America’s Commodity Crisis - 2010 Edition

by Phil - March 5th, 2010 7:07 pm

Ouch!

We did not expect to break higher this week. After a stellar week last week where we had 49 winners in 56 trades, I’m dreading this week’s review as I really feel like my picks were too bearish overall. Of course, the bulk of our trading is in bullish long-term positions that are doing very well but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to win the short game as well. As I said at the close of last week’s review: "I’ll be in a foul mood if we have a commodity rally that moves the Dow up on Monday but it will be my own fault - as I often say to members - CASH is so much more flexible!" And you know what - we did have a commodity rally and I AM in a foul mood!

Commodities are a TAX. They are the worst kind of tax because they flatly (not progressively) charge every man woman and child in this country more money for the same food, fuel, shelter and clothing that they had to have last week in order to live. It doesn’t matter if those people are trying to save or trying to tighten their belts or trying to get out of debt - high commodity prices are a shake-down that rips money out of the pockets of the middle class and funnels it to the very, very small class of commodity producers, commodity speculators and the people who finance them and collect the fees.

Over 99% of the people in this country do not own mines or oil wells (and I’m not counting small farmers because they are literally raped by speculators and bankers, often leaving them worse-off than the consumers) or huge plantations and they do not buy futures contracts on margin with cash they borrow at prime plus 0.5% nor do they own tankers filled with 2M barrels of crude that they arbitrage along the crack spread, looking for an opportune moment to deliver their goods (hopefully during a crisis) at a maximum profit.

So 99% of the people in this country don’t even own a commodity ETF - they have no way to profit from high commodity prices and they need to eat, and they need to buy clothing and have shelter and they need fuel to heat or cool their homes and go from place to place. There is a word for people like that, at…

The Global Warming Religion - A Modern Day Crusade: Do You select The Cause or Does the Cause Select You?

by ilene - November 23rd, 2009 2:15 pm

This is another must-read post by Mish on science vs. propaganda. Unfortunately it seems that propaganda trumps science, at least long enough to cause immense damage. - Ilene

The Global Warming Religion - A Modern Day Crusade: Do You select The Cause or Does the Cause Select You?

Courtesy of Mish

I received a lot of emails in response to Beware The Ice Age Cometh: Hackers Prove Global Warming Is A Scam

Many were from religious zealots of global warming theory, and as you might surmise they were not printable.

A few common sense comments came my way suggesting that the hackers or insiders (I believe the latter) did not prove global warming was a scam, only that that there is proof scammers are involved in global warming.

I have to admit that is true. Apologies offered. That admission aside, even more damning data has surfaced in regards to data manipulation.

The site Watts Up With That? has this interview with Dr. Tim Ball

It seems Dr. Tim Ball was aware of the data manipulation but could not prove it. Here is a partial transcript but I assure you the video is worth listening to entirely.

"[The Emails] confirm suspicions that I have had in 30 years of working in climate science that I saw the hijacking of climate science particularly by computer modelers and then by a small group of people associated with the intergovernmental panel on climate change. The difficulty was that even though I sensed there was these thing going on, proving it is extremely difficult. But now with the exposure of these public files it is not only a smoking gun, it’s a battery of machine guns. … On A global scale it’s frightening. This group of people not only controlled the Hadley Center which controls the global data on temperatures, so that the global temperature record is in their hands, they also control the IPCC. … The IPCC is the basis in all governments for the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and so on. ….. The problem they had is they kept saying the 20th century and the latter part of it is the warmest ever. And of course skeptics like myself [and several other names] were saying it was warmer 1000 years ago when the Vikings were in Iceland and Greenland and that’s why they decided they had to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and they achieved that with the hockey stick.…

Tags: Al Gore, Cap and Trade, Crusade, Global warming, Global Warming Religion, interview with Dr. Tim Ball, Propaganda, scam, science, Watts Up With That?

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Shocked, Shocked to Find That Fraud is Going on in Here

by ilene - November 22nd, 2009 6:03 am

Excellent post, ep’s take on "climate-gate," and the corruption of science by politics. - Ilene

Shocked, Shocked to Find That Fraud is Going on in Here

Courtesy of ep at finem respice/reflection on consequences

The Really Big News™ is actually that there is no really big news. Much is being made of the recent hack of the Hadley Climatic Research Center (the "CRU") whereby over a thousand emails along with documents as well as data and code were lifted and published to an FTP site before being linked to by "The Air Vent" blog and then… the world.

The leak appears to show climate scientists shaping results, strategizing on how best to conceal data and analysis from the public, planning public relations to get their message out irrespective of the most recent data setbacks, debating the best way to influence the "man on the street," discussing means to deal with critics via the press and otherwise, and reacting with barely contained glee to the news of an opponent’s untimely death. While the general consensus is that the most damaging emails appear to reference the now semi-famous "hockey graph" illustration that has been a favorite of the United Nations (and everyone else pushing radical climate change policy) for a decade, I think something much more insidious (and actually quite ordinary) emerges from between the many subject lines. Rank corruption.

Shock and surprise at the conduct of particular individuals within the CRU seem the order of the day. I’m not quite sure why. If, indeed, the disclosures are genuine (and it certainly appears on first blush that they are) how is it news that "scientists" embroiled in what long ago ceased to be scientific research and now amounts to a political campaign would cut corners, sabotage critics, conceal or even destroy data and analysis, massage results and graphics and otherwise act exactly like politicians, particularly where their careers, the body of their life’s work and their continuing income stream were at risk?

It isn’t of course. They are politicians.

The surprise should be that something like this wasn’t revealed earlier. (Well it was, but no one seems to count the glaring errors in Al Gore’s public presentation as relevant for some reason- polish always seems to trump precision).

Normally, I would point out that context can shape a lot with respect to snippets of emails (just ask the Bear Stearns prosecutors) but given the completeness of this body of data, that seems a rather…

Tags: Al Gore, Anthropomorphic Conceit, climate scientists, emails, Global warming, Hadley Climate Research Center, politicians, scientific research

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China Admonishes US Monetization, Sees a Hard Fall for the Dollar Over Time

by ilene - September 7th, 2009 11:59 pm

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Jesse elaborates on the Telegraph’s article on China and US money printing. - Ilene

China Admonishes US Monetization, Sees a Hard Fall for the Dollar Over Time

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

China is saying many things which are true.

They are also omitting many things that are key to the cause of our financial problems. They bought the silence of a succession of US political administrations over their blatant currency manipulation in support of trade subsidies, including the outright contributions to Clinton and Gore, and the cronyism with Bush.

China is a significant part of the problem, and like so many dogs that Wall Street helps to set up to further their gains, this one refuses to wag its tail on command.

The blowback on the US dollar will be significant.

Telegraph UK
China alarmed by US money printing
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Cernobbio, Italy
9:06PM BST 06 Sep 2009

The US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.

Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to "credit easing".

"We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.

"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said. (China is already a strong buyer in the precious metals markets, and is encouraging its citizens to buy gold and silver as well - Jesse)

China’s reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world’s largest.

"Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets," he added. (The short interest being held by three or four US banks is grown remarkably large. As Barrick gold claimed in their lawsuit with JP Morgan by Blanchard, they are being backstopped by the US government. Larry Summers has been…

Tags: Al Gore, Bill Clinton, bubble, CHINA, Chinese yuan, command economy, Mr. Cheng, US money printing

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Banksters Love Cap-and-Trade

by ilene - July 4th, 2009 1:09 pm

Deceit, otherwise known as burying unrelated provisions in bills at the last moment, hoping no one will see them, like the Lilly Protection Act in the Homeland Security Bill, reflects very poorly on Congress but appears to be the way things are done. - Ilene

Banksters Love Cap-and-Trade

The well-placed and well-connected are set to make trillions off new climate bill; economic collapse about to accelerate

Courtesy of James Corbett
The Corbett Report

The sweeping new bill which just passed the House last Friday, the Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, is ostensibly about climate change, but it is in fact a bill of staggering economic ramifications that is going to accelerate the takeover of the economy by the well-placed financiers who have already plundered the Treasury and the Fed of $12+ trillion and counting. It was rushed through the House in the tradition of such nightmarish legislation as the Patriot Act and the banker bailout of last October: hundreds of pages were added to it at the last minute and it was humanly impossible for anyone to have read it before they voted on it. This, of course, is exactly what Obama promised his administration would never allow to happen, and for good reason; bills passed in this manner are always the result of fear and panic and inevitably results in legislation that would never be passed upon sober second thought.

In this case, the rush to pass this new bill was an attempt to stop any scrutiny of a plan that is going to utterly transform the American economy, further centralize control of citizens’ lives in the hands of unaccountable federal bureaucrats and complete the transfer of the American economy from Main Street to Wall Street. And all of this in the name of fighting a threat which itself is a demonstrable fraud. In short, the banksters and bureaucrats are sharpening their knives, preparing to butcher what’s left of the carcass of the United States, and a good portion of the public are not only willing to allow it but are actually clamoring for it.

The first thing that needs to be understood about the brand new trillion dollar carbon-trading commodities market that will be brought into existence if this bill passes the Senate is that it is a ripoff designed by and for the very corporate interests the environmentalists claim to be fighting. For an historical precedent of what is being proposed under this cap-and-trade scam one…

Tags: Al Gore, Cap and Trade, Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, Global warming, The Corbett Report

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America’s Commodity Crisis - 2010 Edition

The Global Warming Religion - A Modern Day Crusade: Do You select The Cause or Does the Cause Select You?

The Global Warming Religion - A Modern Day Crusade: Do You select The Cause or Does the Cause Select You?

Shocked, Shocked to Find That Fraud is Going on in Here

Shocked, Shocked to Find That Fraud is Going on in Here

China Admonishes US Monetization, Sees a Hard Fall for the Dollar Over Time

China Admonishes US Monetization, Sees a Hard Fall for the Dollar Over Time

Banksters Love Cap-and-Trade

Banksters Love Cap-and-Trade

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