Mrcauser’s Weblog

Russia invades Georgia and then, shortly after, oil prices tank. Insuring an economic comeback temporarily. Obama gets credit, then my generation retires and  the economy tanks for many years.

One theory anyway.

Of course the economy may not recover under OB and we kill each other scrambling for food at the local Walmart. How about hoarding a large supply in the closet next to your illegal Glock.

You’re going to need it.

Too many broke dicks lose everything they own and they get a touch of envy. Bang you dead.

Got food stashed, guns loaded and car packed? I have plenty of room up here  in redneck heaven. Still have $45000 coming in. Walmart rules here at least a couple of more years.

You have to like snow, though. It has snowed here so far this season 13 out of 14 days. And another 7 days predicted ahead.

The summers make up for it. Fish like you wouldn’t believe. No gang bangers though. Hardly any crime. Quiet. Cheap living.

Oh yea. No rap music!

The Oil Drum | Discussions about Energy and Our Future

Not any longer. Simply put, Russia is in trouble. Its much-ballyhooed $600 billion cash reserve base dropped by a quarter by Dec. 1, to about $450 billion, and even further since. Much of that has gone to bailing out banks, select oligarchs and propping up the ruble. But with no sign of an end to the global recession, Putin is allowing the ruble’s value to decline rather than pouring limitless reserves into the currency. This Wall Street Journal interview with down-on-his-luck oligarch Oleg Deripaska tells it extremely well. (Note to Barack Obama’s Russia team: South Stream is on hold for at least 18 months or two years; Russia doesn’t have the wherewithal to finance it; Nord Stream is more likely, but again financing will be a problem. That is an opening that was not present before the financial crisis.)

We win, nya nya .

2008 holiday sales tally: Winner and losers – Dec. 29, 2008

“Wal-Mart isn’t doing anything exciting. Their [same-store] sales increases are still much softer than where they used to be,” he said, alluding to the retailer’s same-store sales gains of 6% and higher in the mid 1990s.

But if Wal-Mart ends the year with less unsold merchandise, that will position it to emerge a winner in the New Year, he said.

“The question becomes who is in the best position to take advantage if the consumer does comes back in 2009,” he said. “I think it’s retailers who have low inventory and are financially stable.”

Wal-Mart rival Target has struggled with slowing store sales as its higher-income shoppers shifted some of their purchases to lower-priced discounters including Wal-Mart.

The government bought the Autos. A black hole if there ever was one. The Dems can not compete without union money.

Remember helium vendors? In case we needed  blimps to fight the next war?  We need these companies for the same reason.

Attacking Europe.

Hey! You never know. After all they will be Moslem entities.

The Great Debate » Debate Archive » Bush’s auto plan will test Obama’s union loyalties | The Great Debate |

Barack Obama owes organized labor a huge debt for his November victory. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger can be expected to try to sell Obama labor agreements that appear to create more concessions than are real and leave the Detroit Three in the red going forward.

Fooling Obama would create loans the Detroit Three never can really repay. The government could force payment at the expense of the next creditors in line—the large U.S. banks—but the federal government is already subsidizing their losses.

One way or the other ordinary citizens who don’t earn nearly the pay and benefits autoworkers receive would be paying taxes to subsidize their rather generous lifestyles, much as taxpayers are financing the bloated bonuses at large New York banks requiring federal dole to stay afloat.

Click and read the whole thing. He only touches the extent of statism that has ruined our world.

Thank Goodness I Live in a Free Country by Don Cooper

I was talking with some friends over the Christmas holiday break and they were commenting on how lucky we are that we live in a free country where we have the liberty and the opportunity to live our lives the way we want and are not controlled by the government like in other countries.

So I started thinking about a particular day of mine a couple months ago:

I woke up in the morning in my FHA (Federal Housing Administration) approved home that was built in accordance with USDOE (Department of Energy), FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and numerous CFRs (Code of Federal Regulations).

I went to the bathroom t

According to these nut jobs the dirty bastards did it on purpose! Saved all that money and bribed us to spend it on junk. No wonder were fucked up.

Can you believe these guys?

Personally sounds like ufo’s are responsible. No wait bigfoot.

Yea those sons a bitches.

The Reckoning – Chinese Savings Helped Inflate American Bubble – Series – NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — In March 2005, a low-key Princeton economist who had become a Federal Reserve governor coined a novel theory to explain the growing tendency of Americans to borrow from foreigners, particularly the Chinese, to finance their heavy spending.

The problem, he said, was not that Americans spend too much, but that foreigners save too much. The Chinese have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates, underwriting American consumption.

This colossal credit cycle could not last forever, he said. But in a global economy, the transfer of Chinese money to America was a market phenomenon that would take years, even a decade, to work itself out. For now, he said, “we probably have little choice except to be patient.”

According to these nut jobs the dirty bastards did it on purpose! Saved all that money and bribed us to spend it on junk. No wonder were fucked up.

Can you believe these guys?

Personally sounds like ufo’s are responsible. No wait bigfoot.

Yea those sons a bitches.

The Reckoning – Chinese Savings Helped Inflate American Bubble – Series – NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — In March 2005, a low-key Princeton economist who had become a Federal Reserve governor coined a novel theory to explain the growing tendency of Americans to borrow from foreigners, particularly the Chinese, to finance their heavy spending.

The problem, he said, was not that Americans spend too much, but that foreigners save too much. The Chinese have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates, underwriting American consumption.

This colossal credit cycle could not last forever, he said. But in a global economy, the transfer of Chinese money to America was a market phenomenon that would take years, even a decade, to work itself out. For now, he said, “we probably have little choice except to be patient.”

Oil was about $60 a barrel. This guy is on to something. Probably means shortages. Remember rice and beans missing on the shelves earlier this year?

Could be interesting as trucking companies struggle through the first quarter. Walmart’s fleet is strong and stands to do great.

However, all bets are off on our competitors. Expect some to disappear as union contracts squeeze bottom lines.

Fertilizer shortages in march should pop up and scare the beJesus out of us. Getting food on the shelves is tied to a long line of trucks. I know. I drove food from California to Boston.

This could come to a screeching stop. Prepare now.

Remember, independent drivers went bust when diesel prices boomed. Some of these guys are not coming back. I would be surprised if my former employer is still in business with his two truck operation.

Neither will food imports come back. Foreigners will have their own  problems. Food riots sounds about right.
 

Oh yes. Get to Walmart and pick up any junk you didn’t get last week. Everything is on sale by next weekend.

 Everything.

Kunstler’s Forecast 2007

I will be so bold to say that I called the housing crash correctly last year, though the worst symptoms are slow to present for technical reasons. There’s no question that the action on the real estate scene changed drastically in mid-year. The implosion of this mighty structure of fraud, folly, and misinvestment so far has taken place in such breathtaking slow-motion that its victims have not really felt the pain from the falling bricks yet. By late summer, buyers started evaporating. Real estate signs planted in lawns last June are still sitting there on New Years. Prices have come down a bit in many markets, including most of the hotties such as Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Boston. But the buyers are still not bidding. Meanwhile, the sellers have dug in, determined to get something at least close to their wished-for inflated prices, egged on by their representatives, the realtors. This mutually reinforcing psychology cannot hold indefinitely. Many of these sellers don’t have the luxury to wait around forever. Some have had to move to other houses in other places because of job changes, and are stuck paying two mortgages. Many are stuck with “creative” mortgages that all the evil ingenuity of the human mind conjured in recent years to enable the feckless to live above their means — adjustable rate, payment optional, no money down contracts that suckered buyers into booby-trapped obligations whose initial low-interest terms lured them in and are now set to blow up in their faces as terms automatically re-set upwards to higher rates and “optional” deferred payments get backloaded onto the principal, putting the mortgage holders so far underwater on their contracts that a tour of the Titanic would feel like a day at the beach. Read the whole article

They should now survive as long as the government does.

Expect every Dem constituency  to get in on the band wagon. We’ll be building electric cars with nowhere to plug them in.

Wait! Now everybody needs a subsidy for their own personal windmill.

Wait! What about all those bird deaths?

Wait! Give everybody a solar panel.

Wait! They will warm the planet and kill the polar bears!

Shit!!

Damn that Bush anyways.

What a country!

But won’t matter in a few years. My parents generation will need their stock market money  to eat. Old codgers with huge house and credit card payments can’t continue to work for ever.

However, not to worry, it all comes to a screeching halt in the next 5 or 10 years anyways. I figure 9 out of 10 retirees will be spending their personal savings saving their children from the living on the streets over the next couple of years. Not much left except for their Social Security checks and government retirement checks robbed by consumer price index tinkering. These checks have got to shrink relative to the coming inflation to get us out of the Depression.

Somebody has to pay.

Yes children, Ob needs that magic wand a poppin’ to save this mess.  And save his presidency.

Hilary and McCain will be sighing in secret relief as this crap continues to unravel.

Maybe we can elect Ron Paul  and pay off all those trillions of printing press money to save our ass.

Not!

The problem is that if the government changes the law they will have to fear we will finish  draining what’s left of  the stock market. Therefor, causing the destruction of all private wealth left in the world. So we bail the financial system until it quits.   Either that or give everyone  in the country a government check.

Even Walmart. Ha ha!

Wait that is the plan. But where do we get the money? China is collapsing in ‘09. Who will buy our bonds? Broke OPEC? Remember $40 oil screws them big time. Of course saving that $300 or so billions every year would make a difference. Unfortunately for the world, we still rule militarily.

Look out small oil producing countries.

We are that broke.

Memo to Washington: Here’s how to help retirees – Dec. 22, 2008

Don’t force retirees to sell at the bottom. When you save in a traditional IRA or 401(k), you pay no taxes on the money you contribute and your investment earnings are sheltered from taxes during your working years. Once you reach the age of 70½, though, the IRS comes calling in the form of so-called required minimum distributions (RMDs). At that point you must start taking annual withdrawals from your 401(k) or traditional IRA (based on your life expectancy) and pay income tax on those funds. Fail to do this and the IRS will slap you with a nasty penalty.

Thanks to the vicious bear market, this rule is essentially forcing retirees to sell at the worst possible time. Even many ostensibly “safe” investments, like mutual funds designed to generate income for retirees, have plunged. Technically speaking, you can satisfy the law by simply transferring stocks, bonds or funds from your retirement account to a regular brokerage account. But you’ll still owe taxes on the amount you transfer; as a practical matter, you may need to sell at least part of your investment to pay the taxes.

50 billion stolen all by himself.

And they laugh at UFO stories.

The Catherine Austin Fitts Blog

I have started and managed several small businesses. It is hard to run one set of books for a small business. There are other people involved — not just the head of the company. There are bookkeepers, lawyers, accountants, regulators, tax preparers and auditors. The books have to be straight because so many people with so many different interests get in them. Brokerage accounts add another layer of complexity. Add money management and that is even more complexity.

And we are to believe that one guy could run a brokerage and money management firm with two sets of books and siphon off $50 billion? And no one knew?

This is the financial cover story equivalent of the yarn that a few devout Muslims hijacked two planes that hit skyscrapers that then magically collapsed leaving their passports and a copy of the Koran sitting on the sidewalk.

So…who has the $50 billion?