Happy F-13/triskaidekaphobia etc. As you munch over the trade figures, down toward the end of this morning’s report, remember that sometimes when a new consensus starts to appear, it will come from the ‘fringe’ which is where most of the action comes from. OK, so the Mogambo Guru has been yelling “Buy gold!” for a couple of years – more then – and I made the inflation-is-coming buy assets call back in 2001 (I don’t like to make too many investment decisions…find them tiring).
Thoughtful piece today in the WSJ “Tight maneuvering for Bernanke” gets to the idea that the Fed doesn’t really have much elbow-room in decision-making these days.
But now go read the Tyler Durden piece at ZeroHedge on how this all adds up to “Goldman on why a second stimulus is merely months away...”
About the ONLY question on the table is timing and whether the next stage of money-printing will happen before – during – or after the next round of panic, probably over quickly depreciating bundled commercial real estate debt which is about to sneak up on us in January when the Grim Reaper Does Christmas gets reported.
You really ought to start a pool at the office for both remaining coworkers… Form might look something like this:
| Commercial RE Panic in Market week of | Bought by |
| Nov 15 | |
| Nov 22 | |
| Nov 29 | |
| Dec 6 | |
| Dec 13 | |
| Dec 20 | |
| Dec 27 — etc…— |
And you sell tickets all over town – until you’re busted for breaking gambling laws. When you go to court be sure to ask embarrassing questions like “Why is betting on when a market panic will occur any different than buying a stock option? Or, how about different than taxpayers betting that there’s really all the gold in warehouses and Fort Knox without a complete audit of the Fed & bar analysis or betting that this will all end pleasantly?
Does ‘deep storage’ mean the gold has yet to be mined? Which I suppose gets us around to this in our…
So We’d Noticed Department
Can’t count the number of emails that I’ve gotten about the Rob Kirby story about gold bars being partly filled with tungsten. Here’s a typical example:
“The story is hitting some messageboards I frequent. People are getting worried about all that “real money” they bought over the last year or two in the form of precious metals.
I’m not sure I believe it, and actually it might be good for gold longer-term, but for now I wouldn’t be surprised to see all PM’s take a dive soon once this hits mainstream.
Was this .Gov trying to quell the run on gold as a mechanism to drive the dollar up?
YOU TELL ME!
Yes, this was one of those darn predictive linguistics hits I mention (way too often for some).
Starting to look like the swine flu really was the predicted ‘building tensions’ part of the language globally, what with the situation in Ukraine, etc. What’s interesting in the amount of hate mail both Cliff and I got for that particular prediction.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, the linguistics often get ‘scale’ wrong…but for sure there was a shift of language on the expected date and if you read the October 25th Obama declaration of a national emergency related to swine flu, here, please note that the situation is placed in the same category as Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane’s Ike & Gustav, and the North Dakota Flooding of this year.
Interesting to note the latest figures out from the CDC show that some 22-million Americans have had swine flu now and the death toll is running about three times higher than previously estimated with 4-thousand deaths attributed to swine flu. 41.6 million doses of vaccine are available presently… CDC video here. 3-million doses of ‘regular’ seasonal flu vaccine have been distributed in the latest reporting week.
—
One of the things bugging me about the ‘flu’ being ‘it’ in the linguistics is how this relates to the economy…but now what we’re finding out is that flu spending has turned into a major discussion within Ukraine and concurrently, Ukraine’s debt rating has been downgraded by Fitch to B-minus status according to a MarketWatch report.
Oh, and local press coverage in Ukraine continues to paint an ugly picture, although maybe not from pneumonia.
And it looks like WHO is taking a more aggressive stance on antiviral use early on in the flu.
Trippin’
President Obama is in Japan before continuing on to meet with the Chinese. Hope he remembered knee pads for that meeting with the Chinese who could flush our economy on a whim…
Apparently their power position/cat bird seat is clear: “China’s Hu prods West on trade, investment barriers”. I figure it’s just a warm-up for the strong arming ahead – especially since Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was just recently giving China missile technology. Don’t mean to keep HAARPing on this, but the MainStreamMedia must be DDNB – deaf, dumb ‘n blind – on the importance if giving China access to our hard won technology. You & I paid for it…remember?
Trade Gulf Wider
The latest figures out from the Census & BEA types today shows that after declining a bit in late 2008 and into the first part of this year, the trade deficit is up again…
“The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total September exports of $132.0 billion and imports of $168.4 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $36.5 billion, up from $30.8 billion in August, revised. September exports were $3.7 billion more than August exports of $128.3 billion. September imports were $9.3 billion more than August imports of $159.1 billion.
In September, the goods deficit increased $5.6 billion from August to $47.6 billion, and the services surplus was virtually unchanged at $11.1 billion. Exports of goods increased $3.5 billion to $90.3 billion, and imports of goods increased $9.1 billion to $138.0 billion. Exports of services increased $0.2 billion to $41.6 billion, and imports of services increased $0.2 billion to $30.5 billion.
In September, the goods and services deficit decreased $23.7 billion from September 2008. Exports were down $20.0 billion, or 13.2 percent, and imports were down $43.7 billion, or 20.6 percent.
Not to Worry
OK, so the economy has a cloud over it (which is what you’d expect in a Second Depression, right?) and yeah, so Obama is going hat-in-hand to China. What’s really encouraging is the report that a number of students aged 15 and younger have been arrested for a school food fight.
See how this will solve our nations ills? Why if we can start putting enough of these pre-adults into jails, we could be off on another huge phase of economic expansion. Better yet – jail both the parents and students involved in this.
Imagine the gloriousness of it all: A perfect command economy: Everyone goes to jail, everyone gets do-overs, and no one is held accountable, but it all costs a bundle, so everyone has a job – even if just trading places every so often with their jailer. This, my friend, is the essence of economic recovery going on right now.
The only problem I’ve ever had with socialism is I can’t figure out how to get rich following it.