good time to buy copper," Pan told Reuters on Friday. "The buying should come from imports." A director at the trade department of Yunnan Tin <000960.SZ>, the country's top tin producer, said the firm was working on submitting information to the central government's plan to buy metals reserves from smelters.