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B4 The Bell Weak-end Den, August 6 - 8


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Guest yobob1
Cokenose and Kermit on Crapvision should be quite a show tonight.

 

Today the bond's displayed their "safety" status a little.?

 

Once more with vigor, I'll say Al doesn't dare raise rates and will be in the unfortunate position of lowering them after the first of the year.? While Hyper's time frame closed out a tad earlier mine is still in play till the early stages of Q1 05.? Any stock market "mishaps" will speed the process, but the real lone hold-out for now is still construction.

 

Early in the year I said that sales would weaken by the edge of Summer, which they have, and that will be followed shortly by a reversing jobs market, which according to the feeble lie they came out with today, that is already occuring.? I think the next 60 days will show us the beginning of the breakdown in new construction.? That will be the final card to play.? From there it will be only a short matter of time before the sheeple reach the POR.? The election is only going to add to the general anxiety level.

 

Personally I'm still voting for the surprise comet strike on DC, that would end the true source of most of the world's terrorists.

Until the dollar starts crashing, the Fed may not have to raise interest rates again after next week. I am still looking a rate increase, but now I am only 80% sure after being 99% and 90% sure the last prior two days respectively. Another 200 points down Monday, and the Fed may re-evaluate the decision it probably already made.

 

Time frames as to when the credit bubble collapses are nearly impossible to make. The main difficulty being that events at some point may accelerate out of control at an exponetial rate in a few days after a period of relative calm. There probably won't be a 24 to 48 hour hurricane type warning, except maybe on this forum. The hedge hog funds Mark talks about will suddenly be liquidated when lenders realize trading capital has been wiped out.

 

Next week, the Fed will proceed more agressively with a policy of quantitative easing of the monetary base to offset the deleterious effects of interest rate hikes, higher energy prices, and a faltering credit bubble and economy.

 

[the following is from my earlier, similar post on July 30]

 

As you might remember, Ben the Printer Bernanke implied in his speech on January 14, 2004 that when interest rates reach a practical low limit other unconventional methods might be used.

 

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/sp...033/default.htm

 

The first and most significant unconventional method was "quantitative easing". Bernanke says:

 

"These days, most central banks choose to calibrate the degree of policy ease or tightness by targeting the price of reserves--in the case of the Federal Reserve, the overnight federal funds rate. However, nothing prevents a central bank from switching its focus from the price of reserves to the quantity or growth of reserves. That is, reserves can be increased beyond the level required to hold the overnight rate at zero--a policy sometimes referred to as "quantitative easing"."

 

While Bernanke was referring to what might happen when interest rates approach zero, they are still for all practical purposes about as low as they can go.

 

Further Bernhanke believes that quantitative easing reduces the negative effects of inflation:

 

"In expanding its balance sheet by open-market purchases, the central bank replaces public holdings of interest-bearing government debt with non-interest-bearing currency or reserves. If the open-market operation is not expected to be reversed too quickly, this exchange reduces the present and future interest costs of the government and the tax burden on the public. (Effectively, this process replaces a direct tax, say on labor, with the inflation tax.)"

 

It appears that the Fed has already committed to a policy of inflating and debasing money to fight the oncoming economic recession. As the inflation fire accelerates, they are ready to add more gasoline (repos) to stop the wood (the economy) from burning. This should continue to buoy energy and precious metal stocks up until the time that all conventional and unconventional methods fail to keep the credit bubble inflated.

HB, first my time frame is not for the credit collapse but is the window for when things are obviously turning so bad that no amount of spin or phony stats will hide the reality from the sheeple. What I'm looking for is a sea change in behaviour. My business necessitates looking out 6+ months and taking a lot of wild assed guesses on product mix and quantities and if you can believe it interior decorating trends. What I sell is sold to women primarily. Oh sure the husband likes to think he has some control, but ultimately it's the women that make the final decision. I mean we are talking defacto nest building here. That's one piece of the puzzle from my end.

 

The other obvious large piece is the general economy. So out of necessity once again I have to try and anticipate oil, IR and because of the last decade also the stock market (now that everybody is an investor) Throw in the local economic factors and the variables become almost inumerable. The one thing I have going in my favor is that purchase decisions are planned many years in advance in a lot of cases and it often takes something very big to sway them from their goal.

 

I'm estimating the bottom of the RV business won't fall out for 12 to 18 months. Portions of the industry, primarily those relying on Joe Sheeple how much a month, are already beginning to feel the pinch, whereas the retiring or soon to retire boomer business is still holding up just fine. This is where I reside. I got out of the 40 year old, 2.3 kids, I want a cheap box to go camping in business 4 years ago.

 

Few people realize that in the midst of the depression up until about the middle of 1932, the luxury car business soared. The best two years for the high end marques were actually 1930 and 1931. Business soon went to zero shortly after that.

 

But I digress. The bottom line is I think the economy will be in such obviously bad shape by the end of the year that the fed will feel forced to do something. Sadly, there will be nothing (meaningful) they can do at that point. Bernake's "we have a printing press" talk is a bluff. If they were honestly able to pull off the unconventional measures, they wouldn't make their intentions public as that would minimize their ability. NO it would be done quietly away from the glaring light of public scrutiny. I think the bond market knows this, but isn't fully aware of the ramifications so I expect them to lead, as usual, to a rate cut by Q1 05.

 

As to Uncle Bucky collapsing. I don't see that in the immediate future. The question as always in a total fiat environment is collapse against what? The mighty Yen or the politically contrived Euro? The Yuan? The cute but laughable Swiss Franc? The Loonie? The simple truth is all of them are purely confidence backed as is Uncle Buck. As long as Uncle Buck retains the reserve status and is the medium of exchange for oil, I think they silently all sink together. Not sink in "value" so much as the confidence premium dwindles. Mind you this is based on the precept of a harsh global economic downturn. Ultimately over time they will all have to be valued against something. It is a waste of time to measure one ruler with another for that can only tell you whether they agree or not, but won't tell you if the one foot measurement is actually one foot. (or meter for our foreign friends). There really is only one thing that can serve that function for "money" and that is gold.

 

All of the big foreign CBs are loaded with dollar denominated assets. For most it is a significant portion of their asset base. They really don't want a sinking dollar. As oil works it's way higher more dollars will be needed to buy the oil. Those who export to us (everybody) have no desire to see their currency values higher against Uncle Buck.

 

The US is the consumption engine of the planet. Yes the China story is compelling and Asia likely will become a financial engine in it's own right in time, but not just yet. When the US goes down, Asia and Europe will too.

 

I think the credit collapse will really begin later in 2005 into 2006. Debt deflation should be supportive of cash and local currencies in most countries should initially fare well. It is when the misery levels in any one country rise to the political boiling point that the danger lies for that respective currency. After all, in a fiat system, the value is really based on the stability of the government, or in the case of the Euro the stability of the economic union. Personally I think the Euro comes unhinged before the dollar.

 

In my view we have tipped onto the downslope of an extremly long cycle measured perhaps in thousands of years. When you consider the over population of the planet (due to oil producing food), the apparent peak in oil, the geo-political turmoil and a monetary system based on nothing it seems to me that barring a major natural disaster or global wars of devastating proportions, humanity is in for long bumpy ride to the bottom which will end when the population of the planet has come into balance with the renewable resources. To me that says somewhere under 1 billion or an 80%+ decline. That likely won't happen overnight but left to itself will likely take hundreds of years. It has happened before. Several times in recorded history and probably many times before man learned to record history if one gives any credence to mitochondrial dna studies.

 

Man likes to think he has control of the economy. But the economy is really the sum of 6 billion individual economic decisions made on a minute by minute basis. We may have more control of the weather than we have of the global economy.

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Man likes to think he has control of the economy.  But the economy is really the sum of 6 billion individual economic decisions made on a minute by minute basis.  We may have more control of the weather than we have of the global economy.

Well said. The economy is an organic thing, a meta-lifeform comprised of individual lifeforms. It is monstrous hubris to think we can "manage" it.

 

Chalmers Johnson said that we didn't win the Cold War; we just lost it less badly than the Soviets.

 

Everybody knows now that command economies don't work. Even with a supercomputer, you couldn't optimize the million-dimensional matrix of a value-added economy. Comecon didn't even come close. In fact, just this past week Russia dumped the final vestige of the command economy -- "payment in kind" (in the form of goods and services) to pensioners, which will now be made in cash to eliminate mispricing.

 

The hubristic intellectual error of the west is the belief that management of interest rates and money supplies by committees of wise men is somehow different than a command economy. IT IS NOT! AND IT IS WORSE!

 

Yes, western economies, being less micromanaged than the Soviet Union, have achieved higher degrees of efficiency and living standards.

 

But unlimited credit creation has actually produced a far bigger Bubble here than ever would have been possible in a total command economy.

 

Marx, it turned out, was too literal-minded in his notion of selling the capitalists the rope to hang themselves.

 

THE "ROPE" IS DEBT!

 

In what used to be considered a normal post-Enlightenment society -- a culture with vigorous, healthy debate about the large issues of the time -- the Federal Reserve and its policies would be highly controversial.

 

Honestly, though, when you watch those Humphrey-Hawkins cakewalks ... do you see any controversy? In the major-party political campaigns, do you hear even one breath of criticism for the Federal Reserve?

 

It's the complete lack of debate -- or even cognizance of the issue -- which makes me bearish like yobob. We live in a culture which has succumbed to intellectual coma, but the body (the consumer economy) keeps breathing on the Fed's ventilator. Not for long, though.

 

Clearly, this party bus is going to have to plunge over the cliff and bang up the passengers very badly, before the reckless driver is discredited.

 

So .... let's get on with it! :lol: ;) :mellow:

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Although OPEC began officially in Baghdad, it really began in the beside notebook of a South American lawyer who was an admirer of one of our own institutions, the Texas Railroad Commission. The cartel that so aroused this man was formed by some grouse shooters at a castle in Achnacarry, Scotland. The action that triggered the formation of OPEC took place on the twenty-ninth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. The banking system that received the vast flow of funds from the oil producers grew from the actions of a Russian bureaucrat in London. The grouse shooters, the lawyer, and the Russian all have something to do with the worth of a bank account and the price of a house.
]Paper Money by Adam Smith, 1981

You will find that OPEC may have been formed in Baghdad, but the idea and mover behind the scene was a Venezuealian who accessed Texas RR Commission

files at University of Texas while a graduate student. TRRC allocated market shares for the 7-sisters. :ph34r:

If I remember correctly, the lawyer was Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso.

If he was the oil minister, then it is he. Didn't know the lawyer angle although several would be involved with the formation of OPEC.B)

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With respect to MH's rant about hubris and HT's continuous rants on the debt backing debt system due to implode in the very near future, stoolies might take a moment (actually about 50 moments) to listen to the Heinberg interview on financialsense website this weekend. Economics and ECO-nomics, which ideally should be in harmony, are on a collision course, since the current order is predicated on exponential growth while the planet functions as a complex of steady-state cycles.

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Yobob, that's what I deal with. Trying to second guess the future not only for investment purposes, but my business (livelihood) hinges on how well I percieve the future also. Right now I have to place orders for spring. Hard to do when you have such a bearish bent. This year I'm afraid the POR will hit over the winter and finally affect my sales. I've been anticipating lower sales, so far momentum just keeps building. I think I've finally decided to have the goods available and if I call it wrong we'll just have a massive auction. ( People usually pay more than retail at 'em) I've got to place orders for containers out of Vietnam now for spring (pottery), and my head hurts from the "should I or shouldn't I" debate!!!!Oh well, it keeps it interesting! :blink:

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Bushco/CIA blows it again:

 

To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Ch?vez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow.

 

Ch?vez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. 

 

While Ch?vez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Ch?vez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington.

 

Ch?vez shows 'em

 

The runaway oil price makes Ch?vez VERY popular with his peeps.

 

It just goes to show that Bushco can't keep all those plates spinning at the same time.

 

Help Halliburton, lose Venezuela. What's a muscle-bound hegemon to do? :lol:

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Guest yobob1
Yobob, that's what I deal with. Trying to second guess the future not only for investment purposes, but my business (livelihood) hinges on how well I percieve the future also. Right now I have to place orders for spring. Hard to do when you have such a bearish bent. This year I'm afraid the POR will hit over the winter and finally affect my sales. I've been anticipating lower sales, so far momentum just keeps building. I think I've finally decided to have the goods available and if I call it wrong we'll just have a massive auction. ( People usually pay more than retail at 'em) I've got to place orders for containers out of Vietnam now for spring (pottery), and my head hurts from the "should I or shouldn't I" debate!!!!Oh well, it keeps it interesting! :blink:

It's a hell of mess in retailing right now. I've been operating on nearly zero inventory all Summer long. Units ordered for stock have been sold before they arrive, and what little has actually ended up in inventory has been in stock for very short periods of time except for a couple of tough hangeroners (hey this is America, we make up words all the time. :P )

 

Now as I approach Fall, I find myself in the position of facing an inventory build, but not beyond my desired stock levels. Oddly in my particular market my inventory must peak in December due to an early January show and the need for product to display. Normally we do a fair amount of business in the Aug thru Oct period as the snowbirds (people who RV South for the Winter) buy new units with which to go South. I'm really hoping a wingohockingmoyamensinged up election, crashing stock market and high fuel costs don't disrupt this too much. The Fall of 2000 was a real bitch because of two of those factors.

 

In 1979 we were sitting with about 1.5 million in inventory when the shit hit the fan. (Primarily Volker's interest rates of nearly 21% at my level of borrowing, Prime plus) By 1981 half the dealers and half the manufacturers were gone. We surrvived by refinancing the property and 20 years later I question the sanity of that move. We might have been better off to just let the finance outfits have the units and kept the property free. It took another 15 years to get the property free and clear. It will never happen again. If its get real bad, they can come and get the inventory even though we have personal and business assets sufficient to pay off the inventory - wingohockingmoyamensing em.

 

We're in far better shape than we've ever been. We owe nothing other than a modest amount of inventory financing and are sitting on the largest pile of cash we'ver ever had. Without so much as selling a single light bulb, the cash can operate the business at full currrent expense load for about 8 months and that's after a couple of large cash outlays to take advantage of the IRS one time 100k deduction which expires this year. Right now I'm still looking for ways to bury some profit before year end so that taxes are effectively zero. Starve the state is my goal.

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Everyone works hard...In fact everyone I have ever met claims they are the hardest workers and or work harder then anyone else...

so ttrue.

 

You can add "I do it only for the kids" to that. Of course everyone who has kids tries to be a good father/mother, so what really is the essence of the saying "i do it only for the kids"? Nada.

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about that german beer discussion:

 

Warsteiner is ok, but i like Becks and Jever more. Anyone who has never tried Jever, try it.

 

Among the Weissbier/Weizenbier there are Erdinger and Paulaner which are quite good.

 

 

Lock Limit Down,

 

which other german beers have you tried? :)

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