Thursday, February 12, 2009

What the Goal REALLY Is

A Wall Street Trader friend of mine from my Bear Stearns' days called me yesterday and asked me what I thought the Administration's goal was vis a vie the bank and stimulus plans.  

I replied that I believed they were hoping the system would muddle through without a complete breakdown in the financial and political system.  He paused for a moment, and said: "I was sorta thinking that myself. A lot of guys up here (he works in Manhattan and I am in South Florida) think so, too."

Pretty crazy that a bunch of middle aged, Republican, rich (relatively, that is), overweight white guys have come to this conclusion.  These are hardly the hoping-for-the-world-to-end types you find all over the web. 

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S & P under 820.  Dow Jones under 7750.

Maybe I should start a countdown to the Pension System blowup. 1,750 Dow points to go until Kaaaaaa - BOOOOMMMM!!!  

The ONLY thing the financial markets hate worse than a Republican is a Democrat.

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I guess I am winding down this Blog.  In the immortal words of Dr. Ken Deffeyes of Princeton University:

"I am no longer a prophet.  I am now a historian."

We are going into the teeth of this Recession/Depression.  Hard assets are the ONLY store of value if the system goes postal.  

Focus on having fun.  When things are FUBAR, it is the only rational response.

Mentatt (at) yahoo (d0t) com

5 comments:

bureaucrat said...

Would be a shame to end the blog called "American Energy Crisis" when the crisis isn't even here yet. We're just passing the time with the Wall Street/financial news until the energy crisis does occur. There is still lots of understanding that has to be accumulated by the early and less-lazy folk out there, because while the world isn't going to end, it is obvious to me the first ones in line for energy knowledge will be a bit more comfortable and a LOT more wealthy. You can garden and do your pinko commie stuff later, old man. :)

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Ah, I was just meandering out loud.

And the crisis IS here, we just don't know it.

Energy and capital are one and the same. As I said a couple of posts ago, while we thought the world would end by fire, it now appears ice will be the culprit. FOrget the cause... the symptoms are exactly the same!

The pension system, where MOST of AMerica's capital is accumulated, cannot survive 5 years of declines, or sub 6000 Dow.

The only thing holding things together now is the US$, and that could go at any time... or it could take several years...

bureaucrat said...

If you need material, you might want to pontificate a little as to why oil prices are crashing down while gasoline pump prices seem to be edging up a bit.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Na, no shortage of material.

Pontificate? Are we bloggers pontificators? Ouch!

bureaucrat said...

Well, then, opinionate! :)