Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

….No wonder the Euro is wheezing…

…Dollar Bulls will get a lift from the Peril of the EU..

..Rambus ….I see your point when you say…what we know and what we dont know are all in the charts…

…Should be interesting to see if the EU starts to fall apart…what will they do with the Dollar Index ?

….Lets face it ….we Follow that abomination like its THE most important Financial Instrument in the Whole Ponzi Scheme…

….But lets examine what it is that we are charting and watching and assigning arbitrary numbers like 120 100… 80.. 70… 80…..What the hell is this “Dollar Index” ….which has been leading Gold around by the mouth all these years…?..

..Why must we cheer the Euro’s strength and Fear its weakness ?…just because some monetary beaurocrat assigined it 57.6% of the weighting in the Dollar Index….affectionatly known as the DX…

…Here is the Weighting….Its sorta like a Gold and Silver Miners Index…like the HUI or XAU…

www.akmos.com/forex/usdx/

..Wow.look at that the USDX was born in 1973 at the Smithsomian Institute….Pretty Impressive eh ?

….I guess the composition has changed over the years….since of course the Euro is rather new…there must have been Marks Francs Pesos and Lira etc in there before…

….So what happens if the EU Crashes and everybody goes back to thier own currencies ?…

.you guessed it…rejig the DX

…sorta like the Dow ..which changes,,by removing out of favor stocks and repacing them with stronger ones…..

….or like HUI substituting FCX for ABX….(lately that was a GOOD trade for HUI)….even though Barrick is NOT Unhedged

…So watch for the new DX…hey they even did it to the CRB…..completely changed it to suit thier needs !

…My vote to replace the Euro…is replace it with the Zimbobo……That ought to get the DX up to 84 real fast….so Rambus can sell at a profit !

….Bottom line….Going Forward we should put a LOT Less Attention on the DX as far as what gold is gonna Do…

….Its TIME for Gold to be the Bully it has been training to be….

…All Currencies should be measured against Gold..not Vica Versa…..

….Look at any Currency vs Gold since the turn of the 21st Century….and see who’s the Boss

….Dollar/Gold
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

….Euro/Gold
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

….Loonie/Gold
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

…Aussie/Gold
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

…Pound/Gold
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

…Yen/Gold (I have a yen for gold)
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

…Swiss Franc/Gold (How come the Franc is only 3% of DX) ?
stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=:&p=D&id=p88702858943

…anybody got Stockchart codes for the Rupee or Rouble or Yuan ?

…Do we see a pattern here…?

….Now There’s your DEFlation

…these charts are looking Enronesque….Fannyesque…Lehmanesque….etc

…Anybody thing they are bottoming here…?…..in light of the current Fiat Predicament…!

..the only way they stop going down is to link them to Gold…

…better do it soon..before Zero..!

…Who’s the Boss ?

..

“H.A.A.R.P Antenna Array”

That’s no respectable antenna, Farmboy.  That’s an electromagnetic weapon of atmospheric mass destruction.

IRS undercover operations: Privacy invasion?
The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, “I’m not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it’ll save you $1,000. Want to take it?”) That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.

Starting with the so-called Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988, the IRS has possessed this authority temporarily, with occasional multiple-year lapses. A 1999 internal report said the IRS had 126 “trained undercover agents” working in field offices at the time. This is the first time that such undercover authority would be made permanent.

Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) have been pushing to make it permanent for a while, claiming (PDF) in April that: “Undercover operations are an integral part of IRS efforts to detect and prove noncompliance. The temporary status of this provision creates uncertainty, as the IRS plans its undercover efforts from year to year.”

There’s another section of the bailout bill worth noting. It lets the IRS give information from individual tax returns to any federal law enforcement agency investigating suspected “terrorist” activity, which can, in turn, share it with local and state police. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency can also receive that information.

The information that can be shared includes “a taxpayer’s identity, the nature, source, or amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments, or tax payments, whether the taxpayer’s return was, is being, or will be examined or subject to other investigation or processing, or any other data received by, recorded by, prepared by, furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with respect to a return.”

That provision had already existed in federal law and automatically expired on January 1, 2008.

What’s a little odd is that there’s been little to no discussion of the IRS sections of the bailout bill, even though they raise privacy concerns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this week: “I will continue to work with congressional leaders to find a way forward to pass a comprehensive plan to stabilize our financial system and protect the American people by limiting the prospects of further deterioration in our economy.” He never mentioned the necessity of additional IRS undercover operations.

I fear you are right

Naw MENT, only have ONE latte  (vanilla latte venti, whole milk, extra hot, no foam)  Friend of mine told me that is what I should order the first time I had one! 

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? From whence then has it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay: lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

– Matthew 13:24–30, KJV

florida always suspected that you were one of the greedy ones never content with one latte always two

Thanks for the link, some intense reading in near future.

I did look at Bolivia as I was there (plus Peru & Chile) in 1991 and it was just crazy.

I took my 2 teenage sons and the Aussie/US$ could buy anything, all they wanted was the greenback, very rarely used local currency except in remote villages etc..

I remember we used to see people coming out of currency exchanges with airline bags full of local currency.

We stayed in a waterfront hotel top floor clean sheets every day for $4 per day total all 3 of us!

6 week trip for 3 people - $800 all in!

Many, many stories I can tell but the poor locals were literally starving, it could break your heart - we used to carry bread rolls in our backpacks to give to local children - it woke me up as to how the world works, I can tell you.   The bread rolls from the market were 100 for a $1 so we were not distributing much charity, except in our heart.

Having said that the locals still had a smile.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says it is ironic that European banks have turned out to be deeper in debt than their US counterparts.

It took a weekend to shatter the complacency of German finance minister Peer Steinbrück. Last Thursday he told us that the financial crisis was an “American problem”, the fruit of Anglo-Saxon greed and inept regulation that would cost the United States its “superpower status”. Pleas from US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for a joint US-European rescue plan to halt the downward spiral were rebuffed as unnecessary.

By Monday, Mr Steinbrück was having to orchestrate Germany’s biggest bank bail-out, putting together a €35 billion loan package to save Hypo Real Estate. By then Europe was “staring into the abyss,” he admitted. Belgium faced worse. It had to nationalise Fortis (with Dutch help), a 300-year-old bastion of Flemish finance, followed a day later by a bail-out for Dexia (with French help).

Within hours they were all trumped by Dublin. The Irish government issued a blanket guarantee of the deposits and debts of its six largest lenders in the most radical bank bail-out since the Scandinavian rescues in the early 1990s. Then France upped the ante with a €300 billion pan-European lifeboat for the banks. The drama has exposed Europe’s dark secret for all to see. EU banks took on even more debt leverage than their US counterparts, despite the tirades against ”le capitalisme sauvage” of the Anglo-Saxons.

We now know that it was French finance minister Christine Lagarde who begged Mr Paulson to save the US insurer AIG last week. AIG had written $300 billion in credit protection for European banks, admitting that it was for “regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation”. In other words, it was underpinning a disguised extension of credit leverage. Its collapse would have set off a lending crunch across Europe as banking capital sank below water level.

It turns out that European regulators have allowed even greater use of “off-books” chicanery than the Americans. Mr Paulson may have saved Europe.

Most eyes are still on Washington, but the core danger is shifting across the Atlantic. Germany and Italy have been contracting since the spring, with France close behind. They are sliding into a deeper downturn than the US.

The interest spreads on Italian 10-year bonds have jumped to 92 points above German Bunds, a post-EMU high. These spreads are the most closely watched stress barometer for Europe’s monetary union. Traders are starting to “price in” an appreciable risk that EMU will break apart.

The European Commission’s top economists warned the politicians in the 1990s that the euro might not survive a crisis, at least in its current form. There is no EU treasury or debt union to back it up. The one-size-fits-all regime of interest rates caters badly to the different needs of Club Med and the German bloc.

The euro fathers did not dispute this. But they saw EMU as an instrument to force the pace of political union. They welcomed the idea of a “beneficial crisis”. As ex-Commission chief Romano Prodi remarked, it would allow Brussels to break taboos and accelerate the move to a full-fledged EU economic government.

As events now unfold with vertiginous speed, we may find that it destroys the European Union instead. Spain is on the cusp of depression (I use the word to mean a systemic rupture). Unemployment has risen from 8.3 to 11.3 per cent in a year as the property market implodes. Yet the cost of borrowing (Euribor) is going up. You can imagine how the Spanish felt when German-led hawks pushed the European Central Bank into raising interest rates in July.

This may go down as the greatest monetary error of the post-war era. The ECB responded to the external shock of an oil and food spike with anti-inflation overkill, compounding the onset of an accelerating debt deflation that poses a greater danger. Has it committed the classic mistake of central banks, fighting the last war (1970s) instead of the last war but one (1930s)?

After years of acquiescence, the markets have started to ask whether the euro zone has the machinery to launch a Paulson-style rescue in a fast-moving crisis. Who has the authority to take charge? The ECB is not allowed to bail out countries under EU treaty law. The Stability Pact bans the sort of fiscal blitz that has kept America afloat. Yes, treaties can be ignored. But as we are learning, a banking system can implode in less time than it would take for EU ministers to congregate from the far corners of euroland.

France’s Christine Lagarde called yesterday for an EU emergency fund. “What happens if a smaller EU country faces the threat of a bank going bankrupt? Perhaps the country doesn’t have the means to save the institution. The question of a European safety net arises,” she said.

The storyline is evolving much as eurosceptics predicted, yet the final chapter could end either way as the recriminations fly. Germany has already shot down the French idea. The nationalists are digging in their heels in Berlin and Madrid. We are fast approaching the moment when events decide whether Europe will bind together to save monetary union, or fracture into angry camps. Will the Teutons bail out Club Med? If not, check those serial numbers on your euro notes for the country of issue. It may start to matter.

how should i know .. i don’t // lol

maybe someone with physic abilitys can say.. maybe a chart

some one who reads the sands . the lines in trees .. things fall apart ,, three weeks 6 months a year ,,

you can bet your jolly ,, that the fed will be printing like crazy.. to avoid .. but come it will

but it is getting very close. Today we watched on television as treasonous legislation was passed. Tonight en masse, the mindset seems to be… “oh well, we tried”. Note in the recent press release from Treasury, the US has immediately founded a new three letter agency - the Office of Financial Stability (OFS). It wasn’t enough to have the Exchange Stabilization Fund financed to the tune of $50 to $100 billion (correct me if I am wrong). Now we have an agency that has trillions at its disposal. If you thought we didn’t have free markets before, let me offer a guess - you will look back on this period of time with the thought the markets were free incarnate compared to what is coming.

I sincerely believe that our only hope to return this nation to some semblance of freedom is to see a complete collapse of the markets and the delusional fiat monetary system. In this regard, I was not displeased that the markets tanked after the announced criminal bailout.

PM

ment?

it will not delay the asset collapse the whole 700 billion is designed to help foreign banks who bought the crap.. 150 billion will go to other areas .. not to up hold asetts

it was nothing but a spit in the ocean

7-year recovery period for motorsports racetrack property

Reduction of imported duties on some imported wool fabrics

Exempting children’s wooden arrows from excise tax

Increasing cover of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

Economic development credit to American Samoan businesses

Adam Smith, for one, would be jazzed about this list, since it represents the triumph of the kind of free enterprise that this country so desperately needs to get back on its knees.

In a time of extreme crisis, just when we might have thought Congress would be too busy to concern itself with the niggling details of the 40,000-page tax code, lobbyists have carried the day for those stalwarts of the U.S. economy: sellers of certain woolen goods, and of wooden arrows.

We toast the victory of our Samoan friends as well, since it may be a while before Hawaii’s secessionist proclivities are given full vent and Native Americans can install crap tables in a Hilo laundromat if they so choose. ricks pick

but we can be glad that some money went to the less greedy lolwho needed you and I with a gun at our head to support this stuff

it will result in depression even longer and ugler