"Think we really need to scare the crap out of people again, the world coming to an end, and people literally going after there fund managers and politicians."
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You can't chase down random folks to crucify for multiple generations of delusional and crooked financial systems and institutions.

The incompetence is spread too far and wide. The fraud and outright theft is likewise spread too far and wide across the globe.

"They" were smart enough to make their crimes perfectly legal and steal from no one in particular but all of us collectively. It's those beached whales they slaughtered ---------Fannie and Freddie, our pension funds, our mutual funds, our currency-------that's how the "crime" was committed. They were basically just sharks feasting on the carcass.

Go ahead, see if you can chase one down.

Geez! If this doesn't make you question the legitimacy of baseball!!!
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Pitchers throw wild pitches. Outfielders drop balls right out of their gloves. Infielders let balls roll right through their legs. Batters swing and miss at ball that bounce a foot and a half in front of home and a foot and a half outside.

So why would anyone think that an ump should never REALLY, REALLY blow a call?

It's a part of baseball. The game the night before was delayed 2 hours. That game went 19 innings. I like the suggestion of swapping out the home plate ump with one of the other umps after 10-12 innings.

It was a horrible call. The guy had to be tired. We all make mistakes when we're tired.

I'm sure glad my mistakes at work aren't on TV for the whole world to scrutinize for ever and ever.

I played this game pretty often with my family when I was a kid. So now they programmed a computer to play. Very cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli_%28game%29

I forgot to count but he got Leonardo Da Vinci in about a dozen questions and Sarah Palin in about 7-8

He couldn't get Bill Mazeroski!

But he did have Maz on a back-up guess list. So I'm still impressed. He guessed Al Kaline. Not sure why he thought he was ready to make that stab. Seems like a few more questions could have narrowed it down.

Yup, our "captured" government could be displaced anytime the majority of people engage in the process with enough sophistication to understand who the crooks are.

No need for pitchforks or public hangings----------not that I'm dead set about the public hangings either way.

TASR = Springtime for Hitler

Goldman Sachs = Bialystock & Bloom

concerned shareholders = Franz.......

Some great charts on inflation here:

http://dshort.com/inflation/CPI-categories-since-2000.html?CPI-categories-since-2000

Without watching it again I recall he talked about the degradation of this or that facet of American finance starting with Roosevelt and all the way through to Nixon. Nixon was treated like a red headed stepchild by Eisenhower. So it had to be later than the date claimed.

His predictions of inflation, price and wage controls aren't as impressive made in the Nixon administration as opposed to the same predictions had they been forecast from Eisenhower.

Who with half a brain thinks that free pensions should be available for everyone? Perhaps those that live in Greece?
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It's not all that complicated. Money will come from income and future raises to shift over to cover their own retirement including health care during the period before they are covered by Medicare. That's been happening so there's no real controversy there, just hacking away at the details on a case by case basis. Governments will still need to pony up enormous catch-up contributions to cover retirements and health care for those in that void between retirement and Medicare. That's really where the pain comes in. Nothing has been set aside for that health care.

They're getting small, incremental cuts virtually across the board in government employment. My wife is currently a "furloughed" teacher, right here right now. Her school year ended early and her salary is reduced by whatever percentage 9 days amounts to.

It's so bad from what I've gleaned of the situation they need to cut the total compensation package, shift monies as you mention to cover their own benefits, lay off significant workforce, recalculate the retirement formulas and hack off a thousand other silly frills like "personal days" and unused sick leave.

Health care and pensions are strangling the system. The solutions are not complicated from a legal or accounting standpoint. It's literally taking money from teachers, cops, soldiers, nurses-------those are the government workers we sympathize with----as well as the bureaucrats we love to hate.

1958?

Not quite since he mentioned Nixon as President.

The speech had to be no earlier than 1968

I repeat: 54K news jobs in May
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That's the headline number smoothed over by an imaginary +206K jobs created by all the fictitious new businesses opening up out there and hiring.

It's more realistic that the numbers are much worse and compounding that ugliness is the $1.6 trillion Obama has to borrow and spend to prop up the jobs at the federal, state, local and government contractor level.

The "bailouts" supposedly saved the economy from falling off a cliff. If this isn't off the cliff I'd sure hate to see what's at the bottom of that cliff.

Those sweetened numbers only exist so a large percentage of very thick headed people can argue amongst themselves and maintain some delusions of stability and "economic growth" while our economy crumbles all around us.

Sure, our GDP is positive, inflation is mild and the uneployment picture is improving--------because the government says so.

100% political

The voting public can be spun on a dime and that includes support for any and all spending cuts needed to salvage an economy out of this mess. So it's too early to close the book on the American Empire. We're just a big, big longshot looking at the current Las Vegas spread.

Great analogies lee

A trader, a hitter, a dude at a bar looking to score; either you've "got it" or you ain't got it. Some guys will NEVER under any circumstances no matter how hard they try be able to hit the breaking ball.

Extrapolation from there is what makes your point so relevant.

It also helps to wear a beret when attempting this maneuver.
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I took French in Junior High School for 2 year. That was about the prettiest teacher I ever had right at the time when that's a really big deal in life. I can't read, write or understand French much at all but I can pronounce the words correctly as they are written.

Same basic deal from my two years of German in college. I can read and pronounce the words very well without the slightest hint as to meaning. Quite a bit of the material I work with is imported from Europe and so when I look at the literature with my co-workers I can totally blow their minds by reading the French or German versions of the instruction sheets and specifications.

Have no clue what I'm saying but I look at them as if it's very obvious and then go about doing what I already know the instructions are saying. Nobody really reads instructions!

Zab, the freaking markets gone from 680 to 1350 on the SnP. Long term persistant uptrend right?
It's only the short term noise barrel that you stick your head in daily that's got your cornfused! [g]
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Great for all those long term Warren Buffet investors who had billions in cash on March 9, 2008 (or was it 2009?) and threw all the chips back on the table at $SPX 666

My question is when did those Warren Buffet buy-and-holders liquidate all their assets and go to cash so they could lever up and buy back at that magical 666? Because if they've been on the roller coaster looking at their 401k for 10-20 years the $US dollars they're going to cash for a share of stock 10-20 years hence isn't going to buy a fine suit and a steak dinner at the bestest joint in town like it did in 1913.

Rice and beans maybe

Yes lee, I read all those same reports about the short positions in the futures market. Much of the discussion revolves around the concept of trading "paper" silver as opposed the the real world supply and demand for silver. So there are synthetic long and short precious metal positions, futures, options, ETFs, precious metal mutual funds, individual mining companies that would all be "volatile" and subject to Bernanke's transitory cliff dive.

The objective of the market makers and brokers is to be relatively neutral and generate volume through all the excitement of the herd. I'm thinking internet bubble, Enron's little nat gas/electricity bubble, the housing bubble, 2007-2008 commodity bubble. All somewhat volatile, transitory........and orchestrated to churn and burn.

In my conspiracy theories "they" aren't short something all the way from $15 to $50. If something goes up like that it's always and only because "they" are in on it going up and out and short again just in time for the crash.

Otherwise why even have a conspiracy theory?

typically, good jobs will at least have a moving allowance and most pay for the move
this happens after a prospective employee is accepted

the posted piece says nothing about this fact
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In a discussion of unemployment those types of job opportunities aren't really relevant. There are virtually no blue collar jobs and a very small percentage of white collar jobs that a person presently unemployed could ever qualify for that would pay for moving expenses.

Both my sons are in the University of California system. Tuition is very reasonable and about the same at all locations in this state give or take a few percent. The killer is room and board, books, lab fees, transportation and other "casual" expenses. One of my sons is in Santa Barbara and the other in Pacific Palisades. They're living on some of the best real estate on earth.

I wish I could afford to live there. I can barely afford their rents, food and tuition. But seriously, the tuition seems really reasonable to me. They'll graduate virtually free of debt but even if I couldn't have been there to help out the $23K number is really modest in my estimation. It's less than most new car loans for crying out loud.

wow, wish I didn't make that mistake

It wouldn't hurt my feeling if Obama wasn't really killed and dropped in the ocean.

(really don't buy that ocean part)

I don't have a problem with capturing and ever so gently obtaining information from this fine fellow.

I honestly believe this would be the correct thing to do. If our political leaders have the authority to order hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths in foreign wars I assume they also need to use various covert activities against our enemies. Part of having a covert operation is telling little white lies to not only the international community but our own citizens, most of Congress and maybe even the Supreme Court if need be.

Keep that in mind whenever you vote. That's a part of the job at that level.

Say no more, nudge, nudge.

You're a man of the world, right?

not too sure on real estate-------whether they can really move that market or where it needs to be------but I'm fairly sure the doubling+ of the $SPX from 666 to 1360+ gives them a safe enough margin to tamper with the commodities letting the
chips fall as they may

Especially with precious metals there's no hard measure or immediate demand/supply market like with food/energy/lumber/industrial metals and such. Not being so constrained by actual consumption makes that a very exciting market

He listed three reasons for this importance-one of which was it "lowers the possibility of inflationary pressures".
Silver dropping off cliff is the big news, tho.
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No doubt they have the means to lower inflationary pressures in a heartbeat. They just might not be able to keep housing, commercial real estate and the S&P 500 where those need to be priced to maintain the solvency of our system------or at least a pretense of solvency that they can cut and paste into the balance sheets.

Yeah, I don't have price history on July strikes, but sort of estimating based on how far out of the money strikes it is taking to get a dime price, I judge that the trade may have taken place late last week. And out as far as July makes it even more difficult.

That said, there is not doubt that a huge gain is paying off for a big cojones entry.
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Around April 11 is what I can find from a Google search. I might have been mistaken thinking I read it here. It was up on Zero Hedge that day and I verified the trade by putting SLV July 25 puts on my trading screen at IB. There was virtually no open interest in that conctract prior to that trade.

The price for that contracts stayed around a dime through the month of April and obviously exploded up as silver crashed.

That trade could be a hedge against a precious metal mutual fund, individual mining stocks, SLV, physical silver as well as any and all related futures and options-----long exposure to metals.

If you were WAY long these kinds of positions an alternative hedge to selling covered calls would be to buy put options.

It doesn't seem like a trade that would make a lot of sense standing alone---------except that it's up 400%!!!

Another thing that came to mind is a paired trade, for example long gold and short silver.

It's a big player. That's about all we can be sure of.

One of the raps against precious metals has always been that it doesn't pay a dividend. Once you open up all this "paper" silver or gold trading you give the financial industry tools to generate income off the rights to the metal.

funny how that worked out, huh?

The trade I was referring to was brought to the boards attention quite a while back, at least a week or two. It drew quite a few comments across various websites that focus on precious metals.

Interestingly, the May 20 $25 put is now .08/.10 showing over 2500 contracts traded.

I'm fairly certain the original $1M "bet" was only one leg of a more complex position.

In case it's not obvious to anyone that whole term "transitory" with regard to commodity inflation should be much clearer after the last few days.

Somebody posted info here on a 100K contract trade @ .10 for the SLV July $25 puts for a total of $1M bet.

Now trading @ .31/.32

The three month T-Bill is signaling unpleasantness ahead.

http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/gallery.html?$IRX

"The only true way to inflation-adjust the gold price is against the currency supply."
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Here's another view from this site
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1277150455.php

So what's more fun than looking back on old brokerage records?


4/30/2002 CEF SOLD 1000 SHARES OF CEF AT $3.98 ($7.12) $3,972.88

Is that one of the harbingers of death for a bull market in silver?
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It's more of a reflection on this particular company's hopes and prospects. I don't think the silver market cares who clings to the side rails

S&P futures just went red.

They don't believe we buried him at sea? The Donald has fully authenticated the death certificate! We should be up 500 points on the Dow.

If we don't close up 100 the terrorists win!

Great timing!

Osama is dead

S&P futures +11.00

Silver -$4.46 9.63%

How about a woman that can fell a tree? Well, it may be all about size now, after all.
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A tree?

An old saying claims the right face can launch a thousand ships. Adjusting for population and inflation since those days we're talking wiping out the Amazon forest here with just a wink.

A tree? I suppose without the right face she'd have to grab the old ax and have at it. As far as that's concerned it's all in the hips.

There again there's a lot to be said for a good set of hips.

Here's your green shoot right here



http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=UEMPMEAN

"I have also been without a good news supply for almost two complete days"
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I shut off all the "good news" sources in 1998, now that I think of it maybe it was 1988 or 1978.

You're way better off without that BS.

I'm only interested in the bad news.

What a country!