Down The Tubes DOW Day

June 26, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today's financial news part II: gold and oil are shooting upwards again. In tandem this time. Inflation is raging as the government Funny Money™ checks land in US mailboxes. Investors are suing the pirates and hell hounds. We can watch Monty Python's bookkeeper pirates. And Rep. Schwartz of Texas introduces a bill to encourage SAVINGS for retirement! HAHAHA. She could do better to arrest Bernanke instead.

Whereas Americans are living longer and the cost of retirement continues to rise, in part because the number of employers providing retiree health coverage continues to decline, and... (Introduced in House)
HRES 1294 IH

Ms. SCHWARTZ (for herself and Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means

RESOLUTION

Supporting the goals and ideals of National Save for Retirement Week.

Whereas Americans are living longer and the cost of retirement continues to rise, in part because the number of employers providing retiree health coverage continues to decline, and retiree health care costs continue to increase at a rapid pace;

Whereas Social Security remains the bedrock of retirement income for the great majority of the people of the United States, but was never intended by Congress to be the sole source of retirement income for families;

Whereas recent data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute indicates that, in the United States, less than 2/3 of workers or their spouses are currently saving for retirement and that the actual amount of retirement savings of workers lags far behind the amount that will be needed to adequately fund their retirement years;

Whereas many workers may not be aware of their options for saving for retirement or may not have focused on the importance of, and need for, saving for their own retirement;

Whereas many employees have available to them through their employers access to defined benefit and defined contribution plans to assist them in preparing for retirement, yet many of them may not be taking advantage of employer-sponsored defined contribution plans at all or to the full extent allowed by the plans as prescribed by Federal law;

Whereas all workers, including public- and private-sector employees, employees of tax-exempt organizations, and self-employed individuals, can benefit from increased awareness of the need to save adequate funds for retirement and the availability of tax-preferred savings vehicles to assist them in saving for retirement; and

Whereas October 19 through October 25, 2008, has been designated as `National Save for Retirement Week': Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

Blah, blah, blah. The resolution doesn't call for the dissolving of the Federal Reserve, the arrest of Greenspan and Bernanke for lying, fraud, cooperating with con men to destroy the US economy...etc. If this bill called for Volcker to be reinstated and to force interest rates above the rate of raging inflation then....well, then we pay the piper, the Grrrrimmmm Reapers. Congress resolving to get people to save while making it totally impossible to save is typical. This is a classic pious 'Mom and apple pie' bill and it has few sponsors since Congress doesn't care about savings in the first place.

Because THEY are spending! And not preparing for the future at all. They are at fault. Everyone at the top is causing this problem. And encouraging consumerism is making things worse, not better. Raising the sales tax or having a VAT tax like in Europe and Japan would cause savings to surge if interest rates went up, too. But of course, this won't happen. Nor do all the nations that have trade surpluses with the US want this to happen so it won't happen.

Wall Street Sold Auction-Rate Debt, Warned Issuers

(Bloomberg) -- Yanping Cui, 57, says she invested in auction-rate bonds last December at the urging of a broker at UBS AG in Long Beach, California. The same month, UBS told one of the issuers of those securities, a New Hampshire student-loan agency, that the $330 billion market was in danger of failing.

That's exactly what happened in February, when mounting mortgage losses forced dealers who underwrote and managed the market for more than 20 years to stop acting as buyers of last resort. Cui was told she wouldn't get her money back until the market recovered.

``He said it's very safe and as liquid as possible,'' Cui said of the advice she received from UBS broker Brian Meehan. ``I'm so angry. That's my bloody money.'' Meehan, now at Wells Fargo Investments in Newport Beach, declined to comment.

Cui is one of dozens of investors who say they were sold auction-rate securities as a low-risk alternative to cash at the same time underwriters, including UBS and Citigroup Inc., were telling issuers that demand was softening, bond documents and interviews with investors show.

Dragging these dragoons to prison: this is the only thing that works. I am a big fan of arresting liars and con artists. Which is why I want all the people involved in destroying US finances since 1982 to be arrested. Even if this means digging up graves. Back when these investments were being touted as safe and liquid, I was warning about them and explaining how they were in danger of turning into dust, not liquid.

And now for something completely different: Monty Python's 'Meaning of Life'--the Crimson Permanent Assurance Pirates!

I love Monty Python. Since I first saw them in Europe or rather, heard them on the radio back in the sixties.

Millions in U.S. face energy shutoff

(UPI) -- Large numbers of Americans face the prospect of energy shutoffs during the coming months because of rising energy prices and stagnant wages, officials said.
Millions of U.S. consumers are behind on paying their utility bills following a winter in which many struggled to cover the increasing cost of heating their homes, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Friday, citing energy and utilities officials.

The cost of heating oil, propane and kerosene is the biggest problem, officials told the newspaper, but natural gas and electricity prices are also a problem for workers at the lower end of the income scale, who are also struggling with higher prices for food and gasoline.

People will die because of global inflation. People will starve. This is why making the Federal Reserve creeps walk the plank is a good idea. Let them feel some pain. Congress is NOT doubling the money for energy cost relief. They haven't raised it in years because Bush vetoes it. And now it is nearly too late for the looming winter. If this winter is wet and cold in the north, it will be hellishly hard on the elderly, the working poor. Who must move now if they want to be saved. Waiting until winter is kind of late. Congress knows what is going on and yet still votes the pig's majority of easy funding to the Pentagon. The push for war continues as I explain later. Iran is still in our cross-eyed hairs.

Citigroup May Write Down $8.9 Billion, Goldman Says

(Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., the bank that's posted the biggest losses from the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market, may take an additional $8.9 billion in net writedowns in the second quarter, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.

Goldman also lowered its rating on U.S. brokerages to ``neutral'' from ``attractive,'' saying the pace of deterioration in the industry ``appears to be far worse than'' it originally anticipated, according to a June 25 note.

``The turnaround in business trends that we had been expecting in the second half of 2008 may not occur as quickly as we should have thought,'' Goldman said. ``We see multiple headwinds for Citigroup,'' such as risks of further writedowns, higher consumer provisions, and the potential need for additional capital raisings, dividend cuts or asset sales, Goldman said.

The losses continue. The US banks burn to the ground. How on earth did they expect busines to EXPAND or turn around the second half of 2008? The gears that have been greased by easy lending by the Fed to the investor banks has flowed to...COMMODITIES. And now, is again flowing to GOLD as well as oil. Gold is shooting up today alongside oil again. This is because they were warned not to do it to food. So they backed off of the food feeding frenzy.

Gold Futures Climb as Fed Keeps Rates Steady; Silver Advances

(Bloomberg) -- Gold surged the most in seven months on speculation the Federal Reserve won't rush to raise borrowing costs to curb inflation. Silver also gained.

The Fed yesterday kept its benchmark interest rate at 2 percent, even as policy makers acknowledged heightening inflationary expectations. Gold reached an all-time high of $1,033.90 an ounce in March as fuel, corn and other commodities soared and the dollar fell to a record against the euro.

Oil is up due to war talk. Period. As always. War talk=high oil prices if the war talk is about attacking an oil pumping nation. The entire system teetered on collapse last March. Frantic moves by the Fed saved the day in the most temporary of senses of 'saved' and 'day'. Saved the minute, perhaps. The big corporate global players all thought it was all over after things seemed to rise thanks to huge infusions from the diminishing Federal Reserve's reserves. But this is ending now. The hopes that the revival of the Japanese carry trade would revive housing and stocks is now vanishing. Since this money is flowing into commodities even now.

I suspect the biggest banks are hoping we all buy gold and bid it up and up at this point. This way, the money is 'isolated' and neutralized. People don't burn or eat gold. And if people sell gold to buy things due to inflation or loss of jobs or wars, the value of gold will plummet. Or worse, they are talking with Volcker who said, 'I killed off billions of dollars that were piled into the gold markets when I suddenly raised interest rates very high.' Yes, this may be the plan here. There is a lot of desperation out there and since the people at the top conspire with each other like crazy while lying to us down below, we have to be very wary about all this: whenever they allow a system to be 'liquid' it can suddenly become very DRY very fast if the people running things throw gears into reverse or change tracks! And we will have no warning.

Think the Fed will warn us about rate hikes? All they have to do is have an emergency meeting like in the past and voila! Rates change literally overnight. They are quite arbitrary and prone to mislead everyone so they can operate suddenly and secretively. Only JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs gets a forewarning.

American Express Says Late Card Payments Increasing

(Bloomberg) -- American Express Co., the biggest U.S. credit-card company by purchases and cash advances, said customers are falling further behind on their debt, signaling the economy is worsening.

``Business conditions continue to weaken in the U.S. and so far this month we have seen credit indicators deteriorate beyond our expectations,'' Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault said in a statement today announcing the company would receive as much as $1.8 billion in a settlement with competitor MasterCard Inc.

All recessions last more than a year. Ones that are caused by fundamental weaknesses that are very deep and dense can last a lot longer. Some last a decade. And this one is one of those. People today, to keep up with inflation and keep on buying stuff, are running up whatever debts they can against credit even as credit is vanishing as assets lose value. Risks are rising, not falling. Bankruptcies feed bankruptcies. Thinks can't improve until debts are restored to the natural levels of less than 50% of GDP. We cannot have debts be 150% of GDP.

Here are the MarkIt graphs showing the collapse of ABX.He funds:

After a ray of hope in March, these markets stabilized. But now all of them are headed to the cellar. The AAA markets are still above the 25% level but the others have only a short hike to 0%.

Eurozone's stagnant growth and inflation present rates dilemma

Jacques Cailloux, an RBS economist, said that a rise to the interest rate could cause a further slowdown in the eurozone. “By lifting rates in July, the ECB will take unprecedented risks with growth in the region,” he said.

However, Jennifer McKeown, European economist for Capital Economics, the consultancy, said that the ECB was unlikely to change its mind about a rate rise. She said: “Inflationary pressures and a solid outlook for the German economy will keep the ECB in hawkish mode for some months yet.”

But she said that the 15 member countries of the eurozone may see interest rates fall next year. “The continued evidence of a slowdown in eurozone activity should prompt significant rate cuts next year.”

The Europeans are struggling by their own lonesomes to stop global inflation. They can't do this. If the US and Asia wants free spending ways to continue, they will continue. The US can shut down this tragic mess by stopping lending for consumer spending and encouraging savings by raising interest rates. But like Japan, the Fed keeps saying, they want 'growth'. But the only thing growing is INFLATION, not jobs, not pay, not profits, not economic health. All are getting sicker and sicker as the price of oil shoots to $150 a barrel this month. Are we out of money? Is Europe poor? Look at this next news item:

Monet water lily painting sets $80M record

(AP) -- A water lily painting by impressionist master Claude Monet was sold for more than $80 million at auction Tuesday, kicking off a week of modern-art sales expected to reach records that defy the global economic downturn.

The painting "Le Bassin aux Nymphéas," or "Water Lily Pond," was sold by Christie's for $80,451,178 including buyer's premium, making it the most expensive work of art sold by the auction house in Europe.
*snip*
The one sold Tuesday was bought in a 1971 New York auction for $320,000. It has not been publicly exhibited since.

It is a very pretty painting. It is NOT worth $80 million. None of the art works sold this last 25 years are worth anything approaching the price they command. These are truly black tulips. The mania is NOT finished at all. The inflation monster is far from slain. Did the guy who bought this painting, did he pay cash? No? HAHAHA. Good grief. I once bought a Japanese tiger carved from a single tree. It is pretty big. Takes two strong men to move. I got it at an auction during a bad recession. Things are cheap, then. Years later, I took it to Sotherby's to be evaluated for insurance purposes. They wanted to sell it, I could have gotten a lot more for it. This was due to the fact that we were in a rising stock market, etc.

Well, we are seeing the last of the money flee to 'sure money makers' which is art, gold, etc. As they try to keep value in things that are 'strong' yet artworks can fall just like other things when we get either a bad recession or a depression. There is no 'store of value' on this earth that can outrun inflation when inflation turns hyper. The only killer of inflation that restores balance is to raise interest rates faster and higher than inflation. Then, someone can't borrow $75 million to buy a painting of a black tulip.

GM Falls Most in 3 Years After Goldman Cuts Rating

Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., the largest U.S. automaker, fell the most in more than three years after Goldman, Sachs & Co. cut its rating on the shares to ``sell'' because of a worsening sales outlook.

The shares may be headed for their lowest close in at least 46 years, according to Standard & Poor's Compustat data. The Goldman revision follows Fitch Ratings' cut yesterday of GM's long-term debt to B-, six steps below investment grade. On June 23, Bank of America told investors that the automaker might need to raise as much as $8 billion.

GM, if this keeps up for more than a week, will soon be 'penny stock'. Years ago, GM stocks paid a dividend of nearly a dollar. Then, for 5 years, it was 50¢ then, in the last 4 years, it has been 25¢. Down it goes. Into the pits. Old Geo Metros, on the other hand, are rising rapidly in price. Not to mention, any other cars that are also low gas users. GM put most of their eggs in the SUV market basket and is now a basket case. I still see SUVs all over the place. The drivers are very grumpy and nervous. If I pump gas at a store, they glare at me as if I were at fault for them causing us to rush towards the Hubbert Oil Peak at warp speed. I should be glaring at THEM but they are too dumb to figure out their role in all this.

Delinquencies Rise at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

In April, 1.22 percent of the conventional home loans that Fannie Mae guarantees were past due by at least three months or were in foreclosure. That was up from 1.15 percent in March and about twice the rate recorded in April 2007.

Freddie Mac said its delinquency rate was 0.81 percent in April, up from 0.77 percent in March. The rate was 0.4 in April of last year.

Neither company's figures fully captured the problems borrowers have had making payments, because they excluded loans for which payment terms had been relaxed.

Even with easing the rules, the bankruptcies accelerate. Housing sales are up but prices continue to drop. This is the 'picking the best fruits' part of a housing downturn. Even if prices fall further, the potential upside value of a distressed property is worth the risk of holding it. That is, if this isn't a Great Depression. Housing didn't stop in the Great Depression. It merely slowed down. To buy a house, one had to put down a lot of cash. My inlaws in NYC bought houses this way. The family clan group pooled funds and bought multi-family houses for nearly all cash. This works. I bought in very bad markets, too. Low overhead if one can wrestle up the cash to do this. Selling valuables is one way, I sold some of my antiques and other things and got enough money together.

Housing was way over everyone's heads for a while there. It was overvalued just as those Monet watery flowers are overvalued. Fannie Mae is basically our housing mortgage market. This post-Great Depression agency was set up to bring back housing for the troops fighting WWII. It worked. And was expanded. If Fannie Mae made the mortgages, this is one thing. But the bankers were allowed to make these mortgages and then palm them off onto Fannie Mae. So they made ridiculous, dangerous mortgages to people who could never possibly pay these off and now the taxpayers must foot the bill. Which is being passed on to OPEC and China. Who aren't going to buy this in the end unless we give them something big and nice. Like, say, Taiwan for China. Control of Jerusalem to OPEC.

Carlyle wants U.S. to ease bank investment rules

(Reuters) - The U.S. government should ease regulations on private equity investments in financial services companies to make more money available to the business and help stabilize the economy, two executives at the Carlyle Group wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

"We are not contesting the long-standing policy of drawing a line between banking and commerce," Carlyle Managing Directors Olivier Sarkozy and Randal Quarles wrote. "But the limitations on capital investment are far stricter than necessary to maintain these barriers, and can be amended by administrative intervention that is entirely consistent with the existing laws governing the country's depository institutions."

FDIC is where the taxpayers hold the bag for bad banks. If they go belly up, some of the money is insured by the government. Note that MBAI is going broke. Eventually, we pay for everything. Should bankers be allowed to be even more reckless? Look at how this has evolved! Worse and worse. And thanks to inflation, they need to be even worse! That will get them ahead of this game, eh?

World Economy Would Collapse If Oil Hit $200, Deutsche Says

(Bloomberg) ``Two-hundred dollar oil would break the back of the global economy,'' Deutsche Bank AG's Chief Energy Economist Adam Sieminski said in an interview today in Tokyo. ``Next step after $200 would be global recession and bad news for everybody.''

Well....if the sex-starved gnomes of Deutsche Bank want cheaper oil, why not tell their damn buddies and the other Real Rulers to stop harassing and annoying Iran Kitty? Like, lay off the cat! Stop! NO. BAD DOGGIE. Down, I say.

The clown whining here knows perfectly well that Iran Kitty has removed another $78 billion from Europe's starving banks and on top of this, can't sell oil to them. So oil will be $200 or more a barrel. Thanks to all the war talk. War, war, war. Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. And bomb the global economy. Now, who is to blame here? After all, Saddam disarmed and was attacked! By Europe and the US.

Comments

[Anthony]

This is not the worst yet. (The oil producing countries are promising $150-170 by late summer)

so the full economic effect will be brutal in winter, when people really don't have money for holiday spending. Retail will get hammered.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080626/bs_nm/markets_oil_dc_7

Oil hits record over $140 as Libya mulls cuts

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Yup. We are brutalizing Muslim nations like crazy and boy is it paying off big time... for the oil guys.

[Yusef]

Holy Sh*t! I'm scared. I was kind of hoping all of my own doom and gloom talk really was the result of a personal problem, a symptom of my own sad case of paranoia. That would have been nice-- or at least better than what we're going to collectively experience in coming years.

8 1/2 years after the Y2K peak of 11,700 and we are again below 11,700...Unprecedented in history. We are already in deep, deep doo doo and I can't help but think this is just a small sign of much deeper doo doo to come.

[Anthony]

The carry trade is holding. amazing. look at the proportion of exchange rate between china, US, Japan and europe.

It's like Asia and Bush doing blinking contest in europe plus US banking.

this is going to get very ugly when it snaps.

[cheezy]

obama is officially a whore now:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aA0XK8TY8HYs&refer=home

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

The carry trade is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Yen is up against the dying dollar. While oil and gold go up and up and up.

[Anthony]

bunch of chart (old analysis from 2007) trying to guess what makes USD so weak/inflationary.)

the charts are interesting. comparing various big countries.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-factors-are-affecting-us-dollar.html

Interest Rates, Sentiment, Currency Pegs, Carry Trade

So if dollar weakness is not related to housing, the trade deficit, US printing, or M3 (the latter because every country but Japan is doing the same thing), then what is it? The remaining factors to consider are interest rate policy, currency pegs, the carry trade, and sentiment.

[calvino]

The carry trade is being conducted through le euro and the overnight swaps that Tricky John at the ECB and our own bearded rat at the FEd had set up in December, and expanded in March. Le euro is at its all time highs, incredibly. While Germany could not care any less about Italian soup kitchens and the real estate hurricane about to hit Spain, this discounts the political effects in an economically incapacitated country. While Italy can not export a Fiat to Germany, except as a joke, they can export both communism and fascism to a country where the REd Brigades are not such a distant memory. Tricky is now playing with fire that the etarques can not fit into their econometric models with eighty variables. Is the cretin trying to bring back open class warfare, what is his problem? Europe can not hold up interest while the yen is a freely convertible currency available at one half percent interest. This is not absorbing inflation, or prudent policy. It is economic suicide. I repeat, cut the interest rate one hundred basis points tomorrow and promise another cut at the next meeting. Tell Spain and Italy and France and Greece to issue bonds and let ECB buy them. This will destroy the carry trade, the McMansion economies and put an end to Bank of Japan's colonization of Western industry. That Tricky Jean is a cretin is only my personal opinion and the Helicopter Ben is a bearded rat is also a personal opinion, and not a libelous statement of fact.

[Buffalo Ken]

calvino, this is a separate thread, so I'm going to post here.

I defy anyone to come up with a model based on 80 variables.

The error will overwhelm any supposed conclusion.

I like your way of characterizing the "playas".

[calvino]

Ken, eighty are actually not the new sophisticated models. Last I remember, Wharton econometrics was plugging double that number of variables. If anyone knows exactly, or if I am wrong, please correct me.

[El Johnny]

BANKS ARE RUNNING OUT OF CASH.

When cash and credit become scarce we enter the zone of a deflationary period. For the last 6 weeks I have had an earnest money contract on my residence. The lender is Bank of America. The buyer has a FICA over 800 and 10% down. BOA has no closing costs. We are unable to close because BOA has not the cash to fund the closing. BOA has no cash to continue their mortgage business for the time being. Rather than admit this issue, they prefer to act as if all is well. Cash and credit ARE drying up. Soon prices will decline. Soon cash will be king again.

[Karamaisking]

Incredible. Only the paranoid survive. And now, even I'm gonna die.

The only ones who will survive this holocaust will be some subsistance farmers in the Third World and the central bankers and their kissing cousins.

Everyone else is fucked.

[OC]

Not everyone in Asia is without cash or gold or manufacturing industries....Russia is still pumping oil & gas to them.

Is it possible that Asia will experience depression like US in the 30's and US + EU will experience hyperinflation like Weimar Germany?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

El Johnny, I was wondering what was up with you! So, your legitimate sale collapsed?

This is exactly what happened in the Great Depression! NORMAL banking/lending collapsed after wild, abnormal banking collapsed. So normal, healthy behavior is useless thanks to wild lending to irresponsible people crashes.

About Europe: raising rates fail in Free Trade/Floating Currency systems! If Japan and the US totally ignore not only the real rate of inflation but even their own fake inflation rate statistics, then ALL OTHER SYSTEMS FAIL. As I keep saying the top 2 or 3 economic world powers, if they do anything, they set the rules. The #1 and #3 economies, if they both have near zero interest rates so they can deliberately kill their currencies, then all others must do the same or be destroyed by world trade wars.

The G7, as I keep saying, are NOT in concert with each other. They are at each other's throats while simultaneously pretending to be good friends and allies of the US so they can export to us. But Europe will cease exporting to us at this rate!

The US hegemony of the earth is ending. Using Japanese trade tactics is a sign of weakness, not strength. And we can't imitate Japan if we also want to militarily rule the earth. Period. Japan has no military, so to speak. Ours is gigantic. Ditto Europe, they have very little military, we are gigantic. So each entity is different and Japan has a lock on the Fortress Japan/weak yen/huge trade advantage/huge FOREX business.

[GK]

Here are some factors which lead me to believe in the Volcker Interest Rate Rise plan.

I will allow you to draw your own conclusions as to whether I agree with Elaine that this will save the USA or instead think it will be used to destroy it.

Everyone knows that when Interest Rates rise, the value of bonds go down. If interest rates go from 5% to 15%, how much would you pay for a bond still paying 5%?!

1. Federal Reserve is DUMPING T-Bills (Just very 'safe' Bonds from the Treasury backed by the US military) which pay low interest rates by giving (swapping) them to Member Banks.

2. Fed is swapping those T-BILLS for HIGH INTEREST RATE SUB-PRIME debt that looks like junk garbage, but their plan is to get it backed by the government and tax payers so that it will soon be VALUABLE. (they get title to a majority of peasants 'property' too.)

3. US BANKS are COLLAPSING because insiders know that the value of all those 30 YEAR FIXED RATE MORTGAGES are going to be SAVAGED and plunge in price when the interest rates go from 5% to 15%.

Once interest rates go up to 15%, bond/tbill/oil/gold markets will crash, as Elaine correctly notes, and then banks will collapse due to people not being able to afford to buy debt or anything.

Then housing will complete the ongoing collapse. All houses not owned 100% in cash will be repossessed. If the banks miss a few, the IRS/State will seize the rest for failure to pay property tax. Now people can be herded into cities for easy control and less fuel consumption so it can be sent to factories, cars, trucks and trains in CHINA.

Now the IMF can come in and 'rescue' the US by demanding new Euro-like Amero currency, metric system and more 'free-trade' ie open up remaining ULTRA-CHEAP post GREATER DEPRESSION assets to be sold to COMMUNIST CHINA and the WWII AXIS OF GERMANY AND JAPAN.

The mental model I use for this analysis is to think of the news as a play-by-play reporting of a game of pool (or snooker) between the Rockefeller and the Rothschild gangs.

A gentleman's game played ruthlessly for enormous stakes, but at the end of the game the funds change hands and a few cigars and snifters of brandy are enjoyed with a hearty laugh.

But if Volcker is able to raise interest rates AND return to a sound banking system without a private central bank, then I will switch to a more favorable opinion as to the consequences.

[Buffalo Ken]

Nobody knows the future, but there is power in numbers and the numbers are with the People - you know, the "regular folk". There is no power in "ill-gotten gains"....only a gnashing of the teeth and a dwindling of the mind.

When you get down to the bottom we are all human animals and the "Rocks", "Childs", "Bushes/Pierces", "Walkers", "Harry-men" and the "Chains" (and I could add more) are all skin and bone just like the rest of us. We are all going to get our due. Don't you think? We are all going to die and then what happens next is a grand mystery but I think the way you treat others will make a big difference. You know didn't someone once say...."whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers/sisters that you do onto me" -- seems like this is simply saying that we are all connected. We are all related. Duh.

Sorry to be so "smoky" with this note, but I'm not sure how else to express something so simple yet so long obfuscated...

Its time for a new day.