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Ralph

Imagine Paulson using his bazooka to buy gold futures and options? LOL!!! We are so doomed.

DrKrbyLuv

Elaine said:

"Gold coin sales have been suspended at the Mint due to lack of raw gold. This is a signal that gold will begin to climb again, not bounce lower."

Makes me feel much better as you had been more bearish than many of us regulars. I have been waiting, which is good since I was ready to buy at $960; now, hopefully $833. I opened an account with GoldMoney a few months back but have not made an actual purchase...today that will change.
_________________________________________

The old adage "history repeats itself" is an understatement in the extreme. During the last great depression thousands of banks and businesses went under - then, the wealthy elite picked up what they wanted dirt cheap.

This will happen again but the wealthy will have to compete with foreign opportunists lured to the fire sale.

Mish's has an interesting article today entitled "Ten Financial Entities On The Brink." The bottom line "The key here is there is virtually no chance the Fed can save them all, or even most of them. The list is simply Too Big To Bail."

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
/2008/08/ten-financial-entities-on-brink.html
_________________________________________

Meanwhile, Bush remains in his own demented world as he said a couple days ago: "Georgia stood for freedom around the world, now the world must stand for freedom in Georgia."

He and his neoconn friends are actually suggesting that we send tons of money to rebuild Georgia and to send troops. What the hell planet is he from?? We're broke and our military is way over-extended.

RobG

Hey Elaine, this blogger is soliciting input. He/she is missing the US/Japan interest rate angle. I've condensed the article.

If Only Central Bankers Would Hit Bottom

I'm told that alcoholics and addicts have to hit bottom before they are able to renounce their self destructive ways. Ironically, their personal collapse makes them more capable of change than scientists, who, according to Thomas Kuhn in his landmark, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, were so incapable of abandoning core beliefs that it would take an entire generation for significant advances to become widely accepted. The old guard literally had to die off before the new paradigm could take hold.
... snip ...
The repeated use of the word "heal" says that the Fed has done a great job of pre-selling its message and the words of realists with Buiter will fall on deaf ears.

So what's wrong with this picture? Here is a starter list. Readers are encouraged to add to it.

1. There is a remarkable lack of introspection. The Fed (and by extension other central banks) seem to think they performed ably and are victims of circumstance. They seem to see themselves as agents that act on the system, and implicitly deny their role in creating the current circumstances.

2. Part of the lack of introspection is how mission creep worked to their disadvantage.

3. Focus on monetary policy and liquidity and lack of attention to regulatory and structural reform.

...snip...
I'm sure there is plenty to add to the Fed's rap sheet, and I hope readers will provide input.


Ralph

Elaine check out this article. Pretty good. http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1219417468.php

Stefan Stackhouse

Elaine:

The thing that really burns me up is this:

Ordinary people like myself (and you, and probably anyone else reading this) are ON OUR OWN. If one loses one's job, or suffers a business failure, then that is just tough, it is one's own problem to somehow cope and move on. Most manage to do so, somehow, barely, with great difficulty and suffering. Some don't, and we read about the stories of a select few of these now and then; these stories are just the tip of the iceburg. Just enough stories to make most people glad that it isn't them - not enough stories to scare people enough to make them believe that it really is going to be them next.

This is all supposedly for the best, you see. We are supposed to celebrate the "competitiveness of a dynamic economy", this is the "creative distruction" that supposedly reallocates resources from less productive to more productive enterprises. Right.

When it comes to big shot, big moneybags CEOs and bankers and financiers, though, what do we see? Do we see THEM suffer the consequences when they make a wrong bet on the direction of the economy, or when they make bad decisions and their companies head toward insolvency? NO!!! Because THEY are SPECIAL, THEY get treated differently than the rest of us ordinary people. THEY get special bail-outs. "Too big to fail", they say. Too much well-connected big shots to fail, I say is closer to the truth.

I very strongly suspect that I'm not the only one that feels this way. I rather suspect that more and more people are getting mad as hell about this. There is no mention in the main stream media about it though, not a word. They don't dare mention it.

G.

Comrades !

I exhort you to adhere to Party doctrine.

Most glorious (roll that "r") Party has
glorious 10 year plan to restore liquidity.
All hail to our Dear Beard and his loan "window".

Ignore these hooligans that try to deceive
you with their revisionist bourgeois theories.

Now, get back to your Tractor Factory. The
Party quota must be made.

AF

The crybabies I work with are talking up all the silver and bronze medals the US got. I find this hilarious because a few years ago everyone was running around saying, "Second place is first loser!!!" Hahaha.

I'm also amused by the underlying racist coverage of the Olympics. When athletes from other countries celebrate a victory they are classless showboaters. When US athletes celebrate they are just reveling in the spirit of the games. At various times NBC has implied that the Chinese are robots, savages, simpletons, insects, infantile, childlike, or subhuman.

In banking news, the AHOLES down at HSBC have managed to make my paycheck disappear. Thanks a lot international banking cartel!

Bear of Little Brain

G: If only I had a tractor factory to go to:

"McCormick's factory in Doncaster assembled its last tractor today (14th Dec 2007) after 60 years of farm machinery production.
The closure of the Wheatley Hall Road plant is the latest of a number of closures in Britain over the years. Massey Ferguson used to make combines at Kilmarnock and tractors in Coventry. The David Brown factory near Huddersfield and International Harvester's Bradford plant have long since closed their doors and the same fate befell Leyland's Bathgate facility near Edinburgh and Marshall's Gainsborough factory in the 1980s.

Now, only CNH Global's New Holland tractor plant in Basildon and JCB's factories at Rocester (telehandlers) and Cheadle (tractors) remain."

Massey Ferguson was the definitive UK tractor brand. I even had a toy MF tractor in my childhood. They were taken over by Agco,who closed the plant with a loss of 900 direct jobs. Agco is a US corporation, of course. I'm not whining, just pointing out the facts. This is how it goes, isn't it? And I won't be getting any pleasure if I hear that John Deere is moving all manufacturing to China. It used to be said that what happens in the USA, happens in the UK ten years later (refrigerators, colour TV's, etc). Looks as if it's the other way round now (collapsing motor industry, etc.), but with a twenty year lag.

In the UK, we're buggered now we can't do up our houses and sell 'em on any more. Hope you all do better over there.

AF:
I read that the Olympic medals are only plated, not solid. Says it all, if true.

Paul S

Stefan: The so-called "free market" advocates are total frauds. They don't want free markets; free markets cause competition, which hurts profits. If the 'free marketers' were honest(HaHaHa), they would say they are MONOPOLISTS. That's what they really are. Always follow where the money goes; this tells you the REAL story.

Phil

The Exchange Stabilization Fund belatedly reports that it sold 10 billion Euros and bought dollars.

Also, the ECB manipulated gold.

The price of stuff with no inherent value goes up, while the price of tangible stuff drops.

This buys our country a little more time to borrow itself to death.

G.

Sorry Mr Bear.

I was trying to imitate the olde USSR commie rhetoric a little too much

Instead of "tractor factory" I should've
said, "telemarketing cubicle" for white
collar people, or "get back on your forklift in the warehouse" for blue collar people.

All Heil to most glorious party and to Dear
Komrade Chairman, our Dear Beard Bernanke.

JZ

I think a list should be compiled of who the elites are, and where they live, and they should all be given concrete boots, and tossed in the ocean or worse, if they don't pull the American people out of this in good shape.

Death is the only just sentence for them.

Hakan with the reindeer

Hey Elaine, have you seen this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aIECoNZ8Zbgo&refer=home
"Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and U.S. auto-parts makers are seeking $50 billion in government-backed loans"

This is insane. Mother of all bailouts is approaching... fast. Better get some shelter.

Anthony

Why would anybody buy Lehman? Just let it go bankrupt and buy the pieces.

Their liability is way too big, not worth whatever asset they have left. With real estate crashing and economy slowing, their office buildings couldn't possibly worth that much.

On top of that, if Lehman goes bankrupt, the other 3 big banks are in much weaker position too. It cascades. Then buy one of them.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Koreans will take the Derivative Beast which dwells at Lehman and unleash it upon Japan. HAHAHA. Never forget, Japan, not North Korea, is the entity the Koreans want to mash.

About tractors: HEY! I own and use tractors. I used to have a 1948 Fergason T0-20. Gave it to a friend of my son when it got seized up.


Now we own a Ford 1983 1710. It is a great workhorse. Which is good. Since my poor old workhorse, Sparky, died. All our Ford parts come from....hang onto your bales of hay, everyone....CHINA. Well, well, well.

Bear of Little Brain

G:
Sorry to rain on your parade. I'm becoming a real party-pooper. ;-)

Hakan: Tata just bought the old imperialists' once-prized possessions - Jaguar and Range Rover. Just as well Vietnam doesn't have a motor industry or they'd be after the Big Three! Wouldn't rule out China, though.

Just spotted Elaine's comment before posting. Great minds…?? Okay, just coincidence.

Phil

Bear,

Mention of Huddersfield rang a bell.

Some of my ancestors lived just down the road in Honley, until 1699.

Beautiful place, the Holme Valley. Great place to wait out Depressions.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Hey, Phil, did your family, like mine, irritate King James too much? Him and his Bible, that is. That is why my family ended up here.

Greg

Afghan ministry says 76 civilians killedFrom correspondents in Kabul
August 23, 2008 07:26am
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + -
Send this article: Print Email
A US-LED coalition military operation in western Afghanistan has killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women, the Afghan interior ministry said.

The coalition confirmed it carried out an operation that included air strikes in the western province of Herat but said 30 Taliban rebels were killed only and said it knew of no civilian deaths.

The Afghan defence ministry meanwhile gave yet another toll - five civilians and 25 rebels dead.

It was impossible to independently verify what happened in volatile Shindand district, but the conflicting reports highlight the difficulty in establishing facts in the mounting clashes between troops and rebels.

"Seventy-six people, all civilians and most of them women and children, were martyred during the operation by coalition forces in Shindand district of Herat province," the ministry said.

The dead were "19 women, seven men and the rest children all under 15 years of age," it said.

"The interior ministry, while expressing its profound regret because of this incident which happened by accident, has sent a delegation of 10 people to the area and more details will be announced once the investigation is completed".

If the death toll is confirmed it would be one of the highest for civilians in the battle to fight the extremist Taliban, who were ousted during a US-led invasion in 2001.

The ministry said an unknown number of civilians were also wounded, with some of them in a critical condition.

The police chief for western Afghanistan, Akramuddin Yawer, had also said 76 people were killed in the incident and 15 houses were destroyed in strikes. "Taliban are included but their number is unknown," he said.

But the coalition said 30 insurgents were killed in clashes and air strikes that followed an ambush on Afghan National Army (ANA) and coalition troops as they were going to arrest a Taliban commander.

"The ANA and coalition forces killed 30 insurgents," it said, adding a "known" Taliban commander was among the dead.

Two civilians were wounded. "No other civilian or friendly casualties were reported," the coalition said.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman could not account for the Afghan interior ministry claims, saying "the coalition remains confident in our reports that were released earlier today".

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Hakan with the reindeer

Look a this then:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aslo2E01QVFI
"A failure of U.S. mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be a catastrophe for the global financial system, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to China's central bank.

``If the U.S. government allows Fannie and Freddie to fail and international investors are not compensated adequately, the consequences will be catastrophic,'' Yu said in e-mailed answers to questions yesterday. ``If it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the current international financial system.''
``The seriousness of such failures could be beyond the stretch of people's imagination,'' said Yu, a professor at the Institute of World Economics & Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing."

Harsh words..

anthony

tic toc ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080822/bs_nm/fannie_freddie_dc_2

Moody's ratings cut latest blow to Fannie, Freddie


Early in the day, influential stock market investor Warren Buffett told CNBC there is a "reasonable chance" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock will get wiped out in a government rescue, reflecting market sentiment that has slammed the companies' shares toward 20-year lows this week. The shares closed mixed on Friday.

In the ratings cut, Moody's Investors Service cited concern that market turmoil has hurt the mortgage finance giants' ability to get fresh capital. Moody's made a ratings adjustment that suggests a greater likelihood the government sponsored enterprises, called GSEs, will need "extraordinary financial assistance" from the government or shareholders.

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Geeze, that is why the dollar is stronger and the stock market went up, eh?

Of course, China is throwing VERY BROAD hints that if we cheat them, they will make our lives very, very miserable.

PLovering

Elaine:

My Holme Valley ancestors were Quakers, which irritated the local Anglican Bishop no end.

They were hounded out of the Valley and settled outside of Philadelphia, USA on a Penn Grant. They were early to fight the King in the American Revolution.

Anthony

I wonder what happen if we quit paying the Chinese and Russian their money.

I mean, it would be amazing watching $2.6T liquidity being dumped into the market all at once. It probably makes a very nice thriller novel.

Christian W

Ahaha, it was only about a year ago that the US insisted China invest billions in Fannie and Freddie...

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Apres Deluge! That is what! The Hoover Dam of debts collapses!

Plovering, heh. The Crown wanted to get rid of dissidents. My family couldn't even live in a British colony, we were in the Dutch colonies. Note that Pennsylvania is also, like the Hudson Valley, very Dutch. The Dutch were the true Liberals of the 1600s, not England, not France.


whine and cheese

Ah, foreign affairs now advocates "digital gold" currency:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86308-p40/benn-steil/the-end-of-national-currency.html

Buffalo Ken

the only anniversary i want to see is the one entitled "death of the fed" -- i think it has already passed. Now it is time for the pain - you know. Big deal - we can take it - we the People can take the pain and we can sure enough dish it out. Wait and see if you don't believe me....im just saying ---- just expressing my view --- we are still "allowed" to do that in this country aren't we, or are the few going after this too --- ooh, big mistake by the few.

Tell

You might like to read this...Just copy and paste into address bar...

http://tinyurl.com/5exu5o

Buffalo Ken

then after death of the fed commences in my imagination the death penalty for so many unalive corporations --- all of this flow logically -it just unfolds - or unravel if you will.

Peace. Really.

Buffalo Ken

Hey tell who u been talking 2? Not me.

Buffalo Ken

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/8.08/amateur.html

I don't care for this "tinyurl" thing. I'd rather have a clue - is there a way to see where the tinyurl is going to take you beforehand?

Buffalo Ken

I had to go through the trouble of checking it out and i'm not so sure its worth the time...i didn't read it --- im sure so many have not read mine!

Buffalo Ken

2:22 or maybe not --- whose got the time - not what - i know that.

But I think what has who - by the balls if you know what i mean!

Do ya fool?

ha.ha

Buffalo Ken

and 2:23 - that ain't for me - that is only for "magic number" fooly boy bush fools...such a fool...an easy tool.

Buffalo Ken

he's probably bleeding right now...inbred dumb tejas fuuuu. hay im fu 2, but i no scale

Buffalo Ken

hey that was supposed to be 2:25 - whose got the time.....i wanta know...

Buffalo Ken

all this time and there was nothing.....

i know i should get out of my head........

Hey - We the People. We know.

plus, me, Ken Hausle, I declare I am indignant.

Check out the PeopleProclamation if you want to know what I mean.

Well - that makes 9 (maybe...

Buffalo Ken

make that peoplesproclamation.com

click on my name if you want to get there easily....

Buffalo Ken

K and 11.

OK. Enough of my rambling.

By the way, I finished the laminate job and I think (or at least as best I can tell) everyone was satisfied. A job well done.

You can count on 2morehands. 2morehands can grow as natural as it wants. 2morehands is just an idea.

11 and K go together.

Buffalo Ken

I am going to do the 12th post in a row (at least I think) for two reasons:

1. I can be an asshole when I need to be (i am from new york after all...); and

2. That inflation cartoon chick, or no, inflation "funny money" honey sure looks good, but let me tell she is not faster than thought. Uh ah. Thought is faster than inflation.

Hey - 12th in a row unless someone blocks.

Buffalo Ken

Things can happen very rapidly. That makes 13 and my wife just got home. I better get down there to where she is.

Peace,
Ken

Buffalo Ken

OK - daggonit. My wife told me the Mississipi boys would take out the New York troops. I disagree, but that is neither here nor there.

This is the 14th post, and in my humble typing opinion (and this did not type simply...) i could go on forever...

Buffalo Ken

Earlier Elaine talked about Wars that were still going on, but I disagree. That is very subjective. Some could say the Civil War (the "War of America"_) is still going on, but I disagree. I think now we are only seeing the effects....and so is the case with the other wars...they only live on in imagination and it is time big time to start imagining better...don't you think...i DO. I love.....i love nothing and everything....

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Just watched the mega-huge movie made in Russia, the epic War and Peace by Tolstoy. Amazing and haunting movie.

Buffalo Ken

ok

i1 will1

cnt1 post1 more

my1 keybord1

jhs1 fgone1 fgluky1

peice,1 k

Buffalo Ken

I got a backup keyboard and except for the spacebar this one seems to be working well. I had spilled too much stuff on the other one and it was only a matter of time before its circuity was compromised. Oh well, except for maybe time, nothing lasts forever - not even nothing.

OK Elaine is the movie you meant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_(1968_film)

I wonder if I can get this through Netflix.

If I can't get the movie, then I suppose it is time to read the book. I think I have that book lying around here somewhere.

OK, I don't do this very often, but I promise that I won't have another 15-in-row posting "ho-down" - I really wanted to get 16, but I suppose that would be over the top. Plus, I'm going "offline" for awhile, but I'll still be lurking. You can count on me to be around and show up every now and then. This is one of the best sites I have ever found - I don't even go to "commondreams.org" anymore because they kicked my ass off - and to think, the name of the site was "common dreams" - not an apt name if you are interested in my opinion.

This site on the other hand is most aptly named. Lastly, I plan on checking out in more detail some of your "non money-matters" blog postings. I've read some of them, but I think I want to read more.

Money stuff can just get so frantic in the moment that sometimes it is important to take a step back and survery the situation before proceeding forward.

Peace again. Peace to all those here many of whom I consider "online" friends.

Ken

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