Financial topics

[aedens]

Up or down its zero sum.

The Mexican Fisherman and the Investment Banker (Author Unknown)

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed. “I have an MBA from Harvard, and can help you,” he said. “You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, and eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middle-man, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery. You could control the product, processing, and distribution,” he said. “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “Oh, 15 to 20 years or so.”
“But what then?” asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right, you would announce an IPO, and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you could retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.”

[Higgenbotham]

Fast forward close to two thousand years and it’s far from difficult to see how the same pattern of elite extinction through the collapse of political complexity will likely work out here in North America. The ruling elites of our society, like those of the late Roman Empire, are superbly skilled at manipulating and parasitizing a fantastically elaborate bureaucratic machine which includes governments, business firms, universities, and many other institutions among its components. That’s what they do, that’s what they know how to do, and that’s what all their training and experience has prepared them to do. Thus their position is exactly equivalent to that of French aristocrats before 1789, but they’re facing the added difficulty that the vast mechanism on which their power depends has maintenance costs that their civilization can no longer meet. As the machine fails, so does their power.

Nor are they particularly well prepared to make the transition to a radically different way of exercising power. Imagine for a moment that one of the current US elite—an executive from a too-big-to-fail investment bank, a top bureaucrat from inside the DC beltway, a trust-fund multimillionaire with a pro forma job at the family corporation, or what have you—were to turn up in some chaotic failed state on the fringes of the industrial world, with no money, no resources, no help from abroad, and no ticket home. What’s the likelihood that, without anything other than whatever courage, charisma, and bare-knuckle fighting skills he might happen to have, some such person could equal Odoacer’s feat, win the loyalty and obedience of thousands of gang members and unemployed mercenaries, and lead them in a successful invasion of a neighboring country?

There are people in North America who could probably carry off a feat of that kind, but you won’t find them in the current ruling elite. That in itself defines part of the path to dark age America: the replacement of a ruling class that specializes in managing abstract power through institutions with a ruling class that specializes in expressing power up close and in person, using the business end of the nearest available weapon. The process by which the new elite emerges and elbows its predecessors out of the way, in turn, is among the most reliable dimensions of decline and fall; we’ll talk about it next week.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ... tical.html

He's been writing a new installment every week for the past several weeks on the subject of Dark Age America.

[Reality Check]

US Military Policy in the Middle East

The Washington Times has an excellent, concise article on what is going on in the MIDDLE EAST.

This information has not been reported as concisely, or completely, in other U.S. Media.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... /?page=all

The British Paper - The Telegraph - also has an excellent article on how the portions of Baghdad west of both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are likely to fall to ISIL in the next few weeks.

What the paper fails to mention is what is located there:

ISIL is on the verge of controlling all Iraqi territory west of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, including the portion of Baghdad located entirely west of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

That portion of Baghdad includes the Baghdad airport, the Joint U.S. and Iraqi Army Military Headquarters located at the Airport, The Iraqi Government Buildings, The U.S. Embassy complex and the Green Zone where virtually all of the 5,000 U.S. Troops, U.S. Security Contractors and Diplomats live and work.

U.S. civilians and U.S. military forces in Iraq will have to retreat through areas of Iraq controlled by Iran and Shia Militias.

U.S. people may be taken hostage by Iran or ISIS if they ( the U.S. people ) do not get out soon.

These events would require those Iraqi military divisions west of the rivers to collapse as effective fighting units - but it is at best a 50-50 proposition that that will not happen over the next few weeks - they - those Iraqi military units west of the Rivers - are begging for U.S. help ( in the form of U.S. ground troops ) right now - help that Obama has promised the world he will never give to the Iraqi military.

Many of those Iraqi division west of the rivers are surrounded by well equipped, well supplied, ISIL units that are contesting the supply routes that remain to the IRAQI army units west of the rivers.

ISIL has 10,000 highly effective army troops - not just militant militias - west of the two rivers. More than enough to take the Sunni areas of Baghdad if the Iraqi army units defending those Sunni areas fade away. Virtually all the Baghdad districts west of both Rivers were Sunni areas prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ghdad.html

[Higgenbotham]

Western scientists feel that the consumption and preparation of meat from monkeys, fruit bats, and other forest animals is behind the transmission of Ebola, and possibly a new supervirus, which if left uncontrolled could kill a third of the world’s population.

SCHWARTZ: The 2050 viewers also started talking about this blood disease. They said it came out of Africa and it crossed over from primates into human beings because they killed the primates and ate them. They said it swept across the world and killed millions and millions of people. This was the late 1970s...

http://www.healthy.net/Health/Interview ... ture/305/3

[Higgenbotham]

The S&P500 looks to be crossing the 200 day moving average.

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Higgie, do you think it is finally heading down?

Vince, I haven't a clue really. I covered all my shorts on Friday because normally when it makes a top it chops around for a few months. I think that even if it drops some more it will at some point be higher than it is now. At the same time, I feel it is way more overpriced here than it was in 2000 and 2007. Someone could point to the fact that the current PE is lower than it was at the 2000 top but the E is more fake and fragile in my opinion. A good rule of thumb has been that if this last high was as high as it ever gets, the failed attempt to exceed that high wil come 5-6 weeks after the high was made.

Aside from the way markets normally move at highs, I am seeing gas prices under $3 per gallon the past couple days and when gas prices drop hard from a high the first drop usually gives the stock market and the economy a second wind that lasts for awhile.

[Higgenbotham]

How about silver? I say buy. It finally hit the $16-18 area.

[aedens]

I took a dca at 17.08 http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... dca#p25585

Looking for a bottom to carve out at 85 as mentioned on wti

Also covered all and out last week. I stated Wed Aug 27, 2014 I would close after the election, I was wrong, I also stated we had 10 feet of
snow last year, I was wrong we had nine feet seven inches.

Seen the market head fake so we do need to check here on that, its recorded.

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

History, in due time, will arrange everything for the best. It does not need the advice of mortal men.

We are moving forward. Thus a few more may simply realize the condition.

Let the dead bury the dead as we had been told. He will lift or place the seal as He wishes.

At this point in life He takes, since it was never ours anyways.

[aedens]

Tyler Durden: Where'd you go, psycho boy?

Narrator: I felt like destroying something beautiful.

Projection bias The tendency to unconsciously assume that others (or one's future selves) share one's current emotional states, thoughts and values.

[vincecate]

Higgie: I covered all my shorts on Friday

Aedens: Also covered all and out last week.

I gave up on my Oct Puts a couple months back and bought Jan Puts. Friday got my hopes up that my Oct Puts might still work out. I think there is a real chance of a crash this week. But perhaps that is just wishful thinking. Will know soon.

Yes, I think silver is a good buy at these prices.

[aedens]

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CLX1 ... M;range=5d

As noted V - from here no clue given the genaric maniacs and democidal nuts. Oct14 I may look at a few names.

Meanwhile, Turkey asks us to kill our kids and will hold our coat. Fuck them, and arm the Kurds they deserve space which pisses off the Turks.

I am not sending my people over there. We been there done that and we did not dishonor our friends. The aboves did that on there own.

Ours are retired. Not our Bar fight. If the idiots cannot seal the border here and take out the trash there is stil no point to any discussion.

As noted correct from the report H forwarded....

weakening of that system made it even harder to collect the revenues on which the rest of the system depended, and forced more of what money there was to go for crisis management. Year after year, as a result, roads, fortresses, and the rest of the infrastructure of Roman power sank under a burden of deferred maintenance and malign neglect

The idiots here consider themselves exempt from the consumer choices. Not buying nothing from nobody since saving is the only path to growth and any one with sense already knows this.