May 15, 2012 - It should be no secret now that resource stocks, particularly gold mining shares, are in a killer bear market (for the short term). I had expected this, though not with the current level of severity, because we are in the first of two or three stages of the onset of a synchronous global recession within a secular bear market/soft depression. The first stage is where the previous attempts at global money-printing have failed, having caused asset values to reflate but not economic activity -- and with the supply of newly-minted money exhausted the global asset deflation reasserts itself. The second stage is where things start to “break”, and the money-surrogate gold/precious metals stocks rise and the other resource stocks stabilize, because they represent valuable hard assets in a time of financial instability. The third stage, if the central banks are once again successful, is the reflating of assets as the cycle repeats. In my opinion we are now at or near the end of the first stage, and about to enter the second.
May 7, 2012 - I’d say the whipsawing in the stock market is about done. Looks like “Sell in May and go away” -- for awhile, at least -- is operative again this year.
You will note that in the portfolios I have been concentrating on adding gold mining stocks which pay dividends. The gold shares are at or near a historic buying opportunity, and putting money there beats leaving it in a money-market fund with zilch yield.
March 26, 2012 - The wall of silence on the Obama “birth certificate” begins to crack. As I wrote previously, I have been able to satisfy myself that the Barack Obama “birth certificate” released by the White House last April 27 is a complete fake. It fails authenticity on four levels: First, in the digital PDF, where even cursory analysis with Adobe Illustrator will reveal how it was constructed from digital snippets. Second, without fancy (expensive!) software but just by magnifying the PDF, one can discern the mixture of bitmap and grayscale elements which would not have been possible with an ordinary scan of a paper document. Third, in the typefaces, with at least two different typewriter fonts (maybe more) being used in the single document. And fourth, in the letter spacing, as I demonstrated last July in a test so simple that, as I put it, “even a dumbass journalist can understand it”. (See “Birth Certificate pitch test” in the right-hand panel.) And I was able to satisfy myself because of my extensive, lifetime experience writing and producing technical documentation, including in the 1960s when Obama was born.
But convincing other people - no. If you ever want to see an extreme example of the herd instinct, this is it. Led by the stonewalling/disinterested mainstream media, the herd has decided that anybody questioning the authenticity of this document is a complete kook - or racist - who thinks Obama is Kenyan. (For the record, Obama was born in Hawaii. But the “birth certificate” is still fake. And I don’t know why he did not or could not produce a genuine one.) It’s like the old riddle - if a tree crashes in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? In this case, if the president of the US perpetrates a highly visible fraud on the populace, but the sorry excuses for journalists we have today refuse to investigate further in pursuit of the truth, did he lie? Apparently not, for most people. And individuals who do research the matter are considered to be loons, no matter how much real expertise they may have.
In my opinion, the majority of journalists are “right-brain” (emotional) people - that is, they base their news stories on what people have said (whether or not factual) rather than on evidence.... they do not possess the scientific or technical or knowledge skills needed to arrive at factually-based conclusions. We saw this recently with the global-warning scam.... when the hacked climate-scientist e-mails revealed that climate “research” had been corrupted by grant funding and that the scientists were cooking the data to buttress their preconceived notions and desired outcome and to keep the money coming in.... the “religion” of global warming collapsed, and the global-warming-theory critics whom the journalists had made pariahs became respectable again. We all tend to respect authority, but in doing so we need to make certain that the authority figures themselves are respectable (honest).
So, the first crack in the wall appeared when Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio released the results of his “cold-case posse” investigation by experienced criminologists into the authenticity of the Obama “birth certificate” at a March 1 press conference. This was the first “official”, “government” investigation into the matter, giving it (in the eyes of the herd) respectability and authority (even allowing for Joe Arpaio being a controversial character himself). In other words, Joe Arpaio carries a lot more “clout” than I ever will.
I watched the press conference live, with great interest, viewing the WND streaming video on my computer. The WND servers were so overloaded at the beginning that the stream kept dropping away, so I missed most of Arpaio’s opening remarks, but after that things quieted down and I got to view the evidence. A bonus for me was Arpaio’s investigating Obama’s supposed draft card (I never had pursued this), which clearly is a forgery as it has an out-of-position two-digit year date (80) when all standard Post Office date stamps of that era had four-digit dates (1980). (Their demonstration of how that forgery was created is conjecture, though.) I also saw the press conference being streamed on the ABC website, and my wife spotted it on the CNN website on her computer, but they were blurrier than the WND stream.... and that’s about as much coverage as this ever got from the big boys (as far as I can tell). If you missed the press conference, in the right-hand panel you will find the Arpaio and Zebest reports, and in the Arpaio report there are “live” YouTube links to the videos shown at the press conference, so you can see the evidence for yourself.
At the end of the press conference there were a few questions from the media folks present, and most of them were of the “shoot the messenger” or “how dare you call the president a liar” variety. The little bit of written coverage this received in the mainstream press afterward was also mostly “shoot the messenger”, attempting to discredit the findings because Arpaio himself is controversial and supposedly thus can’t be trusted. And the journalist-perceived nature of the messenger kept the story from moving up the news food chain.
But there is a problem for journalists when they try to suppress the truth through such distortions. Because they tend to be evidence-challenged, they think the public views life in the same way.... but the public as a whole is evenly distributed along a Bell curve in “brainedness”, with half the public more “left-brain” (scientific/technical/logical) than right, and the other half more “right-brain” (emotional/artistic) than left.... and with the majority of people clustered near the middle. So maybe 75% or 80% of the public has the ability to absorb and understand the technical arguments which shout forgery. All they have to do is look for themselves (and not be cowed by the herd).
And that is exactly the problem with efforts to keep the true, forged nature of the “birth certificate” suppressed. The evidence is concrete - digital files - they stand, and can be analyzed, alone, needing no context. It doesn't matter who the messenger is that brings them to you, the evidence speaks for itself. And it's not ephemeral - the evidence hangs around where it can be thoroughly dissected at leisure, so there ultimately will be no mistake about what it reveals.
Lately, now less than a month after the Arpaio presser, we are beginning to see some questioning in the respectable conservative spectrum. First (March 22) was Lord Christopher Monckton (a Britisher very knowledgeable about climate change) saying on the Dennis Miller radio show, "And the birth certificate ....I do know that birth certificate isn’t genuine.... It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated.... But the point is, is what he [Obama] has done on the White House website is he has put up a document which is plainly a forgery and I would regard that as a very serious matter." Lord Monckton has the advantage of being beyond the reach of an IRS audit, so he can say what he really thinks.
Next (March 23) was syndicated columnist Diana West’s must-read “Silence of the Lapdogs”, which you will see listed in the right-hand panel. Most of her syndicated outlets refused to publish this column; it has appeared in a few smaller newspapers across the country.
Then (March 24) respected author and writer Roger Kimball, in discussing Diana West's column, wrote “The most effective form of censorship is also the quietest. It operates not by actively proscribing speech but by rendering certain topics hors de combat, literally undiscussable. It does this by propagating an atmosphere of revulsion and taboo. Ordinary censorship prohibits the dissemination of particular opinions or bits of information. The more subtle engine of silence I have in mind goes further. It stanches not only the flow of speech but also the flow of thought. Ordinary censorship occupies itself with the results of human curiosity. What I am talking about attacks human curiosity itself.”
Respected conservatives raising the issue is an invitation for others to overcome the herd instinct and open their eyes and minds, so it is my hope that more people will start asking questions and looking at the proof of forgery, then the truth will finally out. (Hell will probably freeze over before any liberal ever admits the PDF is a fake.)
To all of the Obots reading this: Telling me “I don't believe you” doesn't hack it. Nor does “so-and-so (some neighbor or friend or politician) says you're wrong”. Nor does calling me a racist in order to shut down discussion, and I deeply resent the charge. This is not an issue of faith (you “believe”), it is an issue of evidence.
You think I'm wrong? Prove it.
I have demonstrated how the fake BC fails the pitch test, and how the BC PDF has mixed bitmap and grayscale images, possible only in a digitally-constructed fake.
Retired typographer Paul Irey has demonstrated how multiple typewriter fonts appear in this document ostensibly produced on a lone hospital typewriter in August 1961.
The “cold case posse” investigators, Mara Zebest and many others have demonstrated how the digital fake is layered and was constructed from snippets, as well as pointed out other anomalies that scream, “fake!”
Go ahead. Prove us all wrong. Not with your “beliefs” or shouts of “racism”, but with solid, hard evidence. Go on the Internet and search for concrete evidence that anybody has produced that conclusively proves that any of the valid technical proofs of the fake are wrong. Go right ahead.
You won't find any, because there is none.
A final note: From my days in the radio newsroom, it seems to me there is one helluva story buried here, but no journalist seems willing to tackle it. Is there no one of them eager to capture a Pulitzer in the tradition of Woodward and Bernstein by casting away preconceptions and seeking out the truth? What are they all afraid of? And why?
March 7, 2012 - Early Saturday morning (March 3) I sent the following alert to my former paid subscribers, those who have been with me for many, many years: "Kindly note that we got a NASDAQ "Timer's Trend" SELL signal yesterday, Friday, March 2. I must confess that this was a complete surprise to me when I ran the numbers early Saturday morning. It had appeared to me that advance/decline signals were weakening as the market topped out, but I did not expect an indicator sell signal so soon after recent market peaks. Looking back, it looks like the blue chips (Dow) have been essentially flatlining since mid-February, and the NASDAQ topped out last week. At a minimum, using previous topping-out sequences as a guide, this likely indicates a period of whipsawing for awhile (a week to a month) before we embark on another bearish jag.... or, more likely, a return of the bear market. It appears that a major top is being put into place. It seems I was two or three weeks early in my estimate for that top. Sorry about that."
A busy schedule has kept me from posting this warning to the general public until now.
February 14, 2012 - I spent an interesting four days at the International Money Show in Orlando, listening to mostly bullish projections for the coming year.... linear projection at work.... but also hearing from a few bearish speakers (Steve Hochberg, pointing out stock market overvaluation; Harry Dent, illustrating demographic decline) whose peering into the future resonated more strongly with me. But to my surprise, nobody at all (that I heard speak) mentioned the possibility of an imminent or near-imminent Mideast war. This, in spite of the current saber-rattling and Leon Panetta's assessment that Israel will likely attack Iran's nuclear-"research" facilities in the spring. I think this was a serious oversight by the money-show speakers, as the onset of such a war would be a major game-changer for investments.
In the U.S., we tend to think that there will be sufficient warning before the world plunges into another war, as this has been recent history (Vietnam, Iraq wars, Kosovo, etc.). But some wars (such as WWI) have arrived suddenly and massively after an unexpected flashpoint. We tend to think that if Israel struck first (likely), the outcome would be similar to Israel's demolishing Saddam Hussein's (Iraq) or Bashar Assad's (Syria) fledgling nuclear ambitions. But that would be severely underestimating Iran's political leaders.
The top brass in Iran are theocratic nutcases (and dangerous nutcases). These folks believe in the return of the Mahdi, or 12th imam, who has been hiding in caves since the 13th century; and that the Mahdi's return just prior to the Day of Judgement will be accompanied by chaos and tyranny. Further, they believe that they can accelerate the return of the Mahdi by bringing on the chaos, imminently.... which is to say, in 2012, maybe as soon as next month. The political leaders in the U.S. may not understand this, but the Israelis sure do, and they are not about to tolerate a second Holocaust. Needless to say, the sudden onset of a regional war would be very destabilizing to the world's current precarious financial position, and I think you should take this possibility into consideration when you estimate future trends.
January 29, 2012 - The outlook for the current year is becoming a little clearer. It would appear that stocks are topping out about now (70% odds; 30% odds the top will come in the spring), in a typical January bull-market top. February will likely be an indifferent or down month, with the impact of the deterioration of the European sovereign debt situation (that is, more countries suffering the fate of Greece) finally arriving in March or April. I know that the months into May are supposed to be the "bullish months", but I don't think that will happen in 2012. The rot in Europe is likely to spiral out of control into a worldwide credit event well before summer arrives.
December 8, 2011 - This is the joyous time of year when stocks are not supposed to go down; “Santa Claus rally” and all that. In recent years I find that most of this supposed bullish period occurs around Thanksgiving and into the first week of December. By December 10 Santa Claus has usually shot his wad and stocks just chop around for the rest of the month (especially those stocks which are eligible for tax-loss selling). Who knows what genius moves the big honchos will make next to appear to save the euro? But appearances are all they will be; the markets will overwhelm them (in 2012) before they can actually get a fiscal union in place. (Or not. I don’t think the voters in the countries making up the EU will stand for it.)
November 30, 2011 - Feed me money!! Today’s moves by the world’s central banks to improve interbank liquidity (a not-very-effective form of printing money) to placate the European debt monster are great for goosing stocks.... for awhile. For the bond market, it was a real yawner, because the crisis is one of solvency, not liquidity; the debts simply can’t be paid back. This is a seasonably-favorable time for the stock markets, so use it to your advantage while you can. The troubles will return, maybe in two or three weeks, but no later than the end of January of 2012. (We’re still on crash watch until volatility subsides.)
November 23, 2011 - The U.S. markets get tomorrow off, and a half-day Friday. The rest of the world’s stock markets trade full-bore both Thursday and Friday. Interest rates and credit-default-swap prices in Europe are soaring, Germany couldn’t sell 6 billion euros of bonds, European bank runs by small savers are underway, and credit stresses are at levels previously reached just prior to the 2008 credit freeze-up. Next week should be very interesting, either because U.S. markets will catch up to the disaster unfolding in Europe, or because the big honchos will pull another magic rabbit out of the magic hat, the effect of which will last.... oh, at least a few hours.
One thing you can say about this disaster, it’s well-advertised, unlike 2008, which (almost) nobody thought could happen and which took everybody by surprise. It’s like watching a truck crash in slow motion while being powerless to prevent it. The surprise this time will be not that it happens, but its severity.
November 15, 2011 - Interest-rate spreads in Europe (that is, interest rates on sovereign debt of nations other than Germany, versus German interest rates) are sharply on the rise again.... and we are back on crash watch. The European central bankers and big honchos may be able to come up with another feel-good “fix”, but like past fixes, its impact is not likely to last more than a few days.
November 10, 2011 - Like most of you, I am sure, I have been following with great interest the sexual-harassment allegations against Republican presidential aspirant Herman Cain. Of course, you know up front that nobody cared about sliming Herman Cain’s reputation when he was trailing the pack, but when he gained the lead in some polls, suddenly, it was in somebody’s self-interest (Republican or Democrat competitor, we don’t know who) to try to take him out in short order. So you know the attack was politically-motivated.
The settlements with women who worked at the National Restaurant Association do not reveal much, as a CEO (especially one as gregarious as Cain) is a tempting target for disgruntled employees, and a company will settle such grievances for small amounts rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court to defend itself, no matter how spurious the charges.
But when accuser Sharon Bialek appeared with her graphic charges and believable story, then there was a he-said, she-said situation to be dealt with. There is a tendency to believe the woman in these cases, because of past discrimination of women in the workplace. And it is almost impossible for a man so charged to clear his name.... how do you prove you didn’t ask for a blow job in a dark car one night in the summer fourteen years ago?
I watched Sharon Bialek’s press conference, and though her story seemed credible, a few things struck me as “fishy”. One was her choice of lawyer, Gloria Allred, who makes ambulance-chasing tort lawyers’ reputations look pristine by comparison. Another is that Allred waved two depositions before the cameras, but didn’t allow their inspection or distribute copies. A third is that no questions were allowed of Bialek after she gave her statement. Then there is the question of motive. Why now? Bialek says she’s not looking for money. Cain had no hand in her dismissal from the National Restaurant Association, so seeking revenge is unlikely. If she was so offended, why didn’t she deal with it when it supposedly happened?
Subsequently, reporters learned that Bialek has a spotty work record, an out-of-wedlock son, has been unemployed for two years (certainly no crime in this crappy economy) and currently appears to be struggling financially. But, you know how opposed I am to “shoot the messenger” - in matters sexual, some men, no matter how upstanding they are in the community, are pigs; and some women, no matter how much trusted by friends and co-workers, are liars. So the only real issue, as far as I am concerned, is: Who’s telling the truth, and who’s lying?
Fortunately for us, some reporters in Cain’s hometown of Atlanta committed real journalism and got the answer. As WGCL-TV reports, “Private investigator TJ Ward said presidential hopeful Herman Cain was not lying at a news conference on Tuesday in Phoenix.... Cain has not taken a polygraph but Ward said he does have software that does something better. Ward said the $15,000 software can detect lies in people's voices. CBS Atlanta's Mike Paluska played Cain's speech for Ward into the software and watched as it analyzed Cain's every word. ‘If he is hiding something this thing would have spiked way down here,’ said Ward. ‘He is being truthful, totally truthful. He is a man with integrity and he talked directly about not knowing any incident he is accused of.’
“The software analyzes the stress level and other factors in your voice. During the speech, when Cain denied the claims, the lie detector read ’low risk.’ According to Ward, that means Cain is telling the truth. During the section of Bialek's news conference where she says, ‘He suddenly reached over, put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head, brought it towards his crotch.’ ....the analysis of that section the software said ‘high risk statement.’ Ward said that means she is not telling the truth about what happened. ‘I don't think she is fabricating her meetings,’ said Ward. ‘But, she is fabricating what transpired.’”
November 8, 2011 - A quiz for you: who’s on top in Europe? (A) The taxpayers and voters, who are just just hunky-dory with the efforts to keep the Euro glued together and therefore are not rioting in the streets of Greece and Spain or grousing in Italy? Or, (B) the sovereign nations of Europe, whose leaders are more than willing to throw every last national resource into the maw of bad debt to feed their big egos, and to hell with the voters and taxpayers? Or, (C) the European banks, which are striving mightily to avoid taking losses on their enormous bad debts? If you answered (C), then you recognize that there are riots in the streets of Europe, and that this Eurofolly has already brought down two governments, Greece and Italy, with more (particularly Spain) likely.
This madness has kept the markets happy, for as long as it lasts and for as long as the resources are sucked up to prevent bank bondholders from taking a bath. But you should also recognize it as an unstable situation; this is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Eventually the voters will throw the bums out; nationalism will rise again.
Below: The depression arrives at the Greendale Mall in Worcester.
November 3, 2011 - Hallowe’en Weekend Nor’easter Trick - No power at home for 53 hours. No landline phone, no cable/internet. Stock trading by iPhone only. Fortunately my wife and I have a generator, which a friend helped us get working after the first day, so we had heat and hot water (the oil furnace can be switched to the generator) and we could keep food chilled/frozen. Even as I write (November 3, 11PM) there are still 10,000 people here in Worcester, the financial backwater of America and New England’s second-largest city, without power. Several of the suburban towns and smaller cities in central Massachusetts remain mainly in the dark almost a week after the storm. Connecticut had it much worse.
It was spooky to see a foot of wet-concrete-textured snow bending and smashing trees still bearing autumn leaves, as you can see in the pictures that follow.
Computing by candlelight
Storm damage on a Worcester residential side street
Scott Brook, Holden. Mass. before the snowstorm
Scott Brook, Holden. Mass. after the snowstorm
October 27 & 29, 2011 - Omigod, the big honchos actually did something! It’s enough to arrest the downward spiral for awhile, and to take me off crash watch for the time being. TARP for Europe.... without the money-printing.... so it’s not clear exactly who will be willing to lend to finance the leveraged bailout funds or invest to recapitalize the banks. The implementation of the bailout may thus prove to be a bit rocky. After all, who will buy sovereign bonds if an effective 50% default does not trigger credit-default insurance? Only those asking for higher yields for the now-heightened risk.
If some reader can point me to a success story of where taking on more leverage has solved a problem created by too much leverage, then I will concede my pessimism is wrong. Otherwise, on October 27 the dreams of the bulls were fulfilled.... so after the bailout news is digested, it’s all downhill from here.
October 25, 2011 - The situation in Europe continues to deteriorate. The solvency crisis has already brought down the government of Slovakia, and threatens to bring down sex-fiend Berlusconi’s Italian coalition government. Bank runs have begun in a small way in Greece, and Greek bond prices indicate there should be at least a 60% haircut taken on Greek bonds, not the 50% being suggested by the big honchos. Such a Greek default would eat half of the $440-billion-Euro rescue fund being proposed - with Portugal about to be the next to go under. So, assuming the big honchos actually do something over the next few days, rather than just talk a lot, it will still be inadequate.
October 24, 2011 - Lest we forget: The “Occupy Wall Street” syndrome has occurred before, in recent memory. The pictures I’ve posted below are from the April 19, 1975 bicentennial of the start of the American Revolution, the “shot heard ‘round the world” (in Lexington and) at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Mass.
About 40,000 hippies, representing the dregs of the “People’s Bicentennial Commission” descended upon Concord and camped out in the days leading up to the April 19 ceremonies. Above, you see hippies hanging out in the center of Concord the evening of April 18, 1975.
In the above picture (taken early April 19) you can see the main campground (thoughtfully funded by taxpayers) on the far shore, with its giant temporary stage on which a rock concert had been held the night before. The perfectly ordinary citizens in the foreground are awaiting the presence of the colonial marching units and President Gerald R. Ford and other dignitaries, while the police keep the hippies at bay on the other side of the Concord River.
“Economic Democracy” (whatever that means) was a popular message; also “Power to the People!” Translation: “Don’t draft me to fight in Vietnam in a stalemate war being bungled by politicians”. (Remember, the war in Vietnam was winding down to defeat in 1975.) A message similar to today’s OWS message (in translation), “You bailed out the banks and financiers, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!”
Both movements had/have a common root, a protest against the crony corporatism of the government-financial complex, which was a problem in 1975 but which today is so egregious that it threatens to blow up, impoverishing all of us in the process (not just those who have already become its victims). And both have leftist “solutions”: By force of government, steal money from those who rightfully earned it (not just from the crony-corporatist crooks) and distribute it to those who did not and who have no moral right to it.
When I first posted these pictures to the web in 1994, I included the following message - “Warning to teenagers: You may see your parents here. Remember, you are supposed to do as they say, not do as they did when they were your age.”
October 17, 2011:
October 12, 2011 - Though we’re still on “crash watch”, obviously stocks won’t crash from rally tops like the current one; they crash only after systemic stresses push stock prices lower, then something “breaks” and creditors panic. The European big honchos are making enough soothing noises to give the illusion that the situation is under control and will remain so. In reality, European bank credit stresses are still rising, systemic risk continues to increase, and Greece threatens to suddenly plunge into depression at any time. There are many things gone awry, any one of which could “break” at any time to trigger a systemic failure (60% odds, in my opinion). In the meantime, we remain in a primary bear market for stocks (excluding gold stocks, which are in a bull market), as the market establishes intermediate-term trading ranges at progressively lower levels. Remember, even if we don’t get a crash, this is still a bear market.
October 9, 2011 - Graphic razzing “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators (source unknown). Click on the image to see a higher-resolution picture:
