First to say “Good work, NR”

good

The guy who didn’t see the crisis coming until after it kicked him in the derriere (Ben Bernanke) is ranked No. 1. So please excuse me if I am not impressed. The idiots who did the ranking clearly don’t know what they’re doing.

You all permabears need to be taken to the nearest woodshed for appropriate thrashing. What is wrong with you all? Why can’t you remove the “Bear” coat and put on the “Bull” coat? If Richard Russell can do it with the change in wind, why you all can’t do it? Put on your “Bull” coats now, and then go back to the “Bear” coats in May 2010. Just ignore the likes of Prchters and the Sy Hardings ilks.

Did they give you 30-day “price match” warrantee, just in case dow goes back to 666?

Here is what I love about da bulls, they do not feel the needto justify their optimism with data.And no matter how much data the bears bring to the discussion,it’s somehow not enough to convince da bulls that the glassis half empty.

Peak Gold?The high cost of mining old mines and the scarcity of reserves as seen the once mighty South African gold mining industry fall from grace in recent years.South Africa’s remaining gold reserves are less than half existing estimates and the cost of bringing the dwindling resource into production may be far more than its value, a new report has found.An article in the South African Journal of Science has highlighted the plight of the country’s gold mining industry, which is afflicted by high costs, environmental damage, falling output and illicit mining. A formerly illustrious industry is in its death throes, according to Chris Hartnady, the report’s author, who predicts that the output of the main Witwatersrand goldfields could fall below 100 tonnes a year within a decade.South African output peaked in 1970, when the country mined 1,000 tonnes of gold and accounted for more than three quarters of world gold production, but production has declined rapidly since. Last year, South Africa produced 233 tonnes — about 10 per cent of world gold supply.“It must be accepted that the Witwatersrand goldfields are now 95 per cent exhausted … the glory days of South African mining appear to have arrived finally at an ignominious end,” Mr Hartnady wrote in his report.http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/africa/article6928681.ece

And, we’re talking economists here! As indicated by the number 1 pick, they are here to serve the status quo, the elite.

But there’s new gold forming! Abiotic gold! Also, technology will create more!

Please define “profit.”“May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not.” – John Woolman, mid-1700s American Quaker & an early American anti-slavery activist. In his 1770 essay, A Plea for the Poor

Down the rabbit hole. Say goodbye to Japan.BOJ to Provide 10 Trillion Yen in Emergency Credit

Why can’t I remove the bear coat ?Because 30 years of excesses won’t get solved in 2 years.

LONDON (Reuters) – Gold hit record highs at $1,198.70 an ounce in Europe on Tuesday as the dollar weakened against a basket of currencies in the wake of policy comments from the Bank of Japan, adding to strong investment demand for the metal.Buyers have been cheered by the strength of gold’s recovery after a correction to below $1,140 an ounce late last week, which was met by strong fund buying, traders said.Spot gold was bid at $1,194.80 an ounce at 0921 GMT, against $1,179.10 late on Monday.U.S. gold futures for February delivery on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange were up $14.10 at $1.196.40 an ounce, having earlier hit a record $1,200.50.http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091201/bs_nm/us_precious_gold;_ylt=AkxHIWxehSxLbu_9fnf4SY1bbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTM1MG5nMzYzBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMDkxMjAxL3VzX3ByZWNpb3VzX2dvbGQEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDZ29sZGhpdHNyZWNv

Goo d luck if you plan on retiring sometime in the 5 to 15 time frame. As I said past January this is a 1-2 Trillion dollar problem.Pension Tension on the Rise?Submitted by Leo Kolivakis on 11/30/2009 20:09 -0500BankruptcyBondsCollapsecongressDeficitsDeltafundinghedgeHedge FundsInterest ratesJobsMarketsMeltdownmoneyOilPrivate EquityStock MarketTaxUnemploymentUSSubmitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.Colin Barr, senior writer at CNN Money reports that Pension tension is on the rise:Retirement plans are on the mend, but the healing process is going to be long and painful.In addition to taking a big chunk out of individuals’ 401(k)s, last fall’s market meltdown left 92% of corporate pension plans underfunded at year’s end, according to a study by investment consultant Wilshire Associates.As bad as that sounds, it pales in comparison to the shortfalls in public pension plans. At the end of 2006, public pension plans were already underfunded by $361 billion, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. That was before the stock market collapse, soaring unemployment rates and tumbling tax revenues dealt municipal finances another blow.The federal insurer of corporate pensions, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., reported this month that it was $22 billion in the red in the most recent fiscal year. The PBGC takes over pensions when they are underfunded or when their sponsors go into bankruptcy, and makes up some of the payments due.While the bounce in the stock market this year has helped the situation, observers say more pain is ahead.Strapped municipalities will face pressure to cut back on promised benefits. Hard-hit companies will be forced to choose whether to invest in their businesses or to beef up their pension plans.”We’re going to face increasing stresses in the pension world over the next three to five years,” said Leo Kolivakis, a pension industry consultant who writes the Pension Pulse blog. “People are hoping and praying the stock market will bail them out, but they’re going to be disappointed.”There are several forces that account for the current pressure on pensions.One problem was that companies didn’t contribute enough to their pension plans. The reason: They were counting on high returns to pick up the slack, a scenario that didn’t pan out in the stock market’s lost decade.Another was that many pension funds made bad investments, embracing so-called alternative investment classes, such as hedge funds and private equity, which have performed poorly in the market unwind.At the same time, companies are now stuck having to pony up more. That’s because of the weak economy, which has led the government to commit to low interest rates for the foreseeable future.It’s also because of the 2006 Pension Protection Act, which started taking effect last year. It includes a long overdue increase in the premiums charged by the PBGC and forces companies to be fully funded by 2015.Congress moved late last year to ease some of the requirements and may yet stretch them out again. But in the meantime, numerous companies are facing higher funding requirements.It all adds up to a continuing squeeze on pension funds’ financial position.”There are no good solutions in an economic downturn,” said Alan Glickstein, senior retirement consultant at Watson Wyatt. “Everyone’s got difficult choices right now.”The bills are starting to come due in state capitols. The West Virginia legislature recently passed a bill approving the sale of $225 million of bonds to help stressed local governments close their pension gaps. The city of Huntington in the state’s southwestern corner had warned that a $125 million pension shortfall could force it into bankruptcy.The situation is less dire for big companies. But they aren’t out of the woods.Among the companies with underfunded pension plans is oil giant Exxon, whose U.S. pension plan assets were worth $6.6 billion less than the plan’s liabilities at the end of 2008. The firm has contributed $4.1 billion to its plans so far this year. And Exxon made $45 billion in profits last year and retains its triple-A credit rating, so there is more where that came from.Less certain is the fate of workers and retirees tied to companies in troubled industries such as airlines, retail and manufacturing.Goodyear, the Akron, Ohio, tiremaker that has cut thousands of jobs in the past year, said in its annual report that its U.S. pension funds were underfunded by $2.1 billion at the end of 2008. The company, which froze its U.S. salaried pension plan last December, warned that the underfunded status would “significantly increase our required contributions and pension expenses, which could impair our ability to achieve or sustain future profitability.”Goodyear says it expects to contribute at least $300 million to its pension plans this year, including $260 million it contributed in the first nine months.OfficeMax, the Naperville, Ill., office retailer, last month contributed $100 million of its stock to a plan that was $435 million underfunded at the end of 2008.Delta Airlines, the Atlanta-based operator of the Delta and Northwest airlines, said in its 2008 annual report it expects to spend $420 million this year on pension benefits.Its pension plans’ liabilities exceeded their assets by $8.6 billion at the end of 2008.While companies are surely hoping that the market rally that started in the spring will take the edge of some of those problems, pension watchers note that the past decade should have taught all of us a lesson about banking on big market gains.”Companies are in the same place as individuals,” said Steve Foresti, managing director at Wilshire Consulting. “Everyone needs to save more. The markets aren’t going to bring these balances back.”I meant what I told Mr. Barr, if plan sponsors are hoping for stock market gains to lead them out of their pension woes, they’ll be very disappointed. Why? Because the next 20 years will look nothing like the last 20 years. Given the historic low levels of bond yields, it’s simply a pipe dream to think that asset appreciation will lead you out of this mess.Pension deficits are a long-term structural problem that will require difficult choices ahead. I’ve been writing about global pension tension for over a year and unfortunately, I have not seen governments take this issue seriously. Perhaps they’re too scared to face the music (watch video below).

Out with this idolatryBy Julian DelasantellisHere in the wee hours on the United States West Coast, the house is, like most of the Pacific shoreline at this time of day, quiet, as if enshrouded in a gentle San Francisco bay fog, but I lie awake. My brotherhood in the worldwide guild of financial market professionals means that my body has automatically awoken me early for but one purpose – to see what kind of mood Nouriel Roubini is in today.CNBC usually moves the news fairly quickly. Is he happy? Then, “buy, buy, buy; mortgage up everything you just bought and buysome more.” Is he sad? “Sell, sell, sell, everything – except the late Louis Rukeyser’s bear market favorite investments of choice, corrugated tin and shotgun shells.”A young man is interviewed about Dr Roubini’s mood. ” I found him happy, but with a twinge of fleeting introspection as he reached for his orange peel, maybe a bit of lugubriousness when he chose the Sweet ‘n Low over the Equal.” Yes, the obsession with Roubini is now so great that they’re interviewing the barista, who obviously is brewing coffee only until he gets a starring role on a reality TV drama, who poured the now famed economist’s morning moccachino.Nouriel Roubini, is, of course, the former Bill Clinton era official at the International Monetary Fund and White House Council for Economic Advisors, who, after taking a faculty appointment at New York University’s Stern School,of Business, made predictions in 2005 and 2006 that many feel presaged the current global economic crisis.Just as the bubble was bursting, in a September, 2006, address to the International Monetary Fund, Roubini predicted a “global hard landing” arising from out of “a glut of housing stock” leading to a “US housing bust”. Roubini said that, even if the US Federal Reserve Board did cut interest rates that year, the US would not avoid a recession.For the most part, Roubini does not receive his accolade for the extent of the damage he was predicting, but their timing. In actuality, many of his 2005-2006 era predictions have turned out to be spectacularly understated.But not all the predictions of the Man Who Saw were golden. The US Fed would not ease for another year, yet the stock market kept rising, until October 2007. Anybody shorting the stock market immediately upon hearing Roubini’s initial predictions would soon see his brokerage’s margin call desk number flashing hard and often on his caller ID.Perhaps most importantly, there is nothing in any of his increasingly Nostradamus-like black vaticinations that would indicate he had any special talent or insight that last spring allowed him to possess prior cognizance of 2009′s most impressive, and potentially most profitable story in the markets – the huge rally, up 61% in the case of the US Dow Jones Industrial Average, in world stock averages that followed the market bottom this past spring.Still, in much the same way old-time newspapermen treated ink and newsprint, modern editors are handling Roubini with electrons. Google News reports 1,600 references with his name over the past 30 days, many with ledes such as “The US and the global economy will experience massive deflationary forces through 2012″ or “Market surge heading for big fall, says Roubini”, or “Roubini: Many Jobs Gone Forever”. Particularly interesting is Roubini’s frequent presence on the Page Six celebrity gossip page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, or on the web pages of the New York celebrity interest /stalker site, Gawker, most often in club attire along with pretty, shiny young nubile things on each arm – obviously, his graduate assistants taking all the time necessary to deal with a problem student.Playing the part of Robin, the Boy Wonder to Roubini’s Batman, is one Meredith Whitney, up until last February a bank stock analyst at Oppenheimer, and since then the principal at the investment advisory firm that bears her name. Much like the American baseball player Bobby Thomson, who lived a life of fame wholly on the basis of one home run hit in the 1951 playoffs, Whitney arose out of the media analyst mush on October 31, 2007, with a call on Citigroup.

Tell me something and all of us that we didnt know!CBO: The Stimulus Didn’t Fail, It’s Just That The Real Economy SucksJoe Weisenthal|Dec. 1, 2009, 5:53 AM | 186 |5Economist Menzie Chinn summarizes the latest report from the CBO on the stimulus.From CBO’s just released Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output as of September 2009 :…Economic output and employment in the spring and summer of 2009 were lower than CBO had projected at the beginning of the year. But in CBO’s judgment, that outcome reflects greater-than-projected weakness in the underlying economy rather than lower-than-expected effects of ARRA.In other words, the continued deterioration of the economy through the first few months after the passage of ARRA was not due to the stimulus package; rather underlying conditions had deteriorated, and the economy would have been in a worse state in the absence of the package

Right on Reggie! Banks are terrified of lending for fear of producing more bad loans on top of the onesthey already have and cannot manage. With decreasing home prices, retail sales, hours worked coupled withincreasing unemployment (thanks MM)it’s going to be a real shocker to the American public that ZERO GROWTHhas become the new norm. The only “U” shaped recovery I see is a sideways “U” where we come up a little andfall back down hard to the bottom where we started. And if the dollar keeps falling, things get even worse!

PeteCa, I don’t see your name on a web blog. Let the professor say what he thinks is right

A top global thinkerwould be clearly and insistently informing the American peoplethat they suffer the compounding effects of the financial crisis dujour precisely becausethey have unknowingly been buffaloed into allowing a few private individualsto claim legal ownership of nothing less than the full faith and credit of the nationand that the full faith and credit of a nation can only rightfully belong to the people of the nationand that the practice of giving over to private individualswhat is only achieved by all the public who laboris absurd on its faceand that a few extremely wealthy and powerful individuals are using that usurped creditagainst the people they stole it fromto rob them blind, sabotage democracy, strangle consumption, implement austerity for working Americans…Top global thinker? No.Just another well-tamed professor tossed one of the bones the pets of the wealthy getfor lending their services to the status quo.

wow people buying expensive high quality denim at GUESS as reported in CNBC. economy recovery!!!!

Statistics can make Any of Us LiarsThe Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its indexgrew last month….LOL…compared to the last recession/depression data months.Its like saying the dead yellow plants were more plentiful during the Great Depression’s dust bowl.Let’s compare today’s manufacturing activity to say, 2006….its horrifying today then.See the proof:http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15898703/Rail-Time-Indicators-November-2009One of the charts show cargo in trains up 5% in 2006, instead of like -20% lately.Most of main stream media ignores the hoards of new desparate Americans looking for workat HomeDepot with our foreign guests, but will point at horrifying statistical trends asencouraging…..ohhh, stocks are up today and the twisted logic manufacturing index improvement[????] is given the credit, LOL.

Gold is an element. You cannot create it outside of a supernova; every atom of gold in the universe came into existance in the center of an exploding star, and you only get about 2 seconds out of every 5 billion years in which to create it. On Earth you can mine this “fossil gold” from surface deposits and a certain amount is always coming to the surface from volcanic activity and hot water seeps. Though it takes about a million years to form a viable gold deposit that way.So what you are saying doesn’t make much sense, unless you think (as did Pizarro) that there is some sort of hidden “motherlode” or fount of all gold, hidden in someone’s backyard undiscovered. Good luck with that one Sparky. Oh and can I have your TV while you are gone looking for it? Thanks.cougar

Speaking of Keen, with emphasis- er, mine:(the numbering system I also introduce, Yes, for emphasis)1. The only sensible course is to reduce the debt levels.As Michael Hudson argues, a simple dynamic is now being played out:debts that cannot be repaid, won’t be repaid. The only thing we have to do is work out how that should occur.2. Since the lending was irresponsibly extended by the financial sectorto support Ponzi Schemes in shares and real estate,it is the lenders rather than the borrowers who should feel the pain–whichis the exact opposite of the bailout mentality that dominates governments around the world.3. Unfortunately, it will take a sustained period of failuresby conventional policy before unconventional policies,like deliberate debt reduction, will gain political traction.Implementing them will require both a dramatic change of mindsetandprobably also a widespread changing of the political guard.http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/Debtwatch 41Ho hum

Cougar,I liked the Supernova/Hypernova connection you made regarding the production of GOLD. Perhaps a Black Swan event is forth coming that will help us in this regard. Of course if it is too close the GRB (Gamma Ray Burst) will muck out all life on the planet; but hey, gold isn’t cheap is it?

You need to put them in order of debt to GDP. then consider their weight globally.

Japan had an advanced civilization when European and neo-European monkeys were swing from tree to tree using their tails. I think the Japanese will be around a while longer.

That’s not the truth at all.Our autistic economics wastes half of everything.It can be fixed, and easily.I wish heinyberg and his nazi-loving eugenicist pals would STFU.

YEEEhaaaatime for a showdownhttp://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) — “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

Two Peas In A PodWhat can we learn from Dubai and from Bubblemaster Bernanke’s desire to classify all FED economic transactions as TOP SECRET?First, Dubai. Although the general govermental reaction that the Dubai fiasco is a tempest in a teapot is probably correct, what happened very well illustrates how integrated and unstable the global economy is. The global economy is a house of cards, and all someone has to do is open a window or door unexpectedly to let a breeze in, and the show will be over.Secondly, why is the Bubblemaster so against transparency? Is it because he is afraid that the good news he is hiding would cause excessive exuberance and overstimulate markets? I think not! It’s NOT a case of “know ye the truth, and the truth will make you free”–it’s a case of “know you the truth, and the truth will make you run for the exit”.

I don’t that the US stock market need “burst” as such. As long as they print enough money every asset class can go up in nominal terms, even stocks.That is not to say there can’t be corrections, there certainly will be those; but that is very different to a bubble collapse in scale. After a correction, as long as money keeps being printed, the stocks can go higher again.

I don’t understand the obsession with the stock markets as a measure of anything; other than how much money they can print.Print enough money, and even a stock market without fundamental support goes up.This is a monetary phenomenon in a speculative market, very little to do with earnings or valuations.

prior knowlege, yes. he keeps very creepy company behind the curtains, but few are aware of who he connects to.

Thanks for the laugh! This does, however, bring up some very important points, and that’s the impact of time on processes. The quicker that something occurs the more violent it tends to be.

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE FOCUS ON THE MESSAGE!You are creepier yet, for pouncing all over something without providing any reasoning at all!

Well, to be fair, and believe me, I have no good feelings about these people, opening up and telegraphing their intentions, even IF they were pure and noble, would expose them to sabotage (think of cold war type stuff). What’s happening is that power is being reshuffled. The US is looking to transfer some of this control (yes, believe it or not) in a manner that is going to maximize its returns (deal now or end up having it taken by entities that have zero sympathy). Just playing devil’s advocate…

Number one:We are all Darwinians now — except in the strange parallel worlds of fundamentalist Christianity and state-guaranteed finance.Neither Cassandra nor Pangloss, Darwin surely deserves to top any list of modern thinkers, dead or alive.NIALL FERGUSONhttp://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/dead_men_walking?page=0,2

People need to correct this misperception of what Darwin was saying. He was actually referring to species themselves evolving, not a fight within a specie. For more on this read Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid.It’s environmental forces that ultimately place restraints on growth, thereby “weeding” out the weaker of the population, not necessarily within the population itself. One simple test: how many humans are there on the planet today? think that the sense of Darminian competition would have allowed this size? and, look around you, look at the people that are out there- obesity, diabetes, not something that necessarily shrieks vigor.

Oh, but one thing that Baum mentions does raise an interesting question. Could it be that our inflation is really being exported to China? I thought that this is how it “generally” works? But, what would be different this time, is that China is taking and really running with it, and that when they trip and fall, which WILL eventually happen, that inflation is likely going to boomerang right back, in full force, at the US. It’s my theory that the US is trying to find areas to outlet this eventual inflation, trying to figure out how to push some of it elsewhere.At any rate, the world is awash in production. Production deflation will be with us for a long time. There won’t be any new big thing to pull the world’s economy upwards. Inflation/deflation, kind of like arguing over which site of the Titanic one should be on…

His message is as wrong as he is – and you would be able to see that if you knew what he’s really up to.His friends give away what he’s up to.The truth will piss you off before it sets you free.

global thinker? what does that really mean?individual thinker, group thinker, local ,regional, national, international, global,solar system, galactic, etc. , universal thinker.are we ready for global thinking / do we haveany institutional minds competent tothink globally or is fp justblowing smoke up our collective .. in attempt toglorify itself and its own agenda? using globalas a descriptor. ben ? number 1. allen greenspanwas number 1 , no?

new thread thankfully

STOP BEING AFRAID TO GO LEARN SOMETHING, PEABRAINhttp://www.spunk.org/library/places/germany/sp001630/intro.htmlread it. read it all.and then don’t forget to google up hienybergand his “inexplicable” connect to the wicked virginia abernathythe enemy has outposts in your head, binky. don’t expect to go unchallengedwhen you post up the bullshit that peace and prosperity for all is impossible.

Is the suppression of inflation modern day slavery?

I have a strong vision of a slow slow revolution upon us in this ‘united states’.This revolution is not about one state vs another. not about the east vs west. not about the north vs south.It is a revolution about stakes and shares. the haves and the have-nots. terrorism within.who gets to decide how freely future generations’ debts get spent today? who decides to print it to begin with?how will we fund medicare and social security? will MD’s settle for a 40k salary?congressional leaders have to better watch themselves as they may fall victims to unhappy Americans.How are sociologists and economists not sounding the alarm?Have we become so oblivious or maybe we just don’t care?

Oh, yeah, like calling me “PEABRAIN” (hm, sort of shows how your mind works, rather not) is going to motivate me to read your recommendations?I don’t follow Heinberg or anyone else. Why don’t you spend your time trying to get him jailed? Or, get professional help?

It may be the excuse, but it’s not the cause. Please refer to one of my posting here that mentions this (and refers ot Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid).

This Land Is Your LandThis land is your land, this land is my landFrom California, to the New York IslandFrom the redwood forest, to the gulf stream watersThis land was made for you and me. . . .In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steepleNear the relief office – I see my peopleAnd some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’If this land’s still made for you and me.