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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (71185)	3/5/2009 4:15:06 AM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Respond to of 74559

Blessed? Challenges and survival are definitely interesting. It could be quite boring if everything was simple success and there was no struggle. On the other hand, I consider it a good thing that WWI and WWII and many other carnages were conducted well away from me. My preference is for things to be done well and nothing going wrong. But that has never been. The mess certainly makes lots of opportunity. Tarken-san is up 1000% from this time a year ago thanks to shorting sundry financial stocks including Wells Fargo which Warren Buffett seemed to think was a good buy. Tarken-san thought that the followers of Warren made it an even better short by boosting the price right up to the mid $30s. As you know, I am more staid and my profitable but unspectacular [these days] QCOM remains my main investment. In NZ$, I'm ahead of this time last year [not counting Zenbu which is unvalued but going very well and ahead of expectations]. When you were ranting against HOV, TOL and co, I was within a whisker of shorting the lot right at the peak, and it was only my excessive caution which stopped me making quite a bundle. I had looked around San Diego area real estate and it looked like at least twice the price that I considered reasonable. A fall was obvious. New Zealand too! Prices have barely started falling here though apartment prices are leading the way down. In US$ house "owners" here have halved their house price. Since swarms have nearly 100% loans, their equity has been ripped to shreds. In NZ$, house prices have only dropped about 15%. Look out below! As 30:1 leveraged hedge funds are unwound, along with other mountains of debt, there is quite a deflationary process possible, though Big Ben said long ago that he controls the printing press and helicopter fleets and there will NOT be deflation. We should take him, as with Islamic Jihad, at his word. 2009 should involve a LOT of fun. Blessed? Certainly it is an amazing time. While the most incredible development in biological history [cyberspace with brainpower and even sentience] takes place almost unnoticed [by nearly everyone], the gargantuan financial catastrophe proceeds apace too. A Turing test of cyberspace draws more than the equivalent of a game of Pong now. Along with great catastrophe comes great opportunity. I am happy to accept the increased dividend QCOM announced yesterday. Not many companies are announcing increased dividends, increased profits, greater revenue, better prospects, new ventures, new gains, great new technologies [Mirasol for example]. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (71185)	3/20/2009 5:15:56 AM
From: shades	3 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

The Fed is Worthless? voxeu.org Do the advocates of the risk-is-holy view really believe that we were better off in a real free-market era when interbank rates could move from 4 percent to 60 percent from one month to the next (as happened in 1873)? And how long do they think such a system would last? It was, after all, the intolerable stresses caused by financial panics that ultimately led to the founding of the Federal Reserve, in the face of adamant opposition from people holding financial-markets-are-perfect, believe-me-not-your-lying-eyes views that are eerily similar to dogmas that continue to be propounded today. The panic of 1907, in which J.P. Morgan effectively stepped in as a private lender of last resort, constituted the last straw for the unregulated financial system that preceded the managing of risky rates that we have had since the creation of the Fed. A less extreme version of essentially the same dogma states that while it is acceptable for the central bank to suppress the aggregate risk that would otherwise roil short-term interest rates, the Fed should ignore all other manifestations of financial risk. It is, if anything, harder to construct a coherent economic justification of this point of view than of the strict destructionist view that says the Fed should not exist at all. But there is, at least, a perception that this way of operating is hallowed by time and practice: Since the Fed, the story goes, has spent most of its history ignoring risk, it shouldn’t change that now. Perhaps General Chen this is a myopic western viewpoint, what does one of your asian friends say? Luo Ping, a director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said after a speech in New York that China would continue to buy Treasuries in spite of its misgivings about US finances. Mr Luo, speaking at the Global Association of Risk Management’s 10th Annual Risk Management Convention, said: “Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold?” he asked. “Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.” Mr Luo, whose English tends toward the colloquial, added: “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.” Throw your little shiny rock at the big US tank all you want, until your military surpasses the USA, which may happen many years from now, the status quo is not going to break anytime soon. Gold Dreams are for suckas nicca. youtube.com 6 minutes in bro. Wiemar Germany had no real military to speak of, USA is a long way from that point. Unfounded fear and panic, if your grandpa was half the statesman you claim, I think he may be rolling in his grave at your chickenlittle sillyness. Posted over ethereal bits flying through qcom chips - buying gold mines doesn't make the world a better place - who does Paulson call if south africa nationalizes the gold mine he just bought? Is the chinese military going to come in and stop the pirates?