Wednesday – Working Toward the Clampdown

by Phil - November 24th, 2010 8:10 am

No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall ’cause government’s to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D’you know that you can use it?

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there’s nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you 

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown – The Clash

Portugal is having a national strike today and labor unions in Ireland are planning “mass mobilization” in protest of planned spending cuts, with a march in Dublin on Nov. 27.

Portugal said in September it would cut the wage bill by 5 percent for public workers earning more than 1,500 euros ($2005) a month, freeze hiring and raise value-added taxes by 2 percentage points to 23 percent to help reduce a deficit that amounted to 9.3 percent of gross domestic product last year. The measures are included in the government’s 2011 spending plan, which faces a final vote in parliament on Nov. 26.  “The strike arises in a context of a set of measures that are quite significant and have social impact,” said Carlos Firme, a director at Lisbon-based Banif Banco de Investimento SA. “It’s natural that there are demonstrations of discontent.”

I’m sure King George’s Bankster buddies told him the same thing when the American colonists expressed their "discontent" – Don’t worry my King, there’s sure to be some grumbling from the peasants but your stimulus package is working wonderfully – now come outside and check out the golden horseshoes I put on my carriage team!  

We were able to add a little bling to our own rides as those QQQQ $53 puts I told you about in yesterday’s morning post, which we picked up in Member chat on Monday at .45, opened at .75 and flew on up to $1.25 (up another 110% from Monday’s entry) and pulled back to finish the day at .98.  We were, of course, very happy to take a daily double off the table because that’s all you need to stay ahead of the game.  Even if you are just playing with $450 (10…

Tags: Bernanke, CHINA, Dollar, Euro, inflation, Ireland, OPEN, Portugal, QQQQ, russia, Spain

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The Russian Bear Awakens

by ilene - July 11th, 2010 4:16 pm

The Russian Bear Awakens

Courtesy of Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse 

Today most Americans consider the United States to be "the sole remaining superpower" – absolutely unparalleled economically and militarily.  But the truth is not anything close to that.  As we detailed in a previous article, China has become a very dominant economic and military superpower.  But there is another world superpower that the American people and the American media are not taking seriously.  The Russian Bear has awakened, and yet most people in the U.S. think of Russia as a Cold War opponent that we "defeated" and which is now a shell of its former self.  The recent Russian spy case is a perfect example of the tremendous lack of respect which the American public has for Russia these days.  It is almost as if the media is saying: "Oh look, isn’t it so cute that these little Russians are spying on us as if the Cold War was still going on?"  But the truth is that it is a massive error to underestimate Russia.  Today it is a fact that Russia is stronger both economically and militarily than it ever has been before.     

You doubt this?

Quick – name the number one oil producer in the world.

Here’s a hint – it is not Saudi Arabia.

It is Russia.

Russia has also recently become the number one oil exporter in the world.

Not only that, but Russia is also the number one exporter of natural gas in the world.…

Tags: cold war, oil exporter, russia, Vladimir Putin

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by ilene - July 9th, 2010 12:51 am

MOSCOW ART CURATORS FACE 3 YEARS IN PRISON FOR CONTROVERSIAL RELIGIOUS IMAGERY

Courtesy of Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds 

Via Christian Nightmares 

 
Does a current censorship trial in Moscow indicate a return to the old Soviet ways of doing things, although it’s a newly resurgent Russian Orthodox Church we’re talking about here? A 2007 exhibit featuring some controversial art (such as the painting above, and another of Mickey Mouse as Lenin) was supposed to be againstcensorship of the arts, but has instead turned its curators into the poster boys for religious censorship. Now, after a 14-month trial, Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev face up to three years in prison:

Even Russia’s culture minister says the two men did nothing to break the law against inciting religious hatred.

But the prosecutors refuse to back down and have demanded a three-year prison sentence when the judge makes her ruling on July 12.

The exhibit “Forbidden Art” at the Sakharov Museum, a human rights center named after celebrated dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov, featured several paintings with images of Jesus Christ.

In one, Christ appeared to his disciples as Mickey Mouse. In another, of the crucifixion, the head of Christ was replaced by the Order of Lenin medal, the highest award of the Soviet Union.

The directors of the exhibit were unprepared for the amount of hate it has generated in Russia, a country that was considered officially “atheist” during the era of the Soviet Union. Now it appears there is less separation between church and state in Russia than in the US of A. I doubt that painting would merit more that a few disgruntled remarks, even in the deep South!

Moscow curators face 3 years in prison (Associated Press)

Tags: art, art gallery, Christianity, Mickey Mouse, religious imagery, russia, separation of Church and State

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Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?

by ilene - May 17th, 2010 3:21 am

Will The EU’s Collapse Push The World Deeper Into The Great Depression II?

Courtesy of Timothy D. Naegele[1]

“For want of a nail . . .  the kingdom was lost.”[2] Will Greece’s debt crisis lead to a Greek debt default and the collapse of the euro and an ensuing collapse of the 27-member European Union (or EU), and trigger the next round of crashes that will be described by economic historians decades from now as “the Great Depression II”?[3] The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo, Serbia brought the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia to a head.  In turn, it is said this triggered a chain of international events that embroiled Russia and the major European powers; and World War I broke out in Europe.[4] Will Greece’s debt crisis set a series of events in motion that sends the world into a downward economic spiral of unfathomable proportions?

For years, I have wrestled with the question of whether the Europe would collapse economically, politically, socially and militarily.  Sounds absurd, you say?  The countries are too interwoven and mutually dependent now for that to happen, and at the very least they will muddle along, making the worst of the best situations, and achieving the lowest common denominator?  The United States of Europe, they are not and never will be, but they have achieved a degree of cohesiveness that I never thought was likely years ago.

I believed jealousies and rivalries and, yes, the hatreds of the past would linger barely beneath the surface, coming unglued at the most inopportune times when it really mattered the most.  When the chips were down, I felt the EU would splinter and fall apart; and that its participants and the world would write it off as a noble experiment that failed, much like the League of Nations.  After all, its successor—the United Nations—is considered to be a colossal joke by Americans, many of whom would love to see it shipped to Europe, and its building on the East River in Manhattan bulldozed and turned into a park, or made into co-ops or condominiums.

The bitter hatreds of the past seem to have subsided in Europe though, and it has become a cultural melting pot, more and more.  Airbus was the first tangible sign of economic integration that I never thought would…

Tags: Alan Greenspan, America, American, Archduke Ferdinand, Athens, Austria-Hungary, Bin Laden, CHINA, China's economy, Conservatives, Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, European Union, France, French, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, German Chancellor Merkel, Germans, Germany, Giulio Tremonti, Great Depression, Great Depression II, Greece, Greece's debt crisis, Greek debt default, Greenspan, IMF, International Monetary Fund, League of Nations, Liberal Democrat, Naegele, Nick Clegg, Osama Bin Laden, Prime Minister Cameron, Prime Minister David Cameron, russia, Sarajevo, Serbia, U.N., United Nations, United States Congress, US, Wall Street Journal, World War I

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Doug Casey on the Russian Bear

by ilene - May 5th, 2010 6:05 pm

Doug Casey on the Russian Bear

Courtesy of Casey Research,
Interviewed by Louis James, Conversation with Doug Casey

L: Doug, I’m in Belarus this week, a pit stop to help some of my students with their various business ideas. I’m struggling with my Russian, but getting along. And that has me thinking about Russia’s role on the global economic stage. I know this is something you’ve given some thought to… What do you think? Is Putin out to take over the world? What do investors need to keep in mind?

Doug: Well, the first thing to keep in mind is that any time you’re talking about a large group of people, I think it’s about 150 million in Russia’s case, it’s hard to generalize. Russia makes headlines, being one of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), which are "emerging" economies seen as a sort of wave of the future. But I have to say that Russia doesn’t really belong in this group. We may lose some Russian readers by my saying this, but while Russia has a lot of resources and should have a bright future, I don’t think it will.

L: Whoa, I didn’t see that one coming. Why?

Doug: There are many reasons, and it’s hard to tease out which one is the most important driver, but taking it all together, including Russia’s history and resulting culture, I just don’t see that Russia has The Right Stuff. That culture, which is transmitted explicitly, verbally, and more subtly, attitudinally, is one shaped by centuries of state oppression. It has strong streaks of isolationism, collectivism, and brutal authority. Russia’s long history is full of sadness, fear, and violence. It’s been relatively calm for the last few years, but that’s a drop in the ocean of Russian tears.

L: Hm. They suffered under the Tsars, threw them out, only to get a greater tyranny in the form of a totalitarian socialist regime, which actively suppressed the kind of individual creative virtues that make for success on the global economic stage. I guess I could see that as a cultural handicap…

Doug: Think of it this way – if you keep mowing down the tallest poppies in a field of poppies, pretty soon…

Tags: bond market, Doug Casey, Economy, global economics, global economy, russia, Stock Market

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Monday Madness – 11,000 or Bust!

by Phil - March 29th, 2010 8:15 am

Wheee – here we go! 

The Nikkei ran up to 10,986 this morning and the US futures are flying.  Why?  Who cares – it’s a RALLY and we all love rallies because, if the stock market is rallying then everything must be great.  Things are, in fact SO GREAT that the market doesn’t even care that 35 people were blown to bits on the Moscow subways this morning.  Just in case you are keeping score:  If people are killed in London – Big crash.  If people are killed on a Spanish train – Big crash.  If there is even a scare in New York – Big crash.  2 separate attacks killing 35 people and injuring 65 more in Russia – Big rally.  That’s the New World Order, I guess…

Perhaps we are just getting used to terror attacks but why then, do oil and gold spike and why is there a $30 per barrel "terror premium" in the price of oil if our reaction to an actual terrorist attack in one of the World’s largest cities is to jam the US futures up 0.5%?  Perhaps part of the problem is that oil, like gold doesn’t actually exist.  That’s right – we already know that the NYMEX trades over 4Bn barrels worth of contracts per month and delivers less than 30M – so the physical barrels of oil to the traded number of contracts is a ratio of 1:133 or 0.67%, almost a rounding error to zero.  Well, it turns out that gold is just as bad as last week’s CTFC Public Hearings on Precious Metals reveal gold trading to be nothing more than a huge Ponzi scheme in which there are over 100 times more contracts for gold than there is physical gold.  Here’s a great video of the testimony, and a part 2. 

1,625 tons of gold are mined on an annual basis but the LBMA is trading 20M ounces (625 tons) PER DAY or 150,000 tons a year, which is the sum total of ALL the gold that has EVER been produced in history and roughly 100 times the actual physical float of gold and most of that float is being churned over and over by the various ETFs (see chart) who have been doing 1/3 of the world’s buying for the past 5 years.  

Does the lack of actual gold make the bullion you hold more valuable?  That’s…

Tags: CHINA, Gold, Oil, russia

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Black Swans And The Collapse Of Empires Swimming In Debt

by ilene - March 5th, 2010 4:08 pm

Elaine Supkis passionately takes on Dr. Niall Ferguson. Her words in Niall’s LA Times excerpt are red. – Ilene 

Black Swans And The Collapse Of Empires Swimming In Debt

Courtesy of Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life News 

It is rather curious how people refuse to see obvious things. This is why so many things are ‘unexpected’ or a ’surprise’. People who do see obvious things are called ‘cynics’.  Cynics are the exact opposite of banking gnomes and their ilk.  Cynics disparage wealth and power in order to see reality and truth.  Often, cynics go around telling people, ‘You are doomed’ which makes them party poopers.  But then, often, they are right.  

Cynic – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cynics (Greek: Κυνικο?, Latin: Cynici) were an influential group of philosophers from the ancient school of Cynicism. Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.

The first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, who had been a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BCE. He was followed by Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets of Athens. He took Cynicism to its logical extremes, and came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher. He was followed by Crates of Thebes who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. Cynicism spread with the rise of Imperial Rome in the 1st century, and Cynics could be found begging and preaching throughout the cities of the Empire. It finally disappeared in the late 5th century, although many

…

Tags: Black swans, carry trade, CHINA, collapse of empires, cynics, debt, deflation, Economy, Elaine Supkis, food, houses, industrial military complex, inflation, Interest Rates, japan, Niall Ferguson, red ink, russia, wars

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Federally Frightened Friday

by Phil - February 19th, 2010 7:56 am

The Fed raised the discount rate – Big Deal! 

As I said in my Weekly Wrap-Up, recessions are for wimps and kudos to the Fed for finally pulling out the stick after all the soft talking they’ve been doing.  Meanwhile, I do not see what all the fuss is about – I did the math for Members last night and banks borrow about $89Bn at the discount window on a good day and 0.25% of $87Bn is a grand total of $22M – this is NOT going cause the fall of Western Civilization people!  What it does do is stop making the Fed the lender of first resort, which was never supposed to be their function in the first place. 

The MSM should be more concerned with the end of the TALF, which is where the Fed buys up toxic assets from the banks at face value (we’ll all be paying for that later) and they just announced that the Fed’s holding of Mortgage-Backed Securities went over the $1Tn mark yesterday, bringing the Fed’s Balance Sheet to $2.25Tn of very questionable assets that they’ve bought for us from the banksters. 

Speaking of banksters – Kudos to Matt Taibbi for his excellent Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle.  As I said to Members, if it wasn’t for Matt and Dylan Ratigan, I would have to be writing about this stuff instead of following the markets.  Thank goodness there are a few top-notch people investigating this nonsense with the ability to communicate their findings in a way that makes it interesting:

The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007.

The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from

…

Tags: CHINA, CPI, CRB, DIA, Fed, GS, PPI, russia, SMN, TALF, USO

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A Major Understatement?

by ilene - January 4th, 2010 5:10 am

A Major Understatement?

Courtesy of Michael Panzner of When Giants Fall

…

Tags: Afghanistan, George Friedman, Iran, Pakistan, russia, slamic states, Stratfor

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Propaganda, Western Style: Moscow Memories II

by ilene - December 14th, 2009 4:37 pm

Propaganda, Western Style: Moscow Memories II

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

As regular readers know, Le Proprietaire was doing business in Russia, mostly in Moscow and St. Pete, in the 1990′s as part of the overall international business portfolio during his past corporate life.

It was an exciting and somewhat nerve-wracking experience, but one that vividly drove home certain lessons about government, currency, and the resilience of the human spirit that have served well in the following decade. Moscow Memories of 1997

I have to admit I was not aware of this series about Russia by the Wall Street Journal, given a long term preference for The Economist and The Financial Times. Thanks to Zero Hedge for bringing this story about it from The Nation (which I would have never read, being a long time conservative) about the Journal and Steve Liesman to light.

As someone involved there I can say that anyone who did not perceive the growing crisis was living in a bubble, or carrying some particularly optimistic slant in their outlook.

The decline of the Russian economy was oppressive, palpable, almost on everyone’s mind. Hard to miss, even at the occasional showy party in English thrown by western corporations for an audience largely made up of ex-pats. The move out of the rouble into just about anything else with substance was becomng a groundswell, later to become unstoppable default. Any presentation about a Russian venture in the 1990′s had better contain some plans regarding currency risk.

But why bring this up now? Le Cafe has no particular squabble with the Liesman, and since we do not watch CNBC anymore, are largely immune to whatever it is he says that does not appear in a youtube excerpt, generally involving his getting owned by Rick Santelli.

We bring it up because this article below exposes the typical modus operandi of the Western press, now and over the past twenty years. Carry a party line until the situation explodes, cover it up and distract the public with phony debates and verbal circuses, and then back to give breaking coverage of Armageddon, with a twist of shared guilt. No one is to blame.

Can you remember the coverage of the tech bubble of 2000 by the media? Giddy excitement as the numbers climbed…

Tags: international business, russia

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