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Tag Archives: Obama

Whut-Whut?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vinI2Dqj9hc 450 300]

(Comedy gold, and Bowie is a conservative, btw)

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Naaaaw, really?

employment

Say no more, no?

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Silver looks to be giving us another opportunity here. The miners are not taking too much of a hit here, so you may want to give the stronger stories more of a look, or you may want to take advantage of the actual pullback in fizzical silver itself by jumping on SLV right now in the form of long term options, the farther the better.  Let’s say January 2014 or 2015’s LEAPs which have pulled back nicely here for my benefit and yours.  Accumulate slowly here, because eventually you will wish you had been quicker.

Things are going well, and I appreciate my market meandering here a bit.

Best to you all.

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No Time Like the Present

sunburn

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It’s not like I don’t get little enough sleep as it is… No, Fly’s gotta start chucking cherry bombs over at his place, talking all kinds of pina colada-induced nonsense about voting for the Emperor again, despite his concerted attack on the American economic system and his attempt to “transform” us into Denmark in the middle of a mild recession that is getting less and less milder as we speak.

All because he thinks Rick Perry — 11 year governor of Texas and one-time Southern Democrat — is going to abolish the Fed?  Can he be serious?  No, I don’t think he is, either.

No, I’m blaming it on second-degree sunburn, and leaving off.  I don’t believe the Fly really wants to turn us into Europe… not with what’s going on over there right now, as their underfunded demographically-imploding welfare states dissolve into a puddle of ill-trained and ungrateful flash-mobs.   And really, what can you expect from a country whose National Health Service had 239 patients die from malnutrition last year?

Yes, you read that right… click on the article to read more about the glories of social democracy and state-based healthcare provision.   Obamacare, anyone?

It’s okay.  You made a mistake.  It hurts, and it’s embarrassing.  Hell, you’ve got to ditch all that blue and red block-printed poster-board and tee shirtage.  But don’t fret… there’s good news.

You’ll have a chance to right that wrong in 2012.  It’s not going to be the “perfect candidate.”  It never is.  Sometimes you have to choose the good over the perfect, and sometimes even the lesser of two evils.

In this case, the choice won’t be that difficult.  You’ve got a chance to undo some pretty significant damage.  I know you’ll do the right thing in the end.

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I remain stolid in my recent positions.  My hedges, such as they are, harden into calcified barnacles, neither sentient nor proud.  Their growth is de minimus, moving like the tides, if at all.

I’m not wholly convinced that the PM’s are quite dead or ready to roll over, so I guess I will wait for a sound.  In the meantime, I continue to winnow positions in other areas, moving to an almost wholly “cash and PM” portfolio, save for my ETF positions and the BWA, WNR and UPS I still own.

OpEx is a tough week.  Let us watch and wait for it to resolve itself. AUY continues to look fantastic, btw.

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Quail Hearted Fools

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR5MweSZjbc&NR=1 450 300]

(Great Mash-up… dig the Vuvezelas, too!)

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Oh that’s just excellent.   The Republicans win the biggest House sweep since the Coolidge Era (63 seats) and then go full Barney Frank belly up to the Messiah on the Great Tax Cut Showdown.

Sure, they kept the Bush 2003 Tax Cuts

For two whole years!   Someone with an economic brain in their head please tell me… what does that do exactly?   How in the heck do these morons in Congress expect anyone in honest business to plan for anything with the Tax Sword of Damocles hanging over their head again for another two years?   

It’s the Uncertainty, idiots!   I think I shall propose an Amendment to the Constitution that might save us all heartache…. I will propose that every Congresscritter get at least 10 hours in university-level economics, with Econ 101 being mandatory in the syllabus.  

And what’s the icing on the cake?  

No, no… I mean besides Obama getting another chance to spout his tele-prompted class warfare inanities over and over (he is SO tedious) to the increasingly skeptical (and sparse) television audience…

No, the icing is this 13-months (yes, MONTHS!) of additional unemployment bennies agreed to by the spaghetti noodle “GOP Leadership” along with this useless extension.    Yeah, that oughtta REALLY help knock down the unemployment rate.   Just like it’s done in Europe, the original mother land of the Permanant 10% Loafing Community.

Hey, who cares, right?   The other 90% of the working stiff community will pay for it, right?   And hey, think of the incentive all those business owners have to try to entice those toadsuckers off the dole with their TWO WHOLE YEARS of low capital gains rates!  

Seriously, it’s days like this that could drive a sensible citizen — one who believes in the true and original precepts of this country — to bleak despair.

And please, fellow conservatives, don’t come back to me with the following trope: “This will be great for the Republicans!  Now we KNOW unemployment will be 12% in 2012, and we can GUARANTEE Barack is done and gone!”

Sorry, Homey don’t play that schist.   I am a citizen of this beautiful country first and foremost, and if my party’s leaders are playing this two year collapse as a gaming strategy, then in my book they are as DONE as Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the useless sods in Congress.

Six weeks after the election and already I’m getting my firehouse out.   Time to ream out the Augean Stables once again!

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All of the above will only continue to crucify the dollar on a cross of paper mache, but that is little solace to me.   I sold some EXK today and more of my AGQ, but left everything else be.   I will likely continue to trim tomorrow, for reasons mentioned on Sunday night.

All of these moves are temporary, and completed in order to raise cash for reinvestment after an expected pullback in the soon to be vastly popular PM markets.

My heart aches.

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Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!!

Some scenes from the Elective Wars.   This first is kind of incredible, actually.  Remember how Chrissy Matthews got “the tingle” up his little pasty white leg whenever he saw the Messiah bring the rain in a speech? 

Well, it seems that Little Chrissy Tingles has gotten a lot older in the past two years, and man has his attitude about his Messiah changed!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IVZw18lH7k&feature 450 300]

Who knows, maybe it’s the strain of working with Olbermann? (shrug)

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This next one is a beaut.  Keep in mind, this is your Speaker of the House, ladies and gentlemen.  Never tell me again about dumb fringe Republicans like that cute little O’Donnell woman (who is not even going to win) when you have put this wombat in the Speaker’s chair. 
For the love of Pete, she doesn’t even realize that natural gas is a fossil fuel!

This is a daily double, though, because it shows Nancy is dumb and corrupt!  Check it:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Q8RynUbvU&feature 450 300]

Hey, at least she’s alert, no?

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And last, here’s a great one that puts it all out there, Terminator II-movie-trailer-style!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNP8W_5YxU4&feature=related 450 300]

God bless and keep you all, and now get out there and vote these crumbs out tomorrow.  All of them! 

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Had Enough Yet?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUQI5PzKPPs&feature=channel 450 300]

Some might be characterized as “half-truths.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLFSanvt_kg&feature=related 450 300]

Some as blustery bullcrap…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLXydnGbfk 450 300]

But then there’s the outright evil, completely in bad faith falsities.

Had enough yet, America?  Time to get serious again.

A simple primer, set to annoying music, for the kids:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDRA3XFfDr4&feature=related 450 300]

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(* Special Note:  The Gentleman at 3:05 is not Barack Obama.)

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Breaking!  Samsonite Hamburglarette wants to become a College Perfessah (sic):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obTNwPJvOI8&feature 450 300]

(these things never get old!)

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Tammany Hall, Washington, D.C.?

There are many reasons that we must prepare our portfolios for more stormy weather, Jacksonians, and the increasingly dangerous interplay of our Federal government in the formerly “private” sector, whether it be for alleged “stimulus” or “rescue,” is one of the most foreboding.

Case in point — there has been a lot of back and forth on the iBC blogs recently regarding the Chrysler re-organization plan, and the Federal Government’s role — reaching all the way to the White House — in “negotiating” the terms of the deal.    For sure the Republicans opened the door to this heretofore unprecedented interference with the perfidy of Lex Luthor (remember him?) and his banking pals, but the Obama Administration has really gotten into the swing of things, pirouetting from control of the financial institutions (ie, “the TARP losers”) to attempting to rig the already down on it’s heels U.S. auto industry.   

 In the latest news we hear that Obama’s people are attempting to “cram down” senior Chrysler bond holders in a less than typical fashion — by inserting unsecured creditors– specifically the UAW labor union — in front of senior bond holders.   There’s a very heartfelt — and angry — attack on this land grab found in this article, written by  “Evil Hedge Fund Manager (TM)” Clifford Asness of  ($20 bn) AQR Capital Management, who is not a party to these proceedings, but has a pretty good idea of where such machinations will end, and so has stepped forward in print.   Here’s a cogent excerpt from the piece (highlights mine):

Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders’ contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.

The above is how it works in America, or how it’s supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler’s creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse.

Let’s be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients’ money to share in the “sacrifice”, they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not. The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients’ money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That’s how the system works. If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could “share in the sacrifice”, you would not be happy.

Asness goes on to mention how damaging such action can be to the fabric our capitalist system, and not just specifically to the non-TARP lenders who are holding out against the Obama Plan.   If the “government” starts taking sides in otherwise quotidian corporate restructurings, what trust will the private sector — not just hedge funds, but any large investor pools — have in any government or union associated businesses going forward?   

And how will that affect the pricing of their securities?   

From the standpoint of M&A valuation, unions are already anathema to private capital and tie a huge millstone around the neck of even the best companies who are saddled with organized labor.    This kind of side-picking will only drive those businesses’ long term equity values — and subsequent ability to grow — down even more.   

For a test — just ask yourself: would you buy a car built by a company largely owned by the Federal government and the UAW?   Even if you were sympathetic to the Obama Administration’s aims?  

 In the 1930’s this sort of corporate-government collusion led to fascism in a number of the “enlightened” European countries.   I’m not saying we are going down that path, only that we are looking at another major strike to the economy if we allow the government to continue to treat the sources of private capital as second class citizens, their legal standing be damned.  

Because the first tenet of capitalism is “Capital is Mobile” my friends, and it will fly to other pockets of investment where the risk-return parameters are more in balance if it feels threatened on these shores.      The President may discover this principle too late, much to his chagrin, and our own.

In the meantime, Jacksonians, as small investors,  all we can do is listen to Fly’s Goat’s singing admonition, and “be prepared*:”

 [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJOY0P84v4 450 300]

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*(TBT, GLD, SLV, SLW, PAAS, EGO, RGLD, NRP, etc., etc., etc. )

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