Just another 120-points and the market will have done a perfect Elliott Wave bounce in here. And while this is going on, the price of gold has been showing considerable weakness. Down – at times – this morning as low as $1,321. Which has led to a number of people asking “Should I sell?”
Gee, I don’t know. Depends what your investment objectives are. If on the one hand you’re looking to hedge against the ready availability of paper and ink, which is what tempts government and central banksters to water down the purchasing power of the dollar and you want a physical asset, then probably not. If you’re a short-term trader, then maybe the recent rise is over for a while and could we test support down around $1,150 or even down as low as the $800 range?
I’ll give you an unqualified “Maybe…”
Drop by in about a half hour (about 8:30 Central, or so) and we should have the new Case-Shiller/S&P Housing Index report up.
What I expect? The housing market probably dropped more. With banks getting their foreclosures going again and with banks trying to get documents shredded...a move postponed by a court TRO… this is not exactly a wildly inflationary period.
Unless, that is, you like to eat.
Although momentarily soft, wheat has been up 8% in the last five sessions and going higher wouldn’t be a shocker to anyone. But, the fact is the life of contract high two years back was up around 1334½ and the current pricing for March wheat was around 822½ for March. My commodity broker, JB, reminded me why I know that one: Oh yeah…forgot, I traded that one.
So, all it’s going to take is a rally in the dollar, continued weakness in gold, more declines in housing and a pick up in foreclosures – which were already widely expected to be running higher this year than last. yes, inflation is possible – if not likely. But tomorrow? Runaway? I don’t see it.
Not investment advice, just my take on things….
State of the Onion
Comes tonight, look for a carefully crafted wordsmithing marvel that will seem to give someone to everyone at no cost. I’m sure you’ll find it more interesting than “Skins’ last night. be fun to compare the overnights on both shows tomorrow…
Everything being a business model, wonder how soon sponsorship of the SOU comes along? Or, would it be an embarrassment that the price of a Super Bowl Ad is higher?
Google has 8,289 news hits on super bowl ad this morning. State of the union gets 5,752. Understandable, I suppose. Football makes money, government doesn’t…
Grope & Cope Department
Former Governor Jesse Ventura is ticked at his recent pat down during travels. So, he’s suing TSA and Big Sis. Text of the lawsuit is here on the InfoWars website. Basis is the violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches.
Quake Planning
Now they want gas? Yep. Government’s got a presolicitation notice out for 24-thousand gallons of gasoline and 135,000 gallons of diesel in each state for NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, TX, and LA. That’s 1.272 million gallons they’re wondering about; how much to commit to 24-hour delivery in each state.
File under lining up ducks in order not to get Katrina’ed or Rita’ed?
A couple of other items on the pending Midwest quake front. One is this discussion in December on the FEMA blog about contingency planning. The other is possible impact of such a quake which the University of Illinois has done a lot of work on including hundreds of pages of planning docs here.
The most useful one is the single volume piece here which outlines the disaster scenarios which should give you a good idea where the 7-million planning number came from.
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Chatting with a few people about this yesterday brought out some good points to think through:
- This is happening in mid election cycle.
- Might be something of an economic stimulus.
- Might be just bureaucrats looking for information only remember this is not a purchase yet.
- Could be the increased sensitivity is due to so many Obama administration types being from the Midwest, not the northeast…
You’re welcome to go off to conspiracy land on this (lots of HAARP/birds/New Madrid speculation out there, but while the pieces may fit, it doesn’t prove causality.
Browse Me
Good CNN Tech brief on how Goog Chrome and Firefox are adding ‘do not track’ features.
Print Cloud
Google has a cloud printing beta up. Been thinking about connecting our wireless laser to Cloud Printing as a kind of ‘drop in news tip printer’ but that’d be silly since in about a 1/2 sec some vicious reader would print the encyclopedia to it for fun. 999 copies, long as we’re at it…
And what happened to saving trees with document management systems, in all this?
Ongo In the Works
Interesting mix of things here: a social news site. We have something in the works which should come along soon…
With Friends Like This Dept.
Am I the only one who’s wondering (or should that be Hu’s wondering?) why China is building a stealth fighter?
In Ure Land, it’s axiomatic that governments don’t spend money on things they doesn’t plan to use….question is where and when, huh?
(more after this ad)
