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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (67624)	10/21/2009 4:51:30 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78407

Hi Rootwad: Thanks for the reply. Getting the views and observations of other investors is one of the benefits of the web. While I earnestly hope you are right, that there are signs that the "excesses" (which I take to mean excess inventories) may be slowly working down, my own assessment is much more pessimistic. How so? To begin with, every form of goods transportation (trains, planes, trucks, container ships, etc) continue to report falling revenues and wilting activity. They are all down double digit percentages over last year and last year was a horror show. Then too, in spite of a variety of government efforts to stem the foreclosure tide, residential real estate inventories simply refuse to decline.... and more pressure is just around the corner (ARMS mortgage ratchet-ups, folks who have run through even their "extended unemployment benefits", etc.). Commercial real estate is a dead body just rising to the surface and it may be an even bigger bust than its residential cousin. Worse still, unemployment, (the key item from my perspective) continues to grind upward (recent estimates suggest the USA has lost over 7.o million jobs since this "recession" commenced). The USA economy relies heavily on consumer spending. Unfortunately, Joe Six-Pack has relied on borrowed bucks for this past decade and now he is "debted-out". Even if he still had a bit of borrowing room, the banks won't lend to him. Now he is frightened (and should be). In fact, consumer savings rates are rising fast and Joe's current motivation appears to be focussed on reducing his debts. Yes, the government has poured godzillions of bucks into the system, (and indeed some of it has leaked into the stock markets), but most of it has been pushed by the Fed to the banks, which have in turn, simply wired the dough back to the FED (a no-brainer way to heal their trashed balance sheets). Personally, I think we are about to enter "stage two" of this developing depression. We have had the initial downward spike as well as the typical 50% retracement. If I am correct, we can expect an even nastier slide to lower lows in the near term. Most market players believe that if we can get through the normal "worrisome months" of September and October, then we will enjoy a happy sail into Spring.... and maybe they are right, but I doubt it. Markets rarely do what is expected of them. At this end, the hatches are heavily battened down for "early winter storms". Best, Earlie