OK, I was only expecting a 50-point rally on Monday and we got 330 on the Dow instead. What did I do wrong? Just underestimated how a Wave 2 rally could play out and where it could all go in a very short time with no particular news, thin trading volume and the impact of the Merkel-jerk on a Greece/whole EU bailout. Big issue there is how Slovakia will cast its vote on bailing out richer countries than their own.
In case you’re wondering, the Gross Domestic Product of Greece is estimated by our CIA at $318.1 billion dollars (purchasing power parity basis) whereas the estimated GDP of Slovakia was about $120.2 billion (PPP basis also) in 2010.
There’s a delicate teeter-totter here: Slovakia’s economy is about one third the size of Greece, yet they are being asked to participate in the bailout. The problem is the Slovak people are smart and there’s a chance the ruling coalition won’t be able to stampede enough of the opposition party to support the “gotta bail out the banksters” which is really how this game works.
To refresh: Banks print up all kinds of paper, when countries can’t make payments, banks essentially threaten to foreclose/bankrupt a country, so globalistas government comes in and says “Oh, God, no! Can’t have bankers have a loss so we’ll paper it over with yet more paper…” I think the Slovak (and German, too) regular folks get this. It’s just that in checkbook democracy world, the strings are pulled by checkbooks and those are controlled by the bankers.
All they need to do is threaten a world economic collapse and they win, simple as that, since no one is willing to call bullshit on excessive debt, so we continue down the self-tightening noose path.
The fact the here in the US the Federal Reserve has not ended business cycles – which was one of its excusifications of being created concurrent with the income tax in that year that lives in infamy (1913, look it up), but we’ve been sucked into the game whole hog, too, such that what began as “our” government by the people for the people, has been purchased by high dollar politicos who own their allegiance to the transnational paymasters.
Is Germany seeing this and is this why the headlines are out reporting a “German push for Greek default risks EMU-wide ‘snowball’“?
And since there are huge short positions on next week’s options expiration there’s no way the paymaster dudes can let those pay off, so what we’re seeing is a violent Wave 2, running of the shorts. May see pullback later in the week, but who knows…crazy as things are anymore. A further discussion in the Coping section this morning under “GrUnCH Time at Space Mountain.”
Bankers Before Humans Dept. (#2)
With all this focus on global economics, we notice the NBC story out of Chicago about how “Cash-Strapped Topeka may stop prosecuting Domestic Violence” case.
What’s not being reported in the MSM is that this is exactly the kind of FU’ed choice-making that has evolved the chants “Occupy Wall Street” into “Occupy World” and which continues percolating out of direct sight, as the MSM and the PowersThatBe have not wrapped their heads around how to co-opt a headless/leaderless revolution. Not that they won’t try, of course.
High Official Resignation Watch
Attorney General Eric Holder’s hold on his office is weakening with a stinging letter from representative Darrell Issa, who wonders whether he’s been candid with Congress on the Fast & Furious guns to Mexico program.
Still, I’m saving the popcorn for (when/in case) Hillary and the State Department get roped in to F&F, since I gotta think someone would have briefed State on this, right?
Admittedly, one well-informed colleague tells me I place too much faith in one hand of bureaucracy knowing what the other is doing, but we shall see…
Wrong Ended Solutions Dept.
OK, so let me get this right: Congress gives American and tax-hiding transnational corps favorable treatment to build foreign factories, avoid US income taxes and so forth and doesn’t impose tariffs on foreign goods, and now that China’s making huge leaps forward, we’re going to have the balls to tell China how to manage their own currency?
For a country which hasn’t ever (far as I can recall) audited either its own Federal Reserve, gold stored at Fort Knox, or for that matter fully disclosed the operations of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT, a/k/a/ the Presidential Working Group on Markets) this is crazy.
No? Oh, I’m sorry, we are talking Washington here. I forgot myself, what was I thinking? Seems to me China’s doing with its currency what we do with our Army…except China goes out and buys countries outright.
China Buying Patagonia
You missed that? Not buying – just long term leasing is more accurate. This goes back a few months, but I assume you noticed that China is putting about $1.5 billion into Patagonia farms. This popped up on one of the English-language services we monitor here – don’t recall whether it was Russia Today or Al Jazeera (both English, both free to air and both not on 99% of cable systems, gotta protect the herd, you know).
Thing is this: Argentina doesn’t allow foreign ownership but China’s going in and doing long-term leases which come with investment provisions in infrastructure like dams for hydro and so forth.
Love to work up the cost comparison with what we’ve sunk into the Sand Box on this kind of approach, huh?
2012: And Then Things Get Worse
A CNN-Money report notes that millions of our countrymen/women will lose their unemployment bennies in 2012. How many? 1.8 million are due to lose benefits in January alone.
A recent National Employment Law Project (www.nelp.org) press release offers this:
“Unemployed workers today face an average of just over nine months of joblessness—up slightly from last month. Even the median duration of unemployment – which reflects spells of unemployment duration that are in the exact middle of the spread of all data on how long joblessness lasts – went up, indicating that the severity of long-term unemployment is worsening. The long-term unemployed—those who have been out of work for six months or longer—account for 44.6 percent of the 14.0 million unemployed.”
Whle the Obama administration is trying to rally support for the Jobs Bill (which would include an additional UI extension, doesn’t look too likely since partisan (BS) politics gets involved.
Oh, and before you get all whipped up by the Herman Cain bid for the White House, maybe someone should check what happened to head count and average salaries for workers while it was optimizing things? That’d be some fine research to see – and I’m not proposing this as a partisan point. Just I’d like to see what happened to the average hours, hourly wages, and how close did they track to inflation when Cain ran companies? Inquiring minds….kinda thing…
Political Favors? Dept.
Report out in the Washington Times today says House minority leader (sic) Nancy Pelosi’s hubby stands to make millions in a residential real estate deal with a man whose daughter Pelosi helped get the Hungarian ambassador post, says the report.
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Ambassador gig have always been political plums, though.
If I were president or a member of congress I would vote no on anyone who didn’t speak the language of the country they were being assigned to. But, hell, I’m just that doggone “basic competences” kinda guy.
Which ensures I’ll never hold public office, of course.
More after this…
