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TheWatcher (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 12:28 AM Response to Original message

110. "The Messiah Rally", and a Nation Of Blind, Drooling Sheep.

Edited on Fri Jan-16-09 12:40 AM by TheWatcher Good Evening Marketeers. Oh COME ON, you KNEW I'd be posting today. Although by all rights I really shouldn't be. More on that in a moment. SO today we have yet another Engineered, Fabricated, Nonsense Rally based on more "Gun To The Head Legislation", from a guy who hasn't even been sworn in I might add, with the same jingoistic chant that Stammerin" Hank cooed to the public just a few weeks ago. "Give Me The Money, or the seas will boil, the skies will fall, and the economy will never recover, and you won't be able to drool in front of your TV's in perfect oblivious coma, with your Official McDonald's feedbag strapped to your face, feeling good." You know, at long last, I am beginning to wonder if it is even POSSIBLE for the millions of programmed, dumbed down, propaganda lathered sheep to EVER see the light. We have such an interesting Cycle that occurs, and I'm sure most of you can see it. The Official Sector comes in for a few weeks, pumps up the Market, with Propaganda as cover stories, artificially moving the Market to whatever Price they decide to set it at. Then, little by little, every fake, fabricated rally falls apart as the REAL Truth, or what they will ALLOW us to know, comes out. The game is simple. Pump the Market to distract the sheep, put them to sleep, and manage their perceptions so there is no panic. Then, each rally simply deflates until we reach the SAME Critical Support Level (7800-8000), and in the late afternoon when things are going off a cliff, a cover story is released, and all is well again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. So what trading advice would I offer here, well, if you are a bear, TAKE CARE, because you may just get taken to the wood chipper the next three or four trading days. I fully expect a sharp, spectacular, feel-good rally that I like to call "The Messiah Rally" which will coincide with Obama's swearing in. There won't be any other explanation given, it won't make any sense, and they can do a news dump of all the horrible news because the sheep will be too enthralled welcoming "Change." You know, I have to wonder at long last, what is WRONG with the people of this country? Why do they just keep buying into EVERY lie they are fed, every deception, while IGNORING the reality that is clearly in front of their faces? It's as if they expect on January 20th, a wave of energy will sweep the Planet, just like The Genesis Project in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, and a whole new world will be born, and everything that has come before this day does not matter. They are willing to sacrifice ANY principle, ANY ideal, ANY moral, ANY concept of reality, so that they can feel good, and live and die for a LIE. It's incredible. I have never seen a civilization so eager to willfully finish itself off, just so they don't have to deal with reality. And if you look at what they ignored TODAY, you have to admit, this has gone beyond any reasonable measure of denial. This is DELUSION at it's MOST DANGEROUS. WE CANNOT SURVIVE as a nation this way. We simply can't. Microsoft Layoffs let out of the bag- Microsoft plant to cut 10-17% of it's workforce. Do you remember when this rumor first got started, and the reaction from the media and the public was to pooh-pooh it at any cost? "It doesn't exist. It's one of those sill Conspiracy Internet Rumors born of some disgruntled employee wanting attention." Well, today they FINALLY owned up to the fact that the perspective lay-offs could be between 10 and 15 THOUSAND if I have my math correct. Intel Profits down 90%. Unemployment is at 7.2%. And that is the FAKE number. GM and the Autos are basically Bankrupt and on Life Support. JPMorgan released their fictional numbers today which hint that are about done as well. The financials are in SERIOUS trouble. All things point to a collapsing economy. But what does everyone focus on? Yes, ANOTHER Bailout. Not like the other ones have worked or anything, but hey, it's more important to feel good and suck down Burger King's TOWERING new Angus Sandwiches than deal with reality. The people not only CAN'T get it, they DON'T WANT to get it. The Dow has basically become nothing more than a rigged casino controlled by TPTB who use it as nothing more than a Price Setting Mechanism. The things I have talked about in this post, and others, all of the patterns and evidence are PLAIN to see. Any independent thinking person could EVENTUALLY figure it out. But what does the average American do? "It doesn't Exist. It isn't real. You're a Conspiracy Theorist. You're A Doom Fetishist that wants the worst to happen, and doesn't want to tow the line or do what's best for "The Football Team." You're interfering with my false paradigm that I live in so I can feel good and not have to think. Layoffs don't exist. Microsoft doesn't exist." And on, and on, and on, and on, and ON. And before the apologists who seize any opportunity to chastise anyone for not being a "true believer" of Mr. Obama, I'm sorry, you are barking up the wrong tree here. This has NOTHING to do with that. What it has to do with is the willingness of the people to continue to swallow every lie, every piece of propaganda, and every deception, to their own detriment, as well as the detriment of everyone else. But for those who can't see the light by now, I have to say this. I am DONE. Done trying to do the right thing and point out reality. Done trying to help people and save them from mistakes that will GRAVELY affect them and their families future. Done trying to "catapult the propaganda." Because it seems to me that people who continue to feed into this maelstrom DON'T CARE about the Truth. They DON'T CARE about reality. The DON'T WANT TO KNOW. They only want their PERCEPTIONS Managed. "Just tell me what I want to hear and I'll go along with it, and get back to shopping, gobbling cheeseburgers, engorging on junk culture, and living in a fantasy land. Just tell me what I want to hear and I'll tow the line." So will the breathtaking Circus take place next week. hey, DON'T bet your life on it, because these days it is never completely clear what the agenda is. You really have to learn to think like a criminal, and then give your BEST GUESS. But it's a lot better than just swallowing the lies. If I could speak directly to the majority of the blind in this country this would be my message. WAKE UP America. There is NO INVESTING ANY MORE. Only Artificial Price Setting and Price Adjustment. There is no REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. Only a machine that leads you like sheep to the slaughter for whatever agenda you are to be processed for. You don't have to believe me. You don't have to take my word for it. I'm not a genius. I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, I'm nothing special. I just OPEN MY EYES to my environment. It's not hard. But you won't do it will you? No. dying for a lie is more important than living for the Truth. Jesus, ROME, even in it's LAST DAYS was more sane than this. Good Luck To You Marketeers. Be safe, and Best Wishes to you all. I know sometimes it feels like you are screaming into the darkness, but don't stop. Maybe, JUST maybe.....You never know. As for me, I am on my way to the ER. I have had a 103 temperature for two days, and I need to find out why. So my apologies if this sounded like it was written in a state of delirium. Because it probably was. But that doesn't make it any less relevant.

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ozymandius (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 12:59 AM Response to Reply #110

112. That's an amazing screed there, TheWatcher.

Edited on Fri Jan-16-09 01:00 AM by ozymandius You touch on an idea that has been given a great amount of examination: Do societies fail because they choose to fail? Or do they fail because they cannot comprehend the enormity of their existence? I will also note that a line from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies comes to mind when considering modern finance advances: "Take what you can. Give nothing back." It just seems apt.

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DemReadingDU (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 01:32 AM Response to Reply #110

114. Nice rant!

Hope you feel better soon.

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Demeter (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 02:54 AM Response to Reply #110

115. I Feel For You==Take Care of Yourself

That is the only thing you can control (when you can control anything).

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UpInArms (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 03:13 AM Response to Reply #110

116. you are way too lucid

while halucinating get better soon and post more often!

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Prag (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 04:19 AM Response to Reply #110

119. You know as well as I that this was all decided at Göbekli Tepe 11,000 years ago.

Edited on Fri Jan-16-09 04:22 AM by Prag I suppose it was pretty obvious that Hunting and Gathering was no longer a feasible lifestyle... and, well... That the adoption of Domestication and Agriculture meant there would be sheep and there would be shepherds (more like wolves these days). Always... and bubbles of feast and famine too. But, I don't believe it must be that way... It's how the shepherds predators like it though. Take care Watcher and I hope you recover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

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ozymandius (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 01:03 AM Response to Original message

113. Here's your baked ending.

Dow 8,212.49 Up 12.35 (0.15%) Nasdaq 1,511.84 Up 22.20 (1.49%) S&P 500 843.74 Up 1.12 (0.13%) 10-Yr Bond 2.201% Down 0.012 NYSE Volume 7,950,148,500 Nasdaq Volume 2,522,259,250 4:30 pm : Stocks concluded a whipsaw session with modest modest gains after market participants stepped in to provide short-term support to stocks. During the session the stock market had been down as much as 3%, while the Dow dropped more than 600 points to cross 8000 for the first time since its November bear market low. At their session lows both indices were down 12% from their January high. With a sense stocks were becoming oversold, buyers stepped in to provide support. Eight of the 10 sectors finished higher. Telecom (-1.1%) and financials (-5.1%) were the only sectors that failed to make their way into positive territory. Financials led the session's initial losses. The sector had been down as much as 8.3% as JPMorgan Chase (JPM 24.34, -1.57), Bank of America (BAC 8.32, -1.88), and Citigroup (C 3.83, -0.70) led losses. JPMorgan Chase reported fourth quarter adjusted earnings of $0.07 per share, which was better than the break-even level that Wall Street was expecting. Still, the results were far below the $0.86 per share earned one year ago. JPMorgan also reminded investors just how shaky macro conditions remain when it reported it added $4.1 billion (pretax) to loan loss reserves. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported Bank of America is close to receiving additional federal aid to assist in the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, even though the bank has already received $25 billion in federal funds. The need for additional capital led many investors to question whether the bank can maintain its dividend. The stock had been down more than 20% to reach new multiyear lows, but finished off those levesl. At BAC's current share price, the stock carries a dividend yield of 15.3%. Large-cap tech stocks like Research In Motion (RIMM 49.24, +4.14) and Qualcomm (QCOM 34.80, +1.04) helped the Nasdaq outperform the other headline indices this sesssion. Apple (AAPL 83.38, -1.95), however, traded as a laggard. Apple fell under pressure after its CEO, Steve Jobs, said he is taking a medical leave of absence until June. Motorola (MOT 4.43, +0.32) was one of the latest companies to issue a cautious outlook and announce additional job cuts. Motorola expects fourth quarter revenue will likely range from $7.0 billion to $7.2 billion, which falls short of the $7.5 billion consensus estimate. The company will cut roughly 4,000 employees this year. That's in addition to the 3,000 cuts already announced. Initial jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 10 totaled 524,000, which is up 54,000 week-over-week, and more than the 503,000 claims that were expected. Continuing claims stand at 4.497 million, which is less than the 4.62 million continuing claims that were expected. The prior reading was increased slightly to reflect 4.612 million continuing claims. Although encouraging at first glance, the continued claims improvement is likely a function of many people having exhausted their jobless claims benefits. In other economic news, the December Producer Price Index fell 1.9% month-over-month, which wasn't quite as bad as the 2.0% downturn that was expected. Excluding food and energy, producer prices were up 0.2% month-over-month. Economists expected a 0.1% increase.DJ30 +12.35 NASDAQ +22.20 NQ100 +1.7% R2K +2.1% SP400 +1.7% SP500 +1.12 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1556/2.50 bln/1151 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1670/1.65 bln/1420

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UpInArms (1000+ posts)

Fri Jan-16-09 03:15 AM Response to Reply #113

117. lovely alliteration

modest gains after market participants stepped in to provide short-term support to stocks blatherspeak for paid shills buying market futures

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Global Financial Governance: The Fund could tame unfair competitive devaluation

Edited on Wed Jan-14-09 08:43 PM by Ghost Dog By Jessica Einhorn Published: January 14 2009 19:52 | Last updated: January 14 2009 19:52 The severity of the present crisis is an opportunity to remedy deep-seated problems. A fundamental (not proximate) cause of our economic plight is the imbalance in current accounts – in particular between the US and China – during the past decade. We can choose our narrative tone – for example, that US spending saved the world from a decline in growth as the east Asians and some others built up their reserves through export-led expansion. Alternatively, the reckless US financial system and irresponsible American consumers accommodated the Chinese mercantilism as the dollar became overvalued and the Chinese built up reserves and maintained an undervalued exchange rate. Of course, both are true. But there is a bigger truth. The global system as governed by the International Monetary Fund is asymmetric in its approach to deficit versus surplus countries. The IMF has an important operational function – to provide financing to deficit countries that experience a crisis in their balance of payments because of unavailability of external finance in a convertible currency. While the Fund also has provisions prohibiting the manipulation of exchange rates to achieve competitive advantage (what we call a competitive devaluation), there is no operating approach to redress this distortion to fair trade. ... We should consider a solution that would rely on both the IMF and the World Trade Organisation for judgment and implementation. If a country runs a surplus on its current account for some period (more than a year) and is simultaneously intervening to purchase foreign exchange at a particular percentage of gross national product, then that country should come up for automatic consideration at the IMF. In order to strengthen political will for action, the presumption should be that a country that sustains the scope and pattern of trade surplus and reserves described in the guidelines is achieving a distortion of trade that should be remedied. Unless an exception is voted by a majority in the Fund, a recommendation to the WTO would follow in favour of remedial action (such as a surcharge on the exports of the named country). This would be consistent with the existing agreements between the two institutions, which gives precedence to the IMF in determinations on foreign exchange matters and provides for the Fund to inform the WTO regarding measures that are inconsistent with Fund articles. All IMF members would be governed by the policy, which would not be subject to a blocking veto in its implementation. ... Tackling this problem would provide an excellent context to address the long-standing issue of reapportioning quota shares (the system that determines votes at the IMF). These negotiations have been going on for years with little redress. If the big industrial countries had something at stake in curbing the excesses of currency imbalance, the prospects might be more positive. Indeed, if the US would agree to surrender its hold on the presidency of the World Bank, then there would be a package of reform worthy of the effort. The Europeans give up shares, the Asians and others give up mercantilism, and the US gives up a vestige of unipolarism. The IMF and the World Bank gain legitimacy and the Fund resolves a dilemma that haunts its fundamental mission. A grand slam for international financial governance. The writer is dean of the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University /... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cce475a-e262-11dd-b1dd-00007...

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fedsron2us (1000+ posts)

Wed Jan-14-09 09:09 PM Response to Reply #78

80. Strangely not that far from the ideas Keynes was promoting after World War 2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/18/lor... Of course, these are the great mans real ideas rather than the fantasy policies that are attributed to him by every free market dickhead on the planet

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Ghost Dog (1000+ posts)

Wed Jan-14-09 09:45 PM Response to Reply #80

81. Indeed. This particular piece does appear directed against China, though,

Edited on Wed Jan-14-09 09:53 PM by Ghost Dog to which this appears to be a response: US to blame for financial crisis, says China Source: Agence France-Presse -->DU thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... US mistakes are the root cause of the global financial crisis, a senior Chinese central bank official said overnight, rejecting criticism of China's high savings rate and booming trade surplus. "Errors made in US economic policy-making, financial supervision and markets are the ultimate causes of the crisis," said Zhang Jianhua, research head at the People's Bank of China, in an opinion piece carried by the People's Daily. Some observers in the West are blaming China and other nations' high savings rate and trade surplus for fuelling excess consumption and asset bubbles in the United States, he said. "Such views are ridiculous and irresponsible in the extreme," Mr Zhang wrote in the harshly worded piece in the Communist Party's mouthpiece. Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,24915240-... Edit: Note the way positions, and therefore interests, are somewhat reversed, today. The US is now the deficit nation. Here's the summary of Keynes's proposal (from George Monbiot's Guardian article, your link above): ... He proposed a global bank, which he called the International Clearing Union. The bank would issue its own currency - the bancor - which was exchangeable with national currencies at fixed rates of exchange. The bancor would become the unit of account between nations, which means it would be used to measure a country's trade deficit or trade surplus. Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account at the International Clearing Union, equivalent to half the average value of its trade over a five-year period. To make the system work, the members of the union would need a powerful incentive to clear their bancor accounts by the end of the year: to end up with neither a trade deficit nor a trade surplus. But what would the incentive be? Keynes proposed that any country racking up a large trade deficit (equating to more than half of its bancor overdraft allowance) would be charged interest on its account. It would also be obliged to reduce the value of its currency and to prevent the export of capital. But - and this was the key to his system - he insisted that the nations with a trade surplus would be subject to similar pressures. Any country with a bancor credit balance that was more than half the size of its overdraft facility would be charged interest, at a rate of 10%. It would also be obliged to increase the value of its currency and to permit the export of capital. If, by the end of the year, its credit balance exceeded the total value of its permitted overdraft, the surplus would be confiscated. The nations with a surplus would have a powerful incentive to get rid of it. In doing so, they would automatically clear other nations' deficits. When Keynes began to explain his idea, in papers published in 1942 and 1943, it detonated in the minds of all who read it. The British economist Lionel Robbins reported that "it would be difficult to exaggerate the electrifying effect on thought throughout the whole relevant apparatus of government ... nothing so imaginative and so ambitious had ever been discussed". Economists all over the world saw that Keynes had cracked it. As the Allies prepared for the Bretton Woods conference, Britain adopted Keynes's solution as its official negotiating position. But there was one country - at the time the world's biggest creditor - in which his proposal was less welcome. The head of the American delegation at Bretton Woods, Harry Dexter White, responded to Keynes's idea thus: "We have been perfectly adamant on that point. We have taken the position of absolutely no." Instead he proposed an International Stabilisation Fund, which would place the entire burden of maintaining the balance of trade on the deficit nations. It would impose no limits on the surplus that successful exporters could accumulate. He also suggested an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which would provide capital for economic reconstruction after the war. White, backed by the financial clout of the US treasury, prevailed. The International Stabilisation Fund became the International Monetary Fund. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development remains the principal lending arm of the World Bank. ...

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Demeter (1000+ posts)

Wed Jan-14-09 10:38 PM Response to Reply #78

87. At This Point, China Has Little to Do With the US Economy

This is our own, personal, national little Death Spiral, brought to you by those fine folks at BushCo. China's got problems of her own, which we caused, partly. Although Europe did their part, too.

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From east to west, a chain collapses (Recycling industry falling apart)

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Ghost Dog (1000+ posts)

Sat Jan-10-09 01:16 PM Original message

From east to west, a chain collapses (Recycling industry falling apart)

Edited on Sat Jan-10-09 01:18 PM by Ghost Dog Millions to lose their jobs as world's largest importer of waste hit by collapse in demand for packaging ... Wu is one of 160,000 collectors in Beijing who make a living from the detritus of urban life - plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators and scraps of cardboard. Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world's waste materials, taking in as much as a third of Britain's recyclables for example. Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it. "It's a canary in the coalmine: it's the front and back end of industry," said Adam Minter, who runs the Shanghai Scrap blog and specialises in the metal trade. "Until about eight weeks ago, for example, the entire (US) west coast paper market was sent to China and most of it was sent south. It was processed and made into packaging for products that then shipped back to the US ... But when US consumer demand dropped off, that broke the cycle." Across the scrap trade, prices have halved or worse in a matter of months. Each link in the chain is disintegrating, from factories to scrapyards to collectors such as Wu, 56, a former farmer who now plans to return to Hubei province. Official media reported that four-fifths of China's recycling units had closed and that millions will eventually be left without employment. /Article continues... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/09/recyc... Looks like a classic globalisation breakdown, to my eye. But I suppose there must must be some opportunities somewhere here, also?

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Now Have To Recycle It Into Fuel

Demeter

Jan-10-09 09:23 PM

#1

Demeter (1000+ posts)

Sat Jan-10-09 09:23 PM Response to Original message

1. Now Have To Recycle It Into Fuel

Not impossible, but not cheap.