Best Of The Best Share Discussion Threads

[traderabc] 01/5/2011 10:25

'Asinine', and 'catastrophic' are two perfectly valid descriptions for the last 20 years of US economic policy. Taking wealth from the productive and giving it to the counter productive is not progress but something quite the opposite.Buffett is currently a supporter of Banker rule, corporate welfare and austerity for the rest, his foundation is dubious and his diet atrocious.
I'm not denying his many admirable qualities and vast self made wealth but for all his down to earth manner he doesn't strike me as the capitalist saint they make him out to be.




Warren Buffett: Not Raising The Debt Ceiling Would Be "Most Asinine"



Warren Buffett says that if Congress doesn't vote to raise the debt ceiling before it expires in mid-May, it would be their "most asinine act" ever.





Warren Buffett: There's "No Question" The Dollar Will Keep Falling



David Sokol's Lawyer Just Accused Warren Buffett Of Lying

[traderabc] 01/5/2011 10:11

[OTE107] On the Edge with Karl Denninger

[traderabc] 01/5/2011 10:08

This old toads' arrogance is going to finish him off someday, in fact it would have in 2008 if they hadn't off bailed out his buddies on wall street.



MUNGER: Buy Gold If You Think Your Country Is Going To Kill You

Most people think gold is a good buy because of "money printing" or general nervousness about global affairs.


Buffett right-hand man Charlie Munger has a more dramatic reason someone would buy it.

Becky Quick just tweeted: Munger #BRK2011: If u think country u live in is going to kill u then gold is a good buy. Otherwise BRK shares are better.

So unless you really, really, think things are all going to hell, then don't buy gold.

[dutch alert] 29/4/2011 13:21

a contrarian view from Stratfor

Risk of U.S. Debt default.

Ultimately a credit ratings agency's assessments of a country are based in how sustainable the country's budgeting processes are. Now the United States - it's not that great; between the Bush administration and the current Obama administration, American finances are certainly on an unsustainable course. Tax revenues are relatively high right now, but with the baby boomers about to retire, they'll be taking their tax income with them. Spending is high and is showing few signs of being brought under control either by this administration or by Congress. There aren't a lot of options for rationalizing the budget: You could drastically increase the retirement age; you could do away with some sort of social benefits, such as social security; you could sharply raise taxes. All of these are political non-starters; they're all political suicide. So by the books, yes, the United States deserves a downgrade - maybe more than one. But ultimately that's irrelevant.

In the case of United States, default is absolutely impossible. All U.S. government debt is denominated in U.S. dollar assets. The U.S. dollar is the global currency. The U.S. Federal Reserve controls U.S. dollar policy. So long as this is the case, it's absolutely impossible to default on the debt. Luckily for the Americans, there is absolutely no currency out there that is within a generation of replacing the United States dollar as the global currency. Let's examine why that is the case.

First, let's look at the euro. The euro is certainly the currency that is the closest to displacing the U.S. dollar as the global currency. But if you look at the events of the last couple of years, you'll notice that the Europeans have been in a nonstop financial crisis, honestly, since before the global recession even began back in mid-2008. Nearly all of the Continent's banks are not only unstable but they've now become interlinked to the currency and the sovereign debt problems that have been racking the Europeans for the last several months. They have convinced their banks to purchase large volumes of sovereign debt - in essence doubling down, throwing the good private assets against the bad government assets. The only way that the euro can seriously be considered a global currency is if the euro manages to get through this crisis in one piece willingly. But that requires 26 states consciously signing over their sovereignty to another country - not very likely.

Next comes the Chinese yuan. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, the Chinese yuan is not even convertible - it's not even a hard currency, you can't take it out of the country, it's not accepted as legal tender anywhere in the world except for mainland China. Second, as manipulated as the Japanese yen is, the Chinese yuan is even more so. In the past three years, the Chinese have printed the equivalent of $5 trillion U.S. dollars in Chinese yuan in order to maintain their subsidized credit system. Without this they wouldn't be able to maintain the loan structure - subsidized loan structure - that keeps their entire export economy going. Third, the currency policy is a peg to the U.S. dollar, so the Chinese have zero currency risk. They know that the Americans will buy at X price, so they maintain the rate right there. Should the yuan fully float, all of a sudden it would be rising and falling with various trade balances. That means that the Chinese exporters would no longer have reliability in their trade negotiations - they wouldn't be able to guaranteed pricing - and that would probably drive a great many of them out of business right off the bat. You make the yuan the global currency and all of a sudden the Chinese currency is volatile because of its connections to the oil and the corn markets, for example, and you're going to be dealing with mass bankruptcies across the entire Chinese industrial base. Shortly after that, you will have mass unemployment and the social instability that the Chinese government has always feared. Fourth, they know that the real power in the system comes from the consumer, not the producer, and so long as the Chinese economy is one of exporters and not importers, they can't stomach the burden of the global currency. They need to stay linked to a much larger system, and for the foreseeable future that system is going to be the American one.

From a bookkeeping point of view, Standard & Poor's is absolutely right. U.S. spending policies are out of control; they're not showing any sign of being fixed in the near future. That said, the U.S. is a special case because it is a country that can manipulate the currency policy of the entire global system for its own benefit, and as we've seen in the past, the Federal Reserve really doesn't have a problem doing that.

Read more: Portfolio: Risk of U.S. Debt Default | STRATFOR

[traderabc] 29/4/2011 12:31

[KR142] Keiser Report: Blind Cult of America
April 28th, 2011 by maxkeiser

We interview Chris Martenson.

[traderabc] 28/4/2011 00:32

Jim Rogers: The Best Asian Investment Most Americans Haven't Heard Of

[traderabc] 27/4/2011 12:21

20 Questions For Ben Bernanke



Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
April 27, 2011

A game of 20 questions with the Fed Chairman...

[traderabc] 27/4/2011 12:08

Keiser Report: Fleeing Dollar Flood & Fraud

[traderabc] 27/4/2011 11:41

Recent interview with Bill Still, author of 'The Money Masters' a good in-depth film about the Federal Reserve and the other private banks bringing the west to its knees.


Author Bill Still: No More National Debt! - Alex Jones Tv 1-5





For anyone who hasn't seen this it's a long documentary, but worth the time as it explains in understandable terms the whole sorry tale of fractional reserve banking, a system that is unsustainable, destructive, undemocratic and regarded by many clever and honest people as the gravest threat facing Western economies.
The link goes to the start of a playlist which will take you through the whole 3 hours of it, so snoozing on the sofa while Bill Still drones on in the background is an option ;-)

The Money Masters (playlist)

[traderabc] 26/4/2011 10:43

British pound devalues by 94% in 50yrs



Press TV
Monday, April 25, 2011
A new survey shows that the value of money in the UK has dropped by 94 percent over the past 50 years, which means an 18-time increase in retail prices.

The survey carried out by BM Savings has found that almost £1,800 is needed to match the buying power of £100 in 1960, the daily newspaper, The Guardian reported.

It means that someone today would need £1,796 to have the same buying power of £100 in 1960, while 50 years ago, if you had £5.57 it would be worth £100 today, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.

The drop in the value of money is reflected in the cost of everyday items such as food and household goods. For example, a pint of milk cost just 3p in 1960 but will set consumers back around 44p today.

[traderabc] 23/4/2011 12:41

I've got a Booker wholesale card, I was in one of their depots yesterday, prices for most things have increased in the last year. Not by a huge amount, but it is still obvious to see the erosion of the pounds purchasing power.

[049balt] 23/4/2011 11:45

If I were to sell an animal in the local mart today I would get about 25% more than this time last year, my local supermarket owner tells me that he has not increased the price of his beef at the counter!.

[traderabc] 23/4/2011 11:10

I've heard it takes about 6 months for the raw commodity price rises to impact consumer prices in the shops. So this process should have already started, and it has from what I see in the supermarkets, the bad news is that it should get worse for several more months. (assuming commodity prices don't fall significantly)

[049balt] 23/4/2011 11:04

Farm gate prices continue to soar, at this stage it appears that those increases are being absorbed by the middle men and retailers, but for how long?.

[traderabc] 19/4/2011 19:54

Jim Rogers on chances of $100+ Silver in 2011

[traderabc] 19/4/2011 19:11

[KR139] Keiser Report – Murderers & Martyrs!
April 19th, 2011 by stacyherbert
Respond

We interview Janet Tavakoli.

[traderabc] 19/4/2011 19:07

If you were an average Irish citizen would you feel responsible?

Hotspots with Max Keiser - Ireland

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[traderabc] 18/4/2011 12:17

Apr 18 Commodity Newsletter Matt Frailey BPT video

[traderabc] 18/4/2011 08:49

Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation


Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

Friday, 2 July 2010


By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.


It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."

[traderabc] 18/4/2011 08:29

A Golden Tipping Point: University of Texas Takes Delivery Of $1 Billion In Physical Gold

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/16/2011 19:59 -0400