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To: loantech who wrote (62882)	1/15/2009 9:27:45 AM
From: Valuepro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78419

Good points, and thanks for the news and personal observations, loantech. Question. If the M-1 multiplier is less than 1, can not this just be reflecting a short period of negative growth, as can happen within a recession? VP in AZ

To: loantech who wrote (62882)	1/15/2009 10:06:52 AM
From: shakes	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78419

Loantech, Outstanding, rational commentary ref. the $US, the Chinese and Paulson, commodities, POO, POG and POS: From MexicoMike on LeMetropole last evening: Hi Bill! I have been doing some thinking lately, which is never a good thing todo in a rigged market. Thinking implies rational behaviour and anykind of rational behaviour in this market is very contrarian indeed. See, what stands out here is the only thing that is rising today is the US dollar. How can that be? How can all of the data coming in be so bearish that stocks are getting crushed and commodities are selling off, yet somehow in that there is good news for the dollar? Yes, we can debate the scenario in which the dollar strength is a flight to safety, or that a short squeeze in the dollar is driving the trading as traders close spec positions from other currency transactions...Supposedly this has been a factor for many months and perhaps there is some truth to that. But I find it hard to believe in any legitimate market drivers these days, since this is an era of unprecedented interference and manipulation. Rather than allow the market to function normally, there is an agenda to corrupt the trading and generate false signals. It has been documented for years in the gold and silver pits. We have also been told that it is of national interest for direct government intervention from time to time in the currency markets. And recently Bush candidly explained that he approved of further direct intervention to 'stabilize' the markets during the worst of the meltdown last year. So what has emerged is that we can no longer consider intervention as an anomaly. It is no longer the forbidden territory of the conspiracy theorists to point out that our markets are fixed, managed, corrupted, rigged, etc. This information is right out there in real time in mainstream disclosure for anyone to acknowledge. There is a precedent to all of this of course. When the government began to fudge the numbers on key economic data, the age of truth and free market behaviour effectively came to an end. Rather than allow the facts on unemployment to be disclosed for example, the calculations were tampered with to understate the real circumstances, and trick the market response. Rather than present true consumer price data, these numbers are constantly revised and cooked such that inflation is understated, and again the net effect is to create a market response that is out of line with the true reality. Up and down the line we have been subjected to a deliberate campaign of information management to sabotage the normal market behaviour. Why should it be a stretch to assume that if we have direct intervention in some sectors of the market, and we have deliberate lying and propaganda efforts clouding the truth for economic data reporting, that the entire functioning of our market is not also compromised from top to bottom to fit in an agenda on behalf of our government? Why should we be shocked to note that the regulators as appointed by government are not doing their job to expose the government corruption on their watch? So as I connect these dots, the counterintuitive behaviour that we observe is actually a logical progression of the agenda that has been cooked up. We know that senior government officials from the US and China met in the summer of 2008 to discuss the alarming deterioration of the dollar, after sharp criticism had been expressed and suggestions were uttered that the Chinese may pull support. Shortly thereafter, we suddenly witnessed a complete reversal in market direction, with commodity prices plunging and sudden strength in the dollar which has continued to this day. Never mind all of the facts and data that have come to light since that time. It seems the mother of all interventions was hatched and what we are now seeing is the scam playing out, free markets be damned. The deal to increase the strength of the dollar to preserve the value of the huge foreign-ex holdings of the Chinese, while suppressing all commodity prices, has in effect granted the Chinese a 'blue light special' to exchange some of their dollars for cheap commodities that they will need for the future growth of their country. Even a small chunk of the dollars held by the Chinese could buy up large chunks of gold, oil, copper, etc. This is a much more orderly transition than if the Chinese had simply started a stampede out of the dollar to buy up whatever they could while the commodities were priced at the top of the bull market range. And for the US, they were able to buy time. By propping up artificial dollar strength and triggering a flight out of commodities, hedge fund liquidation, and a crisis mentality on Wall Street that allowed all sorts of other intervention to pass (think about the unprecedented restriction on shorting financial stocks that was hatched during this time) the government agenda to control the markets was spectacularly successful. This week the Chinese reported that they are building up oil reserves and that oil imports in December climbed 147% from the levels of November. Now look up the price for oil since the plan to support the dollar was launched, and in particular note the behaviour of oil itself during December, even with all of that Chinese buying underway. The Chinese got a good deal for playing along with the scam, buying oil at $40 a barrel with stronger dollars. No doubt there are other transactions going on as well that have not been reported yet. I am waiting to see that a buying surge in copper and base metals will also be reported shortly, all of this going on while commodity investors have been bled white and are closing positions for massive losses. The confluence of events and the way things have gone down so perfectly timed to fit the agenda are just too obvious for me to ignore. Perhaps I have become so jaded by the corruption of our market system that I no longer believe in any normal functioning. Years ago the markets were the response mechanism where economic inputs were discounted and investors could allocate capital in response. Now, the markets appear to be a blunt instrument to force investors to deploy capital along prescribed bubbles in order to create economic conditions as part of an agenda. Information is managed and circulated to achieve an outcome. The rules of the system are changed arbitrarily and money is created and injected in staggering quantities to drive investment flow. I think the system is now broken beyond repair. I would like to believe that all of this was a final act of desperation, that it was somehow the lesser evil to rig everything and hope for the best because the wheels were going to fall off anyway when the derivative mess started to blow up. Instead, we have lost the moral authority in our own leadership. We can no longer trust the people who are granted stewardship of our capital markets. A small, connected elite has been given priority over the rest of the country that is left holding the bag. Without the confidence and trust in our leadership, how can we pull together and make the sacrifices that will be necessary to recover when the consequences of these decisions finally and decisively hit home? I am deeply discouraged with all that we have been through in the last year. If I am right in the way that I have connected the dots, we face a difficult time ahead, and much worse for our society than if the government had just done their jobs in the first place and allowed the market to work its way through the situation. My only confidence now comes from owning physical gold and silver since I know that the value of the metals will survive when most other 'assets' are hammered in the aftermath of all of this. I think we all need to buckle up because it looks like things will get worse before they get better. cheers! MexicoMike