Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

Semi autos, because as far thanks goodness, we are permitted to bear arms but they get around it by putting more and more restrictions on the guns you can own. Because of the people out there that go to malls with guns to take out their anger at who ever is around. I remember some one moving from Texas I think to Calif. who checked ahead of time about some gun he had and they said it was okay. But after he got here they sent him a letter in short and told him it was not and ordered him to turn it in. Well on the principle of the matter, I think I would of drove back to Texas and traded it in for something else. I woundn’t of doubted for one minute that they would have kept it for themselves. As far as riots go for some reason I can’t see it. I could be wrong, but I don’t. The riots of the 60’s based on religious leader Martin Luther. Iflook back and see the discrimination they were under, how stand up he was in a peaceful God fearing way, it was a matter of time without better security some nut was gonna shoot him. But he was shot and killed at at time when blacks were just beginning to have hope and his killing well they took it as a message,  I’m sure distraught with grief shock and anger. I’m  by no means making excuses for the rioters and know that wasn’t  what M. Luther would have wanted. He also knew his people as he called them had a propensity for violence and was addressing that. But Im guessing with out education, social education with stero-typing, and oppression, I think it could happen to any race, if driven to it. Look what we did to Japan after Pearl. Difference is because of such up bringing, we are more focused and don’t run wild in the streets, like we were in the Congo with spears in our hands…we may think. Or do we, I remember watching a documentary of some innocent black man accused of rape in Chicago and a rioting bunch of white men broke in the jail, dragged him out, beat him to death and burnt his body. And then there were days of the lynchings, where similar thing went on for anyone they didn’t like. Our own gov. promoted murder..people to run around and kill American Indians and paid them for their scalps…men women and children..these hearltess ignorant money seeking people didn’t care. So maybe one can think, who did they learn it from. Now days, no mater what race as long as you can’t pay out big bucks for a lawyer, they just get DA’s that taint the trials with unfair playing fields, making sure it’s only them that have the ball, along with their demi god DA helpers the public defender, and uninformed jurors. So basically do the same thing, just more subtle about it, for job security. And if you look at most the propositions this year it appears to be it is more Gov. control  power control plays than ever. JMHO

First a little self evaluation. Most here have been concerned about the future for at least 8 -10 years. We were worried about excess government, excess spending, bubbles in the stock market, bubble in the housing market and on and on.

We viewed gold as a safe place to diversify some of our assets and madee investments in Precious metals and to get more leverage into what we considered the best gold and silver stocks. We discussed the various possible dangers such as confiscation, manipulation by TPTB, the dangers of paper Gold etc. We discussed at some point ($600 to $1500) we should consider switching from gold stocks to all or mostly physical gold and silver. We discussed various trading, buy and hold and combinations of selling 1/3 near the top rail etc, etc.

In short, we pooled our knowledge and did the right things for our individual situations. Now here is the rub - Most of us with very few exceptions have recently given back years of profits and many new commers have lost and are hurt badly. Not Good - where did we go wrong? Oh! hindsight is plentfull and a few made timely moves but most didn’t! How can we do better in the future? That should be the question and problem we work on.

Crisis can be opperttunity. In real Estate, location-location use to be the buzz word. Now in everything - It is capital presevation, cash flow, and survival. Plus our personal freedom, free enterprise and capitalism is in jeopardy. Where do we start?

We know all world fiat currency is trash, just relative as some are preceived better or
worse than others. Ignorance makes people flee to US Treasuries instead of Gold and silver. Diversification is a proven key as being part in physical, part in gold stocks and part in Treasuries, part in real estate and part in energy investments has been bad recently but not terrible - in fact very good over a slightly longer term. But what now?

Personally I expect everything to get much worse before they get better. That said, gold and silver have to be the right thing to be in going forward, notwithstanding continueing volitility and manipulation until the house of paper collaspes. This crisis will last years.

More questions than answers! I read N.N. Taleb’s “The Black Swan” I read and consider all the post here and virtually every gold article written. Unfortunately my old brain is no longer able to assemilate and refine the data over-load into a bottom-line. But I am still trying as I am sure you all are. Survive and prosper are my bottomline. Deadeye

  What a world of sociopaths.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\113\story_3-11-2008_pg1_7

just watched an interview with john kerry where he stated that sarah pallin is not qualified to do anything related to the military. more lies from the left, not that the right is pristine. sarah pallin is in charge of the alaska national guard which is a full time unit watching the skies over the pole. they have been on active duty for many years and pallin has a top secret clearance and is briefed on a regular basis about security over the poles.

how can you tell if some sleazy politician is “misleading”? he/she is still breathing.

rno

  Interesting. I don’t know Georgia State laws but that would sure limit what they could sell you. Pretty much revolvers, shotguns and single fire rifles.

  Heck even Ca. still sells semi-auto’s. In Idaho I can get just about anything - semi’s, fully auto’s, I’ve been told I can get silencers as well - the whole gamut.

   I hope things don’t blow but you’re right, people can only be pushed so far.

Thanks.,,,,,,,,,,,very cool !

Aussie Secret Society of Goldbuggers

Get-together was at red arrow, purple ones some particiants flew in.  Some gave varying addresses and had no ID (wink!)

Coal official calls Obama comments ‘unbelievable’

11/2/2008 4:37 PM
By Chris Dickerson -Statehouse Bureau

Obama

McCain
CHARLESTON - At least one state coal industry leader said he was shocked by comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made earlier this year concerning his plan to aggressively charge polluters for carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

“What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there,” Obama said in a Jan. 17 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that was made public today first on the Web site newsbusters.org, which calls itself “the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” The story later was linked on The Drudge Report.

An audio excerpt from the interview can be found at YouTube.

“I was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter,” Obama continued. “That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Calls and e-mails to West Virginia Obama campaign officials seeking comment for this story were not returned as of Sunday evening.

According to the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, the coal industry provides about 40,000 direct jobs in the state, including those for miners, mine contractors, coal preparation plant employees and mine supply company workers.

West Virginia is the second largest coal-producing state in the country behind Wyoming and accounts for about 15 percent of all coal production in the United States. The Mountain State leads the nation in underground coal production and leads the nation in coal exports with over 50 million tons shipped to 23 countries. West Virginia accounts for about half of U.S. coal exports.

In addition, the coal industry pays about $70 million in property taxes in the state annually, and the Coal Severance Tax adds about $214 million into West Virginia’s economy. The coal industry payroll in the state is nearly $2 billion per year, and coal is responsible for more than $3.5 billion annually in the gross state product.

“The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster,” Obama said in the San Francisco Chronicle interview. “What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”

The senior vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association called Obama’s comments “unbelievable.”

“His comments are unfortunate,” Chris Hamilton said Sunday, “and really reflect a very uninformed voice and perspective to coal specifically and energy generally.”

Hamilton noted other times Obama and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden have made seemingly anti-coal statements.

“In Ohio recently, when Joe Biden said ‘not here’ about building coal-fired power plants — this is exactly what will happen,” Hamilton said. “Financing won’t be directed here. It will all go aboard for plants elsewhere in the world. The United Sates is importing more coal today from Indonesia, South Africa and Colombia than we ever have.

“If we’re going to create a situation where coal-fired power plants are at that much of a disadvantage, there will be new ones built. But as Biden said, just not here.”

Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s state director said Obama’s statements are troubling, especially for West Virginians.

“I think this clearly shows the attitude the Obama-Biden ticket has toward coal,” Ben Beakes said Sunday. “Rhetoric is cheap, but behind closed doors what they tell their supporters - that’s what we have to take as gospel.

“They’re definitely not friends of coal.”

Beakes noted other examples of Obama and Biden making seemingly anti-coal statements, such as in February when Obama said he’d like to tax “dirty energy” such as coal and natural gas.

“And their cohorts in Congress make similar statements,” Beakes said. “(Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said this summer that ‘coal makes us sick.’

“This is an attitude and view that, to me, shows their hatred of coal. And therefore, their view would cost West Virginians thousands upon thousands of jobs.”

Beakes touted McCain’s view toward coal.

“John McCain has embraced coal,” Beakes said. “He doesn’t agree with everything in the coal industry, but his view of coal is positive. He will make it part of his energy policy. He’s met with leaders in the coal industry and let them know that. He’s sought advice from coal industry leaders.

“McCain understands that coal supports about 49 percent of our electricity in this country. He’ll continue to make coal important. He wants to reduce our foreign dependency on oil.”

Hamilton also said the Obama campaign needs to find varied sources for coal and energy advice.

“If they’re victorious Tuesday, they’d better go to someone other than Al Gore on energy and environmental matters,” he said. “They’ve tipped the balance way — unnecessarily so — toward protecting the environment.”

……Australia is a BIG Island……did some of you have to travel a long way ?

……..Where is LP located ?….got a map?

Good post. Yes, the decoupling has begun..we’ve been seeing that with the spread between real physical prices and the fantasy paper prices.. the game has changed but someone forgot to tell the boyz.

Remember remember the 20th of November  V for Vendetta  G for Gold  …C for Cheers  

  Nope, he said for a 10 year period, semi automatics were outlawed. Automatic i could not get. But what is interesting, and I stopped into 3 gun stores, all said in the last couple days there sales of handguns, shotguns , any gun really, has gone up quite a bit. I live near Atlanta, and had numerous conversations with people amazed at how many blacks are in line waiting to vote. I guess the “redneck” Georgians just want to be on the safe side, rather have the gun and not have to use it vs wishing for a gun and not having one.

Still  think this is not going to be pleasant in the next few years for anyone. Stock market will be down, me thinks. Housing prices will contiue to fall, gold silver probably will edge up. And unemployment will rise.

Had 300 people laid off where i work, and they could not reopen a plant due to bomb threats for a couple of days. People , I think , will only take so much. Where the seem will bust is anybody’s guess. But bust it will, I think.

I do not worry about this stuff, but disgusted with both parties, and the lies that are dished out on CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and all the rest. They are just like a used car salesman. They’ll tell you whatever they need to to keep the scam going. What a hoot.

The Shipping News Suggests World Economy Is Toast: Mark Gilbert
Commentary by Mark Gilbert

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — In the third quarter of 2007, Volvo AB booked 41,970 European orders for new trucks. Guess how many prospective purchases Volvo, the world’s second-biggest maker of heavy rigs, received in the third quarter of this year?

Here’s a clue. Picture a highway gridlocked by 41,815 abandoned trucks — because Volvo’s order book got destroyed to the tune of 99.63 percent, with customers signing up for just 155 vehicles in the three-month period, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based company said last week.

The pathogen that has fatally infected swathes of the banking industry is now contaminating non-financial companies. “We’re heading toward the sharpest downturn I’ve ever seen in Europe,” said Chief Executive Officer Leif Johansson.

Volvo has company. Daimler AG, the world’s biggest truck maker, said earlier this month that its U.S. deliveries slumped by a third in the first half of the year.

After months of money-market madness, slumping stock markets, collapsing currencies and bank bailouts, the headlines from the broader economy are starting to roll in — and the news is all bad and getting worse, fast.

Let’s begin with the shipping news. If nobody is buying your trucks, you don’t need to rent a vessel to carry that shiny new 18-wheeler to its new owner. Hence the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping goods and commodities, fell below 1,000 this week for the first time in six years.

Slow Boats From China

Put another way, it is now almost 90 percent cheaper to ship goods over the oceans than it was at the beginning of the year. And because the huge vessels known as capesize ships can’t currently charge much more than their daily operating cost of about $6,000 per day, their captains have slowed down to economize on fuel and save money, to about 8.68 knots from 10.33 knots in July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

It isn’t just the oceans that are emptying. Air freight traffic dropped 7.7 percent in September, according to the latest figures from the International Air Transport Association. That’s the steepest decline since the trade group began compiling the data in January 2003.

Figures this week showed U.S. consumer confidence collapsed to a record low in October; retail therapy probably isn’t the cure. With Christmas looking like it might be canceled, why bother fighting with your bankers for the letters of credit you need to export the stocking-stuffers you make in the factory?

`Growing Anxiety’

“The October reading signals the deepening concern about the marked deterioration in the overall economy as well as the growing anxiety arising from the continued travails in the financial markets,” David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities in New York, wrote in a research report. “Confidence declined across all regions, all age groups and all income categories.”

One way in which the current recession/depression/meltdown (take your pick) will differ from previous economic collapses is the granularity of information now available. The world is awash with more data than ever before, generating a plethora of ways to scare yourself silly.

The Bank of England, for example, produces what it calls a Financial Market Liquidity Index, a global measure of stress that gauges how far a basket of nine indicators strays from its historical mean. The index gets updated twice a year; this week’s bulletin, which recalculates the level up to Oct. 17, showed liquidity at its lowest level in at least 17 years.

Default Danger

The next wave of headlines to scare shoppers out of the mall is likely to come when companies find they can’t pay their debts. Credit-rating company Moody’s Investors Service predicts that the default rate among sub-investment grade borrowers will surge to 7.9 percent in a year, from 2.8 percent at the end of the second quarter of 2008 and from just 1.3 percent 12 months ago.

“With the global credit crisis intensifying and credit spreads widening, it is increasingly likely that corporate default rates will spike sharply in the next 12 months,” Kenneth Emery, the director of default research at Moody’s, said in a research report published earlier this month.

The Markit iTraxx Crossover index of credit-default swaps on mostly speculative-grade companies traded as high as 920 basis points this week. That level suggests investors and traders are anticipating more than half of the companies in the index will default, based on bondholders recouping 40 percent of their money from companies that fail to keep up their debt payments.

Going Bust

At a recovery rate of 20 percent, the implied default level is about 45 percent. At a salvage percentage of just 10 percent, the index is still suggesting about 40 percent of its members will renege on their commitments. It is hard to see how consumer confidence will recover when companies start going bust.

“Worries about defaults are mounting as liquidity is strained,” Guy Steak and Claudia Panseri, analysts at Societe Generale SA, wrote in a research note this week. “Earnings expectations still look optimistic, with analysts projecting 2009 earnings for the S&P 500 rising by 19 percent.”

There’s a great scene in the film version of Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Shipping News.” A grizzled journalist explains to rookie hack Kevin Spacey how dark clouds on the horizon justify the hyperbolic headline “Imminent Storm Threatens Village.”

“But what if no storm comes?” Spacey asks. The veteran replies with a second-day headline: “Village Spared From Deadly Storm.” Unfortunately, the global village we live in is unlikely to survive unscathed.

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

– With reporting by Alistair Holloway in London. Editors: David Henry, James Greiff.

To contact the writer of this column: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 29, 2008 20:01 EDT

Congratulations on your 15th week ..Who would have thought during the heady days of sandals and totes , frogsuits and toe polish that one day you’d be kicking back on hot cocoa and choco cookies.. Well, I hope you enjoyed every last bite and gulp this afternoon as you look ahead to 205 and 305 and 405 and 505 and ….

Now, if ya really wanted to help ol Irish out with his wardrobe planning you could always consult with lipstick piggie 

Wishing you all the best ., Augirl

Your post about the falling relevance of the $USD index is spot on. I’m sure it is, because that’s what I’ve been thinking.

Actually “spot on” is an innacurate phrase, since the spot has been very “off” lately.

a couple of centuries ago, a wealthy nation almost always had a strong military. seems that every time someone’s army or navy suffered a major defeat, the economy in that country collapsed. i would think that scenario would be repeated in some form in the future.

i believe, like most here, that the worldwide fiat system is headed for collapse. i can’t believe that the ptb have been able to hold it up this long. as leveraged positions unwind and debt gets paid off or repudiated, something will evolve into some form of value accepted worldwide. that value has traditionally been gold and silver and i see no other alternative at this time, but energy and food will have some effect.

i don’t believe that physical has disappeared from the retail system by coincidence. i also don’t believe that futures and miners sold off by coincidence. if i was a member of a group with mountains of fiat, i would do the same thing if i was expecting “creeping socialism” in governments worldwide. capitalism works until people vote themselves wealth from the treasury. when the outflow is larger than the inflow, the system is on borrowed time.

the social, political, and financial systems are moving to the outer extremes from the traditional mean. every time the pendulum swings from the extreme to the mean, turmoil across the human spectrum ensues. surplus and shortages of food have traditionally caused the peaks and valleys in cyclical events. if you run out of food, just get a bunch of folks together and take your neighbors. if your neighbor doesn’t want to share, enough folks will die to balance with the food supply available.

the internet has provided the means for events to unfold far more rapidly than in the past. news is transmitted around the world in minutes instead of days or weeks. reactions are much faster because of conditioned response promoted by rapid news of the recent past.

international trade will continue while fiat dies. the value of gold will fluctuate against the supply and demand of other commodities. some form of worldwide “clearinghouse” will probably evolve to facilitate trade.

lots of “what ifs” in my scenario, but one thing is certain. the current system is broke and dying. what evolves from here will be chaos and opportunity.

rno