Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

Welcome back. 

Hi there Tenters.

Just wanted to say hello and drop in to confirm I didn’t fall into a black hole. Just got back from a few weeks of exploration in Panama, it was a great trip and will post more on that at a later time.

Spent a while reading up a bit one the latest news over the weekend, and so nice to see how Gold performed while I was AFK (away from keyboard).

Irish - sorry I missed your call before the holidays. Things were very hectic trying to wrap up loose ends before heading out of town. It’s good to see that things are moving forward nicely. We should catch up offline sometime soon and compare notes.

Best wishes
-Scarab

January 14, 2008
Disarray

The dark tunnel that the US economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole last week, sucking in lives, fortunes, and prospects behind a Potemkin facade of orderly retreat put up by anyone in authority with a story to tell or an interest to protect — Fed chairman Bernanke, CNBC, The New York Times, the Bank of America…. Events are now moving ahead of anything that personalities can do to control them.
The “housing bubble” implosion is broadly misunderstood. It’s not just the collapse of a market for a particular kind of commodity, it’s the end of the suburban pattern itself, the way of life it represents, and the entire economy connected with it. It’s the crack up of the system that America has invested most of its wealth in since 1950. It’s perhaps most tragic that the mis-investments only accelerated as the system reached its end, but it seems to be nature’s way that waves crest just before they break.
This wave is breaking into a sea-wall of disbelief. Nobody gets it. The psychological investment in what we think of as American reality is too great. The mainstream media doesn’t get it, and they can’t report it coherently. None of the candidates for president has begun to articulate an understanding of what we face: the suburban living arrangement is an experiment that has entered failure mode.
I maintain that all the “players” — from the bankers to the politicians to the editors to the ordinary citizens — will continue to not get it as the disarray accelerates and families and communities are blown apart by economic loss. Instead of beginning the tough process of making new arrangements for everyday life, we’ll take up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable old way of life at all costs.
A reader sent me a passle of recent clippings last week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It contained one story after another about the perceived need to build more highways in order to maintain “economic growth” (and incidentally about the “foolishness” of public transit). I understood that to mean the need to keep the suburban development system going, since that has been the real main source of the Sunbelt’s prosperity the past 60-odd years. They cannot imagine an economy that is based on anything besides new subdivisions, freeway extensions, new car sales, and Nascar spectacles. The Sunbelt, therefore, will be ground-zero for all the disappointment emanating from this cultural disaster, and probably also ground-zero for the political mischief that will ensue from lost fortunes and crushed hopes.
From time-to-time, I feel it’s necessary to remind readers what we can actually do in the face of this long emergency. Voters and candidates in the primary season have been hollering about “change” but I’m afraid the dirty secret of this campaign is that the American public doesn’t want to change its behavior at all. What it really wants is someone to promise them they can keep on doing what they’re used to doing: buying more stuff they can’t afford, eating more shitty food that will kill them, and driving more miles than circumstances will allow.
Here’s what we better start doing.
Stop all highway-building altogether. Instead, direct public money into repairing railroad rights-of-way. Put together public-private partnerships for running passenger rail between American cities and towns in between. If Amtrak is unacceptable, get rid of it and set up a new management system. At the same time, begin planning comprehensive regional light-rail and streetcar operations.
End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers, using the existing regional networks of organic farming associations to target the aid. (This includes ending subsidies for the ethanol program.)
Begin planning and construction of waterfront and harbor facilities for commerce: piers, warehouses, ship-and-boatyards, and accommodations for sailors. This is especially important along the Ohio-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes.
In cities and towns, change regulations that mandate the accommodation of cars. Direct all new development to the finest grain, scaled to walkability. This essentially means making the individual building lot the basic increment of redevelopment, not multi-acre “projects.” Get rid of any parking requirements for property development. Institute “locational taxation” based on proximity to the center of town and not on the size, character, or putative value of the building itself. Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories. Begin planning for district or neighborhood heating installations and solar, wind, and hydro-electric generation wherever possible on a small-scale network basis.
We’d better begin a public debate about whether it is feasible or desirable to construct any new nuclear power plants. If there are good reasons to go forward with nuclear, and a consensus about the risks and benefits, we need to establish it quickly. There may be no other way to keep the lights on in America after 2020.
We need to prepare for the end of the global economic relations that have characterized the final blow-off of the cheap energy era. The world is about to become wider again as nations get desperate over energy resources. This desperation is certain to generate conflict. We’ll have to make things in this country again, or we won’t have the most rudimentary household products.
We’d better prepare psychologically to downscale all institutions, including government, schools and colleges, corporations, and hospitals. All the centralizing tendencies and gigantification of the past half-century will have to be reversed. Government will be starved for revenue and impotent at the higher scale. The centralized high schools all over the nation will prove to be our most frustrating mis-investment. We will probably have to replace them with some form of home-schooling that is allowed to aggregate into neighborhood units. A lot of colleges, public and private, will fail as higher ed ceases to be a “consumer” activity. Corporations scaled to operate globally are not going to make it. This includes probably all national chain “big box” operations. It will have to be replaced by small local and regional business. We’ll have to reopen many of the small town hospitals that were shuttered in recent years, and open many new local clinic-style health-care operations as part of the greater reform of American medicine.
Take a time-out from legal immigration and get serious about enforcing the laws about illegal immigration. Stop lying to ourselves and stop using semantic ruses like calling illegal immigrants “undocumented.”
Prepare psychologically for the destruction of a lot of fictitious “wealth” — and allow instruments and institutions based on fictitious wealth to fail, instead of attempting to keep them propped up on credit life-support. Like any other thing in our national life, finance has to return to a scale that is consistent with our circumstances — i.e., what reality will allow. That process is underway, anyway, whether the public is prepared for it or not. We will soon hear the sound of banks crashing all over the place. Get out of their way, if you can.
Prepare psychologically for a sociopolitical climate of anger, grievance, and resentment. A lot of individual citizens will find themselves short of resources in the years ahead. They will be very ticked off and seek to scapegoat and punish others. The United States is one of the few nations on earth that did not undergo a sociopolitical convulsion in the past hundred years. But despite what we tell ourselves about our specialness, we’re not immune to the forces that have driven other societies to extremes. The rise of the Nazis, the Soviet terror, the “cultural revolution,” the holocausts and genocides — these are all things that can happen to any people driven to desperation.

But…if you would for a moment…take a short walk outside and take a deep breath through the nose…I swear… I smell Silver shorts burning.

JBI

I ain’t that tuff,and there’s a pool next door !!! Rollo

We’re mixing it with citric acid and then some nice organic apple juice.  The taste isn’t bad at all.  I’ve never been a fan of apple juice but this stuff: “Simply Apple” is really good.

Take it on the rocks. Be tough. Just pretend you gulpped some swimming pool water.

Sounds like he thinks he is being funny. To me he quit being funny 3 years ago. And that crap about shorting the gold and making money as the price rises is the most transparent attempt at B.S cover up I have ever heard. He is either pulling our legs or he is just one sick puppy..real sick.
Now is the time to shake off the doubts about any trading mistakes that have been made and focus on the here and now. A new form of hold the line comes into play. As the little guys begin to come alive we must resist the urge to sell too quick As much as you want to start pushing …don’t do it…just remember the Lamazze classes breathe and blow breathe and blow……don’t push…..wait a minute what am I doing here….anyway just don’t sell the 50cent guys untill ya see the whites of their eyes somewhere around 50 bucks [but be holding the certs. in Belize] We can play liars poker with them.
Do you still see all the old idea money still rolling into bonds..what a bunch of saps..I hope my uncle is pouring money into 30 year bonds..it will serve his arrogant rear end justice.Haa

I’ve been tryin to get down the mms,I’ve mixed with water,apple juice ,prune juice,pomagranit juice,beer,???? kool aid !!! nothin tastes good ,please, any help out there ?? Tanx in advance. Rollo

I think Citi is in deep doodoo! 

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) - Bank of Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui said Tuesday the turmoil affecting the U.S. credit markets is having a bigger effect upon the Japanese economy than previously expected, according to reports. In a speech delivered at a quarterly meeting with BOJ officials, Fukui said the Japanese economy was slowing and sentiment had become more cautious, according to the Nikkei business daily. He also noted the decline in housing investment in Japan following the introduction of stricter building-permit approvals was dragging on the economy. The BOJ will issue an economic report compiled by its regional branch managers Tuesday afternoon.

By Chris Oliver
Last update: 9:34 p.m. EST Jan. 14, 2008

~ ~ ~

No kidding?

JBI

Could you show a chart where the HUI looks parabolic? Are you sure you know the definition of parabolic? <g> Deadeye

Kaplan already showed that he’s a welsher.  When you win what makes you think he’ll pay this time?