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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amelia Carhartt who wrote (15375)	12/10/2008 4:35:07 PM
From: Don Earl	Respond to of 71447

Well, I did take a few minutes to call my bank to find out if there was any exposure to treasuries. They said no. In line with other recent posts, I agree with the sentiment that people should be fighting mad over what has been taking place in the markets in general. It's one thing for a person to enter the markets and accept the risks involved with their eyes open. It's an entirely different matter to expose those who have intentionally avoided market risks. I won't weep alligator tears for those who keep their retirement accounts in stocks, but there's a whole world of difference between that and using people's savings to make the riskiest investments imaginable. The same goes for market manipulation of basic necessities like food and energy. On the latter, I have yet to see anyone talk about how much manipulation of commodity prices contributed to the housing market crash. I broke ground on a new house in early 2003. By the middle of 2003, the cost of building material had skyrocketed. Plywood, for example, was up on the order of 300-400%. Anything made of steel doubled almost overnight. Sheetrock went up 250%. Everything else was up at least 50%. The price of homes went up accordingly, but it was less a bubble effect than it was the basic economic necessity of having to charge more for a finished product when the cost of materials goes up. Going into 2006, the cost of materials dropped and the price of homes dropped right along with it. The rest is history, but I doubt you'll ever see a word in print by any economist that blames the rise and fall of home values on manipulation of commodity prices.