ON NEARING SEVENTY-FIVE
Winter is again upon me, but why can I not
shake off, as my dog water, this slowly creeping fog
clouding consciousness, knowledge, reasoning, anticipation,
dreams, the sweetness of life?
I am again afflicted with a malaise the Bard called:
“That time of year...When yellow leaves, or none, or few,
do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold.
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang....”
Inshallah, may Spring come to once again infuse
my trunk with sap, bring movement to root,
renewed vigor, warmth and suppleness to branch
and twig, and un-dam my love of life!
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I know I spend a great deal of time lambasting the economic and cultural policies of the Left... I don't give enough time to the RINO's asinine policies, mostly because their cluster f*&#!s are just so glaring they don't need my attention.
Here is an excellent article, which I give a B- to in accuracy (my highest ranking... there are no A+ ratings for accuracy anywhere in the media), enumerating many of the dumbest economic policies of the RINO's over the past 40 years. If you are a Republican... you are either a Libertarian, or you are a RINO... you can't get a little bit pregnant. The Left tends to mush Republicans all together (and the Repubs do the same in return), but Republicans are hardly united in their vision and I think the last election brought that out into the light.
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Jeffers Media Theory says these articles mean somebody is in big trouble. These stories are planted every day. It should be interesting to see what the policy enforcement of this looks like. Just pay attention on any of the major news sites - a new story of this theme appears every day. That ain't no coincidence.
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No obvious culprits in the sell off in Precious Metals? What, you guys never heard of tax-loss-selling, and its uglier step-sister, "Print Day Buying"? ("Print day" is an original of yours truly... but tell me, after the last 2 days action that you aren't a believer...)
"Print Day", 12/31 is past, and the specialty hedge funds that drove certain commodities to the brink for the big pay day are no longer interested in sopping up sellers... in fact, some of these trades are dangerously overcrowded. DANGEROUSLY.
Forewarned is forearmed.
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"Arnold exits, Legacy Vague"???
They should have asked me... I would have cleared the matter up before the commercial break.
The MTVization of politics is only the latest manifestation of how dysfunctional our society is. Arnold and BHO were hero's of the camera, not hero's of political accomplishment prior to assuming executive office... and frankly, it showed - in both cases. I am a big Arnold fan. I am absolutely sure that I would enjoy a pick up game of hoops with BHO. What, exactly, enabled (and I mean that in the 12 step sense) these men to seize the executive reins for the Cal and the U.S.? Our media culture.
But never mind that...
The fact is that California is going to do have to do something DRASTIC before the end of Q2... I just don't see a federal bailout in their future, given the new makeup in Congress.
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In today's Financial Times:
High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery among developed nations this year, the leading energy watchdog has warned, putting pressure on the Opec oil cartel to increase production.
Over the past year the oil import costs for the 34 mostly rich countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have soared by $200bn to $790bn at the end of 2010, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency.
The increase, due to high crude prices, is equal to a loss of income of about 0.5 per cent of OECD gross domestic product, according to the IEA.
“Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. “The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery. This is a wake-up call to the oil consuming countries and to the oil producers.”
No, this is not a "wake up call". This is a challenge: Either OPEC has the excess capacity they claim or they do not. The price over the next 12 to 24 months will tell all. ALL.
12 comments:
Imagine what will happen when there truly IS a shortage in oil products. Right now it's just investors/traders using cheap, borrowed money to run up the commodity market contract prices in crude, heating oil, gasoline and sometimes natural gas.
We also have that 2 million barrels of Canadian tar sands crude coming down here per day, and they are making plans to ramp that up. Really put someone in charge of oil production in Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria, and you might just have a few more years (maybe decades) of decent oil production in these (politically and geologically) difficult places.
"Right now it's just investors/traders using cheap, borrowed money to run up the commodity market contract prices in crude, heating oil, gasoline and sometimes natural gas."
Sorry, Bur... you are an amateur... unlike stocks and bonds (securities) commodity futures contracts carry no interest expense and their immense leverage.
We can speculate endlessly on the "WHY" of the commodity run up.... but, trust me or not, the trade is BEYOND over crowded. When these funds head for the exits it is going to be impressively painful for those long and wrong.
Commodities Futures ARE NOT SECURITIES, and certainly not stocks. They cannot "grow". They are produced, consumed, and gone.... rinse and repeat. Over and under investment in productive capacity is what drives prices.
WIth commodity futures contracts the "margin", or downpayment, is your only opportunity cost.
Alright Nixon got rid of the gold standard and Repubs have always been for tax cuts (or it seems that way). I will not attempt to argue against either point. But making Bush out to be the scape goat for the democrat congressional majority / progressive budgets and entitlement spending is a bit too far.
Sure he signed them but he really didn't have a choice. Until enough American's woke up to the gender-race game it had been political death for any politician repub or dem to vote against ANY entitlement spending.
Certainly these professional politician RINO's are not my heroes but they were survivors. Even though they are spineless we need to keep in mind they had ZERO and I mean ZERO common man support. They drifted to the left when they had no rudder but they were never as far left or as dedicated to wealth redistribution as the dems.
Just maybe now that enough of us are done sacrificing ourselves and our children and the economy to the "PC gender enviro gods" we may find a leader to get us out of this mess.
That remains to be seen however.
We may yet see thermal depolymerization plants next to every city in the US. If oil stays above $100, they could be profitable.
If Reagan would have linked the dollar back to gold it would have forced the budget cuts. A hard currency limits the government to a certain spending level because the money has to actually exist unlike now; previously when the fed increased the base money supply you would see a reflection in the gold price, it showed you what the government was doing to your spending power. But now because of our floating currency they can hide their destruction because the loss of value is relative to other depreciating currencies. Nanny state governments hate the Gold standard because they can’t centrally control the economic life of the nation when the reality of spending is kicking them in the head. Although tax cuts can increase revenue, you need to downsize the government and that is very, very hard. It takes time to grow the economy so deficits in first yr or two turn into revenue gains in 3 to perpetuity. Reagan had a promise from the senate dems to cut spending but they would never bring it to floor after tax cuts were pushed through. I don't want to pay for tax cuts, I want to quit spending. I was just reading about Britain and how when their currency was linked to gold the average interest rate was 2.5% and when they were not it was well above 5%. This was looking back for 200 yrs or so.
Sorry that post above was a little jumpy. I am tired.
The gipper did appoint Alan Greenspan and I have an inkling that he was so fond of the gold standard he was perfectly willing intentionally destroy the world economy to get it back.
See here, and here.
Also he told Ron Paul in congressional testimony, cant find the link, that “there is one person at the fed in favor of a gold standard and it is me”- from memory
Some saying about “ give em enough rope” comes to mind.
Pioneer and Dex:
Please bear with me as I am only catching up to you guys in my American history...
A hard currency may or may not be the best idea... it does hold back government from doing a number of really dumb things, but it also has its negatives.
The GOP has to take some responsibility, and I think that is what is going on to some extent. I am eagerly awaiting this season's political outcomes. Not that 40 years of bad policy can be corrected overnight... what I hope to see, at the very minimum, is a cessation of that.
They can't do anything. The debt ceiling raise is the one place where they hold leverage and that will never be held because the MSM will eat the GOP alive. The senate dems are already trying to do away with the filibuster to force stuff through in the senate. We are going to default at some point; no one is going to do crap about defense spending until the left agrees to do something about the 77 trillion dollar problem of Medicaid. It is just a big game of chicken and the GOP does not have enough votes, nor do they have enough conservatives to make it work. I don’t expect much to get done and that is the best news in yrs. Obama has a chance to rework the entitlements being a democrat and all, but I doubt he gets that ambitious with the GOP. It would portray them as a winner and god forbid these two crappy parties we got ever do something to save their nation. Maybe they could agree to cut 100 billion from defense for 200 billion from SS and Medicare. That would save more than a quarter trillion bucks. It would also be proportional of the budgets at around 15-20%.
Even an amateur can see whats in front of him. :)
Is that crude oil price self-correcting today? Looks like it.
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