Nom de plume: Rivrdog

World bank leader says US economy to struggle for another year

As the President of the World Bank, this guy represents the global economy, and what he says in this article is NOT good news to the election-bound Democrats.

According to Mr. Zoellick, the unemployment number, which the Left has said does not matter, DOES MATTER, and in fact will drag the economy down for a year longer than necessary.

How do you say mishandled economic crisis?

I think that's what the World Bank just said, and since Obama is one of them, Mr. Zoellick probably pulled his punches. Reading between the lines, there will be no substantial recovery next year, and that means that the Democrats will get turned out of office. Our electorate is VERY reliable about changing the flavor of the government when the economy is mishandled.

Also in the article, the World Bank President criticizes the Asian stock exchanges, but by extension, he is also criticizing ours. Too inflated, he says, but I've been saying that ever since the US stock market began it's "recovery", and gained almost 40% from the lows. It was a paper gain, fueled by day traders and speculators, and as such, it's bloat. The institutional investors are still mostly on the sidelines, as are the burned-out small investors. There nothing in the management of the US economy to inspire their confidence.

All the signs are there for another retreat by the stock market. It won't crash this time, but I'd look for the Dow to retreat back to below 9,000 and stay there until the Spring, at least. In the meanwhile, Obama wants to further burden the economy with new taxes and new deficits, in the guise of the health care and cap-and-trade bills. That could crush even a modest 9,000 Dow.

If you're waiting for a revived economy to give your personal fortunes a boost, be prepared for a long wait.

While Democrats lie.......

The US Dollar circles the drain of worthlessness.

It's now at $1095 against gold, up about $30 from yesterday, which was up about $20 from the day before.

The pattern of trading gold has changed, and gold is back trading strictly as a safe haven, and is not being traded, as it had been for over a year, as a commodity.

Now all the previous gold-trading adages come to mind, and are verifiable.

The one I like the best is "Gold never gets more valuable, the currencies measured against it get less valuable." Give my father, who taught me the value of owning gold, the credit for that one.

Taking my late Dad at his word, the US Dollar is in a flushed toilet, circling the drain now, but it inevitably will go down the hole into oblivion.

What I don't get is the stock market, which traders keep pumping up to huge inflationary heights. These are the people that business and private investors trust with their hard-earned money, and they are still buying GM, Chrysler and Citi?

It's fun to fire up my calculator and see what the value of my gold would be if I sold it, almost like the feeling I get on those rare days when I buy a lottery ticket.

Then, it always hits me, and I get angry at these leftists who have so thoroughly trashed the US economy that it will never recover in my lifetime.

I cry for my children.

A US V.A.T. tax?

Driving home from the yacht club last night listening to late night radio (Roger Hedgecock), and he allows as how the (D)onks are looking at a Value-Added Tax to impose, maybe as early as next year.

If there ever was a way to kill off our fragile economy, a VAT would do it for sure.

The Dow tanked 200+ points yesterday and gold jumped about $20, maybe this nuze was why....

From the sublime to the ridiculous

...and all in one news category!

First we have this bit of financial news about the housing sector.

Then we have this news about consumer confidence levels.

What part of lemmings marching towards the cliff do these people NOT understand?

The first article is written by the Dept of Sweet Smoke (the kind that the dot.gov and it's minions in the financial arena blow up our butts). Good news is that for three months, we haven't set a record of declines in housing prices? Excuse me, what about the FACT that the annualized decline is STILL over 18%?

The second article is more appropriate, citing the fact that consumers are getting REALLY worried about the lack of a recovery. Good. When these consumers quit inhaling that Sweet Smoke and figure out that the over-spending government is their enemy in all this, maybe, just maybe, we can get started on the Great Un-Do, which will be followed by recovery.

Beware the "W"

....no, not THAT "W", the last thing he wants to do is ride again.

The "W" I speak of is the shape of the economic curve on the charts as another sinking of the US financial markets is about to overcome us, and there are signs we are on the tip of the past high as a gain from the lows of November last year.

In the "W" forecast, there will be another dip, followed by some kind of recovery, but that recovery will take a long time.

Several factors come into play.

When the market crashed last year, the market's liquidity was in fairly strong dollars. The crash occurred because investors lost confidence in the banks and investment houses that their dollars would be safe, so they sold and got out of the market. Action by the Obama Administration to spend (print) huge amounts of fiat currency have weakened the world's confidence in the dollar badly. That weakened confidence SHOULD have resulted in a de-facto, if not de-jure devaluation of the dollar by now, BUT IT HAS NOT. Instead, the Treasury has adopted a strategy of propping up the dollar instead of letting it float downward to a more natural level where it would find support.

As a result, and this is also driven by day-traders of currencies, the dollar sits at a level considerably above where it should be right now. It is priming itself for a quick crash against the world's better currencies (most of them) each and every day it is not allowed to settle to a level more commensurate with the rest of the US economy, which is still in the crapper.

Day before yesterday, Dr. Nouriel Roubini said that if recovery has started, it's hardly noticeable, and yesterday, Warren Buffett, a great buddy of Obama's, said essentially the same thing.

This article paints a much more ominous scene than either Roubini ("Dr. Doom" to his friends) OR Buffett. When you read it, skim down past the first part of the article, which is basically an evaluation of one investor's advice. You get to the meat of the adviser's warning:

"Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days."

Allow this NON-economic adviser to posit just what that feeling of sadness and foreboding is: it will be the crash of the US Dollar, a crash so bad (against other, more stable currencies) that total economic chaos will reign, and the US Dollar will then HAVE to be forcibly devalued, setting off hyper-inflation here. That feeling of sadness is the premonition that ANY AND ALL influence that the US has because of it's formerly-stable dollar will vanish overnight.

This crash will probably lead to a global crisis of the first order, as currencies which are totally dependent on ours fail as well. Consider Mexico, Venezuela. Argentina, Brazil and maybe one or two other Latin countries as goners right along with us. Most African nations are doomed, as are all the South and Southwest Asian countries. The Pound Sterling will definitely test ALL the safety nets the Brits ave built into it.

Will this just be an event we will ride out, pick ourselves up and recover from (because our ability to produce is still there), or will it hurt us badly enough to create a violent backlash against the Federal government which will have caused it?

Stay tuned, but be prepared to function in a barter economy for a while (do NOT accumulate cash, it will turn worthless as you count it the day the banks close). I think we will stagger along through this summer and into the fall before the crunch comes. There WILL be a crunch. If we are lucky, it will just make this "recession" into a simple Depression from which we can recover, IF WE ABANDON RECKLESS FISCAL POLICY. If we are unlucky, or, as I expect, the Obama Administration makes the initial crash of the dollar MUCH WORSE by printing even more fiat money, then we geezers will die of old age before the nation pulls out of this, and when it does pull out, faces many decades of re-building the world's confidence in our economy.

If the Obama Administration were smart instead of the fiscal idiots they have turned out to be, we could still head this off, by freezing new Federal spending, cutting the Government's give-away programs and balancing the budget NOW.

That's not going to happen, and as I type, the Congress debates how to put us another 10 or 20 percent of GDP into the red for just this year (ObamaCare). There are even rumors of another "Stimulus" (more fiat money printed).

They just don't get it in DeeCee, so we are going to get hammered, hard.

Mr. & Mrs. Gullible shop for bridges

...and the Rivrdog, owner of ALL the local river bridges, just happens to have some on sale at a discount!

Get them while you still have the eleven for the price of eight discount!

Willamette River bridges for sale, today only!

Now, while I have your attention, Mr. & Mrs. Gullible and all your Gullible offspring who have swallowed the Government/Wall Street line about the recession depression ending soon, please read this article in the San Jose Mercury-News.

Yep, last month, more people were thrown out of work than the previous month, and it happened all over the US of A. That's a fairly-well distributed economic "malaise", I'd say.

You wouldn't say that? I'm sorry, Mr. Gullible, you seemed to have gotten that Kool-aide all over your clean white stock-trader's shirt. Here is a Mexican serape to wear while you have that shirt laundered. Very fashionable these days. Don't like the serape? How about a nice Mao jacket to wear over that stained shirt to hide it, they're also quite cheap now. For some reason, the Chinese want us ALL to wear them.

Yep, boys and girls, the economy is getting worse. We may not have Leno around anymore to tell his daily "the economy is bad, really bad" jokes, but the recession only gets deeper, even as the Dow Jones has added 2,000 points of "irrational exuberance" since it hit "bottom" earlier in the year.

Looking for bargains in the real estate market? Have CASH to buy them? Be my guest, you probably won't lose more than 10-15% before the market REALLY bottoms out. Looking to make a killing in the stock market? Grab a mirror, my fine chump. That busted fool whose image you see is YOU.

Come out of this recession depression in Q3 or Q4 of THIS year?

Sure, we will, and this bridge-buyer's contract is just BEGGING for your signature, Mr. & Mrs. Gullible.

Just don't count your "riches" by looking at all your new US currency with the ink barely dry. It buys less and less every day. Soon, you will need something larger than your money clip to carry enough of it, Mr. Gullible. May I suggest one of these, Mr. Gullible? It will carry plenty of currency, your "real" ID, and still have room for that pistol you will soon need to secure your local travels.

It isn't going to get better anytime soon, folks, you still need to be secure for family survival.

Open letter to President Obama

Mr. President:

If you've read any of these pages before, you know that I'm not a fan of your core political philosophy, but there IS one place you and I should be able to agree.

The oil speculators are at it again, Mr. President, grossly inflating the value of oil as a commodity.

Please read the attached article, Mr. President, especially THIS paragraph:

"However, global oil demand remains weak and U.S. supplies are near 19-year highs. And higher oil prices could drag on any nascent recovery."

That should be the catalyst for you to take some action, Mr. President. I believe that a simple jawboning will work for a while, and you are good at jawboning, so let's give it a try. He are a few bullet points with which to make up an address:

• This surge in oil prices is NOT a free-market phenomenon. It is totally contrived by the energy investors and the likes of Saudi Arabia.
• The Administration is looking for places to get revenue enhancements (taxes), and large profits on oil profits raised by this hype would be one way to go.
• The free market WILL work on oil prices if it is given a chance, but the manipulations by speculators have us ALL "over the barrel"

Mr. President, it's been rumored that you might hold a political philosophy that demands artificially high oil prices to force conservation, but I've never actually heard you say this. What you need to say now is that the recession is FAR from over, and the hype of oil speculators will NOT speed it's exit and return to more normal economic times, and in fact, the opposite is more likely: a fresh run-up of oil prices such as we are seeing now will certainly DELAY a rise in consumer confidence and investment that is required for recovery.

Mr. President, these speculators are lining their pockets at the expense of all of us, and especially to the detriment of YOUR recovery program. You need to fight them, with the full weight of your office and the Federal government, as appropriate.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, Sir.

Looming tax increases

Large tax increases are coming, even if they are NOT new taxes imposed by the Obama Administration, which just announced new taxes on business yesterday (and the stock market cheered him on, strange to say).

These increases are from the Bush tax cuts which finish expiring at the end of next year. This is a good article on just how badly we are going to get hammered.

Now, the Democrats COULD extend the cuts, but with Obama's rate of deficit spending, even the dummies who elected him will see that as a bad idea. Also, since he will be starting to campaign in earnest for the 2012 election about then, he won't want to give the GOP any advantage, if they can get off their dead asses to actually RUN against him.

The new business taxes Obama proposed yesterday are the tip of the iceberg of tax increases, and all of our personal finances are racing towards the WHOLE iceberg.

As I see it, before Obama is through, my modest retirement income will be taxed an additional 15-20% by the end of Obama's FIRST term in office. Since I'm on a fixed income, I will need to cut expenses by that much (see how easy this process is, (D)onk dipwads)?

I need to prepare to suffer those cuts in the next 12 months, and the only way to do it is to cut a major part of my life away, and that will be my boat and the boating I enjoy so much. That will hurt, and it will make me a bitter man, so I will have to channel that bitterness outwards to stay sane.

You will NOT want to even mention Obama to me after that happens.

Correspondence to Banks...

If readers have decent credit as Your Blogger does, and a few credit card accounts, then you must have gotten some of those letters by now advising you of large increases in fees, interest, etc connected with the cards.

In my constant search to be USEFUL, I have designed a form letter to send back to the banks acknowledging receipt of these letters and advising the banks, in turn, that you didn't just fall off the turnip truck as they have all assumed you did....

Your name here
Your company here if applicable
Your address here
Your email here, if you want to give it
Your phone number here, if etc etc.

Name of giant taxpayer-owned bank here
Appropriate division of said corp.
Name of real person in said division
Address of said Corp


Dear Sir (or unlikely) Madam,


I am in receipt of your insulting communication of (date). Please be advised of the following realities concerning your abusive fee/interest increases:

•  You probably do not have the right to make such increases, since the contract that we agreed to back in (date of original account opening) is void now, due to the change in ownership of your bank (a public corporation) and the fact that your Board of Directors now improperly consists of only minority shareholders, with zero representatives of the majority shareholder (United States of America) holding Board positions.
• Said fee increases are unconscionable, considering the state of the economy and the request of our President that everyone do their part to live within their means. It is NOT within my means to pay these increases, and your bank is obviously NOT living within it's means or the increases would not be necessary.
• You have slashed your common-stock dividend to pennies on the dollar of what it used to be, you have stopped loaning out money, and yet your receivables are still close to what you had, pre-Recession. This means that you are hoarding funds, not just earned funds, but also TARP funds as well, which you promised in writing by accepting same that you would increase your lending with, and which you have failed to do.
• Your funds are moving so fast internally that they cannot be traced, and now you want to withhold data on the "stress test", a matter of public law and open data according to Federal Law. I suspect that much of this hoarded capital is not retained within these shores, but has been placed offshore, in complete violation of the letter and spirit of the TARP.
• You may say that you are accumulating capital with which to pay back the TARP funds to the taxpayers who so generously saved your bank from total collapse (a mistake on our part), but in fact, you haven't read the TARP. The TARP sets out conditions of repayment of those funds which you have not met, or if you have, have not publicly acknowledged as required.

Please be advised that all future transactions between your Bank and myself are concluded under Protest, and as such, must be held apart from your regular handling and reporting of receivables. In fact, until and unless your Bank immediately appoints new Directors, with directors representing the interests of the United States comprising 80% of the entire voting roster of such Directors, any and all transactions by clients of your Bank may be protested under Federal banking rules for making such protests.

I look forward to meeting you face to face to discuss and implement these changes to your current illegal and inappropriate policy, so if you will please notify me of your travel plans to (insert your city here), I will arrange to meet you at both our convenience.

Be advised that I also stand ready to volunteer for your Board of Directors, as a representative of the majority stockholder, the United States. I will furnish proof of citizenship in the United States at our first meeting.

Be advised that this and all future correspondence between us will be considered public information, and will be published on the Internet.

Until we meet,

Sincerely,

(signed)                                                   (dated)

Make sure to send copies to your Congress people, unless you live in the State of Delaware, in which most of these banks are legally incorporated. If you are a DE resident, you are well and truly screwed, but you know that already, since you gave the rest of the country Joe Biden.

Told ya so

Just a short note of "told ya so".

History background: The Europeans have all tried Socialism, in fact most European countries, such as the Czech Republic, are still socialist democracies, with many, including the Czech Republic, having only just emerged from communism 20 years ago.

These folks know which forms of socialism work and which don't. They all know about heavy-handed central banking and fiat currencies, and they all have changed to some form of "capitalistic socialism", heavier on the capitalism than the socialism, as regards their economies.

When Czech President (lame duck though he may be) Mirek Topolanek tells President Obama that his reckless spending (not his words, they're the words of the leader of the largest socialist nation on the planet) is a "road to hell", well, I believe him. The Czechs have been down many roads to Hell in the past century, so they know.

When will Obama  we learn?