This Week's Action - 02 May - 06 May 2011

[golden]

Don't worry guys, Donald (insert your expletive) Trump is coming to rescue America ;D

Take it easy out there guys


g

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[lance]

Some speculation on CNBC Barack Obama has called a news conference to say Osama Bin Laden is dead??

Lance

[eddievanhalen]

Yeah......................seems that's what caused the sharp rally around 12.30pm EST. Dow futures jumped 80 pts in 20 minutes.

It wouldn't be a normal week without something out of left field lately

At a guess I'd reckon Al Qaeda may be stung into action somewhere or another to show they still have teeth , so whether it's achieved much other than some satisfaction for those affected by 9/11 remains to be seen

[eddievanhalen]

I see silver dropped 12% in 15 mins a few hours back. Never boring

[worm]

Silver dropped 15%: Jeezuz..... Sorry, my fault guys. I just bought some CCU haha

[fastoy]

CCU actually held up rather well. The market was a real mixed bag today, initially selling off on foreign profit-taking based on the rising dollar $A which hit just over $US1.10 before dropping. Some foreign traders have made a lot of money from the $A upmove.

So we have the curious situation of the US market going very well, despite their weak economy, and our market doing very poorly, despite a booming (resource) economy.

The press as usual made a fuss about the silver sell-off, but it didn't last long. It was obvious that small sellers were selling to bigger buyers. A sell down to the $30 area would be welcome.

I think the nervous nellies need a Bex and lie down. The world as we know it is not about to end. Bin Laden will get a lot of press, but that effect will be very short lived.

[eddievanhalen]

A few miscellaneous reads that may interest some

1) A well written background to Osama bin Liner

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/02osama-bin-laden-obituary.html?pagewanted=1&hp


Apparently the Donald has demanded Obama produce the death certificate g ;D


2) Some "chart porn" as the Yank financial bloggers call it - a diagrammatic representation of various countries and their carbon footprint

www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/footprint1.png

3) I found the comments below interesting not because of their content (plenty of bearish commentators share the views expressed) , but becuase of who had the balls to write it............" Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal . He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand."



Ben Bernacke says QE will end in June, but he is either delusional or lying. If the Fed stops monetizing Treasury debt, how will the $1.5-trillion-dollar annual operating deficit of the US government be financed? Are Americans, who are broke, suffering 22% unemployment, foreclosures on their homes and running out of money before the end of the month, as Wal-Mart's CEO recently stated, going to finance a 1.5-trillion annual government deficit? If you think so, I have a bridge to sell in Brooklyn.

The combined trade surpluses of China, OPEC, Japan and Russia are insufficient to finance more than one-third of the US budget deficit, assuming these countries are willing, in the face of the evidence, to continue to acquire US debt.

That means, even under the most optimistic scenario, that the Federal Reserve will have to purchase annually $1-trillion in Treasury debt.

In other words, the US, the great Super Power over-filled with hubris, has outdone the fiscal irresponsibility of third-world banana republics. Superpower America is financing itself by printing money.

Washington, by conducting open-ended wars of aggression against non-puppet states, by giving its approval to the off-shoring of US jobs and thereby US GDP, and by saddling bankrupt taxpayers with $1-trillion in non-recourse loans to mega-rich people in order that the richest and most favored could borrow from the Fed at nearly zero rates of interest hundreds of millions of dollars to buy under-valued student loans, credit card debt, mortgages, whatever, and have any profits from the purchase of under-valued assets put in their bank account and any losses put on the Federal Reserve's books. Obviously, the US economy is a scheme run by the rich for the rich.

In this scheme to impoverish Americans for the benefit of the mega-rich, the Federal reserve actually gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the wives of New York investment bank CEOs in non-resource loans. The already rich wives bought up under-valued debt and made a killing. The wives had no risk whatsoever, because if their investments failed, it went onto the Federal Reserve's books, not on the wives' entity. See Matt Taibbi's The Real Housewives of Wall Street in Rolling Stone magazine.

As the International Monetary Fund said, recently, "the Age of America is Over."

Thank God.


Dunno what a non-resourse loan is though or who Ben Bernacke is


4) The article referred to in Point 3 is a good read too............Matt Taibbi (whose work I enjoy - he coined the term "vampire squid" to describe Goldman Sachs) outlines one small example of the Fed's largesse where the wives of some banksters were loaned hundreds of million from the Fed on a heads you win , tails the Fed loses basis.

www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411


5) If the road travelled from US "surplus" to mega-debt is of interest - some more good charts too

www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/running-in-the-red-how-the-us-on-the-road-to-surplus-detoured-to-massive-debt/2011/04/28/AFFU7rNF_story.html

www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/from-surplus-to-debt/2011/04/30/AFrYNfNF_graphic.html

[eddievanhalen]

Gold's turn for a bit of volatility - just spiked down $30 in 5 mins (after already dropping $30 from its overnight peak).......and now recovering.

[r2d2]

Well Ed, I am finding this volatility a wee bit incovenient...would you mind doing something about it please.

Thanks Pal, knew I could rely on you.

[eddievanhalen]

Sorry r2 - no can do and no want to at this point

[fastoy]

There must be a lot millionaires at CBS Marketwatch. Their web site is full of how everybody knew what was going to happen. They just forgot to mention it before the event.

But the really funny part is that nobody told the market, which has not really done anything out of the ordinary. Today's moderate upmove in NY, and strength all round in Europe, tells me that there was no crash at all, and the panic sellers may have just found themselves on the wrong side.