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B4 the Bell Weak-End Edition


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Guest yobob1

Welcome to B4 the Bell. This forum is dedicated to being open, diverse and uncensored (excepeting the bot "word" censor). It is primarily a trading forum during the day, but otherwise there is really no such thing as off topic. The one rule with any weight is respect for the other participants. First time violators of that rule will be forced to watch 48 uninterupted hours of Martha Stewart Living, after which they must be able to fold a napkin into a swan to regain admission to this forum. A second violation can only be cleared by dating really ugly poor women with room temp IQs (or men if you are female) driving rusted out Subarus for a period of one year. If you're married, well tough titty, then you also have to explain your punishment to your spouse. :lol: And you thought the SEC was tough.

 

Hey how about that volume on the exchanges? Guess the big borkers have done such an excellent job of fleecing the sheeple so far this year that they deserve an extended stay in the Hamptons. Beware the days of labor says I.

 

Yesterday two more business failures were noted on my very short commute (about 6 miles). A chain resturant (JB's Big Boy) that has been in operation for over 25 years in a prime location has folded. Adjacent to that property is an almost new ( about 5 years old) mega craft store. I mean this sucker is almost as big as the average Home Repo store. I often wondered how anyone could support that square footage selling scrap book and art supplies. Now I know - they couldn't. Big sign out front - building for sale or lease. The number of vacant businesses along the major road that we are also on is growing by leaps and bounds. And yet they are building, or have built in the last few months, 3 mini strip malls on this short stretch of road. All of this is close to Idaho's 2nd or 3rd largest mall, also on the same road, - which is, by a conservative estimate, 75% vacant. In looking at the square footage numbers, as a rough estimate I would say that close to 50% of the square footage available in this 4 mile stretch is vacant and there are many business I look at that are in trouble. When you've been in the retail game for 30+ years, you know the signs.

 

Recovery my ass. All they have managed to do with trillions in fiscal and other outworldly stimuli is to temporarily slow the decline. They haven't stopped it, just slowed it down or hit the pause button for a few months. This orgy of money spilled over into mostly leveraged speculation, the unwinding of which I expect to soon begin against the backdrop of reality. The illusion of liquidity and "insurance" will evaporate faster than a saucer of water in the Sahara.

 

I sold a $50,000 fifth wheel yesterday. The gentleman I sold it to is a DOD civilian contactor with about 50K income per year. His wife has a similar income, but her job history and occupation put her income at risk IMO. They completed a 6 month task of refiing their house about 6 months ago. They were nearly 50% upside down in their trade and only had $2,000 cash to put into the deal. His only concern? How much a month. The equifax report showed: Serious delinquincy. Delinquincies too recent, etc. They want to finance 120% of invoice (10% above "standards") as long as possible. Of course my lender wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole - but somebody else did. This loan I'm sure will be sanitized and packaged up as an ABS somewhere down the line. The illusion of liquidity.

 

When I stand in the middle of a mountain wilderness, I know that is reality. Survival depends on you and your in hand resources. When I stand in the middle of a city all I increasingly see is a mountain of debt with no way to repay it. Survival there is all about your credit report and ability to conform. When I see a new pickup with a camper on it towing a boat all I see is three payment books heading home to 95% mortgaged house filled with furniture that they won't have to make a payment on for another year.

 

Hyper may well be right. It's all an illusion. The question is when will the curtain be pulled back and the reality exposed. Impossible to say given the inumerable things that could go "wrong" at any time. I would have to say the state's ability to maintain the illusion is rapidly waning in any event and the probability of another 12 months is rapidly headed towards zero no matter how much confetti they throw about.

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Guest yobob1

Plunger posted:

 

As part of a highway bill now in a House-Senate conference committee, lawmakers are pushing Senate-passed language that would allow the government to withhold any information from the public that would be "detrimental to the security of transportation, transportation facilities or infrastructure, or transportation employees."

 

Karla Garrett Harshaw, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, says that the provision is so broadly drafted it could lead to the withholding of any information on contracts involving taxpayer-funded highway projects.

 

The Environmental Defense organization protests that the Department of Transportation could use the provision to withhold information on hazardous-waste spills on the basis that it might provide information to terrorists about system vulnerabilities, and to restrict information about rail and transportation routes for nuclear waste.

 

Moves to keep secret more government information come in the wake of the report by the 9/11 Commission, which found the government already had too much information that was over-classified. The Information and Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives that oversees government classification programs, reported that the classification of government documents is increasing.

 

In its first two years, the Bush administration made 44.5 million decisions to classify material, about the same number made in the last four years of President Bill Clinton's term in office.

 

A coalition of Washington watchdog groups, led by the Project on Government Oversight, said in a new report that government over-classification costs taxpayers $6.5 billion a year. Each document costs $459 to secure and store.

 

 

--------------------

 

"The entire S&P price action in the futures is being controlled by one counter party. All the guys hate them: their CME clearing number is 990N and they clear through Gelber trading.

 

That one account is solely responsible for the current level of the S&P. They are the ones that are throwing the S&P up overnight. Then they are the ones that are sitting on the bid all day long, supporting the market action.

 

Time after time after time 990 just sits there on the bid. Don't they ever go away. They just absorb the entire market and then push the price wherever they want it to go.? Gee, I wonder who that counter party is?

 

Intervention at it?s finest, your tax dollars at work, providing the ultimate tax to us all."

 

 

IP: [ 65.11.50.109 ]

Plunger Posted: Aug 28 2004, 05:32 AM

 

 

Assistant Professor of Stock Proctology

 

 

Group: Members

Posts: 3249

Member No.: 1283

Joined: 24-February 03

 

 

 

After 9/11, privacy is a luxury Americans supposedly can no longer afford. The administration has left no stone unturned, giving itself powers to sweep up people's e-mail with the FBI's Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people's homes, bankroll Pentagon research on creating hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans, expand the military's role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up personal data to create a federal "color code" for every air traveler. The administration is defining freedom down, pretending that protection from federal prying is no longer relevant to liberty. Americans are supposed to accept that freedom from terrorism is the ultimate freedom ? and nothing else matters any more.

 

Bush is dropping an iron curtain around the federal government. The Bush administration is hollowing out the Freedom of Information Act, making it more difficult for citizens to discover government actions and abuses. Bush invoked executive privilege to block a congressional investigation into the FBI's role in mass murder in Boston and in framing innocent men for those murders. The Supreme Court tacitly endorsed the Bush doctrine that the feds may carry out mass secret arrests and suppress all information about the roundup (including names of those detained, charges, and details on prison beatings).

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/bovard2.html

 

 

--------------------

 

"The entire S&P price action in the futures is being controlled by one counter party. All the guys hate them: their CME clearing number is 990N and they clear through Gelber trading.

 

That one account is solely responsible for the current level of the S&P. They are the ones that are throwing the S&P up overnight. Then they are the ones that are sitting on the bid all day long, supporting the market action.

 

Time after time after time 990 just sits there on the bid. Don't they ever go away. They just absorb the entire market and then push the price wherever they want it to go.? Gee, I wonder who that counter party is?

 

Intervention at it?s finest, your tax dollars at work, providing the ultimate tax to us all."

 

 

IP: [ 65.11.50.109 ]

machinehead Posted: Aug 28 2004, 05:57 AM

 

 

Dean of Stock Proctology

 

 

Group: Members

Posts: 10714

Member No.: 52

Joined: 8-June 01

 

 

 

Doug Noland recognizes -- right here in Fortress America -- the same Late Bubble Syndrome seen in other deteriorating Third World bubble economies just before they blew out:

 

 

QUOTE

I recall reading articles highlighting noteworthy examples of spending extravagance that preceded by only months the respective crises in Mexico, Thailand, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina. But, then again, lavish purchases and ballooning trade deficits are a hallmark of Monetary Disorder. And while profligate spending is not a fresh development here in the U.S., I couldn't help but to think that almost 400,000 empty cargo containers leaving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports during July is a signal along the same lines of booming Mercedes sales in Russia during 1998's first half.

 

 

 

Bubble at the Fringe

 

And what feeds the Bubble? Look no further than Mad Al's unauthorized, off-balance-sheet, $1.25 trillion bond/dollar hedge pool:

 

 

 

Al's predecessor John Law only wrecked one country -- France. Robert Citron only brought down Orange Country with his reckless bond bets in 1994. They were just local operators.

 

But Mad Al Leeson has gone worldwide. This may be the first time in history that one incompetent goofball at the core -- who, in the typical manner, has insulated himself from scrutiny behind a cult of personality and obsequiousness -- could bring down the entire global economy.

 

Bob Dylan, as usual, was prescient --

 

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth

Blowing down the backroads headin' south

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth

You're an idiot, man

It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

 

 

 

--------------------

 

"If the market blows, so do you."

 

- John Law II, PhD, OBE

 

IP: [ 68.193.206.198 ]

alceringa Posted: Aug 28 2004, 06:01 AM

 

 

Doctor of Stock Proctology

 

 

Group: Moderators

Posts: 2536

Member No.: 67

Joined: 8-September 01

 

 

 

QUOTE (machinehead @ Aug 28 2004, 07:42 PM)

For printing, the first ten copies cost $150; the second ten, $100; and $75 for a third batch of ten (i.e. $7.50 each). The prices are said to be lower than iUniverse and XLibris whose minimum orders start in the $450 to $500 range for 5 copies.

 

 

 

The POD (Print on Demand) advocates dream of a world where a Customer walks into a store, selects a book to purchase and the book is printed from an electronic database through the machinery in the back of the store while the Customer has a Latte and waits for it the order to be completed.

 

Total time from "I want that book" to "I have that book", maybe 8 minutes, lots faster than Amazon.

 

In any case, even the prices quoted by your local indie are not as low as you can get. In Melbourne, Australia I was quoted for 324 page manuscript (maximum), perfect bind, 100 gms acid free paper, 4 color front and back cover on cardstock, minimum order 1000 copies-A$6.75 per, delivery 96 hours after my OK of artwork.

 

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

--Will Rogers

 

Sorry about the sloppy copy/paste job guys but I'm unaware of how to move a single post and I thought these should be moved to the Weak-End thread. Yobob.

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Faith in the Stock Market

by Gary North

 

"The chart reveals an unwillingness on the part of investors to get out of this market in a final bear bottom sell-off. The presence of stock market mutual funds, especially retirement funds, has kept the market from entering the final collapse of hope that marks the end of bear markets. There is a floor under this market because of the automatic monthly purchases of shares by fund investors. The "buy and hold" philosophy promoted by economists, which paid off after August of 1982, has produced capital losses on a massive scale since 2000.

 

The typical investor has not lost hope in the economists? dreamy scenario of automatic wealth through compound growth and tax-deferred gains in a 401(k) retirement fund. But he no longer holds this creed with the fervor that he did in 2000. He has seen the reduction of his index fund?s portfolio. It declined for two years after 2000. The recession of 2001 supposedly ended in November, 2001, yet 2002 was as bad a year for stocks as 2001 had been.

 

Where was the stock market recovery that supposedly begins six months before a recession ends? It was nowhere to be seen."

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Yobob:

 

You just sold those people their replacement home, and they are going to drag it wherever they need to in order to escape the debt collector. You are at the leading edge of a big future trend. Any lender who fails to slap a GPS locator bug on these fifth wheels is never going to see many of them again when the payments stop coming in. Could there possibly be any riskier loan to make than a fifth-wheel? The "security" for the loan is capable of being dragged anywhere that a four wheel drive dually can get to, and dropped off there as a permenant residence for the rest of eternity.

 

When people such as these reach the end of the debt rope and find themselves with a future of foreclosure on their primary residence and a looming need to file for bankruptcy, the logical choice for them is to borrow the last remaining money available to them that can provide them with the shelter they require for their forthcoming gypsy lives.

 

Keep track of these people if you can...I'd like to hear how this one turns out.

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"Bunker Nation"

 

Couple of only marginally related anecdotes culled from this weeks interactions.

 

My partner/boss at the office went on a mission of mercy down to Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals, to visit and assist wounded servicemen/women injured over in Iraq.

 

He reports back that the spirit and attitude of these young men and women is a credit to our nation.Of the 35 or so they visited with, most wanted to return to their units although the reality was that their injuries were in most cases carreer ending.Most were amputees. Only one had actual bullet wounds, all the others were injured by those IED's or booby traps to use the old fashioned word. He also reports that the actual soldiers held little if any animosity towards the citizenry of Iraq. As far as they could tell the Iraqi's were just regular shmucks who wanted to work, hang with their families, play some soccer or whatever and crash out. Unfortunately the attitude of the officers who direct the war effort from 10,000 miles behind enemy lines have a different point of view................that the place should be turned to glass, and the sooner the better.

 

The conversation drifted into the political realm sho' nuff and as it turns out the concensus is that Kerry's Vietnam Service and heroics were likely, sorta, kinda, prolly the result of premeditated ambitiousness to some degree. Furthermore the "veteran vote" could go either way as neither candidate is highly regarded by the military, active or retired.

 

After bouncing off the guardrails once or twice the conversation regained traction and the issues of heightened and tightened domestic security reared it's ugly head. Here I became despondant. The attitude of my coworkers was that all these infringements upon the constitutional liberties we are granted by that old piece of parchment are now "on the table" and open to recindment. All in the name of monitoring "THEM" and catching THEM and preventing THEM from doing us further harm.

 

My attempts at pointing out how NOT temporary these measures were and would be, and just how Orwellian the whole thing was getting were met with me be labelled. "PARANOID".And yet they did not see the irony in the ole pot calling the kettle black.

 

Ned38

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Tenet offered a sobering thought. Although al Qaeda's home base was Afghanistan, the terrorist organization operated nearly worldwide, he said. The CIA had been working the bin Laden problem for years. We have a 60-country problem, he told the group.

 

"Let's pick them off one at a time," Bush replied.

 

The president and his advisers started America on the road to war that night without a map.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

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Unfortunately the attitude of the officers who direct the war effort from 10,000 miles behind enemy lines have a different point of view................that the place should be turned to glass, and the sooner the better.

 

Managing WAR from the airconditioned offices in DC or Iraq is not the way

to WIN! The Pentagon Papers tell the story of the way to loose. :ph34r: :ph34r:

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http://melduke.blogspot.com/2004_08_22_mel...366786916850829

 

melduke quotes an economist that is spot-on... what isnt discussed is what happens when the money rate increases to a level well above last year's or last month's natural rate of interest/yield - they can not only juxtapose position today, but more important perhaps is the relation to an "entry" into an investment. i am obvioulsy not a deep thinker :lol: , but i suspect there is another rate in there somewhere, perhaps an intrinsic rate or somesuch nebulous term? maybe it would be a generational "safe rate"; risk-free rate plus inflation expection - i think buffet or monger talked of this before - someone did, im not original thinker either.... maybe its 6%; 3% + 3%, subject to modulations from inflation expectations. the trap is therefore when the natural rate is drawn below the safe rate by manipulated money rates, which is what i believe we now have.... i offer this for your consideration - the time to borrow is when rates are high. also, and never borrow to purchase a depreciating asset (sorry Yobob1). please also note in relation to HT's "debt expansion theory" the money rate being above the natural rate would stall lending except for the most desperate and stupid borrowers. have real estate prices risen to a level where the underlying yield is actually below the IR?

 

we are at a point in the real estate cycle where the property cap rates are approaching the IRs - this is why they dont debt service at 75% LTV. this alone should raise a huge RED FLAG!!!! yes, i realize im mixing cap rates & yields, but i also realize that the propety yields could be well below the cap rates if the natural and money rates rise - i also note that in some instances, the cap rates are below the imaginerary safe rate, so unless income & value increase, the borrower is likely cooked as adjustable IRs rise.

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Money Supply Stable

 

Credit Measures Drop

 

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