Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

Irish, you asked the question, “What do we do…what can we do?”  I think you’ve already done it as it pertains to those in your circle of influence.  They saw you building your Ark during a time they could only see sunny skies.  They probably even snickered about it from time to time.  The polite ones snickered quietly and the not-so-polite may have been more vocal.  They are now feeling the heaviness of the rain and the sudden realization they are unprepared.  You are obviously a part of that awareness they NOW feel, in part, due to your own personal example.The difference between you and them, as I see it, is that you’ve questioned the secular institutional authorities and have taken action to protect you and your family from their mischief.  Your love for the truth, in all things, has propelled you to take action.  They, on the other hand, may have lumped the secular authorities with the spiritual authorities and make no distinction.  In other words they believe in the divine right of kings and that whatever tyrant is in charge must be there because it is “God’s Will”.  They’ve possibly given equal trust, loyalty, and allegiance to both types of authorities.  Whether this is done by religious creed or as avoidance of personal responsibility is not an observation for me to make because I can’t see into their hearts, but my suspicion is their religious creed may have muffled that inner voice within that is warning them of danger.  The looks on their faces NOW could be the realization they’ve made themselves, by their choice to ignore that voice, victims of whatever is to come.  Another explanation is they’ve become so shocked by current events that they’ve reactivated that dormant and childlike quality of asking questions and questioning authority.  We have that quality as children, but as we ‘grow up’ we tend to set it aside.  It almost seems we HAVE to set it aside in order to make sense of the world around us.  Sometimes we even begin compartmentalizing our secular and religious lives because of inherent incongruities and/or competing institutional interests. The potential good I see in all of this is that people will begin questioning institutional authority in all areas of their lives where MAN has assumed a position of authority, within that institution, be it secular or religious.  The challenge for all of us is to continue asking better and better questions, searching for the answers to those questions, and seeking more congruent and harmonious outcomes between our fleshly and spiritual existence in this journey we call life.  Maybe, by the quality of our own examples, we can reach out to those we care about the most.  In my view, that is our only chance.The best to you and Farmgal…pgs 

No way..the coal wins hands down…
Yup we got a lot to be thankful for…we really do..

See Dusty is getting with it for the rush in 2009 he has the wording down ..CHARGE!
See that picture snuck on last post…it is the poster child for California Proposition 8

i got a lump of coal for xmas. think it may turn into a diamond about the same time that fiat turns into real money?

rno

I will soon be off for a very pleasant day with family and friends and good food. A time to relax, reflect, regroup and reCHARGE……..

Just back from early Christmas service…Poor Farmgal ..first time in 29 years she sat downstairs….actually took the steam out of my voice looking down on her…but she will be back ..the director promised a set of tapes for us to practice in Belize to get ready for Easter.. ..but

But something is wrong…dead wrong…I saw it in the faces and the absentmindedness of the people I have known for 10 years..yes, yes some are coming around and asking for advice ..but there is something I can feel..almost taste..that is very upsetting to me…it could be that they are in a state of shock already..I’ll bet their vital signs are moving close to the numbers displayed by trauma victims.. in fact .I would put money on it…
Most of them have not done anything to deserve this …and I’ll tell you ..I looked at that cross at the alter tonight and started getting mad…why ..why don’t he take out the ones responsible for this…why do these people have to suffer at the hands of these greedy selfless pigs in power…I am not happy and quite frankly it showed in my effort ..a couple of the real good singers noticed ..in fact it just wasn’t me..hell the choir blew four full measures of the beginning of one song …never before in my memory has this happened… earlier today was at the ex’s house[we are on good terms] and there were 14 people I knew very well but had not seen in 8 10 month’s….I swear they were out in left field too..like everyone suddenly got a bad case of attention defecit syndrome..it is crazy…

Tenters ,something is gripping at the heart and soul of our friends …. I cannot seem to fix anyone in my small area of influence….but I can feel the eyes of many of them upon me ..I don’t know what to do…helplessness is the feeling that I must..fight to keep at bay… anyone else getting these vibs…cause I don’t think it’s about the HUI anymore
What do we do…what can we do?

Something for the okies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMuyQ7JVzeQ

Something for the Hillbillys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_FnUL3B4Q

Something for those down under

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6P3fCDQVMI

Something for those in South America and Belieze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihW56Xa3XGQ

Something for those in Canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-pQYQm0W54

For yanakka, I mean Hanukkah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrd9p47MPHg

And for everybody else celebrating Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XNQdxlRm9c

And for those who want to venture out in the snow, don’t be a moron like this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW-MznOOAas

And for those traveling, try to avoid this train

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKOEQVgONh0

By SANDY SHORE
AP Business Writer

DENVER (AP) — Investors who have forsaken shaky financial markets for the safety of gold must feel a little bit like prospectors.

As the worst recession in at least a generation spreads, so too does the clamor for gold bars and coins, assets less likely to go up on smoke like so many derivatives and asset-backed securities.

“I’ve never seen a case where demand was so high and supply was so short,” said Chicago coin dealer Harlan Berk, who has been in the business 44 years.

Spikes in demand for gold coins this year appear to run parallel with the mounting woes on Wall Street.

In August, as the Federal Reserve pumped $62 billion into the U.S. banking system and rejected requests for mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take on more debt, sales of the popular American Eagle coin were suspended for a week.

The U.S. Mint was unable to get enough gold blanks from suppliers to match demand, Mint spokesman Michael White said.

In late September, when a massive bailout for the nation’s biggest banks failed, sales of the American Buffalo coin were suspended until Nov. 3 because of shortages.

Yet even before the full extent of the financial crisis was known, investors had begun to load up on gold and other assets that could be held in the hand.

By early spring, investors were snapping up precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum, said Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World trade magazine.

Gold for April delivery shot up to a record of $1,033.90 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange March 17. According to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research released this month, that was just three months into the U.S. recession.

That correlation continued throughout the year as Wall Street institutions fell.

“People sensed there was something going on that they didn’t quite understand,” Deisher said.

In the third quarter, when the U.S. bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed gathered the chiefs of major banks on Wall Street to plot a rescue, and Lehman Brothers descended into bankruptcy protection, gold sales went into high gear, said Natalie Dempster, head of the World Gold Council’s North American investment unit.

U.S. demand for gold coins and small bars jumped 600 percent and international demand rose 121 percent, according to the council.

“The fact that gold is nobody else’s liability was really an extremely important trait for investors in Q3 that were growing increasingly mistrustful of financial institutions in general,” Dempster said.

To get gold as stocks began to fall, investors were willing to pay.

“You saw people paying premiums to get coins and small bars,” Dempster said. “The refiners, et cetera, just wouldn’t have been set up to produce that amount of gold, the same way as any other product.”

Compounding the shortage somewhat, Deisher said, was a decision years ago to offshore some of the tasks that go into making U.S. gold coins.

Under the law, gold used in U.S. coins must be mined domestically. However, the government contracts with private companies to fabricate blank coins for striking with images such as the American Eagle. One of those companies is Gold Corp., owned by the government of Western Australia and operator of the Perth Mint.

Demand for gold coins continued to grow as economic news from Wall Street and Washington grew more ominous.

In early October, the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004. At the same time, coin dealers saw demand a hit a peak, and bullion coins were fetching huge premiums, said Larry Shepherd, executive director of the American Numismatic Association.

“That’s created a shortage not only in the secondary market, where shops are competing with each other to find enough supply to meet the demand but it’s also created a real shortage in the primary market where the Mint itself is having difficulty getting enough supply to meet demand,” he said.

At his coin shop in downtown Chicago, Berk advises customers to plan ahead when arranging purchases, as much as two to three months.

It’s frustrating, but “you learn to live with it,” he said.

-END-

Richard Russell…

Russell thoughts: The truth — the market action isn’t turning me any more optimistic, but (sigh) here goes. Every primary bear market produces its own surprises. What was the surprise of the Great Depression? I think it was this — between 1929 and 1932, 5,000 banks went out of business. This rocked the foundation of American confidence. It frightened hell out of the nation.

And I ask myself, what could be the surprise of this bear market? My guess is unemployment. I’ve warned all along that high and rising unemployment is devastating (and with unemployment comes loss of income and an inability to carry one’s debt).

In the 1930’s people cut back severely on their spending. Nothing was considered “cheap enough to be considered a bargain.” But during the Great Depression, the nation and the American people were not as indebted as they are today. In the ’30s mortgages were hated and avoided. During the 1930, the US was still largely agrarian. A huge percentage of the population lived on farms. Today most Americans live in cities. Today, more Americans work in the service industries. Living in hard times in a city can be a raw and a discouraging experience. News is more available and life is meaner and more competitive in the cities.

The world is far more integrated today. Today, the US is competing with labor and technology with nations all over the world. The dollar is less stable today, and competitive devaluations are rampant as each nation seeks to export more of its own. It’s a much more competitive world today than it was during the Great Depression. In the 1930’s Japan manufactured “junk” items and China wasn’t even a factor nor was India or Brazil. This bear market will be far more difficult for business than was the case during the 1930’s.

Finally, I believe the worth of fiat money will come into suspicion in the years ahead. Fiat money will be blamed for the predicament that the world is in. We never could have produced “bubbles” without fiat money or inflation-minded central banks. The discipline of gold will be missed and rediscovered.

Here is another item that worries me. Great bear markets have tended to end when the dividend yield on the Dow reaches around 6%. At today’s 3.6%, the Dow is currently far away from 6%. Assuming that current dividends hold (which they won’t), the Dow would have to descend into the 5000’s to produce a dividend yield of 6%. Can this happen? Anything can happen.

I’ve talked at length about the 50% Principle and how to apply it. The halfway or 50% level of the entire 1982 to 2007 bull market comes in at 7470. My thinking is that if the Dow closes decisively below 7470, the odds will increase that we will see the Dow sink into the 5000s and that the dividend yield on the Dow will ultimately climb into the 6% range. If that happens, I personally will be preparing for Great Depression number 2. My thinking then will that “gold, not fiat money, will be the last man standing.”

By the way, I don’t like the fact that physical gold has now been swept off the market. For decades, modern economists have disparaged gold and scorned those who collected it. Are the gold-haters correct? Then why is there suddenly no physical gold available? Who are the “fools” who have been buying every last gold coin? And why - why are they doing it?

-END-

Iceland and then what…

Bill,
The tragic events in Iceland should be a clear warning as to what lies ahead for many western nations. Years of excessive debt, leverage and reliance on a service based financial economy has resulted in a collapsing house of cards. At the core this is a currency crisis. Over time the crisis manifests itself as a range of financial, economic, social and political problems. Here’s a simplistic view of the various stages:

Stage 1 - loose domestic monetary policy
Stage 2 - easy access to foreign credit
Stage 3 - asset bubbles in stocks and housing
Stage 4 - booming financial services economy
Stage 5 - asset price growth decelerates
Stage 6 - foreigners start to withdraw credit
Stage 7 - government compensates with monetary and fiscal stimulus
Stage 8 - currency weakens
Stage 9 - asset prices start to decline
Stage 10 - unemployment increases
Stage 11 - foreign credit withdrawal accelerates
Stage 12 - monetary and fiscal stimulus accelerates
Stage 13 - foreign credit withdrawal accelerates
Stage 14 - currency decline accelerates
Stage 15 - interest rates increase
Stage 16 - domestic prices for food and basic necessities increase
Stage 17 - asset price declines accelerate
Stage 18 - scarcity of foreign imported goods
Stage 19 - scarcity of basic necessities
Stage 20 - civil unrest
Stage 21 - government legislated price controls
Stage 22 - chronic food and basic necessity shortages
Stage 23 - hyperinflation
Stage 24 - economic collapse
Stage 25 - riots and social structure collapse
Stage 26 - political instability and demand for change
Stage 27 - rise of an extremist leader
Stage 28 - legislative/constitutional change giving government more power
Stage 29 - blame is externalised
Stage 30 - external conflict

The following article from Bloomberg would suggest Iceland is around stage 20. Where do you think the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand might be?

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=home&sid=a2gMphgAVl3U

Regards,
Mark
www.bullionmark.com/

…….but I guess its hard to sell the bottom

…Here’sa good one….new service….”Audit Integrety”………..Look who Flunked the Test

Financial Condition of TARP Bailout Companies Likely Worse Than Publicly Disclosed, Analysis Finds

More Than Eighty Percent Employ Aggressive Accounting and Likely Will Experience
Restatements and Other Adverse Events

LOS ANGELES–(Business Wire)–
The vast majority of financial services companies being bailed out under the Federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) are likely in worse condition than publicly disclosed, according to an analysis announced today by Audit Integrity, an independent research firm that measures corporate integrity risk.

More than 80 percent of TARP financial services companies have a “Very Aggressive” or “Aggressive” Accounting and Governance Risk (AGR) rating based on their most recent regulatory filings. As a result, these companies have a high statistical likelihood they will restate their earnings and suffer from other adverse events, including regulatory actions, shareholder litigation and bankruptcy. By comparison, two-thirds of the more than 7,000 publicly-traded North American companies rated by Audit Integrity have “Average” or “Conservative” ratings.

The AGR rating is a forensic indicator of the transparency and reliability of a corporation’s financial reporting and identifies metrics most highly associated with financial statement fraud, as measured by SEC enforcement actions.

“As a group, these are very risky companies. The use of federal money to bail them out should be pause for concern on several levels,” said Jack Zwingli, CEO of Audit Integrity. “Unfortunately, the odds are that a number of these companies will fail at some level in the future, which raises the concern that the Federal Government is throwing good money after bad. At a minimum, before we hand over government funds to these firms, we should demand a thorough review of their accounting and corporate governance practices. The recipients of the bailout money should be required to run their business with integrity.”

The Audit Integrity analysis focused on the 25 financial services companies that have received more than 90 percent of TARP funds to date. Of the 14 financial services companies that received “Very Aggressive” ratings, ten were among the recipients of the largest amounts of TARP money, including:

* American International Group, Inc.
* Bank of America Corporation
* Citigroup, Inc.
* Fifth Third Bancorp
* Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
* J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
* Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc
* Morgan Stanley
* PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
* Wells Fargo & Company

General Motors Corporation and Ford Motor Company, which have been mentioned for
possible TARP bailouts, also have low Audit Integrity ratings.

Audit Integrity`s analysis is available on auditintegrity.com or by calling
877-44-AUDIT.

About Audit Integrity

Founded in 2002, serving investors, insurers, auditors and corporate finance professionals, Audit Integrity is a leading independent research firm that rates more than 7,000 public companies based on their corporate integrity. In addition to its flagship Accounting and Governance Risk (AGR) ratings, Audit Integrity also forecasts class action litigation risk, material financial restatement risk, and equity performance risk. The statistical correlation of these ratings has been confirmed by internal and third-party tests. Audit Integrity has offices in Los Angeles and New York City. For more information, please visit www.auditintegrity.com.