Hedge Hog "Work Stations"

[jickiss]

jickiss is back!

 

and

 

the Nick-ME (another chance for a jickiss mis-spelling)

[traderfromhell]

jickiss is back!

 

and

 

Dear HRFF:

 

ok, "Luck Favours The Prepared Mind" --- saying of James Dines.

 

The Emperor's Club. The School on The Hill.

OOOOO What a Luck Man He Was.

 

and jickiss hopes that it is: "Is" and "Stays" (lucky, that is You!!) (And all of Stoolville, too)!!!!

 

If there be a real war of "all against all", ouch-ouch, Hobbes-Style,

well, running will do no good. that must be granted, and it is.

if 500 "enemies" show up at Da Ranch, it is probably too late to argue with them.

 

that is why, of course, your jickiss thinks that the on-shore--off-shore doolar issue is real, and the idea that, eventually, the merican doolar gets a partial gold cover, makes sense.....but Mr. Sinclair has posted certain Exact Numbers on this topic, and jickiss deferres to Sinclair's Analysis. This is not an unimportant issue, by any means.

 

 

if the goobermint can not enable "the coin of the realm" to hold enough Value to pay for the army, police, yada-yada, then, yesssss, there will be no safe place until order is restored.....and, if that part of "economics" that explains that it is Specialization that enables higher population densities to exist, the kind that exist in merica, for instance, (take LA, Kali, which is like a Giant, Jam Packed Insance Version of New Joisey, if you will (with all Real Estate about 15x's higher than in NJ)), if that part of economics is actually valid, then, Stoolville better move to Hawaii, maybe to Lanai. When jickiss was last on Lanai, he had a "vision," that afternoon, that the Merican Empire's expansion was over, finished, cooked. Lania was beautiful, but windy. there were only small waves, but, as jickiss recalls, it was just a bit too windy to, for instance, play tennis. but, in a Hobbesian Movie, it would be a great place to watch the show.

 

so far, despite the efforts to expand this merican empire, it feels to jickiss that all successive efforts in that direction will hit, and bounce back from, the invisible brick wall.

 

however, this feeling, even if true, must not necessarily lead to a complete loss of order in Merica.....

 

but, jickiss will concede to you, sir, that if something comes out of the Blue,

All Bets Are Off. And the greatest evidence that Something Will Come out of the Blue, so to say, is the many divergences in the financial markets, which have been discussed here, and in other locations, tens of thousands of times.

 

Even the great Doc has told us that the 10-year does not seem to trade according to the regular laws of technical analysis.

 

and

 

as jickiss said, about 100 posts ago,

 

Anyone who is not Genuinely Scared Today is, Truly, A Moron.

 

(but not a jickiss, 'cause jickiss is just smart enough to be Scared,

but not smart enough to really know, just yet, what to do about it).

 

(maybe we will find out tomorrow????)

 

regards to you, sir! we hope that you can pull back the curtain just a teenie bit more, (at the right time, of course!).

 

jickiss!!!

i don't know what is so magical about Sinclair's 529 line in the sand on Gold but I will defer to his greater knowledge. Only 5 trading days left to Christmas.

[Goldmember]

I'm thinking....like....for the major indices.....tomorrow or Wednesday.

 

.....but I'll gladly pay ya Tuesday FUR a hamburger today.

 

[BAREister]

Haunting photo Bare...

 

Luck is relative,as a gambler,you really learn to appreciate it....and understand the difference bewtween good bad luck and bad,bad luck...that hapless soul in the photo has the latter...

 

 

The only sure thing about luck is that it will, one day, change - a fearful notion for a pampered and cosseted and self-indulgent society, wot?

 

That wretched lad had to go out into THIS, over and OVER until his luck ran OUT

 

oh, and Winston and his ILLk (such as Haig) had NO compunction about sending him there, by the hundreds of thousand.

[PandaBear]

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/norcini080804.html

 

I continue to marvel at those who are calling for a long term dollar bull market in the dollar to commence whether it is based on some "synthetic dollar short" talk or any other such contrived reasoning. We know that there are many factors that go into determining the value of a currency but most important is the current account deficit of the country in question as well as the inflation rate in that particular nation. A currency may be a high yielder but if the yield is below the actual rate of inflation, all holders of that currency are getting negative real rates of return. Investors will not put up with that kind of situation for long and will begin to abandon the currency.

 

The dollar would have to put in a CLOSE over the region near 92 for a simple buy signal to show up on this chart. If you notice the multiple Head and Shoulders formations evident on this style chart, you will see that region near 92 is the neckline of the H & S shoulders formation. Markets many times will break down one of these formations and then experience a counter trend rally exactly to the point of the broken neckline only to encounter massive supply and reverse course resuming the main trend. As of now, it appears that this is exactly what has occurred.

 

By the way, the long term implications of this pattern are simply mind-boggling. It portends a further 30% depreciation in the dollar from current levels to the region near 62. I do not have a time period put on that however, only a projection at this point.

 

I have seen Forex speculators move in for the kill on various currencies which they felt were inherently weak due to structural problems in the economy of the host nation at large. Central Bank response in those cases is to jack short term interest rates violently upward in an attempt to defend the currency from attack. In some cases that will help to stem the decline. In other cases, Forex players view it as an act of desperation by a Bank playing a weak hand and hit the currency even harder provoking a run on it until rates are hiked to such an extreme level that the attack stops but the domestic economy usually ends up in ruins. Can you say Argentina a couple of years ago?

 

If the Dollar continues to do what I think it is going to do and the U.S. equity indexes continue to swoon, we will begin to witness a flight out of the dollar as foreigners repatriate funds. That will put added downward pressure on the dollar as demand for U.S. paper declines.

[jickiss]

jickiss is back!

 

and

 

Dear HRFF:

 

jickiss would like to know, (while we wait out the hours till they open them in New York),

 

if you tend to agree with the theory, (or position, or argument) that Merica was at its Zenith, or High Point, vis-a-vis the "Rest of the World" in terms of Power, Especially Military Power, at the end of WW I?

 

Not WW II, but WW I.

 

The Effects, negative and lasting, of WW I are VERY OBVIOUS to all that are still able to open their Eyes.

 

(which are supposed to be open, at least in Stoolville so they can

 

keep their eyes on the wire!!

 

regards,

jickiss!!

[BAREister]

jickiss is back!

 

and

 

Dear HRFF:

 

jickiss would like to know, (while we wait out the hours till they open them in New York),

 

if you tend to agree with the theory, (or position, or argument) that Merica was at its Zenith, or High Point, vis-a-vis the "Rest of the World" in terms of Power, Especially Military Power, at the end of WW I?

 

Not WW II, but WW I.

 

The Effects, negative and lasting, of WW I are VERY OBVIOUS to all that are still able to open their Eyes.

 

(which are supposed to be open, at least in Stoolville so they can

 

keep their eyes on the wire!!

 

regards,

jickiss!!

Interesting question.

HRFF will have to cogitate upon it.

Wheeling, W Va where HRFF is FURom, ab initio, was at it's manufacturing height, then, certainly, and has been in an inexorable, gradual decline ever since.

Ohio, where he grew up, is still getting clobbered in that sector.

 

BARE got into a debate w Jim Rogers via email regarding whether Communism elevated the standard of living of the Russian people on balance or whether they enjoyed a higher material standard of living pre WWI (SNOT FUR removed in time from what you are positing) BARE brought his FURmer Princeton professor, Steve Cohen, into that one. Can't recall but there is a strong argument that Russia peaked right beFUR The Great War, and the concommitant ASScendancy of the utopian ideals of Jewish intellectuals there (Karl Marx and Leon "Trotsky", the great proselytizer of the international export of Revolution).

Thought Cohen said the material standard of living for most Russians peaked during the quasi-capitalist NEP in the EARLY 20's (truncated by the death of Lenin) prior to the calamity of collectivisation at decades' CUSP and the great Terror of the mid to late 1930's that liquidated much of Russian technical/managerial/military elites. That (NEP era) would be coincident with your time frame, ironically.

That period post WWI is often used as the demarcation of the steady decline of BRITISH might and influence.

But AMERICAN?

HMMMmmmmm...........

 

 

BARE is inclined to say NYET, because of the fearsome manufacturing and military capability our country possessed at the end of "The BIG ONE" as Dad calls it.

 

Interesting notion.

 

HRFF won't answer sans much FURther research, etc.

[Guest libertas]

oh, and Winston and his ILLk (such as Haig) had NO compunction about sending him there, by the hundreds of thousand.

In fairness to Churchill, he went there - the trenches - too. (He quit his Admiralty position and went as a major in the Grenadier Guards.)

[Butterfield 8]

Only countries with both current account surpluses and budget surpluses:

 

Norway 13.4/8.3

Finland 6.3/2.1

Sweden 5.8/ 5.8

Denmark 2.8/2.8

 

Lousy socialists

 

[martialcomp]

The futures are apparently being goosed...

 

We may rally for a day or 2.

 

Long term trend has turned downward though...

 

The presidentical cycle appears to have topped.

 

I encourage all here to go to Nasdaq.com and look at Company Financials-->Balance Sheets on many of the large cap growth companies on the Dow and S&P.

 

You will be suprised at how many have enormous debt and/or liabilities.

 

Here are a few examples:

 

GE as of 3/31/04 liabilities 575 billion, assets 662 billion.

Ford as of 3/31/04 liabilities 300 billion, assets 312 billion.

GM as of 3/31/04 liabilities 427 billion, assets 454 billion.

Boeing as of 3/31/04 liabilities 45 billion, assets 54 billion.

IBM as of 3/31/04 liabilities 73 billion, assets 101 billion.

SBC as of 3/31/04 liabilities 61 billion, assets 100 billion.

Caterpillar as of 3/31/04 liabilities 31 billion, assets 37 billion.

JNJ as of 3/31/04 liabilities 20 billion, assets 48 billion.

Coca Cola as of 3/31/04 liabilities 14 billion, assets 29 billion.

Proctor and Gamble as of 3/31/04 liabilities 35 billion, assets 53 billion.

International Paper as of 3/31/04 liabilities, 26 billion, assets 35 billion.

Honeywell as of 3/31/04 liabilities 19 billion, assets 29 billion.

Disney as of 3/31/04 liabilities 30 billion, assets 55 billion.

Merck as of 3/31/04 liabilities 25 billion, assets 41 billion.

MMM as of 3/31/04 liabilities 10 billion, assets 18 billion.

Dupont as of 3/31/04 liabilities 28 billion, assets 38 billion.

Eastman Kodak as of 3/31/04 liabilities 11 billion, assets 14 billion.

AT&T as of 3/31/04 liabilities 30 billion, assets 45 billion.

Alcoa as of 3/31/04 liabilities 19 billion, assets 31 billion.

American Express as of 3/31/04 liabilities 162 billion, assets 178 billion.

Altria as of 3/31/04 liabilities 68 billion, assets 95 billion.

 

Talk about a corporate debt bubble!

 

20 of these companies are on the Dow 30...an index which is suppose to represent the Creme de la Creme of Wall Street.

 

I just can't see how these companies can survive with debt/liability levels that high. But, who knows?

 

http://www.stockselector.com/dow.asp

http://www.stockselector.com/sp500.asp

 

P to E on the Dow is still 24.1 with dividend yield of 1.9%

S&P P to E is still 30.5 with a dividend yield of 1.5%

[BAREister]

 

oh, and Winston and his ILLk (such as Haig) had NO compunction about sending him there, by the hundreds of thousand.

In fairness to Churchill, he went there - the trenches - too. (He quit his Admiralty position and went as a major in the Grenadier Guards.)

Yes he did. Because he wanted to, too. And he led his usual charmed existence when under shot and shell.

Churchill's bravery under fire is not the issue - as a young officer he led an extraordinary existence, often in the thick of intense fighting, always emerging, miraculously, unscathed. He was captured in S. Africa and pulled off an ASStounding escape, there.

In WWI he went to the trenches and spent some time there, often in the rear but he did demand to go into the front lines and was taken, briefly, IF HRFF recalls correctly, spending a few days/weeks at most before nervous higher ups demanded his return to safer precincts. While there he visited a dugout. About 5 minutes after he left it was blown to Kingdom Come/smithereens.

 

Churchill slaughtered troops with utter abandon in the Dardenelles. Robert Huges, the Australian art critic for TIME? or NEWSWEEK for years, did a powerfully moving documentary on Australia. Australia lost more men, per capita, in WWI than any other country, alleged Huges, IF BARE recalls rightly. Many of them met their end at Gallipoli, where, IF BARE recalls rightly, British/Allied casualties ran into the hundreds of thousands as in 200-300,000.

 

Gallipoli, rightly, cost Churchill his job. He never really will escape that dreadfull

albatross.

 

His later heroics don't atone FUR such obloquy, given the senseless nature of the campaign.

BARE's point is the willingness of the 'leaders' of the Allies to wantonly expend life.

The Somme's nearly .5m casualties nearly cost Haig HIS job, butt so great was his 'reputation' with a supine/servile public being bled white by him that he survived and, after the war, retired, a national 'hero', on a pension of something like 100,000 pounds sterling - one of history's truly great obscenities.

 

BARE thinks it fitting that Haig be reincarnated, repeatedly, as every Tommy he sent 'over the top' to his death, and experience each and every one - at least once.

 

The tragedy of modern Iraq is largely taht Churchill's creation, too. He was up to his KEISTER in drawing its borders around ethnic/religious groups whose aspirations could only EVER be contained ONE way - tyranny/the mailed fist.

The British tried to impose their will upon Iraq butt only lASSted a few years.

 

Churchill has, very much, feet of clay...

[DrStool]

I've noticed that our snippets are beginning to expand beyond one or two paragraphs when reposting third party material. Please keep snippits to a minimal length. The reader can pick up the rest from the linked article. If you are commenting on excerts, then it's ok to repost those excerpts along with your comments.

[Janitor]

Talk about a corporate debt bubble!

 

20 of these companies are on the Dow 30...an index which is suppose to represent the Creme de la Creme of Wall Street.

 

libertas

 

check it out

 

GM 427 billion in liabilities 454billion in assets

 

net 27 billion

 

but assets include 27 billion worth of deferred expenses. Equity is therefore=O

 

glad I am not holding debt in this POS

 

same goes for Ford & others