TWO SIDES OF THE PLANET!
June 30, 2006
In the East, there’s concern that president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have been one of the captors that held fifty two Americans for 444 days. My question is so what?
Would that be a surprise is IF it were true? Is this some sort of revelation that Iran might be our enemy? Didn’t Bush make them part of the Axis of Evil back in 2001? Isn’t he of the most conservative hard-line political party in Iran Okay, okay I get it, it’s a political PR thing. Iran doesn’t want the rest of the world to think what we Americans think- and who would ever think that would happen?
Then over here in the West I turn for dumb story number two. I imagine every terrorist in the world knows that it would be a dumb idea to get on a plane and go to New York, Los Angeles, or Miami if they had evil plans for us. If you want to wreck havoc here in America, you fly to Toronto or Mexico. Duh!
From Mexico, you hire one of those infamous coyotes and before you know it, you’re in Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas! When we captured two Iraqis yesterday as they were en route to San Diego. They were walking just a few miles from the U.S. border when they were apprehended.
Again are we surprised that foreigners are coming in to America illegally acrosss the Mexican border? Hey, it’s estimated that 12,000 Brazilians did that last year, instead of trying to go through proper immigration channels. We’d be shocked if we knew how many terrorists have come into America via the unprotected Mexican border. Maybe we’d be shocked.
DON’T MESS WITH ISRAEL!
June 30, 2006
I am sure that you’ve read the signs along Interstate 10 or others. “Don’t Mess With Texas”. If you think messing with Texas is bad, think about Israel.
Listen us Hamas and other Israeli enemies, DO NOT MESS WITH ISRAEL!
You’ve heard how Hamas and other insurgents captured Corporal Gilad Shalit. Israel said hand him back over or else. Hamas went deaf! So, Israel takes out their electrical grid, captures seven cabinet members, and arrests several other politicians.
Hamas then agrees to free Shalit IF Israel turns over, 1,000 prisoners. Do you think Israel ran to the jails to free them? No way.
Israel’s response was, turn Shalit back to us in short order or we’ll assassinate the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismael Haniyeh.
That’s like, “in your face”! I don’t know how this is going to end up, but if I could give the Palestinians and Hamas some advice, it would simply be, don’t mess with Israel!
What’s Happening In Florida?
June 30, 2006
There are about a dozen Senate seats that both parties are keeping an eye on; and spending big bucks to win. One such battle involves U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, (R-Fla.), who has become a lightning rod for the Democrats. Ben Nelson, the incumbent Democrat was once thought beatable; however, if Harris wins the primary, does Ben have a free ride?
The US$ Takes A Beating!
June 30, 2006
History shows that there are seasons, some lasting for a decade or longer, wherein when A happens, you can expect B to react in a certain way. As an example, those that have been around the financial markets for at least a couple decades can recall anticipating the Feds release of the “M” , money supply numbers because that would determine what was going to happen to interest rates.
Yes- We Did Break The Pattern!
June 29, 2006
Thursday not only broke the three day pattern, but as I wrote yesterday, we could easily wipe out the first three days of losses for gold. That happened and a lot more. Gold finally broke back through the $600 level.
WHAT ABOUT GOLD?
June 29, 2006
One of the things that I get asked about a lot is gold. With inflation headed higher, and gold having risen from the dead ($250 an ounce), and now back over $600 an ounce, what’s the story?
So, in order to be more specific, I’ve created a whole new web site that will be devoted to gold-philes. You can log on at-
I am not sure the correction is over. Gold topped out at $721 an ounce after an amazing one year $20+ run-up. I felt it could correct back to the $550 level before resuming it’s upward trend. Remember the addage, “The Trend Is Your Friend”. There’s a possibility it could still fall back to $550; however, after August- no way.
Will We Break The Pattern Today?
June 29, 2006
For the first three days of this week, gold opened up at the bell, anywhere from $3- $9. As the morning wore on, it inched down and at the close of the bell it ended teh first three days: even, down $3 and down $4 respectively. Will Thursday be different?
Will George Bush Be Impeached?
June 29, 2006
The City of Berkeley, California wants to put that question to a vote this year. The left-leaning City wnts to join other California cities such as San Francisco and Oakland, who have passed resolutions calling for impeachment.
Show Me The PASSION!
June 29, 2006
George Burns was being more than humorous when he said, “I would rather be a failure at doing something I love than to be a success doing something I hate”. It would be funny if it were not so painfully true. It is hard enough to get through life without being bored or dissatisfied with your profession. And herein is one of the reasons many people cannot get a job or get promoted once they have one: they lack PASSION!
BETWEEN DEVIL & DEEP BLUE SEA
June 29, 2006
And I am not talking about the fleeing Israelis (from Pharaoh) either. I am talking about Greenspan’s mess that he’s created twice now. Thursday he continues to try and get out of the mess with what I predict to be the NINTH straight quarter point increase in short term interest rates.
He’s the one that saw the “irrational exuberance”, as he called it, back in the second Clinton term. While the public was concentrating on the Monica Lewinski story, Greenspan was indirectly filling up the coffers of the crooks, large cap companies (can you say Enron), and major CEOs (I know you can say Ken Lay). He did that by printing money as fast as he could, then dropping rates to an incredibly low 1%- well below inflation.
All of his tinkering is only creating one bubble after another (can you say real estate). A possible scenario that could be on the horizon in the next 45-90 days is what’s called an inverted yield curve. Say what?
While short term rates have been rising for 2+ years, long term rates have been declining (30 year bond rate is down 75 basis points in the last twelve months). One could make a very good case for that to happen before school starts.
So, just what is an inverted yield curve and why is it necessarily bad? I’ll let you read as much from the under-scored words as you would like. Other than to mention they are usually associated with massive economic downturns.
So, let’s see what the Green man does. The Fed usually reports around 1:15 Houston time. Then, keep your eye on the 10 year bond rate, which I update frequently throughout the day, on the far left hand side of this page you are reading. As I write this, it is at 3.99 and the Fed funds rate (second box from the top, is currently 3.00) should move to 3.25 tomorrow afternoon which would mean only a .74 spread.
It’s just one of those major indicators that one should take note of and thereby not get any further into debt!
NOW ON WITH THE WAR
June 28, 2006
The President has restated the case for Iraq. Democrats think he didn’t change a thing: there’s still no time table to get out, so they say. On the other hand Republicans poured on the accolades, saying the speech was an affirmation of a good foreign policy.
So, now what?
The speech wasn’t about giving new insights to the war, it was all about trying to make the public feel it’s a good thing. The president’s popularity has fallen to an all time low for Bush. And if his popularity doesn’t increase, ALL of his domestic programs are in trouble. And did I mention his judgeship appointees?
So, we wait for a few days to see how the public responds. It’s not going to be an easy sell. Americans are not a patient people. And it’s obvious that Americans are not into sacrifice for any lengthy period of time. And then when you have the Democrats hammering away on all the social programs that are taking a back seat due to the war, the pressure is on.
Bottom line, any second term president (excepting Reagan) has a tougher time getting his programs accepted. And a president involved in a war is really at a disadvantage. But, he is still president and what we’ve learned from seeing him preside for nearly five years is that he doesn’t cut and run. He doesn’t even back up.
Now, on with the war!
Just When Victory Seems At Hand
June 28, 2006
If the Democrats are going to take back the House this fall, they are going to need to get control of a couple of situations. One of those problem areas is in Louisiana and the other is in Pennsylvania.
Preparing For The Fall Campaigns
June 28, 2006
First we had the meaningless vote in the House and Senate about keeping the troops in Iraq or pulling them out. Why the debate? It was simply to put Congressmen and women on record so they could be bashed for their positions, regardless of what it was. Now we have had a second vote.
What Will The Fed Do?
June 28, 2006
Gold opened up $9 to start Tuesday based on the turmoil in Israel and Gaza. But when nothing happened during the day, it fell back. As Wednesday opens, Israel is starting to blow up a couple of bridges so gold is uo $4 in pre-trading. So now what?
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