Cesarnc's market talk, gossips, rumours & fun

GU appears to be headed for at least 1.9400

Yep jobs is what we haven't seen yet, and that is scary that we can be in such a pit with jobs still holding up a bit. In the mid 90's recession, the slip in jobs sent a wave of recessionary problems through the economy and caused the house crisis. We have had a house crisis with only a small slip in jobs. If jobs go down as well, that will be very serious.

There has been a recruiting freeze at many large firms for at least 6 months which doesn't show in the stats of jobless but not claiming. Normally, when my wife says she is available to change jobs, there are firms beating down the door to offer her signing bonuses - this time she has spent 6 months working 10 hours per day / 7 days a week to try and get a job. She finally has one but it has been awful.

If jobs go in the US/UK it will be a very deep recession.

I think the "If" is already out of the bag.

Nah they got the old good news, bad news thingie down pat as well in the UK :rofl

US economic outlook is.....

cor - let me fiddle with this pic

nearly 100 pips off there, but at least you got the bounce right. then again, everyone knows greenspan is all about recessions so until further notice I'd say whenever he speaks, he's going to use the R-word.

WTF is up with spot gold? didn't look for a few hours and poof it's up like crazy. all because of oil reserves or what?

Hey all. Was out for the whole day...

Is it me or the market is wierd these days? Few moves here and there, but overall, market seems so slow...

Just euro coming up again. 3rd attempt against 1.59 in the daily. Holds the charm to crack the 1.60 or is it the triple top just to sink another day?

I say 1.6X we go, given recent history

That's what gonna make tomorrow "very interesting"........

HOLLA

for once i think the old news will push EU through 1.6000, the hold on rates is expected but i think people want it confirmed before buying into it. on then 1.700 before may.

That said my charts screem retracment, so the employment data may change things. + the banks could still be protecting 1.6000 and go hunting stops right after the break.

so basically i have no clue.

I say 1.60 then bukkake for a serious retrace, only to reach 1.70 eventually. Trichet's no punk, he's talking tough and sticking to his guns. More interesting is the BoE play, they're sneaky and might cut only 25 or hold, who knows. I think the market's priced in the 50bp so what if that doesn't happen?

BOE and ECB lost importance these days, imo.

It's all about the dollar (US econ, crisis, recession, Bernanke). Of course there will be those steep reactions after the statements, but they are likely to be short lived once big news from US pop up...

Crap like this, for example:

"As banks start reporting first-quarter results next week, analysts expect more losses. Yet bank stocks already reflect the news."
-CNBC

Yep, you're probably right. My problem, hell anyone with a brains problem, is this wildly fluctuating market.

Dow had the third failure off 12.7K since it broke it on the way down and now it has put a ranging pattern between 11.7K and 12.7K

I set breach of 12.7K (convincent and backed upon fundamentals) as my window to get back in.

This was the way I found to avoid "wildly fluctuatin market" and "brain problem" all at once

Keith Fitz-Gerald (Q): There’s a confluence of money flowing into and around China. Do you believe that the U.S., with all its current problems, will get left out?
Jim Rogers: Absolutely.
The U.S. dollar is a terribly flawed currency. I’m trying to get all of my money out of U.S. dollars. I don’t know why anybody would put money into the U.S. dollar, and by extension into the U.S., as we stand here today. The U.S. is probably the largest debtor nation the world has ever seen!
The United States’ foreign debts are increasing at the rate of $1 trillion U.S. dollars every 15 months. U.S. foreign debt is over $13 trillion, and rising rapidly. It’s the official policy of the central bank to debase the currency. They’re trying to drive down the value of the dollar.
Q: The government has succeeded wildly, so far.
Rogers: You haven’t seen anything yet!
They’re trying to drive down the dollar. I’m trying to be patriotic. I’m trying to sell dollars. That’s what they want. I’m trying to help them drive down the value of the currency.
All Americans should. There are certainly probably good reasons to put some money in dollars. For instance, if you have to buy cotton, you have to have dollars.
But for the most part - I, anyway - am joining other people who’re trying to avoid the U.S. dollar, because Washington has sent a very clear signal: "We want the dollar to decline. We’re gonna do our best to make it decline."
Well, everybody has to make their own decision. I’m trying to do what the Federal Reserve wants me to do, and I’m selling dollars.
Q: My take is that former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may go down as the worst central bank chairmen in history. Do you see it differently?
Rogers: [Bernanke] and Greenspan together will probably bring [about] the end of the Federal Reserve. We’ve had two central banks in America that failed. This third central bank will probably fail, too, because of Bernanke and Greenspan.
The Federal Reserve last week put $200 billion more onto its balance sheet of mortgages. Now I don’t know how big they can expand their balance sheet, but if they keep doing it, there’s only so much - [and] they just bought Bear Stearns.
There’s just so much they can do. Maybe that balance sheet is infinite. I doubt it. And it can be said to be infinite; they just print money like Zimbabwe or someplace. But that has to come to an end, eventually.
Maybe Bernanke is going to get into his helicopter and fly around collecting rents now. Maybe when they repossess all the property, he’s going to be the rent collector. But then when they eventually take on all the car loans, I guess he’s going to be collecting car payments, too. And credit card debt, when they take over all the credit card payments, I guess he’ll be hauling us all out saying: "Your credit card’s overdue."
This is insanity.
Q: Is there a circumstance under which you could see the U.S. recovering, or do you think this country is doomed to be an economic also-ran?
Rogers: Historically, nations that have gotten themselves into this kind of situation have only gotten out following a crisis or a semi-crisis, or some gigantic stroke of luck.
The U.K. got out because they discovered the North Sea. Now you give me the largest oil field in the world, or one of the largest oil fields in the world, I’ll show you a good time, too.
So if you have a stroke of luck [you can escape these kinds of problems], but otherwise, nobody’s ever sorted out these problems without some kind of gigantic crisis or semi-crisis first.
In America, most people do not understand there is a problem! The few who know there’s something going on don’t understand what it is. Most of them who understand it actually think it’s good that the currency’s declining. America’s not going to do anything until things get very, very bad.
Others that offer the rejoinder to this - that the declining dollar makes America competitive - [that] has worked in the short term. But no country has ever restored itself by debasing its currency, not in the long term, not even the medium term.
Many places have tried to debase their currency as a solution. It’s never worked, other than maybe in the short-term, for a while.

Q: Are we looking at a Japanese-style lost economic decade?
Rogers: The Federal Reserve is making the same mistakes that the Japanese made. They’re trying to say: "We won’t let anybody fail. We’ll print a lot of money. We’ll drive interest rates to zero. And we don’t want anybody to fail. We’ll put on as many Band-Aids as we have to."
Well, putting Band-Aids on a cancer patient is not a good solution.
So whether it’s like the ’90s in Japan, or the ’70s in America, remains to be seen.
[One-time U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman] Arthur Burns, who headed the central bank in the ’70s, did exactly what Bernanke’s doing. He raced in and printed money and said: "Oh, everything’s gonna be OK."
But the economy never recovered, inflation went through the roof, and the dollar was under duress. Eventually they had to bring in Paul Volcker and interest rates went over 20%. And eventually they killed inflation and they solved the problem.
They’re making exactly the same mistakes that Burns made. For whatever reason, though, this problem is going to last longer than previous difficulties in America. And it’s probably going to be worse.
Because, now, America is a debtor nation. Now we’re the largest debtor nation in the world. At least in the ’70s, we were still a creditor nation. Japan could survive because they were the largest creditor in the world at the time. So they didn’t fall off the face of the earth.
America’s now the largest debtor the world has ever seen. What’s happening in the U.S. is not going to be fun.

Q: Should the Fed be stepping in like it has in recent months?
Rogers: It’s outrageous that Bernanke’s sitting there. You know, I’ve read the Federal Reserve Act. Nowhere does it say [the central bank is] supposed to bail out investment banks! Nowhere does it say you should bail out Wall Street. Their mandate was to have a sound currency, and then it was later expanded to have employment - to help employment. But nowhere does it say: ‘Bail out investment banks.’
Investment banks have been failing for centuries. The world hasn’t come to an end… even when investment banks have failed. They just caused a setback, and so what!
Recessions are usually good for the system. They clean out the excesses. And my God there’ve been excesses on Wall Street in the past 10 years. You don’t see a bunch of 29-year-old cotton farmers driving around in Maseratis and flying in private planes to exotic locations. Well, you see a lot of guys on Wall Street doing that.
And the idea that we’re now supposed to bail them out is ludicrous! I don’t see any of those guys sending their bonus checks back.
Huge amounts were made in the debt markets. We now know [that money was made] at least incorrectly, if not fraudulently, and yet, now we’re supposed to bail them out. It’s bad enough they get to keep their money. But the outrageous part is that it will cost more to try to prevent a recession than to have the recession.
We have safety nets in place, now. We did in the ’70s in America and the Japanese did in the ’90s. I think there’s good evidence that it will cost more to try to prevent the problems than to have the problems.
Q: That’s a very interesting thought that had not occurred to me before.
Rogers: Well, we’ll see if it’s right. In nature, there’s the natural phenomenon of forest fires. The forest fires are pretty terrible when they’re going on. But nature invented them to clean out the forest so that the forest could then come and grow from a new, sound foundation. That’s what recessions do, too. They’re a natural phenomenon.
Nobody likes it when we have them any more than anybody likes a forest fire. But in the end, everybody’s better off. Bernanke thinks he can stop this; he’s going to very well destroy the system by trying to save it.
Q: Could you see a segment of the financial system surviving this? Or do you think that there will be such catastrophic change that we won’t recognize it till several years from now?
Rogers: Ask me again in five years, 10 years. That was true after the ’30s, certainly. It was true even after the ’60s. Very few people went to Wall Street in the ’70s, very few. A whole generation ignored Wall Street in the ’30s and in the ’70s.
Will that happen again? Probably, because of things we’ve been discussing.
So there will be big changes, of course. If you’re in the field that deals with - and works out - bankruptcies, you’ve got a great future - on Wall Street, or in the legal profession. If you’re in commodities, you have a great future. Some sectors of the financial community are going to do well. Many others are going to disappear and/or do badly.
Q: How low could the dollar go?
Rogers: I have no idea. You just have to watch it as it evolves. Politicians and bureaucrats can do unbelievably stupid things, and have [done so] throughout history.
They will usually do things that are so stupid nobody can believe them, but it happens. You have to watch and see as it goes.
[Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a two-part story based on Investing Director Keith Fitz-Gerald’s interview with investing guru with Jim Rogers. In the second installment, Fitz-Gerald will explore China’s potential, the energy sector and the Middle East, and the global commodities boom.

$

Fed Considering Additional Liquidity Measures

FED, LIQUIDITY, TREASURY
By Reuters

Reuters
| 09 Apr 2008 | 08:30 AM ET


The Federal Reserve is mulling further steps to address liquidity problems in financial markets should measures taken to date fail to gain traction, a Fed official confirmed Wednesday.

Among steps under review would be for the Treasury to borrow in excess of requirements and deposit the overage at the Fed, according to the central bank official.

Other potential actions include issuing debt under the Fed's name and seeking authority to immediately pay interest on commercial bank reserves, the official said.


The options under consideration by the Fed were first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

No such moves are imminent because the Fed's balance sheet is currently sufficient to accommodate further lending. The central bank has announced in recent months several new facilities to extend credit to banks and Wall Street firms in an effort to restore liquidity and credit to markets seized up by the subprime mortgage debacle.

Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions.
URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/24028116/

Market Tumbles on News That Bush Is Still President

White House Appearance ‘A Painful Reminder,’ Experts Say


President George W. Bush used a Rose Garden appearance today to reassure investors that he was at the helm of the U.S. economy, causing stock markets to plummet around the world.

“You don’t have to worry about this economy, because I am in charge of it,” said Mr. Bush, touching off what some observers were calling a global financial panic.

Mr. Bush began his remarks about the economy at 10:30 A.M. eastern time, and by 10:31 markets around the world had already gone into a perilous free-fall.

According to Wall Street insiders, the markets were responding to the news that Mr. Bush was still president.

“Over the last few weeks, the markets have absorbed the news of the subprime crisis, the housing meltdown, and the Bear Stearns failure,” said Logan Teasdale of Citigroup. “But the news that President Bush is still president was too much for the markets to shrug off.”

Over the past few months, Mr. Teasdale said, traders have tried hard to forget that Mr. Bush was still president, but his White House remarks today were “a painful reminder.”

At the Federal Reserve, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke huddled with central bankers to find a way to calm the markets rattled by Mr. Bush’s alarming appearance.

One solution reportedly being pondered by the Fed would involve sending Mr. Bush to Disney World for the remainder of his time in office.

Elsewhere, in his first comment on the Eliot Spitzer scandal, Vice President Dick Cheney said he has never hired a prostitute because “I’ve been screwing the country the last seven years.”

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

When does Barrack take over, dammit, it's taking too long.

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