Jump to content

B4 the Bell Wiki Tiki Endi


Guest yobob1

Recommended Posts

Rand falls on shock SA rate cut

Markets in South Africa are digesting the surprise decision to cut interest rates, as the rand suffered extended losses on Friday following the move.

Some anal cysts see the SA central bank's cut in the key repo interest rate, by half a percentage point to 7.50%, as being forced by political pressure.

 

The rand touched 6.55 against the dollar, 13 cents weaker than Thursday's close, and its lowest since 10 June.

 

Its depreciation against the US dollar was 5.4% in less than 24 hours.

 

Labour march

 

Markets were caught on the hop by the announcement, which came without warning.

 

At the South African Reserve Bank's last policy meeting in June, governor Tito Mboweni had said no-one should expect any more interest rate cuts.

 

"It would appear that the pressure that was brought to bear on the MPC (monetary policy committee) following the march of labour union members on Wednesday, played a significant role in the decision," said Absa chief economist Christo Luus in a research note.

 

"The rand did lose more than 20 cents against the dollar on the news, but it remains to be seen whether this decline will be sustained. "

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3561292.stm

 

Currancy Wars are beginning....'Competition' anyone? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 361
  • Created
  • Last Reply
There is NO oil problem!

 

It says so right here in black and white:

 

An anal cyst told me so

 

LA Motorists Get a Break at Gas Pumps

08-13-2004 3:11 PM

 

(Los Angeles, CA) -- Gas prices are continuing to creep lower in the Los Angeles area, despite record prices for crude oil. The latest Metro Source Price at the Pump Survey shows the average price for regular unleaded in LA dropped three cents in the past week to $2.11. San Francisco once again topped the survey with the highest price for gas at $2.16 a gallon. The national average price dropped a penny to $1.86. One industry anal cyst says prices continue to drop because the domestic oil supply is strong and there are no pressing problems with U.S. refineries.

 

 

Copyright 2004 Metro Networks Communications Inc., A Westwood One Company

? ?

 

OK, so where do I line up to buy the swampland in Florida? :unsure: :unsure: :blink:

 

i told you guys - gasoline here is cheap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you folks seen this?

 

"Mr. Moto" posted it on Pru Bear BearChat today:

 

"Stress in the Interbank Market

 

"The total of interbank credit has soared within the past two months to a level only rivaled by the two-week episode in the same measure at 9/11. Not even the period immediately prior to the century-date-change-event can match this comparatively sudden increase."

 

http://www.prudentbear.com/bearschat/bbs_r...r=1&sb=1&snsa=A

 

It put me in mind of a paper Warren E. Pollack did a while ago on frequency of settlement fails.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

great, lets the germans and other Nato-types carry the load of their defense. i was there in 1973-1974 for the "Great Guesthouse Wars" and checked out the Fulda Gap. i couldnt believe the defense plan that required use to drive from Butzbach to Fulda Gap as Russians come driving through. it had to involve "other means".

ha! And who made that defensive plan? I bet my ass it wasnt the german army, but the NATO itself, always controlled by the US. Tactial things and stuff like that were at least in the 70s under full control of the US.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fred Kaplan: 'No way out: Is there any hope of avoiding catastrophe in Iraq?'

Posted on Saturday, August 14 @ 08:23:41 EDT By Fred Kaplan, Slate

 

This is a terribly grim thing to say, but there might be no solution to the problem of Iraq. There might be nothing we can do to build a path to a stable, secure, let alone democratic regime. And there's no way we can just pull out without plunging the country, the region, and possibly beyond into still deeper disaster.

 

The U.S. military?the only force in Iraq remotely capable of keeping the country from falling apart?finds itself in a maddening situation where tactical victories yield strategic setbacks. The Marines could readily defeat the insurgents in Najaf, but only at the great risk of inflaming Shiites?and sparking still larger insurgencies?elsewhere. In the Sadr City section of Baghdad, as U.S. commanders acknowledge, practically every resident is an insurgent.

 

There are not enough U.S. and British troops now to create the conditions for order. Nor are there likely to be any time soon.

 

John Kerry says that, if elected president, he'd persuade our allies?the ones Bush blew off?to come help (or bail) us out. Kerry would certainly be an abler diplomat than Bush; he would repair tattered alliances, and the benefits would likely be substantial in many aspects of international politics. But it's unclear how even Kerry would lure reluctant leaders to send significant numbers of combat troops into what they see as the quagmire of Iraq.

 

Meanwhile, the Bush administration seems to be muddling through with neither a military strategy for beating the insurgents nor a political strategy for securing Iraq's stability.

 

Bush seems to have gone into this war without any notion that he was popping the lid off a Jack-in-a-box?that toppling Saddam and destroying the Baath Party (however laudable) would also uncork decades of pent-up ethnic and tribal tensions. If his advisers were better briefed, they took no steps to quell the likely postwar conflicts. They didn't send more troops to keep order (either in defiance or in ignorance of historic precedent). More to the point here, they didn't seek out the various ethnic leaders or offer them incentives to join a new political order. They didn't, for that matter, formulate a new political order. (Perhaps they thought Ahmad Chalabi had that department under control.)

 

You don't hear Paul Wolfowitz waxing lyrical these days, as he did a year ago, over the universal truths of Alexis de Tocqueville. Even he must realize that the best we can hope for, at this point, is an Iraq that doesn't blow up and take the region with it. The dismaying, frightening thing is how imponderably difficult it will be simply to avoid catastrophe.

 

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?s...=nested&order=0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

great, lets the germans and other Nato-types carry the load of their defense.? i was there in 1973-1974 for the "Great Guesthouse Wars" and checked out the Fulda Gap.? i couldnt believe the defense plan that required use to drive from Butzbach to Fulda Gap as Russians come driving through.? it had to involve "other means".?

ha! And who made that defensive plan? I bet my ass it wasnt the german army, but the NATO itself, always controlled by the US. Tactial things and stuff like that were at least in the 70s under full control of the US.

 

my point wasnt who breaded the schnitzel, it was that the plan was bogus to begin with? it must have been based upon a long notice via sattelite intelligence or something. our response time would have been variable depending upon how much Lebanese Red, Afghan Black, Brown Rock or China White was floating wound the base. this was the period when the Army switched from draft to volunteer and many of the soldiers were in the Army as their only option to be sentenced to jail. dude, half the base was nodding off most of the time - and amsterdam was only a short train ride away....

 

edit: the world would obviously be a safer place w/o muslims. :lol: look for this tact to be taken as muslims are demonized.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The extreme right-wing fat cat capitalists love to talk out of both sides of their greedy mouths.

 

It's "free trade and free markets" as long as they're lining their pockets at the expense of the lower classes.

 

The West built an economic empire on cheap oil so now these same arrogant fat asses feel entitled to cheap oil in perpetuity. "Those backward ragheads wouldn't know what to do with it anyway."

 

Now Arabs have to die so that we in the West aren't forced to -- God forbid -- downsize our SUVs!

 

Don't know this for a fact, but I'll bet 'mericans spend more money muscling the Middle East than they would on higher oil prices from there. I got no beef with paying free market rates for oil. Rising oil prices is what will make energy substitutes more attractive and eventually more affordable.

 

If these same right-wing neanderthals were in charge of things the past two centuries, the U.S. would be invading forested countries right now to feed our wood-burning power plants and steam-driven automobiles. B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd Freddy kaplan has it just about right. Iraq existed as a Country only because of the ruthless Tin Horn who ran it, he kept the ethnic tensions at bay by executing any who pulled their head out of the fox-hole. Yugoslavia existed only because Tito did exactly the same thing. The former Yugoslavia is now a Balkanized mix of small states run by new tyrants who hate one anothers guts the minute NATO leaves (which will be never) the whole region will explode in WAR. Iraq will undoubtedly follow the same pattern and Balkanize into enclaves run by Afghan style Warlords. One has to ask the question what was better for us militarily and economically a stable Iraq run by a caricature Dictator or what we have now. What was better for the Iraqui people stability under So-Dumb or what they have now-the answer is obvious. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oil Market oversupplied says Iran

 

TEHRAN (Reuters) - OPEC can do nothing to douse scorching oil prices when markets are already oversupplied by 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude, Iran's OPEC governor said Saturday, warning that prices could fall sharply.

 

"Now there are more than 2.8 million bpd of crude more than demand," Hossein Kazempour Ardebili was quoted as saying on the Iranian Oil Ministry Web site.

 

 

I don't know about you, but I feel better. :unsure: :blink: :unsure: :blink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The biggest gainer from these high oil prices may be Hugo Chavez, who was able to pump so much money into the poor Venezuelans, that it looks like he may win the referendum and stay in power.

 

The Monroe doctrine is dead. It is now politically impossible for the USA to replace left-leaning Latin-American leaders with dictators. The cold war is over. And if a US government does intervene, it would isolate itself within the Americas and lose much of the hispanic vote at home.

 

The only real US interest in the middle-east is that enough oil is sold to keep prices down. It does really not matter to the USA who is selling this oil. It may be the house of Saud, the Ayatollahs of Iran, Putin or Chavez, as long as they don't turn off the oil.

 

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is already a big failure in many ways. The whole occupation costs so much that even the oil can't justify it. And it is obvious that the USA still can't control oil prices. But if the USA leaves, Iraq will probably come under control of Iran, much like Lebanon is now under control of Syria.

 

After the invasion of Iraq and the 'axis of evil' speech, the Iranian leadership has concluded that it needs to pursue nuclear weapons. The net result of all of this may be that Iran emerges as a military superpower in the middle-east.

Iraq has been a huge success. Our bases are under construction. We will rule the middle east from Iraq. Iran will be just another speedbump along the way. We have no interest other than oil? I beg to differ. Zbigniew Brzeszinski says we have lots of interests there. I believe him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting chart, Hugs. What's it telling us?

 

I don't know. People have been trying to correlate omo with the stock market for a long time. This one is the only one I've seen come close. Stunning how the collapse in the stock market mirrors the reduction in omo the past month.

 

In general though, I don't think omo alone is very predictive. I suspect there's another data point, when matched with omo, might help predict the market. I'm not smart enough to know what it is. It's probably in Doc's anals though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The USA had a window of opportunity after the invasion of Iraq, to create a government that involved all relevant parties in Iraq and to put the country on the path of democracy. I'm convinced of that. But the Bush government has squandered that opportunity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Tell a friend

    Love Stool Pigeons Wire Message Board? Tell a friend!
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • ×
    • Create New...