PDA

View Full Version : "They're Pouring Rocket Fuel"


Pages : [1] 2

hoagster7
April 2nd, 2008, 05:15 PM
"They're Pouring Rocket Fuel", http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

About halfway through the Tuesday trading session my [tax] attorney called and asked a really simple question: "Do you remember when we were going to the moon the liftoff of the Saturn Five rocket?"

Does everyone on the planet know I'm old enough to be verging on geezerhood and might actually remember this stuff off a network feed in 1969? "Uh...well...er...(my mind was racing to change the subject somehow)..."Are you sure it was a Saturn Five?"

"Yes, I am, of course it was a Saturn Five," my consigliore scolded, perhaps thinking I had early Alzheimer's symptoms in addition to not aging gracefully. Nevertheless, he was polite enough to continue "The thing about that launch was remember how very slow it was when it first moved at lift off? It took the darn thing something like 15 to 20 seconds before it got beyond the launch tower and gantry. it took it quite a while in fact, but by the time the first stage was finished, it was going something like 600 miles an hour and was many thousands of feet up. You get it?"

Ashamed to admit that I had my head buried in a client issue (dealing with dropped emails getting to me) I feigned a knowing "Hmmmm...."

"Eggggzactly!"

Whew, I had skated! Washington & Lee University apparently didn't teach late 1970's tax law students about over-the-hill reporters who bluffing about with words like "Hmmm..." and thus succeed at fishing for information rather than seem complete fools. Suspecting this to be the case, I had to do was shut the hell up, and he's tell me everything. Being an attorney, I shouldn't have long to wait. It worked:

"The way I have it figured is that the "Fed" has been pouring rocket fuel on the market for the past month or two, what with all the bailouts and everything. Something like $360-billion by one count, but could be more. My point is that what's happing today (yesterday) is that the rocket fuel is now catching fire and the rocket ship is going to take off. It's going to be one last moon shot, so to speak You were right. I was right. We might get one last chance to bail out before the big crash! Our friend Robin Landry is right! Absolutely smack-dab on-the-button right"

I didn't have the heart to tell him the Crash, which will become The Second Great Depression, is already here, thanks to the fine spending policies of president Herbert Bush who seems as immune to the reality of tent cities for California's homeless as he does to the current price of gasoline.

In fact, the reality of the Second Depression is so strongly cast now that even the British press is headlining: USA 2008: The Great Depression. Ain't that cheeky? They're whining but we're paying for it and the word "depression" is only used on the money honey channels to describe a medical condition and reasons why we should throw money at Big Pharma companies..

I don't know if my friend Jas Jain has trademarked the term "Greater Depression" -- a term he's been using among a bunch of us econ students/pundits since 1995 (*I prefer Second Depression, but Jas' name for it is better from a marketing stand point.). Maybe I should call him and see about licensing the use of the name so I can come out with a timely line of "Depressing clothing" and "Depressing Sportswear". Add a tent city/soup line logo and a line of designer wrist bands for the tent city dwellers and.... Ooops. Where was I? Oh yeah...

----

Need a personal financial bailout? No problem, come send us your tired, your poor, your bankrupt bakers yearning to be free - we'll save 'em - it's what we do in the New America (*the one without a Constitution).

Got some old laundry tickets? No? Well how about a couple of dry cleaning claim chits? I show you in a second how to turn those into millions if not billions.

As close as I can figure, that's all it takes to qualify as an asset-backed security anymore, although a claim chit for a hocked chain saw at a pawn shop could be similarly leveraged. How much do you wanna borrow? Good Times are just ahead, Citizen! I wish I owned a pawn shop.

OK, sure, CONgress is making a big MainDreamMedia (MDM) production of out the few bumps along the way - like killer gas prices -- but the reality when you scratch down through the spin layers is that a lot of the old boyz on the hill are just working over the old boyz in the oil patch for a little bigger slice of the good 'ol pie.


My consigliore had earned his retainer again.

-----

Robin Landry (rlandry@allegiance.tv) , although feeling under the weather with a terrible cold (proving to me that people get sick when they go on vacations, especially on luxurious cruises around the Caribbean) had told me not a half hour earlier that the April Fool's Rally was likely the last train out for people who want to unload before we sail off the edge of the charted financial world later this year.

"I told you I was in Orlando for an investment conference about a week and a half ago? Well, even though I didn't do a paper this year, a lot of people asked me about my model. When I told them that my model had issued a long term sell signal, just like it did in January 2000, before briefly pulling back in February, or so, I told them that I'd be looking for the same kind of divergence to develop this summer. I think it will look like about April of 2000 when it comes to divergences.

You know what George? Not a one of them believed me back in 2000 and no one wants to believe me now! It was amazing. All these people I talked to in Orlando just didn't want to believe it could happen that way again, even when I showed them the chart and the count.

But you know what? I've got my count and it all fits along with all my other indicators. It looks like we're starting into (wave) 5 of 5 of 5 and after that, if you're not out, bar the door 'cause that will be all she wrote.

---

I've have [managed account] clients who I've already moved out of the market calling me. One guy called and said that his account was down 3% since the high and I asked him if he had considered how the overall market had been doing since I got him out - It was down about 20%.

George, these are the exact same people that were calling me when I got them out of Enron when it was over $100. They all told me I was nuts. Well, it's going on like that right now, all over again."

After ,talking to Landry and my consigliore, I admit to feeling pretty smug: I can see the economic future almost plain as day, although this is not financial advice.


We seem to be 'lifting off' our final barn burner rally I was telling you I expect for a couple of months and that come this summer, we may even take out the old high and install some new ones. By the end of July, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 16,000 mark. If I were playing with stocks instead of commodities, I'd be chest deep in index calls with a July or August expiration.

Why? Because as consigliore says, "They're pouring rocket fuel", or as Robin says, "It looks like the 5th of the 5th of the 5th."

---

As the mood swings over to positive here for the next six months, I expect commodities including gold and silver to turn around and rally, especially silver which is due to become more endeared to the public based on the HPH linguistics -- I'm betting that the endearment will be accompanied by a price move - that's my gambling gene kicking in. But then comes the Fall and the fall and we'll be so battened down that anything which comes ought to be survivable, short of George pushing the Big Button.



Remember what I told you a long time back? There may come I time when I would think about loading up to the gunwales and going short with every dime I can raise. I think that will be here late this summer. Short term, 14,000 seems like a good first stop. But by late summer, I might be inclined to short some commodities if any look overpriced then, along with the indices and maybe (gulp - am I writing this?) buying some government bonds, as well. This ,weekend for subscribers to www.peoplenomics.com: "How Would You Play The Crash"?

All that, of course, is way off in the future. We might go hyperinflationary along the way, in which case the metals ought to scream upward). That'd be all the rocket fuel catching fire at once, in late April to mid May. For today, I'll just get my nose back on the grindstone.

So you see, there's really nothing to worry about -- Ben and Hank have saved us -- a little profit taking at the open maybe, but seems to me (and my more learned colleagues) that we're all going to the moon because this band of garage financial racketeers...Ooops, I mean rocketeers... have been pouring straight rocket fuel into the belly of the markets for a couple of months. Yesterday smacks of liftoff.

It's like swallowing a couple Fizzies on a bet when I was a kid. I wouldn't feel anything for a minute or so, but then I could let out with some world-class length belches; Fizzies being a sort of flavored/sweetened Alka-Seltzer sort of thing. (*I was the guy belching root beer.)

---

This morning's discussion is about much more serious matters than my juvenile munching of Fizzies, though not by much. It's about the nature of rocket fuel and how the Treasury and the Fed are getting this rocket off the launch pad.

If you'd like to learn about civilian sources of rocket fuel, so that you can maybe launch some rockets of your own, feel free to click over to the website of the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers. However, be advised that if you do try to mix up some of this kind of rocket fuel at home - make absolutely certain that you don't write the words "United States" on any your work product, for it you do, you can quickly get into regulated rocket fuel territory.

On the other hand, if you have a couple of left over dry cleaning tickets that you haven't picked up yet, combine them and issue a new financial instrument of your own. Call it something like a Leveraged Laundry Obligation (LLO). If you're like a good chunk of American rocket fuel printers, you might be able to sell your LLO's to China (*but they already have good historical reasons to be suspicious of Americans and laundry instruments, so failing a sale there, you could no doubt sell them to someone in the Middle East.

Before you know it, your personal fortunes will have swollen immensely and when they do, please remember to tip the tipster (*me) generously. Wire transfers are fine, or a good 3-4 year old Porsche Cayman or 911 (coupe), no Tiptronic thanks, manual only. Oh, and throw in a fresh clutch face.

Just be sure, whatever you do, to be out of harms way, miles from the rocket range, before anyone tries to get real value for your LLO's. The specific caution being that people tend to get seriously pissed when they find out all about your dirty laundry.

Rockets away!

I've been working on axioms/ mnemonics to help me remember my plan. Try these:

*

"Sell in May and go away"
*

"Sell in June - is it too soon?"
*

"Sell in July and then fly"
*

"Selling August to avoid a Bust"
*

"Sell in September, or the wife will remember"
*

"Sell in October and it'll be Over"
*

"Sell in November, bankrupt December"`

Yeah, those help. ;-)

Resting
April 2nd, 2008, 08:59 PM
Definition of a Recession: A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.

The last quarter of 2007 was UP from the 3rd quarter.....so, we have to look at the GDP for the first 2 quarters of 2008 in order to determine wether or not we are in a RECESSION. That won't be known until August of 2008--and that's only a RECESSION.

A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression...

BOTTOM LINE: WE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE IN A RECESSION OR DEPRESSION UNTIL AT LEAST AUGUST OF THIS YEAR.

I'm getting tired of hearing about the recession/depression the USA is in...it's just not true.

Don't get me wrong...we may be headed that way...but it must be measured...not just based on feelings...

goinghome
April 2nd, 2008, 11:40 PM
All measurements of the economy would have to be the same and consistent and taken in the same manner, etc. We know this is not happening. A depression/recession may not show up on paper until August, but that's just a man-made measuring tool, insconsistently based on other inconsistent measurements by the government who's causing/allowing it with bad policy which they're making up by the seat of their pants, moment by moment. It's naive to think that something isn't happening just because somebody else says it's probably not happening.

HSmomto4
April 3rd, 2008, 09:11 AM
Definition of a Recession: A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.

The last quarter of 2007 was UP from the 3rd quarter.....so, we have to look at the GDP for the first 2 quarters of 2008 in order to determine wether or not we are in a RECESSION. That won't be known until August of 2008--and that's only a RECESSION.

A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression...

BOTTOM LINE: WE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE IN A RECESSION OR DEPRESSION UNTIL AT LEAST AUGUST OF THIS YEAR.

I'm getting tired of hearing about the recession/depression the USA is in...it's just not true.

Don't get me wrong...we may be headed that way...but it must be measured...not just based on feelings...

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...it's a duck. Even the FED admits that most often we are coming out of recession before they can say we are in a recession.

Sharon
April 3rd, 2008, 10:46 AM
We should form groups of people and try to live similar to the lifestyle of the Amish if we want our group to survive a depression. I live in Texas and at least her the weather is pleasant many months of the year and many homeless live outside. I heard during the depression there were many homeless. I think of myself as living as a homeless person in order to get used to the idea of a Great Depression again. My dad ate bread with lard on it and had one pair of shoes.

Christopher Clemons
April 3rd, 2008, 04:28 PM
Definition of a Recession: A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.

The last quarter of 2007 was UP from the 3rd quarter.....so, we have to look at the GDP for the first 2 quarters of 2008 in order to determine wether or not we are in a RECESSION. That won't be known until August of 2008--and that's only a RECESSION.

A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression...

BOTTOM LINE: WE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE IN A RECESSION OR DEPRESSION UNTIL AT LEAST AUGUST OF THIS YEAR.

I'm getting tired of hearing about the recession/depression the USA is in...it's just not true.

Don't get me wrong...we may be headed that way...but it must be measured...not just based on feelings...

That may be true, but a recession or a depression shouldn't be measured based upon the level of the Dow on any one given day, willfully omitted M3 data, a CPI index where fuel and food "don't count", and some hyper technical definition of GDP growing without taking into consideration the inflation cost of said growth.

hoagster7
April 3rd, 2008, 08:22 PM
Definition of a Recession: A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.

The last quarter of 2007 was UP from the 3rd quarter.....so, we have to look at the GDP for the first 2 quarters of 2008 in order to determine wether or not we are in a RECESSION. That won't be known until August of 2008--and that's only a RECESSION.

A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression...

BOTTOM LINE: WE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE IN A RECESSION OR DEPRESSION UNTIL AT LEAST AUGUST OF THIS YEAR.

I'm getting tired of hearing about the recession/depression the USA is in...it's just not true.

Don't get me wrong...we may be headed that way...but it must be measured...not just based on feelings...

RESTING: The central point of this article is to point out what the government is doing. I don't recall the theme being "depression". He might have mentioned that depression will be a result but the point of the article was rocket fuel...money being printed so to speak.

Tall Timbers
April 3rd, 2008, 09:00 PM
I think the press, bored as it can get, has been crying recession/depression for a while now. It appears to me that our economy has continued to function quite well given the punishing energy prices and property bubble burst... We're being strangled, but our economy has been fighting the good fight... it is too early to tell where we'll be a year from now...

Resting
April 3rd, 2008, 09:19 PM
You are probably right, hoagster7. I just skimmed through the article...I probably read through it quickly, and noted a few lines about recession - I think at the end - and decided to respond to that part.

I wasn't trying to derail this thread, but was responding to something within the article...

I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do that. Sorry.

Resting
April 3rd, 2008, 09:23 PM
To all those who do not agree that there is not a recession/depression: there has to be some sort of measurement of the economy, and it must be a man-made measurement, because men began the economy.

You can't just go based on feelings...

Hey, as I said in my post: I'm not saying our economy is not in a downturn...I'm not even saying that we are not headed for a recession/depression...in fact, I would be surprised if our economy grows at all this year...I think by August or September, we'll know if we're in a recession, and I think we WILL be in one...

I'm just saying that we can't talk about a downturn in our economy and cry RECESSION! everytime various parts of it takes a dive.

I don't mean to argue...but I think I have a valid point.