History

     I guess that poor, unfortunate hebrew fellow who scratched out the first stick figures on Mt. Sinai, which later went on to become the foundation of the alphabets for the greeks, the romans, the indo-european nations, and even arabic and even geeze .... he really need not have bothered.

     Some things in history just happen over, and over, and over again, as if none of us had any access at all to history books recording the mistakes of our forebears.  You would have thought one tower of Babylon would have been enough, but no....someone had to go and build the World Trade Center, didn't they ....

     In particular, a great idea, great statesmen, leaders during trying times who bring men together to perform spectacular feats ... this has happened so many times, so many, many times ....egypt, the persian empire, ancient greece, the seleucid empire, the babylonian empire, the roman empire, so many times .... the spanish empire, the swedish empire, the french empire, the british colonial empire, the ottoman empire ... so many times ... the Third Reich,  the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ...  economic successes lead a people to begin to believe that they, as a people, are better than everyone else, that their system is better than everyone else, and that therefore the whole world needs to be "enlightened" and liberated ... and, just as sure as night follows day, they abandon the very principles that they originally began with and which helped to make them great and powerful, they build up their military, and build, and build, they raise torture and abuse, spying and extortion, not only of foreign citizens but also their own, they bankrupt themselves on the enormous costs, and they collapse into oblivion....

    So goodie, I guess we get to do it again, huh.  This time will be a doozie ...

Obama

     Maybe its me, but my perception of this president is there has been more "coloring" of the reporting about him, more shading of the truth, more outright fabrication and lies, than any other president in my lifetime, if not for the entire history of the country.

     Many, many others have weighed in on the subject of whether he has been the best president, or the worst president, that we have ever had.  I don't even need to say on that score.

     In my vocation as prophet, I know I've already said what I think to a few people.  but not even those who respect my judgement gave it much credence.  When I said, back in the beginning of 2001, that the presidents desire to make war against Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism and nothing to do with WMD and everything to do with oil, they scoffed, they pooh-poohed me, hardly anyone even noticed, nobody remembers anymore.  When I said, back in the beginning of 2006, that the next president would be a black man, not even my black friends thought I had anything substantial to contribute, the whole campaign was either Hillarious or Algorithm.

    And there's only 5 or 6 people who ever read this blog, so it doesn't matter either.  I wrote about the black swan of deflation but the markets kept on going up, but at least Zero Hedge wrote the same thing a few days later.  Now, several weeks later, the markets have just begun to figure out that cheap gas may not be such a wonderful thing after all.

     So I can put this out there confident that no one will read it, let alone act upon it.  There won't even be any black SUV's with shaded glass pulling up outside my door to whisk me away.

    Barak Obama may or may not be the best, or the worst.  Historians can sort that out 50 years from now.  What you all need to know is that he will be the last President of the U.S.A.

     Its been good to know you all.  I'm checking out soon.  Your lives are about to get very interesting .....

bad news

well,
I just wanted to tell everyone
that there's not going to be much of a Christmas for very many people this year.

It all began last year
when Santa's wife divorced him.
Due to the biases of the local courts nowadays,
the judge ignored Mrs. Claus long reputation as a dithering alcoholic
and awarded her a substantial child support payment,
taking up all of Santa's money for toys and elf-labor.

He had to rent a room from me because he could no longer afford
his quarters at the North Pole.

He is also suffering from diabetes,
probably due to all those plates of cookies and milk.
and the prodigious effort of maintaining the belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly.

What's worse is
that he has major back problems now
from carrying around those bags of toys
and also from climbing up and down all those chimneys.
He is due at the hospital tomorrow for the first of several surgeries.

Sadly, he won't be able to take the sleigh there.
You see, last week,
one of his reindeer was hit and killed by a car,
while another was shot by a hunter.
Blitzen was so upset about it
that he got blitzed and then wrecked the sled trying to escape the cops.

He is so far behind on his rent now that he is looking into
a new career as an actor,
to see what kind of accommodations can be provided
for someone who acts as so crazy that he gives away everything he has ....
maybe three hots and a cot, maybe even morning, noon and nightly pills on the side ...
and slippers and even jackets which have no arms. ....

so, anyway,
have a merry day,

I wood, but I won't.

http://www.walpoth.com/wood.html

 

 

any artist who tried to do work like this in this country would immediately get jailed
as a voyeur, child pornography, sex fiend.

Nowhere is there simpler evidence of the sickness here ....


I am reading "The Painted Girls", by Cathy Buchanan,
a novel about the desperately poor young girls
who served as Edward Degas' nude models and
Emile Zola's walk-ons ....

its real.

Maybe I am just crazy

Maybe I am addled in the brain.
Or a genius.  We will see.

I think that the black swan that all of us have been waiting around for,
is here.  All around us, in fact, everywhere.

We just none of us see it.  Not yet.

The central banks have been so confident
of their abilities to kindle inflation,
and all of the rich who are relying upon them,
that they have omitted one critical detail.

It is not enough to print a huge amount of money, to encourage inflation.
You have to give it to the people.
If the ultra rich hoard all of it, as they have been doing,
then there is no stimulus to demand
because those people who would spend the money
have less and less and less of it to spend.

I think we are now facing collapse, total collapse,
from deflation, and credit defaults,
and it could happen very, very quickly
once more people begin to realize what I am saying ....
and they will not be able to bring themselves to bail out the common man,
because they are too fixated upon screwing him ....

-chiz

weather

     There are lots of people -- call them investors -- clinging to the notiion that across North America, this coming winter will resemble last winter.  Human nature was ever thus, expecting the most immediate future to closely resemble the most immediate past.  sometimes things do work out that way, however, after periods of extremes events are far more likely to revert to the norm than they are to continue on in the extreme.

     This time last year, I had already burned through over a cord of firewood.  As of today, there have been only five mornings so far this season when I have wanted a fire in the furnace and by midmorning the warmth has been sufficient to let it go out.

     This time last year, the spot price for natural gas was around $3.40 and I was crying about how ridiculously low that was.  Right now its around $3.90.  I say that that is high, and I've put my money where my mouth is. 

     We shall see.  (Unless, of course, everything else goes south just a bit more quickly than we presently expect it to ....)

turnaround

     I turned around my portfolio late Thursday afternoon.  It is now 115% long, absolutely no hedges.

     My reason for doing so is my personal conviction that there is going to appear on the scene, perhaps in Brussels or someplace, some obscure entity who happens to have unlimited access to a printing press and who has a yen for certain currencies -- perhaps japanese and/or european.

     So I benefitted from the strong rally on Friday.  I apologize to both of my readers for not posting this information earlier here.

     Indeed this morning the Japanese stock market is booming, up over 3%.  Across Europe, however, there is still a lot of red ink.

     My inclination is that the powers that be do not intend to reverse the recent trends but perhaps to halt them and sustain the current levels.

     My buddies are solidly convinced that the drop in crude has been deliberately engineered to punish the bear.  Guilty parties meet customarily in Riyadh.  Belatedly it dawned on them all that the so-called free world pumps a lot more oil than the russians and the iranians do.  the recent price drops are threatening to bankrupt some seriously large and probably indispensable entities, such as Mexico, Venezuela, and the Republic of Exxon.  I am betting very, very heavily that the present price is an absolute bottom and in fact, within three years we will have the next oil shock.

    It will start out profitable and end up a disaster.....