The Contrarian's View s published 11 times per year on a mostly-irregular schedule, and the views expressed are those of the author and editor, Nick Chase. Because nobody can predict the future, results of past suggestions or recommendations are no guarantee of future results. My own material in this publication may be freely quoted provided proper attribution is given to its source; quotes from other people are subject to fair-use copyright restrictions. Subscription rate: Selections are free on the Internet. Using your favorite Web-browsing program, open URL http://onashi.org. Mailed paper subscriptions, one year for $39 to The Contrarian's View, 132 Moreland Street, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609. There is a limit of 50 paid subscribers at one time; please check for availability before sending any money. Sorry, Visa and Mastercard are not available. Overseas subscription rate, U.S. $54. Unsolicited material sent to us by UPS or by courier other than the postal service is refused and returned to sender! ISSN 1536-4429 Phone: (508) 757-2881
Given that we are also at war with Islamofascist fanatics, this may not be a valid assumption.
So far, the attacks by the Islamofascists, though apparently well-planned and carefully executed, are decidedly low-tech. They use small-scale conventional explosives, with the cleverest being using mere box-cutters to turn freshly-refueled jet aircraft into flying bombs on 9-11.
So we could perhaps justifiably assume that al Qaeda has nothing more sophisticated - such as nuclear bombs - at its disposal, or they certainly would have used them on us and our allies by now, instead of continuing with only the low-tech murders of civilians.
That might not be a good assumption. One of the stories that's been floating around for the past several months, "under the radar" of the mainstream media.... no doubt because it would take real work to pin it down, not just some talking head foaming at the mouth in front of the camera.... is that al-Qaeda has for some time been planning an "American Hiroshima" of simultaneous or near-simultaneous nuclear explosions in large American cities with the greatest numbers of Jews.
Consider the following quotes gleaned from various sources, mostly from intelligence experts:
America has still not been punished for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. - Mohamed Haydar-Zamar [one of the planners of the 9-11 WTC attack]
They [Al-Qaeda] hatched their plan over years and trained well for it. They used "cheap" weapons not because they did not have "expensive" weapons of mass destruction; all evidence indicates they have such weapons. - Stanislav Lunev [the highest ranking defector from Russia's GRU intelligence service]
Russian crime syndicates already have been identified several times as cooperating with groups of international terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, who used his organization's connections with Russian mobsters to launder money from drug trafficking for the Taliban, receiving $133 million to $1 billion a year.... bin Laden has bought several small-sized nuclear weapons from Russia's criminal syndicates, which have not been used only because they are protected by Soviet codes that require a special signal from Moscow before the weapons can be detonated. According to the Russian media, al Qaeda has already spent considerable sums on the recruitment of Russian scientists and former KGB agents capable of helping it break these codes. - Stanislav Lunev [2002]
The latest information out of the U.S. is that the leader's [bin Laden's] emissaries succeeded in purchasing out of the Ukraine 3 mini-nukes known as RA115 and RA116. These can be carried in a suitcase, and 700 of them were manufactured in the Soviet Union. Russian sources admit they have lost at least 100 of these. - El Mundo [September 16, 2001]
They're [nuclear weapons] not difficult to obtain if you have contacts in Russia with other Islamist groups. They are available for $10 million and $20 million. - Osama bin Laden (to Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir)
Several reporters and top intelligence analysts.... have been working quietly and independently for years on this issue of al-Qaeda's acquisition and plans for nuclear weapons. What's happening is that this independent work has led to surprisingly similar conclusions - that al-Qaeda has nuclear weapons, probably many of them, and that some of them, according to a variety of sources, have already been smuggled into this country using our porous borders and with the help of criminal enterprises like the MS-13 gang.
There is no question, based on captured documents and captured al-Qaeda leaders, that Osama bin Laden has been planning his "American Hiroshima" for many years -- long before Sept. 11, 2001 . When you hear U.S. officials -- from President Bush, to Vice President Dick Cheney, to the head of the FBI and Homeland Security all telling us about the "inevitability" of a terrorist attack on the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, this is what they are talking about....
I have had what I consider to be credible sourcing on 95 percent of this for quite awhile. I withheld it from publication because I couldn't even believe it myself. I didn't and don't want it to be true. I have no desire to be right about this. I want very badly to be wrong. This is not a story that can advance my reputation, credibility, career or business interests. If I'm wrong, which I hope I am, people may some day laugh at me. I will gratefully accept that. If I'm right, nobody is going to be saying, "Gee, that Farah told it like it was". They will be focused on the national disaster that has struck us - just as I will be. - WorldNet Daily journalist/publisher Joseph Farah
So, what is the bottom line on this? Either our own intelligence sources have been hoodwinked by "bad" intelligence, numerous open sources have also been fooled en masse, or it means there is indeed credible information al-Qaeda currently possesses nuclear weapons. The private consensus among intelligence insiders for the last few years is indeed that al Qaeda has nuclear weapons in their possession. - Ryan Mauro
Now, we can hope that this "intelligence" is disinformation, or that its collectors are perhaps as correct as the CIA operatives who said Saddam had "weapons of mass destruction" prior to war with Iraq. Or, we can agree that it might indeed be valid, but there's not much we can do about it except hope the Federal government interdicts those nukes before al-Qaeda can set them off. The U.S. has a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons to use in retaliation, but exactly whom or where would we attack?
Should al-Qaeda successfully launch an atomic attack, it for sure would cause a lot more damage than punch a few irradiated holes in our big cities and kill, maim or poison several million people. It would blow up the (debt-saturated) financial landscape. We are home to much of the world's capital because the U.S. is perceived as a "safe" place to put it, and our low returns on investment are a direct result of this perceived safety.... a "low-risk" environment. A successful nuclear attack on even one city, coupled with our inability to immediately retaliate, would cause capital to flee our shores to other countries which are not perceived as al-Qaeda targets, and our "risk premium" would jump. I doubt the derivatives markets would survive such an attack.
If an attack comes, and you are fortunate enough not
to be in it, and you live in an area where life can soon
return to close-to-normal, and you can even cope
with the erosion of (what's left of) our freedoms as
people exchange them for safety.... you probably will
still find yourself struggling with financial catastrophe. Few people profit from war; the great majority
are made poorer.
An 11% price jump in a day, and a 14% jump in two days, certainly got my attention. Each time we drove past a gas station I would quote the price in disbelief. My wife said, get over it, there's nothing you can do about it, you have to pay the price if you want gas.
True, but I can tell you: I find myself asking, Is this trip really necessary? A friend in New Hampshire needed help in dividing her large clumps of collectible daylilies for sale at fundraisers for various nonprofit organizations. That's a round trip of almost 300 miles from Worcester, the financial backwater of America.... or about $30 worth of gas. I went anyway.... after all, it was to help nonprofits. But I had to think about it, instead of just saying "sure, no problem". And I ate a bargain-basement lunch and dinner on the journey to save money.
Which leads me to wonder, just how many other
people are cutting expenses elsewhere to keep
feeding the family car?
Now, we have come to appreciate in the 30+ years of being directly or tangentially involved in the art of forecasting that there is no single monetary policy indicator that sends a true "signal" all of the time. But when two indicators that have shown a great deal of reliability over time line up on the same side, we take notice. And both the slowdown in real M2 growth - outright contraction in the second quarter of this year - and the steady narrowing of the yield spread are sending a strong signal that economic growth, which already has moderated on a year-over-year basis, is likely to moderate further. - Paul Kasriel and Asha G. Bangalore
Now, we need to realize that oil usage as a percentage of GDP is less than half of what it was 30 years ago. We are much more efficient. But it still has an effect. My take is that oil prices, even where they are today, are not high enough to push us into recession. It will just slow things down a bit. - John Mauldin
So, after all the hyperbole is done, we have to wonder what the combined effect of auto sales reports along with the crack in the Housing Bubble reported yesterday will add up to later this year. One bet? A 20-40% decline in the Dow (which makes a bigger move down in the NASDAQ an even less wild prediction) between now and the middle of March 2006. - George Ure
The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or 98 percent, are in the domestic service sector. Here is the breakdown of the major categories: 30,000 food servers and bartenders, 28,000 health care and social assistance, 12,000 real estate, 6,000 credit intermediation, 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation, 50,000 retail trade and 8,000 wholesale trade.... Not a single one of these jobs produces a tradable good or service that can be exported or serve as an import substitute to help reduce the massive and growing U.S. trade deficit. The U.S. economy is employing people to sell things, to move people around, and to serve them fast food and alcoholic beverages. - Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. is losing control of its money. The control is gradually and subtly switching to our creditors, the Chinese and the Asians. The direction of the yuan in terms of dollars or dollars in terms of yuan may be the "next big thing". - Richard Russell
What will shatter America's confidence is probably a combination of financial crises. The dollar is vulnerable. So are Treasury bonds. So are stocks and house prices. Which one will crack the mirror is anyone's guess. Our guess is that house prices will stop rising, causing a cutback in consumer spending. This will send the U.S. economy into recession...probably a long, soft slump that will take down house prices and the stock market, but leave the dollar and bonds with little damage. - Bill Bonner
Thus, this vast increase in the market value of asset claims is in part the indirect result of investors accepting lower compensation for risk. Such an increase in market value is too often viewed by market participants as structural and permanent. To some extent, those higher values may be reflecting the increased flexibility and resilience of our economy. But what they perceive as newly abundant liquidity can readily disappear. Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher prices. This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.... Our forecasts and hence policy are becoming increasingly driven by asset price changes. - Alan Greenspan [Nick's translation: We're trying to let the air out of the housing bubble slowly, without disrupting the rest of the economy.]
Fannie Mae is sitting on over $1 trillion of derivatives. $1 trillion! There is no way that anybody on Wall Street can evaluate or quantify the risk, leverage, volatility, or explosiveness of that portfolio.... Fannie Mae is sitting on a derivative portfolio big enough not to just put itself out of business, but big enough to take the entire real estate market with it. I say that because Fannie Mae finances one of every five home loans in the United States. If Fannie Mae blows up, the real-estate-never-goes-down crowd is in for a very rude surprise. - Tony Sagami
Since 1999, when the financial bubble was in full bloom (due in large part to the Fed), we have been saying that the central bank faced a dilemma with limited choices - none of them good. They could either kill the bubble, let the economy and markets take the hit and come out of it ready to resume healthy growth - or they could keep extending the bubble for a while longer with far worse consequences down the road. The Fed, under Greenspan, chose the latter course, resulting in a dangerous housing bubble following the financial bubble of the late 1990s. This is evident in the fragile unbalanced recovery, the massive trade deficit, low consumer savings rate and record household debt. The standard measures of the economy indicate to many that Greenspan has won his bet.... but we believe that the final word on Greenspan's reign as Fed Chairman is not yet written, and history may not view him kindly. - Charlie Minter
For the first half of this year, executives at home-building companies - those with market caps exceeding $500 million - sold off a total of $671 million worth of stock, compared to $189 million for the same period last year... Robert and Bruce Toll, co-founders of Pennsylvania-based builder Toll Brothers, have unloaded $441 million worth of stock since last November. And this year, execs at home-building firm NVR have sold $125.4 million worth of stock - more than double the $54.3 million they unloaded in the first half of 2004. Hovnanian Enterprises executives have dumped $39.5 million in stock this year, after selling just $900,000 worth in the same period for 2004, while Lennar execs have cashed out for $32.5 million - eight times the total sell-off from the first six months of last year.... Our guess is that if the insiders knew their stock would continue to rise and the real estate run-up would continue, they wouldn't be unloading their shares in such massive amounts. - Carl Limbacher
I do not like to be a prophet of doom. I am not a negative person. At least I try not to be, but what I see in California, New England, and other places, makes me really worry. How can a working-class family afford to continue making payments on a home which is hundreds of thousands of dollars overpriced? This, when fuel costs have tripled, other prices have gone way up, and wages remain virtually the same. I just don't know how it can continue... in California, Boston, Washington D.C. or any other place where real estate prices are out of sight, making servicing their mortgages very expensive. - Don Stott
It is difficult to imagine a greater level of optimism regarding future expectations when interest-only loans, comprising a mere 2% of new home loans in 2002, accounted for.... 61% in the first two months of 2005.... The market share of ARMs, which comprised only 18% of new purchase loans in early 2003, now totals almost 50% of the national market and over 60% in California.... My guess? We may experience a 20-50% collapse in [house] prices in many areas by 2012. - Doug Thorburn
Massive amounts of announced layoffs in the banking and telecom industries will start kicking in the second half of the year. Eventually, this will spill over and affect housing just as it has in the United Kingdom and Australia. The United Kingdom has just about finished year one of a housing bust, and Australia is well into year two. - Mike Shedlock
Evidence of sharply slowing economic growth [is] accumulating by the week for Britain and Australia, both belonging to the Anglo-Saxon family of housing bubble economies. Flattened house prices in both countries have drastically curbed home equity withdrawal, essentially with prompt, drastic adverse effects on retail sales. - Kurt Richebächer
Since the beginning of the Dollar Standard era, every time an ounce of gold could buy less than 10 barrels of oil, an investor would do well to buy gold. Today, an ounce of gold buys only seven barrels of oil. The message from the markets is clear: Buy gold. - Addison Wiggin
I grew up in the 1930s. When the Depression hit, our home was one of only two or three in our immediate neighborhood which was not foreclosed. To make ends meet, my mother took in boarders... workers who streamed in to work on a big new government dam project on the Ohio River. While my dad had a job, the 600 or so mill workers under him were out on the street. My older brother and I gave up our room and moved into a tent in our yard for three years. Just try that at 15 below zero! - Charles Allmon
....most people don't realize that if you get elected to Congress you're set for life with a full salary pension!
Indexed to inflation, of course! ....My solution to the Social Security crisis; put all politicians on Social
Security and cancel their lavish pensions. - David J. Taffi
A check with our soon-to-be-divorced friend in the San Diego area, whose house is now on the market, reveals a similar story. Inventory of unsold homes has doubled.... some people who don't have to move are delisting. Our friend is flexible on her asking price, but her real-estate agent says most sellers aren't, so as a whole prices haven't dropped. (Since she's flexible, she'll probably sell before prices really sag.... others won't be so fortunate.)
Now, as fall approaches, we enter a period I expect to be really difficult for the stock market. Surprisingly, the technical indicators don't really foretell of trouble ahead.... as a whole, they appear to be saying that we are at the tail end of a long, broad top. You know my current opinion of the stock market as predictor of the future.... not very good, because the public is leaving stocks and prices are held up by hedge funds playing games (and possibly also by government intervention). But stocks are still a good coincident indicator.... as the economy heads into the crapper, stocks will be along for the ride.
Much more important as indicators of the future direction of the economy, and of stocks, are: The decline in real M2 money supply; the flattening of the yield curve; the economic strains of the rising prices of gasoline and (for the winter) heating oil; and, most importantly, the popping of the housing bubble. Simply put, the Fed's 2002-2004 reflation efforts produced primarily a housing bubble, but secondarily a mini-bubble in overpriced stocks. It's unthinkable that stocks could continue to rise as houses decline; as they went up together, so shall they go down together.
I don't expect much stock action until after Labor Day. The remainder of September I expect to be bearish as people cut back on spending because the housing ATM is disappearing. October I expect will be truly dismal (for the bulls; bears will love it) and we'll likely see an important intermediate bottom, well below Dow 10,000 and possibly below Dow 9000, in late October to mid-November. Then I expect stocks will go on holiday (recover somewhat) to about the end of the year, with the bear returning again in 2006.
The risk of systemic failure is currently about 20%,
attributable to the funny accounting at Fannie Mae
(FNMA) and the jaundiced inspection the Federal
Reserve is giving certain derivatives traders. As
stocks sink in the fall and the economy comes under
increasing strain, systemic failure risk could climb as
high as 35%. Then I expect it will retreat to 20% -
25% (if nothing "breaks") until the end of the year.
A. "Professors' Investment Group (PIG)" - investment club portfolio.
SUMMARY - "PIG":
Original cost: $10,699.00
Present value: $18,090.71
Increase: $ 7,391.71 [+69.09%]
COMMENT on "PIG": There is no change from the last issue.
TIAA/CREF 403(b) retirement plan; I switch between indexed stock/bond/money funds:
(No transactions since June 30, 2004 due to my retired status. Update soon, I hope!)
Values, 30Aug2005: stock, 196.26; equity-index, 79.46; MM, 22.39; bond, 76.57; inflation-indexed bond, 46.33; real estate, 227.87; TIAA current yield
in SRA, about 5.2%. Current money-market yield is 3.16%.
Gain, 1988: 18.91%; 1989: 14.48%; 1990: 8.28%; 1991: 27.93%; 1992: 10.20%; 1993:
3.08%; 1994: 4.07%; 1995: 4.80%; 1996: 5.28%; 1997: 5.38%; 1998: 5.72%; 1999: 5.12%;
2000: 9.99%; 2001: 1.11%
Gain, January 1 through March 31, 2002: 0.97% (3.86% annual rate of return)
Total gain since January 1, 1988 (14.25 years): 223.43%
Compound annual rate of return: 8.59%
Gain shown excludes the impact of additional monthly cash contributions.
(Please note that I have not had the time to calculate my rate of return beyond March 2002, and
may not get the time until 2005)
Buying CREF stock on January 1, 1988 and holding it gained 422.38%, for a compound annual rate of
return of 11.46%.
COMMENT on NYSE "Timer's Trend": We are currently on a BUY signal of May 17, 2005..
COMMENT on NASDAQ "Timer's Trend": We're on a SELL signal given August 8, 2005.
NEXT ISSUE - will appear near the end of September.