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Ragin Cajun
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The I fund appears to be getting spanked pretty hard today. Does anyone see this as a buying opportunity or a pullback from a really good run recently?
CajunTEUFEL HUNDEN
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Tspgo has some good ideas on how he decides to get in or out of the funds. Yes the I looked really bad this morning however, it appears to be going back up ward.
here you will see that it has barley reached the 5 day moving avg. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/intchart/frames/frames.asp?symb=efa&time=1&freq=9
There may still be hope.TEUFEL HUNDEN
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Cajun, if you go to that link you can (on the left hand side) add a moving avg. and the # of days for that avg. Sarah reccommended these charts about a week or so ago and they are great to mess around with.GGuest
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Rolo wrote:
It's mostly a pullback with a small increase in the dollar exacerbating the decline. The US markets are definitely outperforming Europe today. Perhaps its the Greenspan Effect?
Rolo, I don't have the symbol for Big Charts either..if you find it, let me know. The symbol for stockcharts.com is $USD
TEUFEL HUNDEN
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Rolo here is some insight. I'm sure that there is something better out there.
http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html#
teknobucks
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It's all too weird, and I am all too scared
[size=-1]Richard Daughty
[/size][size=-1]...[/size][size=-1]the angriest guy in economics
[/size][size=-1]The Mogambo Guru
[/size][size=-1]Archives[/size]
[size=-1]February 16, 2005
- Every actor in the Global Cartel Of Central Banks That Is Destroying The World By Destroying The Money, or what we professionals in the economics business simply call GCOCBTIDTWBDTM, is, I am sure, pumping money like it is going out of style to try and keep asset prices inflated, because the wealth of the whole world is now totally dependent on stock prices that go up and bond prices that also go up. Not to mention the retirement plans of everybody. So, getting out the calculator, we add 1 = today, plus 2 = tomorrow, and we get the answer 3, which makes no sense to me and I am wondering what in the hell I was thinking about and does this mean that I have Alzheimer's or something? Instantly, a buzz goes through the classroom, and we all realize the error I have made. But it will be a cold day in hell when I admit to any of these snot rag kids that I made a mistake, so I quickly add, "The answer is three, because today is also somebody else's retirement, so that makes, in all, three separate demographic groups that would be devastated with a general asset deflation, and that is why the answer is three. Write down three in your notes. Three. The answer is, as I have said, three." With that I turn on my heel and strut away, triumphant again!
Total Fed Credit actually contracted by $7.6 billion last week, which, combined with the action of Total Fed Credit over the last week (down), in the last month (also down and also in the context of the action of Total Fed Credit over the entire 18-year term of the Greenspan Fed (up and up, and especially so, horrifyingly so, insanely so, since 1998), then this is unusual, I think. And this all happening at the time after the G-7 met, and of course decided some secret things, and then they all went away without saying anything, which is spooky. And it is spooky enough that a fear originating in the instinctual, autonomic regions of my lower brainstem kicks online-- bink! -- and I am watching myself empty a machinegun at various bushes that rustle, and maybe get off a few rounds at neighbors who "say" that they were only standing out in the yard having a cigarette, but who were probably probing my perimeter defenses, because we both know that the abysmal money-and-credit-creating actions of the Federal Reserve means that there will come a time of desperation, fear and anger. And when that dark, dismal day comes, my so-called "innocent neighbors" WILL be out probing my defenses and getting their butts shot off in the process, and then they will turn around and blame ME, like I am the one who did something wrong here!
But the money supply is still expanding (seasonally adjusted) or is contracting (not seasonally adjusted), as it lags Total Fed Credit, or not. But The Mogambo, who oddly enough seems to take a perverse pleasure in being wrong about everything, says that the slowdown will start showing up in the Ms pretty soon. And when the money supply starts contracting, coupled with the monetary inflation (that the Federal Reserve is using to try to get price inflation blazing, as hard as that is to conceive), things WILL get plenty ugly, and The Mogambo taking a few lousy potshots at you in the dark will be the LEAST of your problems.
- Reader Michael van der S. writes to deliver the interesting factoid that "Weekly US beef kill is down 34% from 780,000 to 540,000 head -- give or take a little. Yet prices on raw skins have DECLINED for last 3 weeks, the exact opposite of expected actions." The Mogambo scratches his head. What does this mean? I eat steaks and my shoes are made from leather, so I should be uniquely positioned to comprehend the situation, right? It is true that The Mogambo is eating less beef than usual, put off not only by the price of the beef (yikes!), but also mostly thanks to the price of everything else in the damn store also being higher in price, and by the time I get to the meat counter I have already spent all of my money on aluminum foil (to ward off mind-controlling rays from the government and aliens from outer space), disinfectants (to kill germs because maybe Howard Hughes was right), the latest issue of Practical Government Economist magazine (lead story: "Tax Breaks and Credits for the Super Super-Wealthy; the Beneficial Multiplier Effect of Obtaining Permits, Paying Impact Fees, Environmental Surveys and Other Exorbitant Various Costs and Fees when Designing, Planning and Constructing Mega-Mansions!") and maybe a little beer, and maybe some pretzels. He goes on to say "Retail on all levels outside of WalMart type stores has also declined. Downward pressure on retail prices is extreme." Then he goes on to say, "I am expecting very poor economy through 2005 - and I see no real reason for it to change going forward. The implications for the US as a society are profound and disturbing." And that is exactly what I have been saying all along!
Perhaps it was a coincidence, or maybe Michael is friends with them, but the NYSE Members took last week as a good time to sell 106,750,000 shares. As I like to keep an eye on the guys who are deep in the bowels of the financial industry (and if you keep at this thing long enough, you will come to appreciate the subtle humor of why I used the word "bowels" to describe the financial services industry), I note that this is an increase in their usual level of selling. But they occasionally have big sales or big buys, and sometimes it is a lot higher than this, so I am not sure that there is anything to this whole Member buy/sell activity as an indicator. But being the paranoid suspicious type, and knowing people like I do, I don't trust any of those slimy weasels, and after you have looked at the NYSE through the lens of the Dick Grasso scandal and the board of directors scandal and the compensation committee scandal and probably everything else scandal, you get kind of suspicious, too, because dogs that lie together and work together and run around sniffing each other's butts together during a long boom know all KINDS of things about everybody.
Then, you automatically extrapolate that to the whole financial services industry, and then extrapolate that to the government, and then extrapolate that to how those government bastards are all out to get me, and then you extrapolate that to alien beings from outer space controlling the governments, and then you extrapolate that to invisible Thought-Control Waves being beamed into my mind, then pretty soon you are feverishly squirreling away guns and ammo and [/size][size=-1]gold[/size][size=-1] and [/size][size=-1]silver[/size][size=-1], and attaching roll after roll of aluminum foil to the ceiling and walls of your house, and trying to train a stupid cat to attack on command, which is, it turns out, a BIG waste of time and effort (and not to mention a fortune in Kitty Yummies and cat toys, and don't get me started on the hassle of trying to find a simple cat whip! I politely ask the guy for a cat whip, and he sneers at me and says they don't have any cat whips. So, naturally, being The Mogambo, I start getting in the guy's face, and I say, "How do you expect me to train a cat if I can't whip them, moron? Haven't you ever seen the lion-tamer at the circus, you stupid bozo? A chair and a whip! The freaking guy is wearing riding boots, a safari helmet and packing a pistol! I mean, chicks must be crawling all over this guy! Hey! That gives me an idea! While you are at it, get me a nice cat-training pistol, too! And a cat-training hat! And the macho boots! Don't forget the boots, man!" Well, the sad news is that they didn't have ANY of this stuff! What has happened to us, America?).
So knowing these guys as I do from long years of reading the paper, reading magazines, watching the news and answering subpoenas and getting into screaming hissy-fights with government employees over trivial and ridiculous things and yelling at my mutual fund companies about the princely sums they pay for advice only to be given a slap in the face with investing performance which turns out to be worse than average, and they keep on paying for this same bad advice, year after year, for crying out loud! So, I am sure that they would willingly screw the hell out of me, anytime, day or night, 365 days a year, if it meant that they would benefit, even minutely, by it.
But here in the USA it seems unnaturally calm. Calm and quiet. And if we were in the movies, this is when the grizzled sergeant takes the cigar out of his mouth and says, "Yeah. TOO quiet!" and sure enough, in the next couple of minutes there is going to be a hell of a pitched battle, and there will be bullets flying everywhere and all the English-speaking White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) are acting brave and heroically, in contrast to all their cowardly and despicable attackers, who are either of a different race or they speak with foreign accents, who ruthlessly attack Our Brave American Boys, which ought to tell you why there is so much racism and xenophobia in America. Trying to connect this with economics and earn a few brownie-points for my mandatory Diversity Instructional Message (DIM), I point out that our Federal Reserve central bank is filled with WASPs, the whole banking system filled to bursting with WASPs, the political system is overflowing with WASPs, and together they are killing our money, and as soon as your money is sufficiently debased, you will die, bitter and screaming out your rage in the gutter.
Couple this with the fact that these selfsame monsters of different races and languages, who were, as you recall, killing Our Brave Boys In Battle not ten minutes ago, ALSO all have fiat currencies and central banks and corrupt political systems, and they are all debasing their currencies so as to inflict inflation on their own people, too! Not just us! They do this by buying up all the dollars that are being spent by Americans on imports, and which end up in the pockets of foreigners, who are called "foreigners" because they all talk with foreign accents. So, the point is that that, and you may want to write this down, the whole racist and xenophobic defense mechanism is not as effective as Hollywood would lead us to believe.
- The problem with raising interest rates to cool inflationary fires is that it can initially cause inflation to accelerate, which seems paradoxical to me. But then again, almost everything seems paradoxical to me, mostly because I am a real stupid guy. But by way of explanation, I ask the rhetorical question, "What price do I have to charge for my widgets if I pay one percent on my financing, and how much I have to charge for my widgets if I have to pay twenty percent on my financing?" And the reason why this is a rhetorical question, and thus not requiring an answer, is that it ain't my freaking job to figure that crap out, because my job is to be the Big Boss and Capitalist Swine, where I strut around like I'm some kind of hot stuff, and I make everyone work like dogs around the clock, and I under-pay them, and I constantly exploit the working proletariat trash, and trick them, and systematically cheat them every chance I get, because every dime I can screw out of those hateful morons, slackers, malingerers and thieves goes right into MY pocket, which only BEGINS to pay me back for the sheer aggravation of having to spend my precious life dealing with human workers, whom I call "trash" behind their backs ("Hahaha! Trash! Hahaha!"), and they caught me a couple of times, and then I answered their concerns about demeaning their dignity as both workers and as human beings, and in my usual calming and reassuring way by ordering them to get their fat butts out of my office and get back to work or do I have to get out Mister Baseball Bat Of Employee Motivation (MBBOEM) again?.
But we were not talking about how The Mogambo Sweatshop (TMS) is turning such fabulous profits by cruelly exploiting the downtrodden proletariat worker as conveniently suggested by Marx. Perhaps this has something to do with Frank Shostak's essay at Mises.com, entitled "The Myth of The Neutral Interest Rate Policy." This is only ONE of the myths of economics, and they all revolve around some weird bastardization of Keynesian economics.
And although I go to great lengths to demonize Keynes, in my heart of hearts I kind of admire the guy, as he achieved fame and fortune by peddling nonsense as economic fact, and got a lot of people to swallow it, hook, line and sinker. All he said that the government could counteract a contraction of economic activity by deficit-spending. Well, duh! It's the same thing that every dirtbag government in all of history tried to do, moron! I mean, what could be more pleasant? You are the government, and you are going to spend more money that you can collect! It's Nirvana, dude! Do you think that only NOW has any government in history tried to spend more that it collected? Hahahaha!
And the reason governments DON'T do that, when they would all simply LOVE to do that, is that when they send the country deeper into debt, it has always, and let me re-emphasize that word ALWAYS because it is crucial to comprehend the enormity of this Big Mogambo Lesson In Economics (BMLIE) and the reason that it is crucial is because I promise you that it is going to be on the Final Exam, and I am telling you this now so that perhaps you will pay particular attention and not have to repeat my course for the fourth year in a freaking row because I am as sick of looking at you as you are sick of looking at me, but it ALWAYS, and there is that word spelled all in capital letters, so you know this has GOTTA be important, fails. And when it fails, the economy is ruined, and there is unimaginable suffering and upheaval. That, and that alone, is why nobody tries that silly freaking crap, dude! I mean, how hard IS this to understand?
The Keynesian theory went on to say that the debt, which is the icky residue after money is borrowed and spent, could be paid back out of the increased tax revenues as the economy began to grow! Wow! Astonishing! It makes you slap your head and say to yourself, "Wow! Astonishing!" At the end, Keynes predicted that everything would be back to normal, IF, and I emphasize "if" by capitalizing both letters, which seems to be some kind of weird literary device strangely running through these last couple of paragraphs, IF you use the increased tax revenue to pay back the debt that you incurred for the deficit-spending program.
The problem is that it can't work. The "borrowed and spent money" distorted the economy while it was being spent. And when the economy grew with all of this stimulus, it grew by virtue of increase in businesses that sprang up to sell stuff to government, which was doing all this buying. But if the government stopped buying stuff, and instead used the money to pay back the debt, then the economy would sink and stall, because the economy is now composed of 1) guys who sell stuff to the government, and 2) guys who are making a living by getting money from the government without selling them anything except a sob story! It's a closed circle! Hahahahaha! And then, even worse, they all use their government-money to buy imported goods and services, creating a record trade deficit of $615 billion last year! Hahahaha!
Brilliant economic planning, jerks! Hahahaha! This is your government, and your Federal Reserve central bank, all rolled into one huge, loathsome, corrupt and filthy glob of crap (GOC). The point is NOT that it is, as I say, a GOC, but that there will NEVER be a time when the economy can pay down any of this debt. And that is why no government debt has been repaid for the last forty-five years in a row. So total debt has to just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and then one day you see this thing rising up over the horizon, and it will be the arrival of the Mutant Debt Monster That Ate The World, and if you think that the government is going to save you, then to you I say "Hahahahaha!"
Which brings me to one of the idiotic sponsors of National Public Radio, whose motto apparently involves "solving the problem of homelessness," which always give me a big laugh, and not the good kind of laugh where joy and happiness are infectious and pretty soon everybody around you is smiling and laughing, too, but the OTHER kind of laugh, an evil, dry, mirthless and sinister half-laugh, half-sneer, as if Satan himself was mocking you. So, as my charitable contribution this week, as part of the philanthropic Mogambo Charity (MC) which distributes, free of charge, slaps to the faces of people who are acting really, really, really stupid, and by really, really, really stupid you know that I mean the Federal Reserve, as I would never forgive myself if I accidentally passed up an opportunity to heap a big ol' stinking pile of Mogambo Sneering Contempt (MSC) on the Federal Reserve, there are two main reasons why some people are homeless. 1) They can't afford to pay rent, or 2) they don't want to own a house. As for Reason Number Two on our Hit Parade of Reasons For Homelessness, to tell you the truth, I own a house, and I have learned the hard way that I don't want to own a house because it is a responsibility, by which I mean that it is a big, time-consuming hassle, and an expensive one, too! And when it comes time to disappear in the middle of the night, beating it out of town one step ahead of the police after getting the maximum cash advance form each of my wife's credit cards, what are ya gonna do with a house THEN? Take it with you? Hahahahaha!
So that leaves Reason Number One as the reason, namely that they can't afford it. And why can't they afford it? Because prices of housing, and the electricity, and the utilities, and the furnishings, and the bullet-proof doors with the little peepholes that let you see who is out there, and lets you decide whether or not you should try and make a break for it with guns blazing, or stay inside and lash out, like the cornered little rat that I am, with a hail of hot lead, and go down in glory, yelling "Here's a little present for Alan Greenspan and the rest of his Federal Reserve bastards from The Mogambo, boys!" and then unleash a firestorm of high-powered weaponry that exploits little-known loopholes in the Second Amendment. Hopefully, Alan Greenspan will read the story in the paper, and is so moved by it that he resigns and appoints me as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, which would suit me fine! After a little butt-kicking (to get it out of my system) and a little hounding people and ruining their lives (to get the revenge out of my system) and a cheeseburger and fries (to get something INTO the system), I will soon show your children how a [/size][size=-1]gold[/size][size=-1] standard guarantees happiness and prosperity. It is too late for you, as a lot a sins must be washed away in the Great Washing Machine Of Economics (GWMOE). But in another twenty or thirty years of life under the [/size][size=-1]gold[/size][size=-1] standard, grateful people of the world will probably all name their children Mogambo, or [/size][size=-1]golden Mogambo[/size][size=-1], or (my personal favorite) Mogambo, The Macho Stud Muffin.
And why did prices of housing go up? Because of the same reason that is ALWAYS the reason for everything bad happening: A meddling government, with financing provided courtesy of the damn Federal Reserve! The banks are ALWAYS at the source of economic problems, just as I am always at the source of neighborhood problems, but they always start it, sort of like France kept picking on poor old Germany in 1939, and although they initiated the hostilities, I am determined to show these so-called "friends and neighbors" just who in the hell they are messing with here, now that pre-emptive strikes are part of the American credo.
So good luck, charitable foundation, on "curing" homelessness. If you really want to cure homelessness, get the damn government out of the economy, especially that part which relates to houses. But even if you can't do that, at least get rid of the Federal Reserve, which is creating more and more money and credit to be used to drive prices higher and higher. Only when you solve the problem of monetary inflation will you solve the problem of price inflation which will solve the problem of homelessness. And even then there will always be guys who, because of Reason Number Two, don't want to paint the damn house, or mow the damn lawn, or pay the damn electric bill. Especially the electric bill, when, for the cost of a fifty foot extension cord, I can plug into my neighbor's house and get free electricity! All I want for free! Hahahaha! He was warned to watch me every second, and now it is MY fault that he stopped paying attention?
- Some good news (such as it is) for people who save money, is that the interest rate on the 6-month Certificate of Deposit, currently paying 2.97%, is steadily going up, and will soon crack the three percent barrier! Whoopee! Or in Mogambo-ese, "Whoop-freaking-ee!" Inflation is running at more than three percent, and after the bite of taxes levied on the paltry gain, you would need roughly double that piddly 2.97% interest rate to let the saver break even in terms of buying power! The Greenspan Fed is pounding interest rates down and down in their desperation, and thus proving that they are incompetent morons who have no idea what in the hell they are doing! This is proof! If they were NOT incompetent boobs, why are they pounding your grandmother in the head?
- Fernando Gonzalez on FSO has noticed a divergence between two indexes that has important technical aspects. "In the past, it has been quite a consistent observation that whenever the primary (S&P500) and speculative (Naz) markets are out of sync like this, the dominant current direction is likely to be unsustainable. In this case, this market is more likely to encounter resistance of the upward trend rather than strength to continue the recent advances". Translation; stocks should be heading down.
- To show you the complete idiocy of the people who should know better, the news from the Commerce Department that imports of goods and services exceeded exports by $56.4 billion in December was received as some wonderful news. And it was, I guess, as it is now second largest deficit ever in the history of the United States ("The [/size][size=-1]silver[/size][size=-1] medal goes to December 2004!"), as compared to November's $59.3 billion deficit (the current [/size][size=-1]gold[/size][size=-1]-medal winner).
It wasn't until you read, in the back, in the footnotes, in small print, in a foreign language (Aramaic), in a rare dead regional dialect of Aramaic, we learn that imports went down because we imported slightly less oil, and that the price we paid for it averaged only $36.63 a barrel, which was the biggest drop in the price of oil since 1991. Remember: imported oil cost $41.15 in November. So that part of the trade report showed a decrease in oil imports that lowered their total value to $11.8 billion from $13.4 billion, for a savings of $1.6 billion in the trade deficit.
So adding back the $1.6 billion into the trade report, the trade deficit is actually more like $58 billion. And if we had imported our usual growing allotment of oil, then the trade deficit would have almost certainly been the worst ever. Maybe even a new record!
- Bill Bonner of The DailyReckoning.com is as amazed as the rest of us that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has "owned up to the central role he has played in sparking unprecedented global imbalances" by admitting "the growth of home mortgage debt has been the major contributor to the decline in the personal saving rate in the United States from almost 6 percent in 1993 to its current level of 1 percent."
So instead of people accumulating savings, they accumulated debt, which is actually an anti-savings. Not only that, but people who "tap into their equity" of their houses by borrowing against it spent almost half of the money for "additional household expenditures, reducing savings commensurately and thereby presumably contributing to the current account deficit."
Perhaps this has something do with the article entitled "Bankruptcies In UK Soaring" which was the headline that blared out at me from the FreeMarketNews.com posting by Michael J Ross. He writes, "The number of citizens in England and Wales going bankrupt reached a record high during the last three months of 2004. Specifically, individual bankruptcies increased 34.6 percent compared to the same period the previous year, while 8 percent higher compared to the previous quarter. "
So, who gives rat's ass about some limey trash? I knew you were going to say that! And Mr. Ross has an answer for you! He writes "While U.S. citizens often think that English news has little effect upon their own lives, these developments could presage future pain for U.S. consumers, a sizable portion of whom are already up to their eyeballs in credit card balances, house and car loans, and cash-out mortgages. At the same time, the U.S. Federal Reserve has made it clear that it has no intention of slowing down its current schedule of rate hikes. In 2004 there were an estimated 1.6 million households in the U.S. that sought bankruptcy protection. That number could certainly rise during the current year as more American consumers feel the pinch of higher lending rates."
- Now that the true cost of the Medicare prescription drug program is being revealed to be exorbitant, Congressional buttheads are wringing their little hands and bleating as they always do. Don't believe them. They knew all along.
To give Ted Kennedy a little credit, although he is a loathsome Leftist commie-rat Democrat from Massachusetts, which is a state that I hold up as a worthless collection of morons, he voted against this extravagant extension of the Medicare program. But to make sure that we do not forget his ridiculous credentials, as if being from Massachusetts is not embarrassing enough, he goes on to say, "The problem is not caused by its being too generous toward seniors. In fact, it is not generous enough. Too much of the cost of the program goes to increase the drug industry's already-inflated profits." Hahahaha! So it is not the cost per se, but that the drug companies got too much of the money! But, and notice that I am laying on the floor convulsed in laughter, if the seniors spent the exact same amount of money on the drugs, then that would be okay! It's not the cost, only who GETS the money! Hahahaha! And remember that the people of Massachusetts keep electing this guy, and also John Kerry, the loser Democrat moron who had a damn plan ("I have a plan for that!") for everything on the campaign trail, but now that he is back to being a mere Senator, he is not going to tell us ANY of his marvelous plans.
- And don't be carried away that the latest report shows showed the number of U.S. workers filing for state unemployment benefits dropped by 13,000 to 303,000. It was, admittedly, the fewest number of applicants in more than four years and the less-volatile four-week average of initial claims fell by 16,000 to 315,500, which was also the lowest in more than four years.
The caveat comes when you read "The number of workers continuing to receive benefits rose by 47,000 to a seasonally adjusted 2.737 million. The four-week average of continuing claims rose by 22,500 to 2.734 million."
- Bob Wood, of Kaizen Asset Management, passes along this timeless bit of wisdom from Sir Josiah Stamp, who was the President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, and was also the "second richest man in Britain." Mr. Stamp writes, "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."
- But all is not sunshine and roses, as we learn from the Associated Press that "Consumers' confidence has fallen dramatically over the past month, reaching a 16-month low, and economists say the political debate over revamping Social Security probably is a major factor in the decline."
In more news in the same vein, we read that "The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index sank to 79.1 in February, down sharply from 92.5 in January. February's showing was the worst since October 2003."
- From H.H. we get a link to, what I suppose, is an article by Norman McLain entitled "A Cautionary Tale" and is supposed to be at the Mindfully.com site[/size][size=-1]**[/size][size=-1], whatever that is,[/size][size=-1] [/size][size=-1]but I don't need to check sources because I am The Mogambo, whose entire life has been one of always doing things by taking the easy way out, and only doing things that 1) I want to do, or 2) things where I cannot avoid the responsibility because mean, spiteful little people are FORCING me to act responsibly, and if you are my wife or daughter reading this, then, yes I am talking about YOU! [/size][size=-1]**[Editor's question: Is [/size][size=-1]this[/size][size=-1] the piece, MoGoofaloo?][/size][size=-1]
But the article is the sad story of how descendants of the Romans handled the economic ignorance and corruption that WE are now experiencing. After awhile, we come to this telling description, "For a time, the wealthiest curiales succeeded in bribing their way onto the lists of senators, for the Senate was the cream of Roman society and the ancient, if ineffectual, symbol of its past republican glory." It sounds exactly like our Congress to me! He goes on to say, "Others bribed their way into other ranks of the bureaucratic honeycomb, such as the enormous Palatine service."
Well, this cancerous growth of government is the exact point that I want to bring up. In my Leftist hometown rag of a newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, the front page in the Sunday edition had a nice article entitled "Pay Scales Tip in Favor of County Staff" by Michael Sandler. It is the despicable story of how people who get their paychecks from taxes are making big, BIG bucks and taking home big, BIG benefit packages that are so preposterously generous that there is no equivalent in the private sector, or anything even near. These government employees are raking it in!
And the funny part is that the photo they included was a wide shot of some county commissioner's meeting, and they all look exactly like the same people that used to sit near me in all my classes in all my years of public schooling, and I am here to tell you that most of my time all those years was spent either being summoned to the Principal's office on some trumped-up charge, or in a classroom laughing at the utter incompetence and arrogant stupidity of my classmates ("puny Earthlings!"), and I am doubtful, VERY doubtful, that the people in the photo are any different from their look-alike counterparts from my youth.
And I am here to tell you that this proves that there is no God, because if there WAS a God, then The Mogambo would not be holed up under the 34th Street overpass bridge and being ordered to come out with my hands up, and these people would not be making insanely huge salaries to ruin the economy and thus the society. Their blinding incompetence and the unbelievable stupidity of their predecessors makes The Mogambo laugh in that creepy way that has these dark undertones of disgust and fear and utter, utter contempt. But I see you are intrigued with my assertion that I have proved there is no God. Allow me to elaborate. If there was a God, then The Mogambo would be given a 007 license, whereby I could slap the hell out of morons until they smarten up and they say "The Mogambo was right! A fiat currency that the government can print at will, and a central bank to administer all this money, and huge, unbelievable leverage from abusing fractional-reserve banking are too great a temptation for mere mortals, and that is why it always leads to disaster! I see it now! Thanks Mogambo for slapping my stupid face until I understood! All hail The Mogambo!" And then I would stop slapping the hell out their snotty little faces and go find ANOTHER moron, and slap some sense into HIS head, too!
But this is not about me and how I have proved that there is no God, but the thrust of the article was that all the pay ranges for these guys are being drastically increased, and huge raises are being handed out, because what they do it to hire certain consultants, who take a look at pay scales in other counties, and then they recommend that all the local salaries are waaaAAAAaaaaayyyy too low, and that everybody ought to be given a big, fat raise. Then everybody GETS a big fat raise. And then the consultant goes over to some OTHER county, compares their paltry wages to our new, high wages, and that means that they need big, fat raises, too! What a racket!
The county people admit that they have no problem with attracting or keeping workers, which is how the private sector determines wage scales! So there are plenty of people who want the jobs with the current pay, and yet they get more money just for showing up and listening to some jackass consultant's opinion! Wow! Nice perk!
But in a weird, Leftist way, you can almost hear one of their economist co-conspirators say, "It's okay if government workers make more money, lots more money, because the average income of the population will go up! And higher incomes mean higher spending! So, my advice to you, as a trained university professor of economics" (and this is where you look down and see the Harvard pin in his lapel and your blood runs cold and then you think of The Mogambo, and you wish-- oh, how you wish! -- that The Mogambo was here right this minute because HE would know what to do!) "is to increase the size of government, and give everyone huge salaries! And use tax money to give them these absurdly generous retirement benefits, where they are GUARANTEED to show huge profits, because if they DON'T make huge profits in their retirement accounts (like the rest of us in the real world), then the damned is required to increase our taxes and put THAT money into their retirement fund to make up any and all shortfalls! Thus the stock market will go up! And everybody, and when I say 'everybody' I mean us, prospers when the stock market goes up!"
Ugh.
***** The Mogambo Sez: It's all too weird, and I am all too scared. I know what history says will happen, and that is why I am scared. And you should be, too.
Feb 16, 2005
Richard Daughty
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teknobucks
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what's this dude saying?
http://jovan.ru/pics3/greenspan.gif
Greenspan Indicates Fed To Continue Raising Rates
Private Social Security Accounts Are Given Cautious Endorsement
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
February 16, 2005 2:14 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan indicated that the U.S. central bank will continue to raise interest rates gradually, telling Congress that the economic expansion rolled into the new year at a respectable pace and that inflation remains under control.
In prepared testimony on the Fed's semiannual report on monetary policy to the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Greenspan said conditions underlying U.S. economic growth improved over the past half year, with consumer spending remaining strong and business confidence improving.
"All told, the economy seems to have entered 2005 expanding at a reasonably good pace, with inflation and inflation expectations well-anchored," Mr. Greenspan said in his prepared remarks. "On the whole, financial markets appear to share this view."
Under such circumstances, the Fed has opted to slowly raise its key federal-funds rate, charged on overnight loans between banks, toward a more neutral level that neither restrains nor stimulates economic growth. It has raised rates by a quarter percentage point at each of its last six meetings, bringing the federal-funds rate to 2.50%.
But rates remain low, Mr. Greenspan said. "The cumulative removal of policy accommodation to date has significantly raised measures of the real federal funds rate, but by most measures, it remains fairly low."
The level of inflation in coming months will shape whether policy makers speed up or slow down their rate-tightening campaign, Mr. Greenspan suggested. Policy makers will be watching whether companies, amid slowing productivity growth, boost workers' salaries and then pass along those higher costs onto customers, the Fed chief said.
"Going forward, the implications for inflation will be influenced by the extent and persistence of any slowdown in productivity," Mr. Greenspan said, while pointing out that productivity trends are difficult to forecast.
The inflation outlook also will be shaped by the direction of oil prices, which rose sharply in 2004, and the value of the dollar, which has been falling over the last few years. The Fed chairman repeated his argument that foreign exporters have responded to the weakening U.S. dollar by choosing tighter profit margins over raising prices, a trend that probably can't long continue.
The overall effect of the rise in oil prices over the past year has been "modest," although it has hit some sectors of the economy more than others, Mr. Greenspan said.
Spending Robust, Saving Lean
U.S. consumer spending has been "well maintained," buoyed by growth in disposable income and gains in net worth, particularly through rising home values and low interest rates, Mr. Greenspan said. But consumers are saving much less, an average of just 1% of income, compared with the 7% average of the previous three decades, he noted.
However, rising home values and stock markets have outpaced the increase in household debt, bringing the ratio of household net worth to income above historical averages, Mr. Greenspan said, adding that a reversal in that trend could prompt Americans to save more.
It is critical for the U.S. to increase national savings to prepare for the rising retirement and health-care costs of the baby-boomer generation, Mr. Greenspan said. Although long-bond rates are now puzzlingly low, he said rates could climb sharply if the problem isn't addressed.
"This is especially the case because longer-term problems, if not addressed, could begin to affect longer-dated debt issues, the value of which is based partly on expectations of developments many years in the future," Mr. Greenspan said.
Business executives are becoming gradually more confident, boosting capital spending and corporate borrowing, he said. Financial markets appear "very confident about the future and, judging by the exceptionally low level of risk spreads in credit markets, quite willing to bear risk," Mr. Greenspan said.
The disparity in sentiment between business executives and financial markets may reflect additional concerns of businesses about potential legal liabilities from reform measures like the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation rather than a fundamentally different assessment of economic risks, he added.
Shoring Up Social Security
Mr. Greenspan repeated his call to Congress to take action to shore up the massive entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Those programs face large financial strains with the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers beginning in 2008.
"Benefits promised to a burgeoning retirement-age population under mandatory entitlement programs, most notably Social Security and Medicare, threaten to strain the resources of the working-age population in the years ahead," Mr. Greenspan said. "Real progress on these issues will unavoidably entail many difficult choices. But the demographics are inexorable and call for action."
During opening questioning by the Senate panel, Mr. Greenspan offered a cautious endorsement of personal accounts, saying it is unclear how financial markets would respond to this type of "forced savings."
New government borrowing needed to make the transition to these personal accounts could make bond-market conditions more difficult if the markets see it as an unfunded liability adding to the long-term national debt figure, rather than part of a long-term process to bring the national debt down, he said.
Mr. Greenspan said "in general" it's wrong to make policies that add to the government's budget deficit, but the partial transformation of Social Security to personal accounts is "one of the very rare cases" where increased deficits may not decrease national savings. But he acknowledged such a transformation would technically shift savings from the government to the private sector. The Fed chairman said he is still trying to get a sense of how the financial markets would interpret the effect on national savings.
teknobucks
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OK...anyone out there have a clue what happened in Iran today??:s
nuke plant explosion, missle attack, gas tanks falling off planes, etc......GEEEEZZZZZ
teknobucks
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From the Official Iranian News agency:
http://www.irna.ir/?SAB=OK&LANG=EN&PART=_HOME&TYPE=HP&id=200502162020540
Not even a fallen fuel tank, but instead,
" An informed source said the minor explosion might have have been set off in a mountainous region east of Daylam port 220 kilometers north of Bushehr before noon on Wednesday by Oil Ministry contractors, while attempting to clear the ground for implementing oil projects. He said the use of dynamite to clear the rough mountainous terrain for roads to implement oil projects is a usual procedure. "
What it was, they are playing it down......
teknobucks
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http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
and the beat goes on:
snapshot of naz:
teknobucks
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u r welcome VM!...fun 2 sift thru all this stuff.
wish the market would go one way or the other. sure seems poised to melt up until u look at all the ugly facts.
just not sure what direction we may go either short term or for the entire year for that matter. any more military adventures on our part ( NK, Iran< Syria..)may send this thing down the pooper big time.
tekno
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China has replaced the United States as the world's top consumer.
A report by the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute says China has eclipsed the world's richest economy in consumption of four of the five basic foods, energy and industrial commodities.
The reports says China's rapid growth means it is taking the main share of grain, meat, coal and steel.
The country uses twice as much fertiliser as the United States and Chinese people buy many more television sets, refrigerators and cellular phones than Americans.
China trails the United States only in automobiles.
http://abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1304761.htm
teknobucks
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CLOSING WRAP-UP, Feb. 16
By Jody Osborne, Optionetics.com
2/16/2005 6:15:00 PM
http://optionetics.com/articles/article_full.asp?idNo=11941
Major market indices end in the red, but come off intraday lows. The Dow ($INDU) fell just 2.44 points on the session, closing at 10,834.88. The S&P 500 ($SPX) was virtually flat on the day to close at 1,210.34. The Nasdaq ($COMPQ) lost 1.78 points, ending at 2,087.43. Volume was a bit lighter than Tuesday’s session with the NYSE trading 1.49 billion shares and the Naz turning over 1.88 billion shares. Market breadth was actually positive on the session by a 17-to-16 and 16-to-15 margin on the Big Board and Naz respectively.
A reported explosion in Iran this morning sent stocks lower to start the session and pushed oil prices higher. Though the explosion ended up being an industrial accident, oil prices still ended up sharply higher on the session. Crude added $1.07 on the session to close at $48.33. This came after a mixed inventory report and comments from an OPEC leader that the cartel is leaning toward cutting production next month.
In earnings news, Coca-Cola (KO) announced better than expected results and provided an upbeat view of the future. As a result, the Dow component saw its shares rise 1.52 percent to $43.30. Shares of Applied Materials (AMAT) finished flat on the session, but the chip equipment maker announced strong earnings and raised current quarter estimates. However, there still is debate on whether chip equipment orders have bottomed. AMAT did see sequential growth slide, despite besting expectations. Overall, the Philly Semiconductor Index ($SOX) fell 0.84 percent to 435.53.
The big news today was Fed Chairman Greenspan’s speech to the Senate Banking Committee. Mr. Greenspan told the group that the economy had entered 2005 at a “reasonably good pace” and that inflation was “well anchored. However, he did state that the Fed funds rate is still low, meaning that future rates should be expected. But, there seems no reason yet why rates would have to be accelerated. Overall, the Chairman provided an optimistic view of the economy, though he did warn that the trade deficit and problems with Social Security and Medicare do need attention.
Despite ending slightly lower on the session, the general feeling among traders is that stocks are going to move higher. Of course, resistance at a 52-week high is going to be tough to overcome for the Dow and SPX, with the Naz needing to first take out its 2005 high.
Jody Osborne
Senior Staff Writer & Options Strategist
Optionetics.com ~ Your Options Education SiteSimilar threads
