A Gentleman
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Interviewed above is a man who is arguably one of the best rock and roll musicians of all time, with an indelible legacy that will never be questioned by the more serious students of the genre. And yet Levon Helm is also indubitably a Southern Gentlemen in the truest sense. Born to poor cotton farmers in an Arkansas town just west of the Mississippi, he was brought up with impeccable manners, respect for others, and a healthy fear of God. The phrase “salt of the Earth” is cliched, but applies here if anywhere.
Note the patience, humility and even respect he allows the over-earnest newsdork interviewer? A teevee journalist who, much like myself and most of my urban Northeastern brethren, reveals a contrasting self-important air of arrogance that far belies his functionary status? It’s awe-inspiring.
Hell, I’ll say it– Levon is inspiring. And his example and those of many of his generation is one of the major reasons I wanted my kids to grow up down here. I wanted them to meet people with the quiet American dignity you see in this clip. People like my children’s grandparents, and their grandparents’ kin from the Appalachian regions. Because make no mistake, even in the South, folks like Mr. Helm are slowly becoming a rarity.
Every day, therefore, I will strive to be more like him– not in talent, of course, but in pursuit of that humilitous honorability — as I believe that a most worthy goal.
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On the trading front, I covered a large number of my silver sold calls today, specifically SLW, PAAS, MVG and EXK, all at 35-55% profits. I did this mostly because I think we will have a short term rebound here. Maybe 2-5 days. I find it hard to believe we are done, however.
I think the noobs who piled into the PM markets in December still need to be shaken like rats running from the terrier. What fun is a bull, after all, if it’s weighted down by noobs?
I kept almost all of my gold hedges, not because I don’t think gold will bounce as well, but because the silvers are more volatile, and I have alloted the gold calls (sold) a bit more rope. I will likely step out of them tomorrow morning.
The dollar is ramping, and it may return to our old mid $81 resistance levels once again. I am preparing, and prepared. You should be as well.
Lastly, if you are looking at the rare earth’s we’ve dabbled in recently, you should think of paring some here. I expect a larger market correction to be upcoming, and that means the hottest stocks will be the hardest slapped. Take note on AVL, as well as REE and MCP if you have any (I’ve neither).
Best to you all.
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Holy crap, they disabled the embedding on this one too… freaking CBS! Just click on the “watch on youtube” request in the middle of the screen, and it will pop a window where you can watch the clip.
Apologies, but I think this one’s worth the extra step.
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lol
FAIL
(The Anti-Levon cometh.)
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Take heart Jake, my 27 yr old spent the first few years of his life growing up in Eastern NC amongst many of the sort of people your post describes. You will find Mr. Helm, and The Band solidly represented in the young man’s CD and vinyl collection – oddly refreshing, no?
And I bet he’s got tonnes of the Doctor, as well!
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Most indoubitably(sic), his tastes run to the eclectic, by today’s standards.
Aside – when I’m beat up, I’m still inclined to reply to “how ya doin?’ with “Feelin ’bout half past dead” — one of the all time great lines of rock n roll.
LOL. For years I thought it was “half past ten” and I didn’t get it…
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Thanks for the clip Jake — it was a nice thing to see today.
I grew up in the south, summers around extended family in the blue ridge mountains. I feel lucky for the reasons you articulated so well.
As always thanks for your thoughts here — my hedging skills need improving though I was able to sell a bit the last two weeks.. it is sure to be a fun, bumpy ride.
thank you sir.
Enjoyed the vid and your comments. Watching your and goat’s takes on the dollar closely.
Nice post Jake. In your area I think you are picking up on a mixture of Southern and Midwest values and that would be a good balance. I grew up in the South Georgia/Alabama psyche and that has some baggage.
Yes, the Midwest should not be shortchanged, either. The non-commie parts at least. 😉
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eggcellent post.
I have a goal of getting to the Midnight Ramble sometime in the next couple of years. The Band is one of the all-time best and Levon is a class act. He represents quiet dignity which, to me, is one of the highest attributes a human being can have.
Agreud!
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True words of wisdom. Levon Helm is a beautiful person.
I’m gonna re-watch The Last Waltz for the 36th times. There are many reasons why The Band was admired and loved by their peers unlike no others.
Meanwhile back in lovely New York, as long as you don’t mind mounting piles of unhauled garbagio and the occassional murderous roving dog pack, things are just peach-a-rooni.
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The South sounds like Canada, but with more poverty.
Maybe back in the day, in the Western Provinces, where the cultural roots are very similar.
Much of the Band was Canadian, actually, aside from Levon. Of course, Levon was the heart in more ways than one, so what does that tell you?
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So you’re saying only good ol’ country folk are decent people? My wife has about 200 relatives here in Ontario (I’m an immigrant) and they’re all great people without all the folksy bullshit. I don’t understand the lionization of a culture that has the highest rates of murder, divorce, teen pregnancies, racial segregation, and self-imposed chronic disease in all of North America. All this while proclaiming themselves to be God-fearing church-goers. It boggles my foreign mind, really.
Which “culture” is that?
Methinks you might be referring to the “welfare culture” which you will find has little geographic discrimination.
Just thank your stars your country is too cold to attract the loafing set.
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Our loafers fly south in the winter… It’s the only thing that makes it bearable. Although the recent trend of form-fitting North Face and Columbia outfits certainly helps.
Jake, Let me assure you there are still gentlemen and gentle women living here in the North.
They are in nursing homes… lol.
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From your question on Fly’s thread:
I believe that I am more conservative than you. Certainly in the ballpark. And it’s lunacy to think that central banks around the world owned by private citizens and controlling all the money is a good idea which leads to selfless outcomes. Go watch the following documentaries as a start and report back later: http://bodocus.com/
The Money Masters.
The Prize.
The Century of The Self – The Happiness Machines.
Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Journey of Man.
Commanding Heights.
Manufacturing Consent.
Money as Debt
Globilization and the media
Biography of Mcnamara
I actually replied to this (and to that nutball “Central Banker”) on Fly’s thread.
I don’t argue that there are those who seek to consolidate central power, and we should be vigilant against them. I just don’t believe there’s an actual group out there running things. World is too complex, and people are too incompetent.
Conspiracy theories are intellectually lazy.
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Not just that, but really oppressive changes can only be implemented by open use of naked force. Rebellion keeps things in check when people get pushed too hard. Which is why I shall remain optimistic and uninvolved in uncovering how things really work, and ride the wave of the status quo, recognizing that there are big players making a lot of those waves. I’m not affiliated with any conspiracy revealer groups, and I generally don’t even waste time on their websites. But the frog in the pot scenario is always something to be vigilant against. And I know you are vigilant with overtly oppressive moves (unconstitutional communist policies from Obama), and I salute you for it! I really appreciate your tendancy to call a spade a spade, state it as you see it. Your championship of the unbridled human spirit falls very in line with my ideology and optimism for the future of the world (though I have a heavier slant toward technological salvation I think). I find myself agreeing with (and usually chuckling at) your humourously posited examples, analogies, arguements, and explanations. You have a keen mind, a good sense of humour, a realistic view of politics, and a power over language that is matched by few writers (perhaps akin to Stephen R. Donaldson).
No I’m not asking you to be my girlfriend.
Well thank goodness.
I think I read all those Steven R. Donaldson White Gold Weilder books as a kid… but I understand he’s still writing them…
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It shows. I’m reading them aloud to my boys at night in the hopes that they’ll turn out just a wee bit more literate than they otherwise might (and than I did). Donaldson is a 10th degree blackbelt wordsmith!
He’s a mite garrulous. I’d start with the classics… Lewis and Tolkien’s works. Everything else is largely derivative.
(though entertaining)
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Again, alike! I decided years ago that I would begin reading The Hobbit (There and Back Again) followed by The Lord of the RIngs out loud to them when the oldest guy turns 5. For now, I’m just filling their little heads with the sounds and rythms of a vocabulary which is much broader than my own. Rambling though Donaldson may be.
I presume you mean the Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandria, and That Hideous Strength? Perelandria had the most captivating fight scene in a book that I have ever read. I was physically exhausted and sweating after the chapter-long enrapturement (which was a first and only for me). Good ol’ Clive Staples! Now there is a man on par with your Levon.
Highly recommend his books for adults as well.
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Jacobite, I came in with some support against that fucking central banker. Might I add, I have come to enjoy your blog, you have the blogcentiricty I’m am lurking for on these here webernets. Secondly, if you want to leave the US and run some real money in Australia, let me know. It is a good place to raise a family, our kids snort “the pearl” and not meth.
You need to hook up w. Ozzie J — he is a frequent correspondant both via phone and on these interwebs.
He is a pure currency trader by profession, but is very wise in most equity analysis as well.
On this site, he goes by “J” alone.
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Hey
I’m looking into taking a vaca to the land down under… should i plan on having any time at all to trade US markets or are the hours too fubared?
It’s like a 14 hour difference. So if you don’t mind trading late at night (I wouldn’t), why not?
Just don’t get too drunk.
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Common garden slug retreat to your garden at once. Leave iBC for the intelligent people.
I can’t post a contrary comment? For shame, Sir, for shame.
You can post what you like, Slug.
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Thanks Gint, I shall seek him out. There is a lack of sophisticated investors due to this country being over-brokered, however this spells an opportunity for a good money manager. Always looking for someone to talk to, as less staff, I operate in isolation apart from one peer who goes to drobny and another who initially seeded me into this game. I spend half my time reading whilst raiding the wine cellar and thinking in the surf, that is when I can get a break from the missus.
Chivo: the hours are horrendous although I have grown used to it, I typically don’t spend all my time in front of the tickers. US markets open at 10.30pm on the west coast of oz, and then our markets open at 7am.
Way out in Perth heh?
Ozzie J is in Melbourne, if I recall correctly.
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Having mentioned staff, I can’t even get them to dig into my library – margin of safety, soros, drobny, market wizards, elder, security analysis, taleb, greenblatt, buffett, einhorn – to name a handful, are all untouched. Zero degree of the hunger.
Author Moody: Is there a good amount of australian based firms that trade U.S. markets?
Time to crack the scotch!
Isn’t it like 6 am where you are??
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Chivo, there is indeed. We have iron ore and coal. (Sarcasm) In actual fact I lament the dearth of our markets, but there is money to be made. Worth looking into, although wait until AUD shits itself, as we are a one trick pony and I think China is nearing a tipping point in terms of construction, hence no more of our coking and ore to make steel. Thus AUD decline.
Are they going to be approving Uranium extraction in Queensland? Have they already?
I applaud the efforts at promoting the southern culture, but Louisville is not really in the south. A reasonable cutoff point is Little Rock. Real die hards set the line of demarkation at I-10 or the Intercoastal Waterway.
You’ve spent too much time on Khao Sarn Rd.
While Louisville is pretty “North” to be “the South,” geographically, it’s still very much like it in manners and culture, but with the friendliness of the Midwest pitched in. Nicest people in the world (present company excepted, but I’m from Noo Yawk).
Lexington is even more Old South, and it’s geographically the same distance below the Mason Dixon Line (ie, “just”).
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I can cut Lexington some slack as UK is in the SEC. Then again, basketball is the main religion there and not football like it’s supposed to be in the true south.
The comment about south of I-10 is not one just made up on a whim. When I started out working on rigs in the Gulf of Mexico I was often referred to as a “carpet-baggin’ yankee”. This despite the fact I grew up near Shreveport, LA. Those rig guys are a tough crowd.
You probably went to college, there, college boy.
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Visit any other city/town in KY other than Louisville and you will undeniably consider yourself in the south. Louisville has southern hospitality with northern progressive political undertones.
Yes way out in Perth, although I spend most of my time residing in Eagle Bay near the tip of cape naturaliste, no conspiricist plebeians allowed!
Is that in Adelaide or something?
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I would suggest it is inevitable, although I would suggest only owning existing producers.
Thoughts on Laramide?
Buy
Sorry g2m I missed this one, I have a view on Uranium for the next decade which is rather bullish, however I will pick a better entry. If you read Gary Shilling’s “the Age of Deleveraging” there is some good, obviously out of consensus; views on investments over the next ten years – uranium being one. However that said, I have been opining on strategy for uranium for the last 18 months, and think I will look to enter in the next year or two, when I feel there is significant upside.
On the speculative end of my book in Aus, I am currently heavily invested in BOW, CFU, KGL, MNC and TRY. Worth looking into, they are yet to see any significant upside.
Thanks. Agrees with my thesis as well regarding uranium timing. I’m more of an inflation expector at this time, but I’ll order the book anyways.
Had his son in my class. Never knew his old man was a big shot until years later.
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JG, do you teach?
No, I meant my class in college.
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Chivo, not really only a handful of global macro funds that do.
DMG who has been sleeping in the mattress in a box in Bangkok? I strictly only sleep on sheets composed with 60% duckdown and 40% goosedown.
I believe Mr. Po Pimp is a resident of the land of smiles.
Sawadee Khap.
Your sheets are made from feathers?
Seems a bit irritating, no?
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I too have most of my family from the south – albeit Texas is a different kind of southern. You still have southern class however at most places, and humility, a true sign of class in my opinion. I felt that the only woman worth marrying was a southerner, so I took a post down in Arkansas to find me one. Found her and convinced her to move back up north to Colorado where theres less racism and an actual winter.
There’s a lot to be said that’s good about the south. Just wish they would kick racism to the curb and get better education.
Not irritating at all Jacob, that I can teach you anything I can’t believe it is about linen. A gentleman seriously needs to have the duck/goosedown!
Surely you are talking about your comforter and not your sheets? I have never heard of sheets made from feathers. 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton, maybe, but not feathers.
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No Jake it’s a street in Bangkok… Why it was brought up I don’t know??? I guess polar opposition to said linen as the peasant sleep in a cardboard box. Yes Adelaide is a hole, the only thing good there is a decent wine region, but that is all.
Jacob, do you mind I ask your story? Do you work in a fund – don’t need to name names or anything?
No, I’m a deal guy.
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Very nice words about Levon Helm, Jake. My best friend has worked with him on both acting and voice-over jobs. He’s a good guy. Professional in his work and kind in his interactions with everyone on set and in the studio. A good representation of the gentility the South has and can engender in a person.
Does any one else keep getting these sums wrong???
Its a common complaint. Might have to log out and get back in again.
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http://www.levonhelm.com/electric_dirt.htm
Go on Amazon and buy it today. When the weather warms up, roll your windows down, hang your left arm out the window, watch the Ohio roll by, and TURN IT UP. Trust me.
On a tangent- ever taken the kids to Marengo Cave?
With higher ag prices the dirt farmer will be making a comeback going forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBuJB218UvU&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5Jl3zxabo&feature=channel
Eggsellent line.
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Will do, and yes! You’ve been there? There’s caves all over this region, including Mammoth, the biggest (and a national park).
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I used to work there guiding tours and running the adventure programs. I’ve caved all over Kentucky and Indiana. I used to actively hunt for virgin caves…trying to dig them open, blast them open, whatever it took.
Um, yeah, me too.
But then I met my wife and calmed down quite a bit.
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I picked up some EXK yesterday. Some say these may be the lows of the year.
We sahll see.
I was still letting some go as of yesterday. May be a bit longer this time of year.
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Go2mars, your probably a much better bloke than I gave you credit for, that central banker however, he was a douche.
wonder if he was the guy who shot up that AZ Safeway yesterday?
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http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/08/rex-murphy-dont-censor-mark-twain/
Jake = Some Canuckistani comment on a great man. Rex gets it right a lot of the time.
This is a beautiful quote from above article:
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug”
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