Today is the canonical birthday of George Washington, that remarkable man who did so much to create the United States of America. Reading a biography of his gives one much insight on how this nation was created out of wilderness to become the world's leading bastion of freedom for over 300 years. And it was wilderness. The accounts of a 21 year old Washington traveling from Williamburg, Virginia on instructions from the Governor to parlay with the French near Lake Eire shows great hardship and efforts.
The Crown in London had ordered the Governor to stop French expansion into the Ohio country. Accounts of Virginia's assembly questioning and even limiting the British appointed governor's requests for funds and authorization for militia shows how the Crown's commands were quite foreign to pioneers who had effective independence for nearly 100 years. [See my blog post of July 4, 2007 for further thoughts on theory.] The correlation of forces leading to American independence was increasing even in the early 1750s. The seeds of freedom and independence had germinated and grown much on America's fecund lands.
So I recommend reading one of the many fine biographies of George Washington in remembrance of him on this day. John Marshall's is a good start as that author knew Washington personally. I am currently reading "All Cloudless Glory", a two volume set that seems very thorough.
Market
More yo-yo action as the bears were imbued with energy by the not unexpectedly poor Philly Fed index. That index's poor reading set off a bad wave of selling one month ago and the bears used it Thursady to try the darkside again. They are searching for sellers lower and trying to create more panic so they can cover shorts lower. Time will tell. Recent caution gave clues that there are real buyers lower, however. Be patient. Buy dips in good groups as they are pummeled in bear raids.
I am still slowly selling gold, using the funds to buy index ETFs in my Krypto Fund. If silver can put in a few days over $18, I'll start selling it, too. I still need to sell a lot to get my gold & silver asset allocation down to 10% in my Krypto Fund.
I also sold 1/2 of PCU yesterday for a 125% LT gain. That stock's LT gains date was hit in January, but the stock was depressed by a bear raid then. I just had too much exposure to copper. I still think PCU gets taken over at $150, and that copper will go to $5. But I try to practice risk management, too, and take partial sugar on rips.
Words of the Day
"Truculent" - adj [$10] - the first syllable is pronounced like "truck"
"Truculent" means 1. feeling or displaying ferocity; 2. deadly, destructive; 3. scathingly harsh; 4. aggressively self-assertive.
Sentence: Will Hillary resort to the usual Clintonian truculent campaign style to close ground with Obama ?
"Tergiversate" - verb, intransitive [$10]
"Tergiversate" means 1. be apostate; change one's party or principals; 2. equivocate; make conflicting or evasive statements; 3. turn one's back on something.
Sentence: As more and more Democratic superdelegates tergiversate on their prior support for Hillary, the likelihood of Obama becoming the party's nominee increases.
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Breaking News from MoneyNews.com
Stagflation is Here. We First Warned You.
Rising food and energy prices, a brutally slow economy, gold setting records.
If this all seems familiar, it’s because we have seen this before — in the 1970s.
Stagflation, that curious phenomenon where inflation rises even as the economy falters, is upon us at last. It’s the lead story in the major financial media now, but the Financial Intelligence Report (FIR), a monthly newsletter published by Newsmax Media, warned its readers of coming stagflation in April 2007.
This time last year our Financial Intelligence Report made some bold predictions for 2007, and hit the bulls-eye on almost every one including skyrocketing gold, crashing dollar, sub-prime crash, credit crunch and more.
FIR called the coming recession as early as January of that year, warning that the end of a historic and massive liquidity boom already could be felt in 2006.
It would just take time for Wall Street to figure out what Main Street already knew: Prices were rising, and assets were falling. Now the facts are getting to be too hard to ignore.
Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times led their business coverage Wednesday with the dreaded "S-word.”
The Journal cited Labor Department figures showing consumer prices up 4.3 percent in the past 12 months, rising to almost a 16-year high. Removing food energy, prices are still up 2.5 percent, a 10-month high.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has lowered its growth forecast between 1.3 percent and 2 percent. Ominously, the monetary authority hinted that even this figure might be too optimistic.
What’s going on?
As FIR predicted, housing has crashed and will continue to crash well into 2008. What’s open to debate is not the decline but its severity as literally millions of homes enter into foreclosure proceedings.
Editor’s Note: Learn what stagflation will mean for your job, income, savings and investments and five urgent steps to take immediately to protect yourself.
U.S. consumers, too, after years of living on cheap money, have finally run out of room on their credit cards. No more cheap home equity loans to cover it. Worse, no more loans at all for many, even if they might have qualified for it just a few months ago.
But it takes more than that, given the overall size of the U.S. economy. A further damper on the economy has been the ridiculous amounts of leverage Wall Street has managed to provide itself.
By shoveling thousands of questionable mortgages off into opaque investment securities known as collateralized debt obligations, banks were able to pass off iffy loans as top-rated, "safe” investments for mutual funds and other institutional investors.
Problem is, most of those investors are traditional "widows and orphans” vehicles meant to be ultra-safe sources of income, not speculative playthings.
Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of these securities are in doubt, which has rocked the stock market and forced companies with otherwise reasonable earnings prospects to pull back — to hire less and invest less.
Consumers are frightened too. Retailers are feeling it first, with bankruptcies among brand names like Sharper Image and Lillian Vernon hitting the headlines now. Larger retailers are reporting big losses.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is dumping in money as fast as it can to almost no avail. Rate cuts down to 3 percent have had little effect other than to prop up stock prices to their most recent, weak close -– promptly followed by fresh lows.
Banks have that money, of course, but they are squirreling it away into reserves, not lending it out. The Fed is riding the gas, but the lenders are riding the brake.
The result is noisy, confusing stall, a stand-off where no one can win.
Editor’s Note: Special: Why the Real Inflation Rate is Closer to 10%
On the inflation front, the U.S. has even less control over matters — for the first time in modern economic history.
Once upon a time, the United States was the source of most inflation. As the world’s single largest market economy, if Americans ate more, drove more, bought more clothing or toys, then prices rose.
That has changed. The world’s poor are finally coming into their own as consumers are exchanging rice for chicken and chicken for beef, buying motorcycles instead of bicycles, even going straight to cars.
Chinese and Indian industrial giants are moving across the planet, digging up iron for bridges, copper for wiring, oil for everything. Commodities prices shatter records nearly every day now.
Those twin factors, better diets and rising global economies, are pushing up prices for wheat, for minerals, for crude oil — even simple things made from oil like plastic bags and milk jugs, all are rising fast.
In a normal, "pre-global” economy, the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates and choke off U.S. growth. Not anymore.
China and India are both highly dependent on the United States as a customer, but they do have internal economies and other export customers. Unless one or both overheat on their own, there’s no guarantee that rising consumption abroad won’t simply continue to accelerate inflation here.
Even so, there’s no sign that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is really even concerned about inflation. He and the rate-setting committee at the Fed talk about it, but then hint that more rate cuts are possible.
Bernanke is caught in the same vise as the rest of us: pure and simple stagflation, albeit for a host of utterly new reasons.
Bernanke, unfortunately, has two birds to hit but just one bullet. So far, he’s been aiming to hit the recession on the expectation that inflation will sort itself out.
If the U.S. economy slows dramatically enough, and the Chinese manage to cool their own economy without crashing it, maybe that will happen. Just maybe.
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good morning. BIG day! DT time
thoughts bman?
what's wrong with drinking tea? in fact i prefer tea over coffee......i drink coffee on workdays to get jump-started in the am.....but on the weekends and vacations....tea....english style with milk and sugar.....twinnings or darjeeling are good
croissants are tasty......french breads and pastries are delicious......american breads are nasty
your ohio diner/deli? no chance i'd ever step foot in that place let alone eat in it........the food there prolly tastes like the diner vincent laguardia gambini ate grits at.....(what movie?)
my cuz vinny
man is marisa tomei still soooooooooo very hot!
constanza blew it with her.
i dont know if she deserved the oscar for that, but the seen when she was in bed with pesci and said something like "it has been callobrated to be dead on balls accurate" gave me half a chubby.
ruth cris. people eating less buttered cover meat?
golfing biz down
michelin raising prices.
hmmmmmmmm
u dont need to eat at ruth cris, u dont need to play golf. u do need tires. and while michelins r the most expensive i bet the 2nd and 3rd tier tire follow suit.
the Oman is a gold-plated duplicitous disingenuous partisan phony!
why do i say that?
he constantly calls Hillary dishonest and a crook
well.....let's examine the record of his candidate john mccain
Mccain looted the taxpayers and investors billion and billions in the S&L scam.......he was part of the Keating 5....."i made a poor judgement".....lolololol.......he got censured by the senate's ethics committee.......you really have to be a 100000% thief and liar for that to happen
when he was chairman of the commerce committee...he admits he was too close to the lobbyists ..."another poor judgement"........he regularly traveled on the private jets of the lobbyists ("i never did any special favors in return".....gimme a fucking break.......now we know.....he was gettin blow jobs on these jets by female lobbysists ...in return they got friendly legislation that looted the taxpayer billions
what does the Oman constantly say about Hillary? " a thief never changes his colors" ....ok.....so mccain was a crook and is a crook
mccain has always been in the pockets of the "rich and powerful" lobbysists........and also in their panties apparently
but we already knew politicians are crooks...nuthin new here
now we know that the Oman's outrage is phony .......the Oman is a fraud
mccain been more honest with america this campaign than hildog!
u lucky she lost to obama.
he wud have smoked her.
obama is the next president
finally saw High Noon last nite
great flic
hillary = marshall will kane
no doubt about that
PS......i'll play the role of grace kelly.......i shhot the scumbags in the back if i have to
oh Abud, you protest too much. MCCain is an honest man. Hillary is a pathological liar & crook.
Hmmm a Tyson food exec has $140,000 in cash in a suitcase in his house ...hmmm ... maybe a cash contribution to Hillary or the Clinton Founddation ???
sheesh mern, that MoneyNews post was a bunch of fearmongering crap.
Sheesh, the monetary base is still almost flat and they say the Fed is dumping in money ? Are they lying or just stupid ?
you don't like American country cooking, Abud ? ;-)
Mmmm grits are very tasty with a dollop of butter.
odd re McCain that the accusers never have a specific fact to point to - it's always a smear or innuendo.
jimmie nice call on gold stocks...what a charlatan....is that a $10 word moderator?
great im 99% sure i failed
took a test after i left and failed
I WANT TO KILL MYSELF!
QQQQ the wedge is broken, a break of 43 measures to 39.50.
Dear Bunkerman,
DO you think stocks cheap here?
Thank you sir.
Your obedient reader
SPY wedge break measures to 125...think the 133 needs to go to confirm.
Bud are you implying that I am a sycophant? or a toadie? certain $10 words there sir...
not for me, mfl, but perhaps for some.
i'm sayin that you guys all worship the Oman like he's a moral arbiter and defender of the common man
i proved today that he is just as greedy as the 'rich and poerful' he rants and rails against
his only interest is his personal financial interest.....common man be damned
PS.....nuthin wrong with bein greedy.....i am greedy myself.....but i don't pretend to be anythin different
Oman is a hypocrite
i am not greedy
can a nga catch a friggin break?
NOPE!
Bud why this constant need to traduce Bunkerman??
QQQQ 43.05...the bears in fear of pressing this tape to where it needs to go...I attribute this to that pinko nazi king of the state of NY...he has decided that it is his job to maintain the investment grade ratings for the monolines...what a scam...protect his rich and powerful contributors in a last ditch effort to save a failing poltical career...the end game is hyper infaltion, the death sentence of the common man.
Bunkerman, by comparison is a saint, an understanding man who cares about the common man...that is until one attempts to breech compound secruity, then he would grease the tracks of his tank with thier guts :)
i dunno what transduce mean
but perhaps i am a bit too ruff with the Oman
i'm sorry
Oman please don't cry .......i never thought you were a weak-ass wimp like frosty......now he's a real cry-baby bitch
good one, spin - I had to look up that $10 word again :-)
That would have fit in well as a word of the day today.
"Abud's truculence in the face of Bunkerman's clean reasoning and facts perhaps shows he is worried he might be forced logically to tergiversate and accept Bunkerman's thinking on many subjects, so he resorts to emotionally and irrationally traducing Bunkerman."
;-)))))) This is fun !
This weekend I think I need a refresher on the 'duces and the 'jures and maybe other word groups.
is this a recession?
Existentially, no. Perceptually, perhaps.
;-))
did you hear that frosty?
Oman finally took his head out of the sand
may have to start callin him the "Bman" again
i guess even ostriches can feel the earthquakes
American banks are in ruins
the tsunami has yet to hit our financial system
i'm warning y'all......you have time......run for cover
Not changing my opinion, Abud, but I recognize many others can be wrong and "think" it's a recession, hence the "perceptually". This is the long debate of perception vs. reality, or more precisely, the epistemological trichotomy of empirical knowledge, perceived knowledge and conceived knowledge.
:-)))
uh Bud...I heard bunkerman loud and clear...I think he said you mock what you don't understand...that his critical analysis of the so called facts has you doubting yourself...causing you to lash out.
How dare you attempt to suck up to me...you really are disgusting.
A problem many people have is they simply don't understand the extent and redundancy of the financial intermediaries in a late 20th century western economy. All this focus on the banking system deludes them into thinking that "all" losses and problems are there and that all credit and capital comes from "banks". That's been wrong for 30 years. Since I spent 25 years rasing money from institutional investors and almost none of that came from "banks", I think I understand the resiliency of the system.
I invested in teh big banks since I think they will be able to raise prices adn gain market shre after this ends. Many of the nimble, cheaper competitors will be out of business. So the big banks will scoop up the business. For example, who do you think will make the money from refinancing all this auction rate municipal financing - the big banks.
Similary the home mortgage business. All those little mortgage brokers and bankers will be out of business. The big banks will get more business and will be able to make more profits on it, in my thinking.
The 1998 party at Jose Canseco's house in Miami may have started out as a gathering of friends and family. It has turned into an event worthy of congressional testimony and a source of "evidence."
There is a photo of Roger Clemens at Canseco's house during the June 1998 party, according to the New York Daily News -- a photo that would contradict Clemens' sworn testimony that he never attended the party.
Clemens has repeatedly denied being at Canseco's house for that event. But a young man has a photo of Clemens at the party, according to the Daily News. The man was just 11 years old at the time of the party, taking photos of various baseball players in attendance.
Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, has said he turned over evidence to congressional lawyers, including an affidavit from Canseco, proving Clemens didn't attend Canseco's party.
MAYBE IF ROCKET IS LUCKY, JOSE WILL BE HIS CELL MATE.
but bush will pardon rog, probably not bonds, tejada or jose. they aint white from texas.
i wonder how much cash rocket gave jose to lie?
not like u can wire transfer or cut him a check.
jose needs money. im thinking about 100 grand got jose to lie for rocket.
or maybe rocket just gave jose some gold bars.
;-)
BOY IT LOOKS BAD FOR ROCKET AFTER THIS. lying on a few things and witness tampering. no hall of fame. maybe stripped of cy youngs.
i wasn't aware that Oman hired frosty as his attorney
just read the nannys depo.
she was smart enuff not to lie.
she didnt know or remember.
i thought hardin said she said he wasnt there. imagine that, hardin lied!
her depo is only 27 pages.
she flip flops, but never commits to anything other than canseco didnt even have a party.
bye bye rog
Mern...if you fail the drug test you can still get that job...tell them via the interview process you became aware of information that would be of interest to the FBI...they interviewed you so they must certainly know that are completely insane...job search 101 indeed.
Looks like the AAPL double load print is coming soon...
they know you are insane...use it.
Esteban.............muy bonita senor
AAPL is finished
90 seems like the resting spot
what r u talking about frosty.
i saw plenty of illegal crap at the rogue broker.
BSC, only crime, that i cud see, is they r lazy morons.
tell em uuuhhh..I had a hammm sammy with poppy seeds......could that be it sir?????...I dont even drink sir!!
anyway i dont fly like that.
i really like being honest.
marijuana being illegal is the dumbest thing i can think of.
imo, alcohol, prozac, ambien, cigs, cigars, coffee, sugar, etc etc etc r ALL much much much worse for the body that something that grows out of the ground, smells great, tastes great is less filing and to be totally blunt is one beautiful plant to look at. yes i get a chubby when i look at high times, and my eyes water.
recuirter asked the samething thing my response was im not elaine benace.
im sticking with jerk store!
JERK STORE!
not i slept with his wife, JERK STORE.
and jerk store is, i was in amsterdamn in late august, and when in roman smoke pot and hash.
thats my lie and im sticking to it. even though that is true. i smoked a little between august and today, but just not in weeks.
if i was a coke head i wud be clean in a week. samething for every other drug they tested me for, that i dont do, ever.
recuiter says "its just a little weed" i can still get u in. u may have to pee every month for 3 to 6 months, but i am getting u that job.
going 6 months without oxygen wud suck!
better to go with the flow, mern and switch to beer/wine forever.
watching a real funny movie
"flirt with disaster"
ben stiller, alan alda, lilly tomlin, teai loni.
love the line
"nothing like the cruel exceptness of a casual invitation"
"droaning mona" a must see, imo
I wonder if I should go to a triple load at 107; that price is so insane.
hold me back, frosty ... I feel buck fever coming on.
i got the better part down pretty damn gud. in fact im going to the watering hole know.
beer, as well, never told me to stop smoking weed or stopped taking the pill without telling me.
beers says "its ok merny, drink up, smoke up, pop pills. u been at this over 20 yrs, i aint gonna let u down, aka heath ledger"
my liver is irish, therefore extra tuff. in fact irish folk consider it a muscle, that needs to be worked daily.
TOP OF THE MORNING TO U.
who wants an irish rose? aka a drippy wet FART!
now i will vote for obama. he mite make the weed legal or not illegal.
see how much of this is BS. u only vote for what u want, not what is best for the country or the world.
i still think if the world wants to make, we need a lot of glass in the middle east.
the world is over populated. reading how fast the amazon forest is being train wrecked. i dont care about the global warming but like smith said in the matrix humans r a virus, a disease. at some point there r just too many of us, and it will be impossible for most people to live a decent life.
like the SP episode the other nite when people came back from the future to take everyones jobs for 10 cents an hour. world was so overpopulated in 3035, everyone was poor.
"THEY DONE TOOK R JOBS!"
we either need to kill the muslims or the catholics.
muslims seem more crazy but maybe we can cut a deal with russia and china and wax em both!
since i was raised catholic i guess that means im out.
oh well, its for the better of the world. ill take a bullet
Mccain caught in a lie?
A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.
McCain claimedthat he had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.
But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK.
he's a pathological liar
"a crook never changes his colors"
now we know why frosty hates mccain......he's a corrupt politician who steals from the taxpayer in exchange for blow jobs
mccain is a scumbag
what a joke this ABK bailout is....
SKF OUT....PPT right on time...firday at the last support level....oh brother.
MBI 11.40
uh mfl............you sound like zeta
lololol zeta...he must be very pissed off right now....i wonder what he'll have to talk about now.....
Nazi's in the house.
Hmm ... I was reading Faust. Sounds appropriate.
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
thanks everyone and have a good weekend
sounds like a CFC type force takeover. Bears beat teh company soo much it has to sell out for peanuts. Then the buyers get great assets for zippo.
Then in nine months, the truth comes out that teh real losses were much less than the screechers were hwoling.
Oh well, that's hardball, I guess.
A snowy evening, a fine martini, and thou !
Not you, Bud. I mean Mrs. B.
;-))))
Have a good weekend.
hmmm looks like DNA shorts will lose one nut this weekend. Shucks.
Great job this week BunkSquad!!......Rocks on Spinny!!!
hmmm today is another up reversal on high volume.
So that means the beefer bears were pressing shorts, and real buyers slowly were hitting offers lower; then the news hits re ABK and bears have to cover, so market closes higher.
Uh ... conclusion: real buyers are accumulating cheap stocks on fake dips due to shorts.
Mr Plow thats my name
that name again is Mr Plow....
Ill get your driveway Bunk..be there in 7 hours
wow i see quint now posts on minyanville.com with toddo.
revy must love that!
looks like LBJ only responsible for 60k deaths
Deaths Average Age
Total 58,148 23.11 years
Enlisted 50,274 22.37 years
Officers 6,598 28.43 years
Warrants 1,276 24.73 years
E1 525 20.34 years
11B MOS 18,465 22.55 years
some kid practically lost his mind at me at the watering hole when i suggested the # was about 500k.
he said it was more like 30k. he doesnt vote and thinx the whole process is a sham. i agreed with him on many points, but i still vote.
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