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I believe that most politicians from either party will continue deficit spending. Who's "entitlement" do they cut? I intensely disagree with much of Obama's economic policies and his healthcare bill without real cost controls, but I doubt the opposition will actually make the hard choices to cut.
If we continue the deficit spending, be it by the radical far left or by republicans, the American economy will of necessity implode -- the $US will become worthless, and there will be chaos in the streets.
We will become Weimar Germany II, where you sell your house to purchase a loaf of bread. That is the goal of obama and his minions.
There will thousands of those mailed out; by many insurance companies. Companies will have to pay and average of 10-22% more to provide insurance to their employees. How will companies do it?
The answer to your question, of course, is that they will not do it. The government will then force us into a single payer insurance system with the taxpayer footing the enormous cost, which will be far higher than anyone ever dreamed because of all the new demands and regulations imposed by that very government. The requirement that demands full coverage immediately for those with preexisting conditions alone is enough to break the insurance companies -- economically, it is a demand that is totally impossible to implement without raising premiums for everybody through the roof.
The obama goal is to destroy the current system, and place all of us under government control, funded by the taxpayer and unlimited deficit spending.
It is a prescription designed to produce the economic death of America. It is "fundamentally changing America" in ways we never even dreamed possible.
....we treat the marxists, Obamacrats, progressives far to "kindly" in the media....
they are willfully trying to undermine America....it's freedom based on individual achievement and capitalist economy...
I have absolutely no idea of why we are so "polite" to them!?
I think the underlying reason for the "politeness" you refer to is twofold. First, the media is overwhelmingly controlled by people who are quite liberal themselves, and who tend to agree with the progressive agenda obama espouses. While they recognize that obama is "liberal" even by their own standards, they do not understand the radical nature and danger of obama's "progressivism".
The second problem speaks to why the American people themselves are so "polite". The American people in general do not yet understand the extent and immediacy of the threat to the very existence of America that is posed by obama and his radical leftist companions. They have been lulled to sleep by the liberal media.
obama and his radical marxist brethren are not Christians. Despite all the professions of their supposed "christianity" and "faith", both their actions and their very words prove that they are not true Christians. But most folks in the world are not Christians, so there is nothing unusual or disturbing about that.
No, the real problem is not that they are not Christians -- as I say, there is nothing unusual or upsetting about that. The real problem is that the "progressive" agenda has always been actively anti-Christian, opposed not only to the Bible, but also to the God of the Bible. obama and his followers fully embrace that agenda.
A primary part of obama's radical leftist agenda is to undermine America's faith in God. They have been and continue to be engaged in a campaign to remove both God and the Bible from our public discourse and to denigrate all persons of faith in the God of the Bible. Unfortunately, that campaign has achieved a remarkable degree of success in the past few decades, and America is the worse for it.
It is kind of pathetic yet very telling that with all the backing of all the major unions, the NAACP, and all the liberal media and all the far left wing "community activist" organizations, the communist party, all the radical marxist groups, and everything else left wing known to man, that they could get no more people to turn out than they did -- even with many unions making it "mandatory" that their members show up.
It is sad that so many "sheep" are still willing to be offered up as a sacrifice on the altar of obama's radical marxist agenda.
Glenn Beck, with no "mandatory" backing by anyone bought out many times as many folks for his rally.
It shows for certain that the liberal agenda does not have the support of the American people.
It also indicates that the type of common sense American values "agenda" that Beck is advocating has the support of the people.
Praise the Lord. Perhaps there is hope yet for America.
Based on his own words, obama is not a Christian -- he just claims to be one for political purposes, just like when bill clinton needed to prop up his numbers, he would go to church lugging his eltra-large Bible for all to see.
Bill Clinton: "No one has done more for the America Dream than Barney Frank."
That is just an example of willie clinton trying to reclaim the title of "World's Greatest Liar" from obama.
I have to admit, his comment about barnie frank is a pretty good effort and without doubt a world class lie, but obama already has the "lifetime achievement" award. Not even wee willie can catch up with obama.
Who are they going to sell it to?? If you look at the numbers, they are slowly selling off as much of their position as possible, but there is no way that they can sell it all. It would not shock me to find that they are having to quietly support the $US in conjunction with our FED from time to time.
Why more alarm bells are not going off because of the Fed buying up the paper at auctions (because of lack of buyers) amazes me. It should be a terrifying thing to Wall Street, and in truth, I think it is but they cannot say so for fear of starting panic.
how about the possibility that stock trading is a human endeavor/sport.....and, computerization has encroached on human activity with no "rules changes" which reflect computer capabilities....
IMO...."I am POSITIVE" the uptick rule was changed to ENABLE hedge funds, foreign banks, and offshore traders to ravage our markets and make AMERICAN $$$$$$$$$ (the world's de facto currency).....
just like derivatives....financial instruments whose value is based on other financial instruments....i.e. "nothing based on confidence in some intrinsic market segment".....all of which translates into: "another way to generate American dollars"....Hmmmm....sound familiar....who got bailed out?? Deutsche Bank....UBS (Swiss)....the French (Societe Provincale {sp?}) ...and all socialists....
yeah, gee, there's something "funny goin' on"
It is true that over the very short term, computerized trading can influence the market direction. Over the longer term, however individual entities or even a group of such entities do not have the resources required to control the market over more than the very short term. To control the movement of the entire market takes an enormous amount of resources -- only the government can marshal that kind of manipulation.
Changing the uptick rule was frankly "stupid", but again, that is something that can be used to manipulate only a specifically targeted stock or a very small group of stocks -- it cannot in any way control the entire market. You have to also remember the fundamental problem with shorting stocks -- to actually realize your profits, the stock has to be bought back in the same quantity that was originally shorted, and the results can be the same magnitude, but the opposite direction. You have to really know what you are doing to be successful in shorting large quantities of a stock.
Some derivatives, in theory, are useful and needed financial instruments. They are not inherently "evil" -- but they have proliferated to the point where they are now a disaster waiting to happen. When they go bad, usually by something unanticipated happening that was not accounted for in its theoretical structure, the leverage involved makes them almost certainly financially deadly for the holder. Our financial system is now inundated with these poisonous products, and they have the ability to destroy our entire system. That ability to destroy is not just theoretical -- it almost certainly will come about.
tks, imo there is no reason for the market to be up
You are absolutely correct in that assessment of the fundamentals underlying the economy. That is why intervention is the only way it can go up over the intermediate and longer term.
you really believe they ever were not being manipulated LOL
Yes, there has always been manipulation in the stock, bond, and currency markets. I am very familiar with that and when I was in the industry as a broker/trader, I occasionally was part of that manipulation. The difference between then and now lies in who is doing the manipulation, what is being manipulated, and why.
In the past, various entities such as institutions, banks, stock brokerages, and hedge funds would work (often together) to manipulate individual stocks or bonds with a view of enhancing their profits. The US government has always intervened and manipulated various currency markets, but the target was always specific currencies, especially the $US. Governmental intervention is not limited to just our own currency, and we often work in tandem with other central banks around the globe. The reason for government manipulation is usually (but not always) currency and monetary stabilization although more rarely, the goal can be destabilization.
The bottom line for all of these manipulations was that they were limited in scope to either a single target issue or a small group of targets. In the stock and bond markets, the manipulation was almost always from private, not government, entities. The intervention in the currencies was always by the government but now, utilizing the leverage made possible by new financial instruments, even private entities can engage in currency manipulation, such as when George Soros was able to tank the British system.
Today, the government is intervening in the stock market, and that is a completely new phenomenon. Because the government has the ability to create money out of thin air (by fiat), they have the ability to move key stocks and stock indexes as desired, for short but crucial periods of time. They can stop a sharp selloff and turn it into a rally by driving up key stocks and index futures. And they can do it day after day, with a goal of creating an longer term artificial rally and running the shorts to help fuel that rally.
For the stock market layman, the process is is far too complex to explain in a message board post, but for those who understand how the markets work, it is easy to understand and visualize the process, especially how such concepts as the "moral hazard", derivatives, and institutional trust in the manipulation itself all play substantial parts in how it all works.
The bottom line now is that the stock markets are manipulated in a totally different way than in the past. Rather than individual targets of manipulation, the target is now the entire stock market, and rather than a single entity or a small group of entities being responsible for the manipulation, it is the government itself, with unlimited resources, that is doing the manipulation.
The goal of governmental intervention and manipulation is to create the illusion that everything is ok when in fact it is not ok at all. It worked after 9/11, so we know what can be done. The question is whether or not it will always work as intended. Based on my experience, I do not think it can -- if it becomes obvious that things are not ok, and in fact the economy and the financial system are in terrible shape, then the smoke and mirrors of the manipulation will be exposed, and I do not think even the government will be able to stem the tide of the resulting meltdown in the markets. I think we may be close to that point now, but there is no way to really know that in advance.
That is just my opinion, though, and even if I am correct, it is impossible to anticipate when the meltdown will commence as I noted above. I am convinced it will happen, but I am unable to guess when that will occur.
The answer to your question is that the markets is being manipulated, and has been for some time.
The background for this is that the problem from the Fed side is that they are totally out of ammunition to fight a recession -- therefore, they cannot allow the recession we are in to resume.
The President's working group (often known as the PPT) made the decision back when the economy was falling apart. The banking system had failed and the stock market was in free fall. They had to have some time to get the banking system bailed out and to do that, they had to stop the free fall in the markets. They stepped in and turned the markets back to the upside short term while they bailed out the financial system as a whole.
Since the Fed had already used all of its normal ability to manage a recession (by lowering rates, etc.) and there was no loan demand to enable it to inject fiat cash into the economy, the only choice they had was to continue to prop up the stock market and drive it higher, which gave (and still gives) a sense of confidence to the general public. This is the exact same thing they did immediately following 9/11. For those of you that were trading the markets back then, the PPT stepped in when the markets were crashing in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, which happened while the markets were already being crushed by the bursting of the technology bubble. Back then, they drove the markets up until the economy was able to stabilize and that is what they want to do now.
Bottom line is that the markets are no longer working under a free and open market system. The stock market is being manipulated, and has been so for some time.
I have not invested in copper. To date, it is making new highs just like gold and silver, but copper has always been the commodity that best reflects the economy, and for good reason.
Whenever any kind of house or commercial building is put up, it takes a lot of copper to build it -- a whole lot of it is used in both plumbing and wiring. If I am correct that the economy is unsustainable and will begin imploding, then the demand for copper will necessarily drop dramatically because the demand for new building will cease. At the same time, there are literally thousands of tons of it that could become available from commercial buildings that go vacant -- in a really bad economy, the copper plumbing and wiring of vacant buildings will be "looted", either legally or illegally and that will hugely increase the supply available to the marketplace.
Finally, copper has never been seen as a "storehouse of value", primarily for the reasons stated above. For me, copper is not a good long term investment and is unlikely to be seen as a unit of value for trade in the same way that gold, silver, and potentially oil (gasoline) would be.
To a lesser extent silver has some of the same problems as gold, although nowhere near as severe as copper. Silver is also an industrial metal, and as the economy slows the demand for silver will fall also. But there is nowhere near as much silver lying around to be plundered, and most unused silver (and gold) is already being reclaimed now, so that is not as much of a problem as it is for copper.
Gold is still the best hedge, in my opinion, with silver being next. Oil and gasoline will be good, but it is both difficult and expensive to store it in bulk inconspicuously.
Gold can be stored much more easily, and would be especially handy for trade if it were broken down into 1 oz increments.
But the only sure way to protect yourself in a disastrous situation is and always has been to trust not in gold or silver, but to place your trust in the Lord.
When you say that obama and his crew of marxist followers have screwed up by moving too fast, I think you need to consider another possibility.
Obama may be thinking bigger than you realize, with a much shorter time-frame and path to permanent power. If they are successful in collapsing our economy, then this nation will be thrown into a climatic crisis not seen since the civil war. I believe that is their primary goal and that is where he expects to be able to gain full power.
obama knows that to take us into full socialism and a marxist state would take a long time because gaining the consent of the governed, the American people, will be not only hard, but practically impossible.
That is why he has appointed mostly radical marxists to posts throughout within his administration and why he wants to take the path no one expects him to take. He would not have done so if he wanted or was seeking the approval of the American people. Like a phoenix, he wants to raise his government by the ruling elite (himself and his minions) out of the ash heap of an economically collapsed nation.
We are already much less "free" than we were a decade ago, and individual freedoms are vanishing daily as obama and his administration inundate us with new regulations and laws that by definition limit our freedoms.
Things are not good here. Don't look at the stock market -- it is being manipulated. Look at gold and silver -- that is your fear guage.
Some of us are already scared and see what is happening. But not enough. Too many are still complacent.
I would so LOVE to see this POS behind bars!!! Poor Obama wouldn't no what do with one of his major gurus behind bars.
Now, lets hope they go after cass sunstein, eric holder and rahm emanuel, that would be SWEET!!!
Sweet?? Indeed, but you and I both know that none of them are in any danger of justice being done as long as obama and his cronies in both the administration and in congress are in power.
Hopefully, the people will regain power in this nation and then some true justice can be meted out.
Aug. Consumer Confidence Index: 48.5 vs. 53 expected and 53.2 prior (revised). Present situation 23.1 vs. 24.9 prior. Expectations 65.4 vs. 72 prior (revised). "September's pull-back in confidence was due to less favorable business and labor market conditions, coupled with a more pessimistic short-term outlook," the Conference Board says.
All the indications are that our economy has at best stalled, and more likely is about to resume the worst recession since the great depression -- and it could end up being even worse.
The FOMC has admitted that is the case and they are more fearful of deflation than inflation. If indeed we do reenter the recession, we have a Fed that is literally a "paper" tiger, unable to fight deflation because it has already exhausted all its ammunition. They have essentially had the base interest rate at zero for a long time, and it is already printing fiat money as fast as it can find ways to get it into the system.
As a result, we have not only the potential of the economy entering an uncontrolled downward spiral, but also face a very real possibility of massive inflation due to the debasing of the $US. Like the Weimar Republic, we could see both at the same time. This is what is looming in our future if we do not begin to act now to stop it.
Yet the market continued its recent rally to new recovery highs today.
Any stock market investor who thinks that we still have free markets today is delusional. The markets have been totally manipulated for a good while now.
Be careful with your investments. I do not think that the current artificial market bubble can be maintained forever.
I do not maintain a daily Obama Watch. I ignore him.
I think that is a very dangerous approach to obama.
America, with all its warts and flaws, has been and still is the greatest nation on earth, and for anyone who loves our country, obama and his hoards of radical marxist companions are the enemy. They are dead set on bringing our nation down from within, and they have made much progress toward reaching that goal.
And far too many of us are still asleep, and like frogs in a pot of water where the heat is slowly but steadily rising to the boiling point, we are oblivious to what is happening.
obama is the single most dangerous person on earth right now for America, and he is not one to be "ignored" anymore than we would have ignored the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
Dropping Coverage: HHS head Kathleen Sebelius criticized the decision by some insurers — including Aetna, Cigna, Humana, WellPoint and a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary — to drop child-only health insurance now that those plans are required to accept kids with pre-existing conditions, Politico reports. The insurers say the rule permits parents to avoid purchasing coverage until their sick kids need services. Sebelius says, in a letter to the industry, that “we would hope that insurers who have for years offered child-only policies to healthy children would not deny coverage to families who desperately want to purchase health insurance,” Politico says. HHS also issued guidance that could help insurers avoid the adverse risk selection issue
Most any fool with even the slightest knowledge of economics or math knew this was going to happen. Taking preexisting conditions on without a significant increase in premium is economic suicide -- a guaranteed prescription for bankruptcy. It cannot work. Period. I said this here on the board when the subject first came up.
It cannot work in the case of child health insurance, and it cannot work any better for the rest of the health care industry. The goal for obama and his cronies in the administration and in congress is to force America into a single payer system, with the US taxpayer footing the entire bill, and make no mistake -- the cost will be far higher than what we have been used to.
The ultimate goal is far more insidious than just getting control of our health system. Americans need to understand that every time the government takes a choice away from us, it is taking away a freedom. Freedom can be defined as the ability to make choices -- no choices is the same as no freedom.
When America foolishly elected obama president, I thought that he was the most incompetent, ill-prepared, candidate that had ever run for the office, and knew that we were headed for trouble with he and the pilosi/reid faction of the liberal far left running the nation. I said as much many times here on this board.
I was wrong about the first part -- he had me fooled.
I no longer believe that they are totally incompetent -- at least not all of them. It is worse than that. To the contrary, they have been frightfully competent. I also believe that I was wrong about their agenda -- it is not the normal liberal agenda that we have been used to. These people are not "liberals" in the traditional sense of the word as used in American politics. They are dedicated to the radical leftist agenda of social marxism, and their goal is to "radically transform America" into their view of a utopian marxist state. Remember "hope and change"??
They want an America run by a ruling elite (themselves) who make all the decisions and "take care" of the masses who are not as "wise" as they are. They are more than willing to take this country down if needed, in order to accomplish that agenda, and the easiest way of accomplishing that is to destroy the economy in order to bring about a climatic crisis which will open the doors for them to fill the resulting void.
Most Americans think such an agenda here in America is impossible. It is not. It is being implemented now.
"We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening," Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.
In the presidential election that kerry was involved in, we were very fortunate that the above quote by kerry was inaccurate.
But if he was looking back to the most recent presidential election, I would judge his quote above to be accurate. I wonder how all that "hope and change" stuff worked out...
The immediate problem for our economy is deflation, not inflation. If you read carefully the latest FOMC statement and look at the numbers, you will see that deflation is what they are most worried about -- and for good reason.
It is a pretty good probability that we are about to slip back into the recession but the Fed is out of ammunition to fight a renewed slide in the economy. At the moment they are already doing all they can by propping up the stock markets and jawboning about how good the economy is. If that combined smoke screen does not work, we are in deep trouble.
Once the economy begins to crumble again, eventually the stock markets will follow since even the President's Working Group folks cannot keep it propped up forever. Once all that happens, the $US will be ripe for a free fall. Actually, it is not inconceivable that the two events could happen concurrently, and that is the worst case scenario -- a recipe for disaster.
America has proven that fiat money is possible to sustain over long periods of time, but the problem is that politicians eventually get overconfident and use the power to create money as a never ending fountain to gain or keep power by massive subsidies to their friends and constituents. Once the ruling elite reach that plundering stage, the end is near.
I think that is where we are at the moment, and I am not at all sure that the most recent leg of our journey to reach this point has not been intentional.
Not only was it a bailout of his union friends and cronies, it was entirely unconstitutional in scope and against accepted precedents in bankruptcy law. Obama should have been impeached over that one a long time ago.
Of course Buffett is correct in saying that we are still in a recession. Those who are declaring that we are out of the recession are like the folks who look outside when in the eye of a hurricane and exclaim in joy that the storm has passed.
The US taxpayer will never recover its investment in GM. obama turned over effective day to day control of GM to the very same unions that were such a large part of the reason it went under in the first place, and now obama is pushing GM to make "green cars", a foolish idea that will require that the US taxpayer will be heavily subsidizing each GM green car sold.
The government is also using GM in a big way in its aggressive policy of global asset and income redistribution by encouraging GM to "invest" in building new plants in China, Mexico, and whatever other third world countries that obama favors at the moment. Kenya may be high on the list to make the Volt so we can even more heavily subsidize the sales of that true "money pit" in Africa. Cuba and Venezuela are probably high on the list also.
All these actions by the obama administration, plus the fact that the government will be meddling in all future GM decisions and subsidizing all of its financing and rebate programs, together guarantee that the US taxpayer will be actively subsidizing GM forever, and we that we will never recover our losses.
Chrysler will be an almost total writeoff, but if that is the case, in the long run that means that Chrysler will ultimately cost the US taxpayer far less than they will shell out for GM.
It is also interesting that the Government appears to be actively promoting Government Motors against other automobile companies who produce cars in America and gainfully employ many Americans without any subsidies, and that seems to be especially true for Toyota. The government hyped "gas pedal of death" now appears to have been a government manufactured scare tactic that had massive help from the main stream press. The problem with the sticking gas pedal now turns out to be non-existent. Toyota should sue the government for damages.
The most important "reform" that must be done to protect our economic and banking system is to return to where retail banks were required to be totally separated from investment banks.
Retail (commercial) banks are those which provide to individual consumers and corporations all the common banking services such as checking, savings, car loans, credit cards, business loans, and some mortgages. Investment banks handle financial markets transactions such as mergers, acquisitions, initial and secondary stock offerings, and bond marketing.
Until the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, there was a strict prohibition that prevented banks from doing anything pertaining to investment banking, including participation in stock and bond market brokerage activity. Conversely, investment banks were strictly prohibited from accepting deposits or engaging in any other retail banking activity.
After the stock market crash in 1929, it was determined that the one of the primary causes of all the bank failures across the nation (20% of all banks) which resulted in the Great Depression was that many banks were deeply involved in stock market speculation which resulted in huge losses. At that time, there was no separation between retail banks and investment banks. In 1933 Congress enacted the Glass-Steagall Act which erected a steel wall of separation between the two, and because of that our banking system became much more sound and stable than it is now.
That wall should never have been taken down. Retail banks should never have been allowed to do anything else, especially engaging in investment banking or stock brokerage activities. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, ending that strict division between the two and that was the initial step that ended up with the near meltdown failure of our banking system in 2008.
We must restore the separation of retail banks and investment banks -- our banking system cannot survive without doing so. When the steel wall between the two was taken down in 1999, the resulting meltdown of the finance and banking system proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Taking it down was a very bad decision that must be reversed -- the wall must restored.
Somewhere along the line bankers forgot that many people don't know how to manage their money, particularly when it came to debt incurred from the use of credit.
And somewhere along that same line, the bankers themselves forgot how to manage their money.
...no, however using that time constructively can reveal the truth about what happened and (hopefully) prevent another crisis from forming again in the future.
I know you do not believe it, but I think that "another crisis" is already fully upon us.
There is no time right now for the blame game, which is utterly fruitless anyway because everybody's opinion is already set in stone -- no is going to change their mind at this point.
As a nation, we have to face the crisis that is engulfing us right now, and leave the past in the past.
Anyone reading the FOMC's statement today should be scared -- they are seriously concerned about deflation. A lot of us already knew that and have long expected deflation to rear its head before all of this is over.
In reality, I suspect the FOMC has long expected it also.
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