With the 8:30 am release of the May Non-farm Payroll date from the Bureau of labor Statistics, the bad news - for which everyone in the world had been pre-conditioned by NBC, CNBC and any other reliable propagandist sources - was finally revealed.
Only 54,000 new jobs had been created by the great ponzi scheme, the unimaginative artificial stimulus and $600 trillion in fresh buckeroos since last September from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The Keynesian experiment can now be exposed as the colossal failure that it is, though already the talking heads, left-wing politicians and idiotic economists from the Ivy League's ivory towers are already suggesting that the slowness in job creation is merely a "soft patch" in the recovery.
It is nothing of the sort. The US economy is closer to a complete shutdown and recession than at any time since the grand collapse in the fall of 2008. Not only were the NFP numbers off by grotesque magnitudes of scale, any suggestion that conditions will improve over the summer - while the worst congress in the history of our nation idly postures over the debt ceiling and enormous deficits - is nothing short of hot, gaseous, noxious air, the kind most prevalent inside Washington DC's beltway.
Rather than belabor the obvious: that the economy is stuck in first gear, if not simply idling, it is time for Americans to come to grip with what we have. And that is an aging population living on borrowed time, borrowed money, false hope and remembrances of things past, without an industrial base, energy policy, sound money, honest markets nor anyone even remotely willing or able to fix them.
We are a hollow shell of a formerly great nation, put on its collective knees by a cabal of bankers and politicians whose only purpose has been personal gain and control, a control which they are rapidly losing. 17% of the country receives food stamps. More than half the country depends on some form of government check for their basic needs. The middle class has been relegated to numb consumers of foreign goods, many without jobs and those that have them living in abject fear of losing them.
Nobody except bankers get raises, educational standards have been lowers persistently over the past forty years, though that's hardly a problem since there is no steady employment for engineers, chemists, biologists, and a raft of other high-skilled fields of endeavor.
All of the economic numbers for the past month have been dismal, despite the government's best efforts to fudge, obfuscate or otherwise obscure the truth that we, as a nation, are smack dab in the middle of the worst depression in the country's history.
People are living in houses without paying mortgages for two, three and four years because the banks can't produce clear titles, the courts are overwhelmed even when they dispense justice properly, which is seldom, and the number of weeks spent on unemployment is now at an all-time high.
Housing values have plummeted to levels worst than during the Great Depression, gas is more than ten times as expensive as it was 40 years ago, new car sales, retail sales, industrial production, capacity utilization, factory orders and durable orders are beginning to fall off a cliff. Municipalities everywhere are struggling to close budget deficits, while pensions are underfunded and tax receipts are falling. About the only thing that isn't falling apart the amount of outright lying and deception delivered daily from the various mainstream news outlets, politicians and business leaders, some of whom have already jumped ship and are oopenly saying that another recession is on its way (considering the first one ever ended).
And that's the good news.
It's good news that all of this is finally getting to see the light of day, so that Americans can outrightly reject any and all new proposals, taxes, regulations, elections and instead stand for change.
This is A TRULY GREAT DAY FOR AMERICA AND FREE MARKET CAPITALISM...
because the jobs data and all the other bad data from the past three weeks show that central planning doesn't work. Bailouts of insolvent banks don't work. Giving taxpayer money to the richest people and foreign financial institutions doesn't work. Mark this day down because it is the date upon which Wall Street, the Fed and the federal government (throw in the mainstream media for good measure) are shown to be complete frauds, liars and cheats, absolutely unfit to serve the good people of America in any capacity.
America can and will survive. Watch for more of the following, strictly from the private sector:
Innovation
entrepreneurship
rent parties
barn raisings
barter clubs
independent contractors
tax evasion
home business
cottage industry
buy American!
back yard garden
handymen (and women)
underground economy
black markets
and forget the following:
mortgage payment
property tax increase (or any tax increase for that matter)
bank loans
TBTF (at least two of the big four BAC, JPM, WFC, C) will fail within a year
minimum wage
health insurance
The restructuring of America can begin apace! Get the insurance companies out of health care and let doctors earn their livings like they should, treating their patients individually.
National banks will become much smaller.
The Fed has to go.
Back to the gold standard or some semblance of sound money.
We can also repeal the minimum wage, along with severely limiting all the other employment regulations, like unemployment benefits, worker's comp, Social Security and medicare deductions, etc.
Start putting up WE WIN! signs and people will first think you're nuts, until they start seeing you living better than them by rejecting the status quo.
It's time to put away the idea that government can fix problems, because they simply create more of them, along with wars, fear, famine and homelessness and time for Americans to do what they have always done in times of crisis: stand up individually and take control of your lives.
Stocks tumbled again, on low volume, but it could have been worse. Since the poor jobs number was telegraphed by the ADP report, much of the selling was already well underway on Wednesday. Today's figures were mostly priced in, though since there's almost no participation by individual investors at this point, the big, controlling interests can hold a while longer and take stocks down as they please. Wall Street has been and now is completely irrelevant. One could do better stuffing dollars into mattresses than taking a flyer on the various stock offerings being kicked about.
Th Dow Jones Industrial Average fell for the fifth consecutive week, the largest expanse of time for continuous losses since 2004, and it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. Stocks are probably 30-40% overvalued at this juncture, and a crash is dead ahead.
Dow 12,151.26, -97.29 (0.79%)
NASDAQ 2,732.78, -40.53 (1.46%)
S&P 500 1,300.16, -12.78 (0.97%)
NYSE Composite 8,222.15, -55.61 (0.67%)
Declining issues buried advancers, 4809-1792. NASDAQ new highs totaled 31, while there were 82 new lows. ON the NYSE, 37 new highs did not measure up to 48 new lows. Combined, there were 68 new highs and 130 new lows. The most reliable leading long-term trend indicator - highs-lows - has been flashing signs of reversal for months. This should be the tipping point after which the direction will be identified undeniably as straight down. As long as new lows outweigh new highs for a period of more than about six to eight trading days, there is virtually no way to reverse the trend. It also will be telling if the gap between the highs and lows continues to widen. Even as such, the Dow has already shed 657 points from its nominal high, reached exactly one month ago today. The turnover in the highs-lows is just now confirming the trend despite desperate pumping, dumping and priming by manipulative stock insiders.
NASDAQ Volume 1,908,014,125
NYSE Volume 4,028,291,000
The commodities markets were a tragi-comedy of denial that global deflation has ensued. All manner of commodities fell sharply in the morning, only to be ramped back up in the afternoon. Crude oil fell by a laughable eleven cents! to close at an abysmally-overpriced and speculatively-inflated $100.22.
Gold could not be held back, gaining $9.20, to $1543.00. Silver, despite being pushed down to near $35 early on, ended up 17 cents, at $36.32.
At least the weather is better. This is by no means over. Rather, a collapse worse than 2008 is already in the cards, though not represented in prices. The sum of all fears is on its way and it will be deflationary, desperate and lasting for more than a generation.
Showing posts with label Bailout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bailout. Show all posts
Friday, June 03, 2011
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
QE2, TARP2 Signal Beginning of End for Global Currencies
The mortgage/foreclosure mess created and exacerbated by the banks is still news, big news, but in the long run it is only a symptom of what is really crushing the global economy, and the US in particular.
That would be the failure of unwinding the toxic debt created by the nation's largest banks in the most magnificent swindle in the history of the world that not only allowed the banks and financial institutions to not only profit from their spendthrift, shifty, illegal ways, but to profit from it and then to prop it up when the house of cards began to crumble.
A report from the IMF released yesterday, calls for more quantitative easing by central banks and another round of bailouts for impaired, decrepit banks amounting to another $4 Trillion wasted on the very entities that started the entire mess, calling the banks the "Achilles Heel" of global recovery.
With apologies to the great Achilles, the banks aren't only the heel (though one could maintain that the bankers are "heels"), but the head, neck, shoulders, chest, torso, arms, legs, hands and feet of the financial crisis. They are all of it and they need to be forced to own up to their liabilities, stop the mockery of accounting known as mark to model and head directly into receivership or, more appropriately, to bankruptcy courts.
Not that it isn't where they're headed anyway, but this evil, crooked gang of thieves populating the banks and the halls of congress must not be allowed to rape and pillage the global economy one more day. If there's any time that the US public should be taking to the streets in protest, it is now, or, whenever they try to sneak the next bailout by us, for they truly cannot announce it very publicly or loudly.
There should be a minimum one year moratorium on all foreclosures, evictions and repossessions. Naturally, that will crush the real estate industry, but, at some point, there has to be a mechanism for price discovery. All the mortgages sold during the years 2003-2007 should be examined, documented and written down or forgiven, mostly to alleviate the strain on the courts and the public, but more realistically because the vast majority of these loans were originated under false pretenses or have been or are being foreclosed upon fraudulently, or both.
The banks and the note-holders will take significant hits to their bottom lines, but none could be more deserving. It's certainly a better solution than what's gone on for the past three years, a la foreclosure gone wild. Keeping people in homes, in communities, whether they're paying rent or mortgages or whether they have jobs or don't is the first step toward restoring the nation to some semblance of wholeness, though admittedly, it may already be too late, the pain and suffering inflicted on people and the economy are severely deep wounds which will not heal overnight.
We must, as a people and a nation, take positive steps toward recovery and that begins with thre truth finally being told about the banks, and the crimes they've committed. Most of the hot-shots running the major banks should already be behind bars, but we must start now before the statutes of limitations begin to expire.
No more bailouts, no more quantitative easing and maybe no more Federal Reserve. The time has come that desperate solutions are the only answers to the desperate situation into which the banks and the government have put the nation.
Stocks were basically flat, despite a pumping of $5.5 billion this morning by the Fed in yet another POMO. This amounts to nothing less than QE on the cheap, funding the banks with fresh cash every few days because they simply cannot roll enough notes to keep them going.
Dow 10,967.65, +22.93 (0.21%)
NASDAQ 2,380.66, -19.17 (0.80%)
S&P 500 1,159.97, -0.78 (0.07%)
NYSE Composite 7,448.33, +14.15 (0.19%)
The markets remain chaotic, bifurcated, as is the case today. Decliners took out advancers, 3157-2552. There were 454 new highs to 33 new lows. Volume remained at depressed levels.
NASDAQ Volume 2,127,381,000
NYSE Volume 4,205,435,500
Crude oil lifted 41 cents, to $83.23, but the real story was in the precious metals, which continued to rise in explosive fashion. The latest print for gold was $1348.50, up $7.90, while silver added 30 cents to $23.17. Precious metals prices are moving in direct inverse action to the crumbling currencies of the major industrialized nations, as the race to the bottom ramps up to include the US, all of Europe, Japan and other major nations.
More will be posted about developments in the mortgage foreclosure miasma, since today's news is more than enough upon which to chew for one day. The threat of another round of bank bailouts - which didn't work the first time around - is simply incomprehensible. The global economy will not sustain it.
That would be the failure of unwinding the toxic debt created by the nation's largest banks in the most magnificent swindle in the history of the world that not only allowed the banks and financial institutions to not only profit from their spendthrift, shifty, illegal ways, but to profit from it and then to prop it up when the house of cards began to crumble.
A report from the IMF released yesterday, calls for more quantitative easing by central banks and another round of bailouts for impaired, decrepit banks amounting to another $4 Trillion wasted on the very entities that started the entire mess, calling the banks the "Achilles Heel" of global recovery.
With apologies to the great Achilles, the banks aren't only the heel (though one could maintain that the bankers are "heels"), but the head, neck, shoulders, chest, torso, arms, legs, hands and feet of the financial crisis. They are all of it and they need to be forced to own up to their liabilities, stop the mockery of accounting known as mark to model and head directly into receivership or, more appropriately, to bankruptcy courts.
Not that it isn't where they're headed anyway, but this evil, crooked gang of thieves populating the banks and the halls of congress must not be allowed to rape and pillage the global economy one more day. If there's any time that the US public should be taking to the streets in protest, it is now, or, whenever they try to sneak the next bailout by us, for they truly cannot announce it very publicly or loudly.
There should be a minimum one year moratorium on all foreclosures, evictions and repossessions. Naturally, that will crush the real estate industry, but, at some point, there has to be a mechanism for price discovery. All the mortgages sold during the years 2003-2007 should be examined, documented and written down or forgiven, mostly to alleviate the strain on the courts and the public, but more realistically because the vast majority of these loans were originated under false pretenses or have been or are being foreclosed upon fraudulently, or both.
The banks and the note-holders will take significant hits to their bottom lines, but none could be more deserving. It's certainly a better solution than what's gone on for the past three years, a la foreclosure gone wild. Keeping people in homes, in communities, whether they're paying rent or mortgages or whether they have jobs or don't is the first step toward restoring the nation to some semblance of wholeness, though admittedly, it may already be too late, the pain and suffering inflicted on people and the economy are severely deep wounds which will not heal overnight.
We must, as a people and a nation, take positive steps toward recovery and that begins with thre truth finally being told about the banks, and the crimes they've committed. Most of the hot-shots running the major banks should already be behind bars, but we must start now before the statutes of limitations begin to expire.
No more bailouts, no more quantitative easing and maybe no more Federal Reserve. The time has come that desperate solutions are the only answers to the desperate situation into which the banks and the government have put the nation.
Stocks were basically flat, despite a pumping of $5.5 billion this morning by the Fed in yet another POMO. This amounts to nothing less than QE on the cheap, funding the banks with fresh cash every few days because they simply cannot roll enough notes to keep them going.
Dow 10,967.65, +22.93 (0.21%)
NASDAQ 2,380.66, -19.17 (0.80%)
S&P 500 1,159.97, -0.78 (0.07%)
NYSE Composite 7,448.33, +14.15 (0.19%)
The markets remain chaotic, bifurcated, as is the case today. Decliners took out advancers, 3157-2552. There were 454 new highs to 33 new lows. Volume remained at depressed levels.
NASDAQ Volume 2,127,381,000
NYSE Volume 4,205,435,500
Crude oil lifted 41 cents, to $83.23, but the real story was in the precious metals, which continued to rise in explosive fashion. The latest print for gold was $1348.50, up $7.90, while silver added 30 cents to $23.17. Precious metals prices are moving in direct inverse action to the crumbling currencies of the major industrialized nations, as the race to the bottom ramps up to include the US, all of Europe, Japan and other major nations.
More will be posted about developments in the mortgage foreclosure miasma, since today's news is more than enough upon which to chew for one day. The threat of another round of bank bailouts - which didn't work the first time around - is simply incomprehensible. The global economy will not sustain it.
Label:
Bailout,
banks,
Federal Reserve,
IMF
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Unchecked Greed Reigns Free
If you thought the 2 1/2-week-long rally had run out of gas - like yours truly - you were proven wrong on Thursday. The Masters of the Universe were at their level best once again, goosing stock positions throughout the day, but particularly in the final hour (just like yesterday, and many days before), when stocks added mightily to their already solid gains.
The Dow jumped nearly 100 points in the last hour, while the NASDAQ, which outperformed all other indices by a huge margin, added 28 additional points as the session drew to a close. It is apparent to any outside observer that greed has trumped fear over the short term. The Dow Jones Industrials have now climbed 1377 points since March 9, a span of 13 sessions.
The economic news of the day was pretty much in line with expectations. Unemployment roles hit a new record high, with another 652,000 Americans adding their names to the roles of the jobless. Final GDP figures for the 4th quarter of 2008 came in at -6.3%, better than the -6.6% some had expected. A number of companies reported better-than-expected earnings, Best Buy and Texas Instruments among them, though investors were snatching up shares of just abut anything that had a price attached to it, in a mad scramble to jump on the equity bandwagon.
If ever there was a textbook case for an overbought bear market rally, this surely is it, and while there may be no perceptible end in sight, the 8000 level, at which there is substantial resistance, is already within shouting distance. It should be pointed out, however, that this market knows nothing of support and resistance, commonly disregarding any resistance on the way up. The path back down ought to be particularly brutal, now that 90% of the public is convinced the worst is behind us, since there are there have been numerous gap-ups at various opens, and, as any chartist well knows, gaps always get filled.
But that's a lesson for another day. For now, any hint of the financial crisis, liquidity squeeze, deflationary spiral or housing crunch has given way to chants of "go, baby, go."
Dow 7,924.56, +174.75 (2.25%)
NASDAQ 1,587.00, +58.05 (3.80%)
S&P 500 832.86, +18.98 (2.33%)
NYSE Composite 5,230.53, +103.53 (2.02%)
Market internals were as unsurprising as the headline numbers. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners, 5180-1675, though new lows continued ahead of new highs, 117-36, though the numbers are closing ranks. Volume was very high once more, especially on the NASDAQ, which recorded one of the highest volume days of the year.
NYSE Volume 1,792,579,000
NASDAQ Volume 2,594,485,000
Crude oil continued to rise, up $1.57, to $54.34. Gold gained $4.20, to $942.20, while silver tagged along with a gain of 18 cents, to $13.62.
Noting the gains in stocks, as well as most commodities, it seems that throwing trillions of dollars at the markets in all manner of bailout, breakout, cram-down and stimuli, seems to be working. The economy is reflating at an incredible rate, so much so that the Fed should consider raising interest rates off their absurdly low emergency levels. Of course, they won't, until the American landscape is littered with currency.
The precious metals now appear to be even better investments than ever. With all asset classes rising in price, rather than an orderly deflation which would have occurred naturally, we will now have even more mal-valued investments in equities especially, backed by a currency that is losing value faster than a prostitute sheds her chastity.
People's 401k's ought to look much better by the end of the month. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 25% in the past 2 1/2 weeks, though all that extra loot in one's pension is surely going to be eaten up by the ravishes of taxation and inflation. Welcome to the new normal. You earn, you pay, you remain under the thumb. Enjoy it while you can.
The Dow jumped nearly 100 points in the last hour, while the NASDAQ, which outperformed all other indices by a huge margin, added 28 additional points as the session drew to a close. It is apparent to any outside observer that greed has trumped fear over the short term. The Dow Jones Industrials have now climbed 1377 points since March 9, a span of 13 sessions.
The economic news of the day was pretty much in line with expectations. Unemployment roles hit a new record high, with another 652,000 Americans adding their names to the roles of the jobless. Final GDP figures for the 4th quarter of 2008 came in at -6.3%, better than the -6.6% some had expected. A number of companies reported better-than-expected earnings, Best Buy and Texas Instruments among them, though investors were snatching up shares of just abut anything that had a price attached to it, in a mad scramble to jump on the equity bandwagon.
If ever there was a textbook case for an overbought bear market rally, this surely is it, and while there may be no perceptible end in sight, the 8000 level, at which there is substantial resistance, is already within shouting distance. It should be pointed out, however, that this market knows nothing of support and resistance, commonly disregarding any resistance on the way up. The path back down ought to be particularly brutal, now that 90% of the public is convinced the worst is behind us, since there are there have been numerous gap-ups at various opens, and, as any chartist well knows, gaps always get filled.
But that's a lesson for another day. For now, any hint of the financial crisis, liquidity squeeze, deflationary spiral or housing crunch has given way to chants of "go, baby, go."
Dow 7,924.56, +174.75 (2.25%)
NASDAQ 1,587.00, +58.05 (3.80%)
S&P 500 832.86, +18.98 (2.33%)
NYSE Composite 5,230.53, +103.53 (2.02%)
Market internals were as unsurprising as the headline numbers. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners, 5180-1675, though new lows continued ahead of new highs, 117-36, though the numbers are closing ranks. Volume was very high once more, especially on the NASDAQ, which recorded one of the highest volume days of the year.
NYSE Volume 1,792,579,000
NASDAQ Volume 2,594,485,000
Crude oil continued to rise, up $1.57, to $54.34. Gold gained $4.20, to $942.20, while silver tagged along with a gain of 18 cents, to $13.62.
Noting the gains in stocks, as well as most commodities, it seems that throwing trillions of dollars at the markets in all manner of bailout, breakout, cram-down and stimuli, seems to be working. The economy is reflating at an incredible rate, so much so that the Fed should consider raising interest rates off their absurdly low emergency levels. Of course, they won't, until the American landscape is littered with currency.
The precious metals now appear to be even better investments than ever. With all asset classes rising in price, rather than an orderly deflation which would have occurred naturally, we will now have even more mal-valued investments in equities especially, backed by a currency that is losing value faster than a prostitute sheds her chastity.
People's 401k's ought to look much better by the end of the month. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 25% in the past 2 1/2 weeks, though all that extra loot in one's pension is surely going to be eaten up by the ravishes of taxation and inflation. Welcome to the new normal. You earn, you pay, you remain under the thumb. Enjoy it while you can.
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