Hiding Bear Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Welcome to B4 the Bell Hold on to your rollercoaster seat today. I don't think the ride is through. India is suddenly destabilized: India's Gandhi May Not Take Prime Minister's Post, Channels Say May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Sonia Gandhi, who led her Congress party to a surprise victory in India's elections, may not accept the prime minister's post, NDTV 24x7 and other Indian television channels reported, citing officials from Congress and other parties. Gandhi, widow and daughter-in-law of assassinated Indian premiers, was invited by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to discuss forming the new government to replace Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After a meeting with Kalam this morning, she was asked to show letters of support from parties backing her, Gandhi said. The 57-year-old Gandhi, whose Italian origin has been the point of criticism by the Bharatiya Janata Party she ousted from power, will address party workers at 5:30 p.m. in New Delhi, NDTV said. Gandhi may name Manmohan Singh, a former finance minister, as her choice for prime minister, it said, citing party officials it did not identify. Singh accompanied Gandhi to the Kalam meeting. While stocks rose on reports of Singh's likely elevation, any announcement from Gandhi that she is not a candidate for prime minister is an unexpected development for India's oldest party, which as recently as last night said a Congress government led by Gandhi would take office this week. Gandhi herself said last week that the party's parliamentary leader is also traditionally prime minister. On Saturday, the party named her its parliamentary chief. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=1...=top_world_news Purple Rain: LA Times The annual spring jacaranda bloom is on brilliant display on Myrtle Street in Santa Ana and throughout the Southland. A slight breeze can cause the faintly fragrant 2-inch-long flowers to cascade from a tree?s canopy. Lavender-colored streets and sidewalks are a beautiful sight, but the blooms can be a sticky nuisance underfoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Is the Sarin Claim Bogus? From an alert reader: ( Disclaimer: I know nothing about chemistry. ed. ) Shorter version: this device, an Iraqi binary weapon, probably didn't have sarin in it at all, and the alerts were to cyclohexanol. Why? 1. bc the insurgent deployed the weapon as an HE round, thereby showing he didn't know what it was. 2. bc Iraqi binary weapons require the use to POUR IN THE SECOND INGREDIENT BY HAND AT THE LAST MINUTE. Therefore, if there had been sarin, that would have required a level of care belied by the device's use, according to Gen. Kimmett. And if the shell was deployed as if it were an HE round, no sarin could have been present. Another false positive. Stratfor's coverage not only missed this, it also missed simple facts in the Kimmett account! http://www.agonist.org/archives/015755.html#015755 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yobob1 Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Grab your pom-poms and rally hats, Wank Street wants to party and warm up the greetings for AMAT's big earning news tonight (the whisper number is up 70%). I have a suspicion they will try like hell to rally today but the earnings from AMAT will get sold by tommorrow. Hmmm, down Moonday, Up Teuzleday, down Humpday, up Turdsday, down Fryday??? Looks like a plan to me. Metals markets are in temporary limbo. Expect action to resume later this Summer as reality slowly sinks into the Prozak for lunch bunch. Uncle Bucky's death has been prematurely reported. Barring a catstrophic heart failure, I expect him to limp in circles for a significant period. This would be characteristic of a competitive devaluation in a total fiat scheme. It won't really show in the FOREX. This time it's labor that's being discounted. Our money is not a store of wealth, but in reality "time" chits. Work an hour get a claim on someone's debt. It's the same the world over. Expect yields on the 10s to nudge up to 5%, as the rest of the curve flattems around it. Al holding the fed rate at an artificial level has prevented the normal curve from developing and as such has eliminated one of the market's primary signals from being displayed; inversion. Without the inversion being displayed, most participants aren't going to know what hits them a few months down the road. The revved up supply in commoditites should crash right into a shrinking market by mid-summer if not sooner. Oil, NG, gold & silver should buck the trend as all will share a common characteristic - declining production against a stable to rising demand. Of those four only gold may have a stockpile large enough to withstand falling production. I say may because nobody really knows for sure just how much gold was leased out and subsequently sold into the market never to be seen again. At what point will the CBs decide that enough is enough and decide to stop giving away something that is desireable to the world at large? To say that leasing/sales has proved to be uneconomical lately would be an understatement. At this point only a significant decline in demand are likely to reign in energy prices and then only temprorarily until the supply and demand meet again at a lower level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yobob1 Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 I find this analysis of China's economy in line with my thinking. "We expect a shock from Asia, but we do not know how, when and why," he said. Molano warns that the Chinese economy is badly overheated and that the rise in the inflation rate well into double digits is creating factors that will decelerate the pace of Chinese economic growth. Nevertheless, he argues, "the rampant corruption and the weakness in the banking sector suggest that the controlled adjustment could manifest itself into a hard landing." Such a scenario, Molano writes, "would ricochet immediately into Latin America." A drop in the much noted Chinese demand for commodity products, he continues, "would coincide with a large increase in production" to accommodate the market's expectations that China's voracious appetite for everything from U.S. grain to steel is insatiable. Alarm bells ringing on bankrupt China Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Excerpts from several sources, in a roundup found here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0517/dailyUpdate.html The military lawyers were so upset, Joe Conason of Salon reported last week, that eight senior JAG officers took the unprecedented step of arranging an off-the-record meeting with Scott Horton, chairman of the New York City bar association's Committee on International Human Rights Law. "They were very specific in saying there is a policy coming from the top creating an atmosphere of legal ambiguity surrounding the interrogation process that serves no legitimate function and carries grave risks," Horton recalls. "They made it very clear they wanted the bar to raise its voice about this." Newsweek reports that after 9/11, President George Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld, and US Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off on a "on a secret system of detention and interrogation" designed to prevent another 9/11. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers?and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. The White House has long insisted that Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners are not covered by the Geneva Conventions because they are "enemy combatants," although Mr. Powell and his staff were "horrified" by the suggested changes to prisoners protections and tried without success to negate them. Newsweek reports that the post 9/11 plan signed off on by Mr. Bush gave the CIA permission to set up secret detention facilities outside the US Editor and Publisher reports that The Associated Press ran a series of stories in November of 2003 (almost completely ignored by other mainstream media) that quoted several former Iraqi detainees who said they had been tortured while they were in Abu Ghraib. Charles J. Hanley, the AP correspondent who wrote the story, said it didn't have any "traction" with his media colleagues because it didn't come from a government "handout." He [Hanley] is still amazed that apparently no one else was looking into the allegations, and no major newspaper picked up on his reporting after it appeared. Why? "That's something you'd have to ask editors at major newspapers," he said. "But there does seem to be a very strong prejudice toward investing US official statements with credibility while disregarding statements from almost any other source ? and in this current situation, Iraqi sources." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lock Limit Down Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Funny how the European markets are not near as excited today as the good old boys buying the pre market futures here. http://finance.yahoo.com/m2?u Silver is up as usual until the 8:20 slapdown Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The brown one Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 This would be characteristic of a competitive devaluation in a total fiat scheme. It won't really show in the FOREX. This time it's labor that's being discounted. Our money is not a store of wealth, but in reality "time" chits. Work an hour get a claim on someone's debt. It's the same the world over. Excellent! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrStool Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Buy Signals Some Here, Some Not Your Golden Stool, including short and long term updated charts and price targets, is loaded. Even if you are not a goldbug, you should check out the Golden Stool. It's in your Anals daily. Take a subscribatory and download the Golden Stool RIGHT NOW! 30 Day Intro Subscribatory. Just $16.99! Get In RIGHT NOW! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twignberries Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Max pain chart for QQQ: Notice the steeper slope of the graph below the max pain mark of 36 representing the larger put open interest. Since we are already below max pain, the boyz have a lot of motivation to keep this thing from falling this week, making a significant move down unlikely until next week IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Lots of Fed Bullhorning expected the next few days. Then there is the Yearnings Report on The Economy (AMAT). All of which are designed to prop things up to burn out all the puts during Scam Week. Even TASR is catching some bids this morning. GILD up almost $3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiding Bear Posted May 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Expect yields on the 10s to nudge up to 5%, as the rest of the curve flattems around it. Al holding the fed rate at an artificial level has prevented the normal curve from developing and as such has eliminated one of the market's primary signals from being displayed; inversion. Without the inversion being displayed, most participants aren't going to know what hits them a few months down the road. Well done. We stand a fair chance of some further confrontations later this week across the Taiwan Strait. If so, all markets will be turned on their head. Otherwise I expect interest rates to resume their upward course. I don't see how the ten year bond can stay less than 5% when its likely we will have 5% or more inflation this year in the US even using the CPI. But I'm waiting a few more days or so to go short, and will carefully review the Long Bond Hit report first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrStool Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 HB-- That's "Bong Hit." -- The Long Bong Hit :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wndysrf Posted May 18, 2004 Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 GILD up $3 in the PreMarket..... Wonder if its getting ready to Giraffe out of this trading range.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiding Bear Posted May 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 HB-- That's "Bong Hit." -- The Long Bong Hit :lol: Yeah, what was I smoking? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiding Bear Posted May 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2004 Before I check out today, I actually listened to Crapvision to catch the OMB director Bolton. Like others, Bolton does not mention that individual tax receipts are down 3% this year but talks up how well Treasury receipts are doing. He need look no further than the energy companies to find where the increase in tax receipts are really coming from. Yes higher energy prices are helping close the budget deficit some. Also this year we did not have the retroactive business tax giveaway in the second quarter 2003 which reduced business taxes almost to zero for a short time last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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