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...and only ~ 5 pts below the previous close and only ~ 1 pt below the 10 SMA.
Two successive days down on the NDX and showing some short term topping action, but the lower uptrend line is ~ 20 pts lower and thus still intact. NDX typically *leads* the broader market up *and* down. Today may simply have been a cash out day to make repo coupon payments. Except for the AM runup, NDX is a whopping 10 pts below the open.
Messiah worship at its finest - Seen flying at the UAW Local in Kokomo, IN (*not* Photoshopped)...
Not to butt in, but then again, why not? Who appointed Winston Smith the arbiter of Truth anyway??? That's a pretty hubristic tag line...
Thanks for the tip.
I am sure in Chuckie's jaded mind no one is more important than Congress, so why should *anyone* be allowed to make more money? Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg. You eat well for a meal or two, but then what??? What Chuckie forgets is the multiplier effect of a well-run company and that without them, where is he going to get all the trillions he and his socialist friends want to spend on all those "porky" amendments that he asserts Americans don't really care about. Does he thing top executives are going to take a 90% pay cut and keep on doing what they are doing? While we're at it, let's put a windfall tax on the annual incomes of movie stars, professional atletes, and music performers.
I fully expected 3Q earnings to be uniformly horrible, but with a couple of exceptions, perhaps I underestimated companies' abilities to cut costs further by firing workers while maintaining a semblance of profitability and to feed into the illusion that the recession is "over". Retail stocks may yet fail to impress, but the fix may be in there as well. Maybe if anyone reported really bad numbers (other than GE, who is already on their knees in the Oval Office), Obama would threaten to take them over. Even today's profit taking selloff has been relatively mild and orderly in the wake of the MSFT overdone bounce. Haven't seen any cats lying down with dogs or blood in the streets quite yet.
The problem is that the socialists see the incredible wealth and prosperity that capitalism has created and think that it would be so much better if all that wealth were spread around more equitably. What they fail to recognize is that under the Marxist “redistribution” model that Obama and his minions subscribe to, without the risk/reward incentive, much of the wealth would never have been created in the first place. Unfortunately, if they can’t see that for themselves, they will never understand. When the lollipop takers outnumber the ones who are taxed to pay for the lollipops, the nation is doomed. Sadly, we are just about there. 2010 may be the last chance to correct this horrible mistake before more drastic measures are necessary.
Those in the military who are pro-Obama and would gun down fellow citizens on his orders are an *extremely* small minority, and would most likely be neutralized by their own long before it came to an armed confrontation with civilians.
Obama Explained - The Saints of Socialism and the Religion of Radicalism
By Daniel Greenfield - Thursday, October 22, 2009
(original link with photos here: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/)
A magazine features a cover photo of Obama with a halo beaming behind his head in the likeness of the murals of medieval saints. Women faint on hearing his speeches. He delivers those speeches with lines and cadences borrowed from his mentor, a radical clergyman. “In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He’s sort of god. He’s going to bring all different sides together,” proclaimed Newsweek editor Evan Thomas.
Barack Obama is of course a messiah, one of the latest in a long line of socialist messiahs, men whom socialists and liberals believed were meant to radically reform the world, to teach people to overcome selfishness and greed, and unite as one.
The phenomenon of the quasi-religious worship of Obama is only shocking to those who fail to understand that socialism is itself a religion. Henri de Saint-Simon, the French 18th century thinker who coined the term socialism, described it as “The New Christianity”. Like many early socialists he envisioned its ideas as a tool for returning to primitive Christianity. The famous 19th century historian Renan explicitly made the comparison, writing, “If you want to get an idea of what the first Christian communities were like, take a look at a local branch of the International Workingmen’s Association.” The Association is better known as the First International, one of whose members was Karl Marx.
The original name of the Communist party that Karl Marx would go on to head was The League of the Just, whose stated goal was, “the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one’s neighbour, equality and justice”. The same essential principles sum up the ideals of the Religious Left today which define religion in terms of social justice. Of course the end result of this process wipes everything from the blackboard, including God and the Bible, which become nothing more than props for socialist preaching. And that is exactly what the religion of socialism looks like.
Communism simply rejected one god, in favor of human divinities worshiped for bringing social justice to mankind
Communism was never atheistic, it simply rejected one god, in favor of human divinities worshiped for bringing social justice to mankind, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the whole gang of crimson murderers and thieves. These men formed cults of personality around them because they embodied the theology of socialism as a vital active work on earth. To socialist Christians they embodied the message of Jesus. To socialist Jews, the message of the prophets—stripped of anything but social justice.
But what sort of religion is socialism exactly? What drives and motivates it? Socialism views individualism as sinful and unity as the solution to human evils. The brotherhood of all men, a phrase that resounds from the French Revolution down to Saint-Simon and to the Bolsheviks, idealizes a collectivist struggle and tyranny under the guiding hand of the great socialists.
Saint Simon, the original socialist, did not envision the common man running things. Instead he foresaw socialism as being overseen by “Men of Science” who would direct the industrialists on how to run society for the benefit of all. Two centuries later, virtually the same dogma runs through the administration of Barack Obama, with its manifold Czars and Harvard graduates directing everything from banks to car companies.
They are the Saints of Socialism, presumed to know better by virtue of their commitment to socialism, just as nothing could be built in Communist China without crediting Mao’s red book as its inspiration, and Stalin was presumed to know all there was to know every field better than its practitioners. The supernatural competence credited to Obama by his supporters must be seen in that light.
The paradox of socialism is that it demands equality for all, and yet insists that the common man is completely unfit to make his own decisions. Their argument is that individual man is too flawed, too bent on seeking personal advancement and wealth, and too little given to considering the needs of society as a whole, a flaw that he can only overcome in concert with others as part of a larger organization dedicated to the betterment of man. That same line of propaganda runs through the talking points of every socialist agenda, from health care nationalization to environmentalism to multilateralism. One bad. Many good.
The religion of organization is the theology of socialism. Only united toward common goals are men anything more than selfish hoarders. And since men individually are selfish, only transcendent individuals who can unselfishly see the larger vision and steer the world toward it, can be allowed to lead. Men who are “special”, who play the role of the transformative messianic figure, smashing political and economic obstacles to create a new world order.
Or as disgraced former Presidential candidate Gary Hart put it;
"He is in fact an agent of transformation. He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians, and this makes him seem elusive to the conventional press and the traditional politicians. His instinct for the moment and the times is orders of magnitude more powerful than the experience claimed by others. Experience in the old ways is irrelevant experience. In an age of great transformation, experience of the past is worthless because it is a barrier to the breakthrough gesture."
The past is worthless, so the transformative figure need not have any actual qualifications. Experience is irrelevant because it is rooted in the past that is going to be demolished anyway. Who needs to know how many states there are or when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In the brave new America, there will be no states and Columbus Day will be the new Nakba.
The idea of the transformative figure plays a key role for radicals, who often have tossed aside even liberal theology in favor of radicalism. Religion to them is social change, their saints were martyred while protesting for the oppressed, and their messiah is the avatar of social change, a man who shatters the links to the old ways, ushering in a new society and new ways of thinking.
Chris Matthews was not being obsequious when he proclaimed, “This is the New Testament”. He was literally having a socialist religious experience. One that many others in the media have experienced as well. When your religion is social change, the man who embodies that change is the messiah. His words are a New Testament, setting aside the old, in favor of the new. A new world order. Hope, and most of all change.
I have spoken mostly about Europe, but American radicalism also has a long history of creating such artificial manmade supernatural religions right down to the modern New Age movement. Spiritualism, promoted by liberal theologians in liberal Churches, once played a major role in America, tying in even the 19th century George Bush, one of the country’s most famous ministers, and the great, great granduncle of George W. Bush.
In the 19th century radical Quakers like Isaac Post, promoted the predecessors of Oprah, namely the Fox sisters or Ascha Sprague, who traveled around the country, appearing on stages and claiming to communicate with the spirit world. In the process they also promoted everything from evolution to feminism and abolitionism while picking the pockets of gullible audiences. Their publications boasted names such as Banner of Light and The People’s World.
While it is easy to dismiss Spiritualism as silly superstition today, in the 19th century they were known as Christian Rationalists, because they had essentially reduced religion to a science. And while that science was a collection of lunatic nonsense inspired by a man suffering from delusions, its premise denied the unknowable, replacing conventional theology, with one based on animism, spiritual transformation and social change—elements heavily present in the Oprah crowd today.
“We’re all here to come together – to appreciate our uniqueness and to treasure our diversity, and we’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . The reason I love Barack Obama is because he is an evolved leader who can bring evolved leadership to our country.” - Oprah Winfrey
The rhetoric is virtually the same, backed by the old Spiritualist notions that we are here to move on to a higher plane and a time of social transportation is here. Combined of course with socialism’s driving force, the evolved leader who can embody that social change.
The New Age movement was not a radical break with the past, no more than Oprah’s rebranded Tolle material is, both are successors of Spiritualism’s radical past. The original version of the Spiritualist’s Communion of Saints, in which the dead would return to uplift the living, has faded away. Along with the Fox Sisters knuckle rapping messages from the other side. But in its place has come environmentalism, which like Spiritualism fuses animism with radical politics, and is fed by the New Age movement.
The Spiritualists believed that the dead had returned with a message for mankind to cease its selfish ways and ascend to a new level. Environmentalists preach that the earth is alive and in peril, and calls on us to cease our selfish ways and ascend to a new way of living. Both mask supernatural dogma with a veneer of science. As absurd as Arthur Conan Doyle’s search for fairies might seem today, he believed that he was applying strict scientific methodology to an important issue, no more and no less so than any environmentalist today.
The common element is transformation. The theology of socialism is one that promises transformation through collective action. Change is its religious experience. And those who teach the masses to Hope for Change, for the great evolutionary revolution, are its saints and messiahs.
"Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh…
Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence." - Ezra Klein, The American Prospect
It is doubtful that any spiritualist could have better expressed this same set of ideas. The idea of Obama as a force that elevates, that causes you to experience yourself as an agent of historical change and that finally teaches us to transcend by envisioning an ideal America as a socialist kingdom of heaven on earth, where no one is hungry or sick or discriminated against… and the government led by him takes care of us all.
Not the word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh. Flesh is weak. Needy, greedy and selfish. Socialism is doctrine triumphing over humanity, Orwell’s boot on the face of humanity, keeping us down for our own good. And if any of us have the gall to feel bad about it, that is where the preachers of the Socialist Word come in, to “inspire” and “elevate” us to be better cogs in the collectivist machine. To be agents of revolutionary social change.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. Hope and Change. Some must sacrifice for the good of all.
Hmmmm, the "Net neutrality" initiative???
Instead of a "tingle up your leg", sort of makes your blood boil, doesn't it? What continues to amaze me is that so many are just fine with it, even when accurately characterized and identified for what it is, i.e. socialism. "Well, it's just fairer that way." By and large, these are the people who faint at the sight of their own blood. If it comes to that, I for one will be more than happy to help them get over it.
The ballot box is the first choice, but the price of a bullet is cheap if it defends your freedom and liberties from those who would take them from you. Socialists beware, you have no f**king idea what you are dealing with...
Do you know where I can get a deal on 9mm parabellum, .45 ACP, .30-06 (220gr), and .38 Special +P (hot loads) brass jacketed hollow points?
Re: the Great Depression II, next week, if not tomorrow, you should start looking for land with timber that can be cut for fuel and enough cleared space to grow vegetables and chickens. When the collapse comes, we will quickly revert to an agrarian subsistence existence.
You simply can't print trillions in fiat currency without it affecting it's value relative to things of intrinsic worth. You would think with the examples of the Weimar Republic, Argentina, and Zimbabwe we would have learned that lesson.
*Now* we have a lower low, unless the bulls jump on this big time in the next 5 min...
Apparently, just to stock up on more wood...
Today, for example, at least so far, would not qualify as a lower low.
You should know that a single break of a trendline is not sufficient to define a new trend. It *may* be the first indication that the trend is about to change, but it is just the first data point. To have a new downtrend, you would then need to get a second, lower data point (i.e. a lower low), and preferrably a third for confirmation.
Some see horsies and duckies in the clouds, and some just see clouds. Even over the last 12 trading days, what I see on the NDX is mostly up. Do you think the Fed gives a whit what you or I think the market *should* do???
Sorry, one red bar doesn't do it for the NDX. No downtrend in sight here...
Wasn't it funny how he wouldn't answer the guy who did the latest documentary about whether or not the polar bears were "in peril"? Seems the polar bear population is actually increasing, which of course does not fit nicely into Al's schtick...
When Big Al left office, he and Tipper (the couple who inspired "Love Story"), were worth ~ $2M. Today, he is worth well over $100M, so for Al, this is very much his livelihood.
BTW, my wife went to Vanderbilt Law School with Big Al, and from her recollection, he was as dumb as a box of rocks back then as well, so it is no wonder he doesn't quite get the "cause and effect" that the scientific method demands.
Global Warming Swindle - I apologize if I may have posted this here once before, but it bears repeating...
We need alternative energy (biofuels, wind, solar) as a supplement to increased domestic production from all sources (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) for one primary reason: energy independence from the terrorist sympathizer regimes of the world.
However, the whole global warming/climate change canard is not only bad science, but is the biggest hoax ever put forth on an undereducated public whose eyes glaze over when they hear the word “science”. Please check out the below video link in its entirety and then validate the following salient points...
http://www.garagetv.be/video-galerij/blancostemrecht/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle_Documentary_Film.aspx
1) The scientific method *requires* that when there is presumed “cause and effect”, the cause must actually precede the effect.
2) Historical CO2 levels are "recorded" in the air bubbles trapped in the polar ice. Core samples reveal that there is in fact a close correlation between CO2 and global temperature over time, but when examined on a fine enough scale, the rise in temperature consistently *precedes* the rise in CO2 by several hundred years.
3) The two gases most responsible for the greenhouse effect are CO2 and water vapor, both of which are naturally occurring and hence are not "pollutants". In fact, plant life actually *dies* without CO2. The rise in global temperature can be directly attributed to increased levels of solar radiation which warms the earth and causes the oceans to give off more CO2 and water vapor, hence the observed “lag”.
4) To date, there is no known method for controlling the level of solar activity, although many think we should cripple our economy with cap and tax and/or spend a couple trillion dollars to invent something. Good luck with that.
5) The climate has been warming since the peak of the last ice age ~ 10,000 years ago, long before the puny effect of humans had *any* discernable impact on the planet.
6) Those who support the global warming/climate change arguments typically have hidden agendas (e.g. getting my research funded, limiting further development, pulling in big lecture fees, etc.).
7) Al Gore is a total idiot.
Well, treaties require ratification by 67 votes in the Senate, so absent that, he can agree to anything he wants and it won't matter. The clock is ticking, and he has ~ 1 year...
Absolutely. Even though his primary focus was keeping us safe from terrorism, and was largely successful in that endeavor, George W. will go down in history as the second worst president ever. The worst will go to BHO for bankrupting the country in the name of social justice/redistribution of wealth.
Unless you are capable of critical thought, a skillful liar can deceive you without your even knowing it. Observe the master in action...
http://www.theospark.net/2009/09/video-7-lies-in-under-2-minutes.html
My favorite BHO lies…
“This bill will not add one dime to the deficit” – which really means they intend to tax the hell out of everything and everyone as necessary to pay for it, including cutting $500B from Medicare, and rationing/denying care to the elderly based on QALY (i.e. death panels, since “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), because they have no idea what the real long term costs will be, but we just need to “do it” anyway.
“If you like your current healthcare, you can keep it” – which really means *if* your employer doesn’t cancel your current plan, pay the penalty, and dump you into the Government plan and/or you are willing to continue to pay the higher Government-imposed fees for it.
“If you make less than $250K (or $200K, or $150K, or whatever because the number keeps shrinking), your taxes will not increase” – which really means that even though he *might* not raise your *income* taxes (until he is “forced” to by the burgeoning debt he has run up), the price of most other things you pay for will increase drastically (healthcare, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, electricity, basically anything that requires energy to produce and bring to market), but those technically are not “taxes”.
“Illegal aliens are not covered under this plan” – Well, I am not sure what an “illegal alien” is, since the preferred term seems to be “undocumented Democrat”. However, neither does the plan say they *must* be denied treatment, so when they show up in emergency rooms with GSWs or whatever, do you think they will be turned away? Our Constitution provides for equal treatment under the law (due process) for *persons*, irrespective of citizenship status, so whether or not they are “allowed” to buy insurance under the plan is a canard (and probably not such a bad idea, since they will be receiving treatment anyway). In any regard, when they are all granted amnesty, there will be no “illegals”, so problem solved.
No arguments here. Just like gold and other commodities, there is an intrinsic component and a speculative component of the price. Also, with people still losing jobs to the tune of ~ 500K per month, regardless of whether that number is decreasing, it means unemployment is still *rising*, and that means more mortgage foreclosures, more credit card defaults, and lackluster spending going forward, especially on big ticket items. When consumer spending is 70% of the economy, that dog doesn't hunt for long when ~ 17% of the country is out of work (yes, the *real* unemployment figure is much higher than the BLS's official number of ~ 10%, since many have given up looking or have taken part time minimum wage work). Of course, the socialist Obama and his cronies will want to spend more of your unborn grandchildren's tax dollars on more pork projects to make up the difference.
I frequently travel a ~ 15 mile stretch of I-40 between Nashville and Cookeville that was recently repaved with part of the Stimulus money, or so the prominently posted signs proclaimed. The thing was, we don't get a lot of freezing/thawing road damage down here and so the old pavement was still in perfectly good shape, but I guess it was our turn at the trough anyway. No doubt there were some union highway construction jobs that were "saved". A hearty "thanks" to all you hard working taxpayers who elected this Joker and band of idiots to spend our money for us.
It isn't that oil and other commodities are too expensive, but rather that the value of the dollar is being systematically destroyed by Government spending on an unprecedented scale and a Fed that is creating fiat money to cover the debt (monetizing).
This is a very eye-opening chart, but the story it tells is not quite the whole picture. In that gold (and other commodities as well) is a market unto itself, the important question is, is the price of gold up the same percentage over the same time period as the value of the dollar is down? In other words, the value of gold in dollars is not only a function of its intrinsic value relative to the dollar, but also its speculative value. It is the latter that you have to be cautious of before you make a headlong rush to it as a hyperinflation hedge. Have you wondered why gold is being so hyped on TV lately? It isn't because it is cheap. It might not be a bad plan, however, to average into it over time.
Here's another Denniger video. Pretty sobering stuff...
Karl Denninger video - Proof Bernanke lied...
Congressional letter to Bernanke...
Dear Chairman Bernanke:
In testimony before the House Budget Committee, you called on Congress to "begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance." We support your call to action and ask the Federal Reserve to back that policy by terminating your recent practice of purchasing Treasury securities.
We know that the Congress should cut spending to reduce borrowing. We are committed to that goal. We also know that the Fed's current policy of creating dollars for use in covering U.S. debts is a new and highly risky policy that threatens to debase the dollar. Currently, the Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt is borrowing over $160 billion a week to finance our deficit. Lenders to the U.S. government are expressing growing reluctance to buy more U.S. debt. Credit rating agencies are ready to cut Britian's AAA rating - the U.S. may be next.
Creating dollars to cover debts gives markets a short term boost at the expense of debasing the dollar and triggering inflation. To date, the Federal Reserve has already created over $130 billion to cover $35 billion of long-term debt and over $100 billion of short-term securities.
Key policy makers among U.S. creditors, especially in China and Japan, increasingly doubt the wisdom of this new policy. Most investors now see that the United States has embarked on a policy of dollar inflation in a short-sighted attempt to repay old debts with newly-created dollars.
By fully repaying revolutionary war debts incurred by the United States, President Washington granted his country the gift of confidence in the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government. Unless we put a stop to the new policy of creating money to cover debts, we will steal our future and end the founding father's gift of financial integrity.
We urge you to rapidly end this new policy of buying U.S. debt with newly created dollars.
Sincerely,
Mark Kirk
Member of Congress
Leonard Lance
Member of Congress
Erik Paulsen
Member of Congress
Dan Burton
Member of Congress
Concur, but I don't think we'll see it. The Fed hasn't turned off the fiat money spigot yet (GS/JPM earnings were primarily due to cheap (near 0%) Fed "dollars", and too many would-be bulls and MMs have missed the run and still have a ton of Cash to put in. Except for smart guys like Poker, the deception is intact, so any pullbacks will be shallow and brief. NDX is currently ~ 20 pts off yesterday's high. Whoop de do...
I see 1095.50 at 0330 (~ 30 min after the European markets opened?) in the overnight session...
Hmmmm, curious. GS reports similar numbers to JPM and the market throws up on its shoes (pre-market). Maybe guidance sucked? Go figure...
EW isn't the only market prognostication method Obama has screwed up. If you can daytrade the short term OB/OS conditions you can do fine, but taking a Short on any given day and riding it to the next signal has been a fool's errand the last several months.
I admire your tenacity and perserverance. You will eventually find one that fits.
SP futures hit 1085.75 in the premarket.
Qs popped .40 on Intel announcement. Good Short scalp opportunity, IMHO...