Posted on 09/28/2010 10:27:44 AM PDT by jacquej
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"This is the game being played to "pump confidence" in the stock market. The Fed comes in and "POMOs" their so-called MBS "rolloffs", and the money immediately goes into speculation. This drives up equity prices, but it drives down the dollar by more (about 12% since this new "POMO" program began in June) and in turn this is immediately reflected in higher commodity prices."
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No. There is no honor in honesty. Honesty is a default requirement for minimum human decency, like caring for one's children or not assaulting people on the street.
In the moral scheme, dishonesty gets you demerits while honesty gets you no credits. It is to be expected from everyone at all times.
A market market that highly values honesty, honors it. Most assuredly there is both a practical and spiritual value in honesty — honesty is NOT the default. The default condition of humanity is self-deception and deception.
It takes effort and training to be honest. It is not default in nearly all humans.
Although I did meet a young woman recently who seemed completely honest — but she was an moron with Down’s Syndrome. I am not using the word moron as a slight to her, it is the word to describe her actual mental condition. See http://www.neatorama.com/2006/12/11/whats-the-difference-idiot-vs-moron/ I could describe her as a shining soul, trapped behind a think curtain of retardation of a mild-moderate level. She seems ever happy, and she has a job as a bagger in a grocery store.
Respect for honesty has many ramifications. It means also that we do not tolerate spiteful name-calling, in order that we may honestly use accurate terms such as moron, imbecile, idiot, without a sense of meanness being attached to them.
The interesting thing with humans is that the smarter we not only are we more able we are to be dishonest, by the default condition of our souls we are more LIKELY to be dishonest. As I said, honesty must be honored and valued and worked toward.
[Fix up reposting.]
A market that highly values honesty, honors it. Most assuredly there is both a practical and spiritual value in honesty — honesty is NOT the default. The default condition of humanity is self-deception and deception.
It takes effort and training to be honest. It is not the default for most of us.
Although I did meet a young woman recently who seemed completely honest — but she was an moron with Down’s Syndrome. I am not using the word moron as a slight to her, it is the word to describe her actual mental condition. See http://www.neatorama.com/2006/12/11/whats-the-difference-idiot-vs-moron/ I could describe her as a shining soul, trapped behind a think curtain of retardation of a mild-moderate level. She seems ever happy, and she has a job as a bagger in a grocery store.
Respect for honesty has many ramifications. It means also that we do not tolerate spiteful name-calling, in order that we may honestly use accurate terms such as moron, imbecile, idiot without a sense of meanness being attached to them.
The interesting thing with humans is that it is obvious that the smarter we are the more ABLE we are to be dishonest, yet by the default condition of our souls the smarter we are the more LIKELY we are to be dishonest. To be honest we have to be trained to be honest and in a lifetime we have to continue training in order to continue being honest.
The reason for such a seemingly negative spiritual default, is that it allows us to achieve, but only with effort, a higher level of spiritual understanding.
As I said, honesty must be honored and valued and worked toward.
THe “12%” figure is relative to certain other currencies that are of little direct concern to these old people. It hasn’t translated into consumer price increases yet in any real manner.
If we get to where the foreign component of our food supply becomes a significant factor, currency movements could start hurting old people. But for now, most everything they need is produced in american dollars. Food, housing, drugs are all home-grown. Not quite so much clothes, but they are artificially cheap because of cheap foreign labor that also isn’t effected significantly by the price swings.
The biggest hit would be in oil, except the gasoline prices haven’t swung any more than usual yet (we are in a traditionally downward-moving period now, so we’ll know by November if the dollar currency drop has propped up gasoline prices).
POMO - Permanent Open Market Operations.
This is the program that provides liquidity to the banking system to prevent another freezeout of money market funds. The Treasury sells treasury bills to banks when things are good, and when it looks tight, they buy them back, providing cash which the banks can lend out to people who need to make payroll, etc.
Some people speculate that the treasury is buying back too much of their t-bills, and the banks are using the money to invest in stocks. Since there is speculation that the banks are sitting on trillions of dollars in assets, you’d have to think some of that would be in equities, although I bet most of it is in real estate they can’t really sell, so they don’t REALLY have trillions to lend out.
MBS - Mortgage Backed Security. The thing that allows a mortgage company to sell the cash flow from the mortgages they hold without having to transfer the underlying mortgages. It “spreads the risk”, but also hides the risk, and when the mortgages were crappy subprimes, the securities often got miscategorized as highly-rated instruments simply because of the expectation that the government would step in and back the quasi-public mortgage lenders.
There is no cost of living increase, because the cost of living has not increased.
food and fuel are not discounted in the CPI numbers. They are ignored in the monthly figures, because the price of food and fuel swings wildly from month to month for cyclical and other reasons having nothing to do with the underlying economy.
Their movements are averaged in to get a somewhat fuller picture each month which is published separately from the core inflation numbers.
SGS - Shadow Government Statistics, an online “newsletter” published by John Williams, which you can get in full subscription form for the low low price $89 for six months, or $175 a year (a savings of $3!!!!).
The online posting is free, and is meant to entice you to purchase the full newsletter.
Is it working?
I have waded through 28 posts on this thread, and all I know is the DOW was 12,398 when the Pelosi/Reid Cartel took control of Congress three years and nine months ago.
Hah! laughable.
Don’t panic! Their $100k has pretty much the same purchasing power now as it did in June. Cannot buy as many Swiss Francs or Gold doubloons, or AAPL stock, but food, clothing, computers, autos, houses, etc. it is just as good, if not better. If one looks at purchasing power in terms of a basket of goods that people need and use, many other currencies are judged as overvalued in terms of the $. A MacCoffee in Sweden is the Krona equivalent of $2, here, $1.
To paraphrase Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in government, but government is interested in you.”
SS Adjustments are lagging. The CPI last year didn’t increase.
It’s funny, I remember the arguments about how CPI was overstating inflation for seniors, and bankrupting Social Security, and the answer was to develop a new CPI just for seniors that could be used for the Social Security calculations.
Obviously you could never do that, if even conservatives scream bloody murder if SS doesn’t go up every year by large sums.
I don’t disagree about indexes being jiggered to justify whatever result is desired. I just know grocery prices are going up, as are health costs, tuition, insurance, many basic consumer goods and services. But definitely groceries. Bigger prices, smaller containers, hamburger at steak prices, etc. I want my steak at steak prices, please.
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