February 9, 2011 posts

Business / Economic / Financial

[ This link to a somewhat more cumulative blog posts page will precede current days news since most all topics remain current in terms of impact and longer-term effect and can be searched by topical index term more easily. The same is provided since the blog site http://alpeiablog.blogspot.com has just been censored as to size by google which is typical for google as nsa / cia / gov’t shill as more are becoming aware of. The same is true for microsoft, another co. that’s seen their best days and relies on the government to maintain their monopoly. Up to now the better page http://www.scribd.com/alpeia is provided for ease of formatting and clarity thereby while the Washington Post page is the real deal but without formatting http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/community/mypost/index.html?plckPersonaPage=PersonaComments&plckUserId=alpeia&newspaperUserId=alpeia . The following is the cumulative archive of blog posts / topics for 2010 as the new year starts anew: http://albertpeia.com/December312010postsarchive.htm or PDF formatted version
http://albertpeia.com/December312010postsarchive.pdf ]

Sallai Meridor: Israel's fear (Washington Post) [ Come on! Wake up! Illegal nuke totin’, war crimes nation israel’s fears … p l e a s e, spare me the pro-israeli b*** s*** ! What israel fears is a projection of their own ill-founded motives and actions for which all norms, rules, laws governing civilized behavior are suspended for expedience at the least, and blood-thirst that some posit as a remnant of their historic role as Christ-killers (with roman ‘juice’). Isn’t it time, in these desperate times for america, to put america’s, not israel’s interests, first. Who cares what israel fears … In 1948, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, an opponent of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, warned that, even though failure to go along with the Zionists might cost President Truman the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and California, it was about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States….. Mr. Forrestal was absolutely correct! Isn’t that exactly what’s happened to defacto bankrupt america in intractable decline. TIME TO REVOKE AND NULLIFY THE BALFOUR DECLARATION AND ABROGATE THE CREATION OF THE NATION STATE OF ISRAEL IN THE INTERESTS OF FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PROSPECTIVE PROSPERITY FOR THIS WORLD! Israel wary of transition in Egypt, concerned about regional stability (Washington Post) [ Who cares what the paranoid, war criminal, illegal nuke totin’, war criminal israelis are wary of. This country has gone down the tubes cow-towing to the paranoid, self-interested concerns of the psycho / sociopathic zionist israelis who are forever projecting their own pathological motives to every turn of history while ignoring their own culpability in producing the very outcomes they purportedly seek to avoid. War, conflict, greed, bloodshed is the historically based israeli way. ] A resurgent Syria alarms u.s., israel (Washington Post) [ Tell me! What doesn’t alarm these two paranoid, zionist neo-nazi regimes of oppression, suppression, aggression, and regression. If they were individuals, they’d undoubtedly be diagnosed as psychopaths, sociopaths totally ignorant of the rights of others, laws, civilized behavior as israel pads her illegal nuke arsenals with american supplied weaponry / support while expecting all other nations to ‘role over and die’. Bipolar / manic / depressive, the ups and downs are increasingly difficult for even americans to follow. Obssessive / compulsive thy names are zionist israel / america. Projection / displacement regarding their own illegal acts, war crimes, etc.; what they distinguished from what they do … dissociative identity disorder, dissociative fugue? Yes … the u.s. and israel are the world’s lunatics, sorely in need of therapy! ] Syria's fresh interference in Lebanon and its increasingly sophisticated weapons shipments to Hezbollah have alarm officials and prompt Israel's military to consider striking a Syrian weapons depot.

Spreading unrest raises pressure on Mubarak (Washington Post) An array of new developments turned against President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday as Egypt moved closer to a full rupture between its autocratic government and a growing popular rebellion. [ Do not talk about ruptures in the presence of Pharhosni Mubarak he chides the Washington Post! After all, at 82 years old and 30 years in power, hernias are known to quite easily happen… Previous: Free elections still distant prospect for Egypt Activists express doubts about feasibility of September ballot (Washington Post) ["I'm shocked by what the Americans say - that Mubarak must stay as president so we can prepare for new elections,'' said Negad El Borai, a human rights advocate and lawyer in Cairo. "Mubarak must leave, and then we can talk." … Truth be told, I’m not shocked. Indeed, though this is only marginally what america / israel wanted, this will stick to america / israel like glue; that proverbial albatross; that lose, lose scenario for america in the region. Previous: Egypt protests continue as Mubarak's government offers concessions (Washington Post) [ Come on! Let not all of us join america’s / israel’s, et als, and mubarak’s delusions. After all, here’s an 82 year old tyrant, in power for 30 years, yet in some parallel universe appears to think he’s calling the shots. Other than literal and quite foolish shots against protesters, even journalists, see infra, there are few indeed that would trust his mindset, such as it is, much less his judgment, so flawed as he has now shown it to be. What is obvious is that this long overdue ‘people’s election’ cannot be thwarted by platitudes and small talk, but resisting the inevitable will turn an american quasi-ally into an anti-american breeding ground because there’s just no reconciling a pro-mubarak, however slight, position with american / israeli, et als war crimes in the region. Restless Cairo protesters hoping for U.S. support (Washington Post) [ The sad reality here is, much like wobama’s Afghanistan fiasco, that america has ‘bought it’. This is truly yet another ‘loss, loss’ scenario as is true of america’s mideast policy generally. Defacto bankrupt america’s initiatives in the region particularly, though generally true of all american policy, is the ‘square pegs in round holes’ approach to almost everything they do, which certainly is not lost on the rest of the world. Coddling and caving in to israeli / neocon / zionist paranoia despite the war mongering intransigence of the former is devastating to a nation as pervasively corrupt america which is facing insurmountable domestic problems of its own, economically, financially, politically, and geo-politically. This should bring to mind the missteps of a former fading empire in this same region desperately trying to remain relevant. Indeed, from Balfour’s Despoliation to arbitrary boundaries, etc., Orwellian britain’s demise (decline) as a real player globally was, as america’s currently, significantly and irrevocably hastened. Quite simply, pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america will increasingly be viewed as a bunch of ‘muck-ups’ who can’t handle their own substantial problems much less those of other nations; and in fact, invariably exacerbate existing conditions / problems, particularly when pandering to israel’s self-interested concerns. ] While the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak remains the most pressing concern for protesters, the role of U.S. is far from absent in the dialogue. { Previous: Amid Arab protests, U.S. influence has waned (Washington Post) [ And that’s just the way israel likes it … and to america’s detriment, of course … which is not lost on even George Soros … Drudgereport: Soros: 'The main stumbling block is Israel'...

Egyptian protesters plan new push Government detains foreigners, says it's willing to open talks (Washington Post) [ Open talks? ‘bout what? Building a pyramid in mubarak’s honor before stepping down? He’s done … finito … burnt as an over-micro-waved burrito! The following from the Post is indeed the straw that broke the riders with whips he sent on camels’ and horses’ backs! ‘Wants to die in Egypt? How touching, or the reality, he’s just plain touched as in totally ‘out of it’. ‘…In what the U.S. State Department called a "concerted campaign to intimidate," several dozen journalists were rounded up by security forces and detained for hours, along with foreigners working as teachers, engineers and human rights researchers. Across the city, angry bands of supporters of President Hosni Mubarak also beat journalists; several reporters said that they were threatened with death…’ ] Cairo seeks to shift blame for clashes by rounding up journalists; U.S. worries renewed protests could spark more violence from Mubarak supporters. Demonstrations in Egypt take bloody turn In Cairo square, Mubarak backers confront anti-government crowds (Washington Post) [ Not too difficult for desperate and done mubarak to contrive: Mubarak Says Egyptians Have to Choose Between “Chaos” and Him … Then Sends In His Thugs to Stir Up Chaos (Infowars.com) In order to justify staying in power until elections are held in September, President Mubarak said on tv that the people had to choose between him and “chaos”. ] The coordinated nature of day's events suggested that Mubarak's supporters were determined to show, as he had warned, that the country faced a "choice between chaos and stability." [ Previous: Mubarak's pledge seen as not enough Egyptian president plans to stay in office to transfer power (Washington Post) [ Let me put it another way: Mubarak is as done as an over-cooked tamale … He seems to be stalling for time and even in his age impaired mind certainly knows his position is untenable, unsustainable, and even more irrational as each second passes. There is a possibility that he’s using same to move money / treasure for himself and others, literally as well, buying time. See infra … Previous: Mubarak seeks dialogue, shows no sign of relenting Demonstrators call for massive protest but lack leadership (Washington Post) [ He relented when he resorted to media / internet blackout. Indeed, this lack of sign thing is a testament to how far from reality 30 years has taken him, not to mention the other 52 years that have taken their toll on his cognitive processes. Whether it is plaques ‘on the brain’ or outright senility, that he is so disengaged from the events unfolding around him, one may only wonder how he lasted this long. Nor did his choice of cia standin / shill, new VP Suleiman enhance his now untenable position which leaves him as ‘done as a burnt enchilada’. Kissinger on Egypt unrest – “This is only the first scene of the first act of a drama that is to be played out” [ The import of this so-called interview, and it is here that I part company with alex jones, et als (who by the way, censored me for this very thesis, which puts him and his at the top of my hypocrite list), is that the so-called elite have orchestrated these events and ‘are in control’. First, there are no elites in this world; you can’t derive elites from apes, notochordates, and initially single celled organisms. Second, almost by definition and certainly by history, there are no elites in america even if you were to accept the first proposition (though true) as untrue. What you do have, in this world and america particularly (with few exceptions as I’ve discussed elsewhere / comments / my website), are inherent criminals and mentally ill people of varying degrees of unscrupulousness and insanity who do commit crimes, both small and large, to further their interests or fortunes (sociopaths / psychopaths). The ’so-called alpha-dogs’ of the human species at most, but still incompetent vegetables who, if you look at anything they touch (to use a term term of such incompetent vegetables as historically pertains to their role in the mideast – and generally the state of the world) it invariably goes ‘pear shaped’ (english term). What hasn’t zionist kissinger not messed up as appointee or ‘consultant’ – what does he get paid for? No! The fact is, they have absolutely no idea how this unfolds and as with most of their lives, they will predictably choose the most sordid, despicable, and diabolical course at every turn because … that is their inherently criminal, mentally ill / unstable nature to do so. ]

] Fragile steps to end crisis seen as plans take shape for a transition process that would allow Mubarak to remain as a figure head until new elections.

} ]

] After decades of repression, democracy advocates say it could take many months -- if not years -- to lay groundwork for open and credible elections.

]

Congress must raise debt ceiling, Bernanke warns (Washington Post) [ Riiiiight, bunglo ben … this from the same ben who forecasted ‘no-recession’. The fact is, ‘helicopter ben shalom bernanke’ hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s doing and is the ‘poster boy’, epitome of that incompetent ivy league vegetable who’s long on rhetoric and cv but quite short on real results. The only thing that has been true as per his stated intentions, is an inflated new wall street bubble to and for the benefit of the wall street frauds. ‘Have printing press, will travel’ … that soldier of his and their fortune is a man called ‘Palawallstreet’ aka ben shalom bernanke … which temporary obfuscation with money that’s not really there in real terms means that beyond the temporary look good/feel good, disaster straight ahead. Bernanke's Worst Nightmare Is This Man's Boxes: Caroline Baum BusinessWeek Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ben Bernanke arrived at his office a week ago and came face to face with his worst nightmare. Staring out at the Federal Reserve chairman from page C1 of the Feb. 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal was a photo ... The Associated Press Video: Republicans Grill Bernanke Over Inflation, Debt Paul calls Fed's Bernanke "cocky" in House hearing Reuters [ Yeah … Come on! … The incompetent ‘no-recession helicopter ben’ has nothing whatsoever to be cocky about; he’s clueless as to what to do; satisfied to be helping the frauds on wall street; but in the end, this will end … quite badly! ] Drudgereport:White House to Slash Heating Program for Poor…but still no pros of massive frauds on wall street which fines and disgorgement of would yield huge amounts to cover spending... [ Howard Davidowitz on the Economy: "Here Are the Numbers ... WE'RE BROKE!" 11-25-10 ‘The U.S. economy "is a complete disaster," Howard Davidowitz declared here in July, the most recent in a string of dire predictions from Tech Ticker's most entertaining guest.On the eve of Thanksgiving, I asked Davidowitz if he had any regrets, or was ready to throw in the towel given recent signs of economic revival. Are you kidding me? "Here are the numbers...we're broke," Davidowitz declares, noting the U.S. government goes $5 billion deeper into debt every day and is facing $1 trillion-plus annual deficits for the next decade. "In other words, we're bankrupt."As with the economy, Davidowitz is unwaveringly consistent in his views on President Obama, calling him "deranged, dysfunctional and discredited."Results of the midterm election show "the people of this country think we are in a catastrophe," he says. "I'm with them."Check the accompanying video for more of Howard's unfettered opinions and stay tuned for additional clips from this interview. And...Happy Thanksgiving! Aaron Task is the host of Tech Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter at @atask or email him at altask@yahoo.com’ Timid Tuesday: Is it Safe? Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘ ]
] Fed chairman offers dire warnings about the damage Congress could wreak if it refrains from raising the government's debt limit this spring.

Rep. Lee (R-N.Y.) resigns after Craigslist incident (Washington Post) [ I am truly astounded; and, I say that without even a tinge of sarcasm. Where is the corpus dilicti here. That he is a fool and somewhat a dummy, if such is the standard for resignation, then all of capital hill should be tendering their resignations en masse. After all, aside from the inherent conflict, and particularly in light of a financial / fiscal / economic disaster in large part of their own making and compounding by failing to prosecute the perps and instead accommodate their crimes, ie., FASB rule change, etc., does not the consistent though undeserved raises they give themselves constitute of sorts a defalcation of duty, responsibility, and trust. Unlike congress, indeed all the pervasively corrupt and incompetent branches of u.s. government in their day-to-day activities / course of business, though tasteless, sleazy, etc., this so-called incident is without a corpus dilicti. It kind of reminds me of that scene in ‘Road to Perdition’ when mob kingpin Newman responds (in a somewhat incredulous, come on, who you kidding way) to former footsoldier Hanks by reminding him that they’re all murderers (in the room-including Hanks).] Move came after a Web site reported that the married congressman had e-mailed a shirtless image of himself to a woman he met online.

CIA's dilemma in Egypt (Washington Post) [ Come on! How does anyone take these ‘muck-ups’ seriously … As a purported journalist, Mr. Ignatius should know better. What distracts the agency is self-interest and greed … yes, greed for themselves, theirs, and a raison d’etre that assures their continued funding (oh how they miss the cold war, hot ones will have to do) on top of their private so-called ‘black ops’. They’re wrong or absent without leave (awol) on major events purportedly within their bailiwick; ie., mideast, israel, ‘wmd’s in Iraq’, 9-11, Egypt, etc.; and, as well, are fallacious in their policy direction, directives, etc.. I mean, beyond their nefarious undertakings, they look more and more like Maxwell Smarts (‘Get Smart’) minus ‘99’ every day. Expanded Free Trade: Exporting Jobs [ When you come right down to it, this has been america’s most significant export. Indeed, this irrevocable structural shift, hailed by cia men hw bush and clinton (clinton couldn’t have survived without them) by way of NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread was indeed in no uncertain terms condemned and warned against by Perot, a man of honor who, unlike his opponents, could not be bought, which is the reason, in pervasively corrupt america, he could never have been elected. Interestingly, you may have noticed the good (but not great, other than the spotlight on pervasive bribery including judges, police, politicians, etc., being far too light) the film ‘The Untouchables’ getting a wide re-airing of late, purporting to be a significant part of american folklore / history / culture. However, the reality is that in america, and certainly today, the real story with impact is that of ‘The Touchables’. The reality is that Elliot Ness died a broken man; bankrupt, unable to even win election to the mayoralty of his then current hometown. He was incorruptible; and hence, in the real america, unelectable at the least if not also all but unemployable (he and his are among those few genetic anomalies in america as I’ve previously alluded to. How far america has fallen from even false perception! Pervasively corrupt, meaningfully lawless america can’t even fake it anymore. At CIA, mistakes by officers are often overlooked (Washington Post) [ Duuuh! I want to know of even one thing that’s not overlooked concerning those incompetent mental cases at the cia; from assassinations, to illegal drug dealing, to illegal arms sales, to corruption, to disinformation, etc., to america’s and the world’s (ie., those WMD’s in Iraq, etc.) substantial detriment. See, for example, http://albertpeia.com/CIAAgentAffidavit1.jpg http://albertpeia.com/FBIAgentAffidavit11.jpg , and of course, corrupt legal / judicial processes, etc., Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on offensive (defensive a misnomer / propaganda) military spending than all the nations of the world combined, and by a large margin at that. Do you see a pattern emerging here [ I unfortunately only belatedly did, and the feds, fed employees, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality in the most nefarious sense ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ) ]:

CRIME STATISTICS > TOTAL CRIMES (MOST RECENT) BY COUNTRY SHOWING LATEST AVAILABLE DATA (america’s No. 1).

Rank	Countries	Amount
# 1	United States:	11,877,218
# 2	United Kingdom:	6,523,706
# 3	Germany:	6,507,394

… The following youtube video is well worth the look and explains how and why the frauds on wall street have gotten away with their devastating fraud thus far. The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed. ( UPDATE: MORE CLAIMS OF RACE BIAS AT JUSTICE... CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ex-Justice official quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims US v. AZ... Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama broke promises ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw&feature=PlayList&p=2EFAB57B44063742&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1. [ The Obama Deception Number 1 on U.S. Google Trends ]

‘The Obama Deception’ Censored ‘The Obama Deception’ has been censored In light of this development, I provide an archived site version which appears to be complete (but will be compared with earlier version and replaced with same if incomplete) http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv

Then there is the well researched, produced, and informative ‘ESOTERIC AGENDA’ which explains how we’ve gotten to this forlorn point: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7052400717834950257#

For the Same Reason I’ve Included Here a Web Site Archived FLV Version of Esoteric Agenda http://albertpeia.com/esotericagenda.flv

] ] Ignatius: Its fight against al-Qaeda has distracted the agency.

Rumors Cause Some Selling: Dave's Daily [But more than a rumor, it is a market top] ‘A rumor making the rounds, later denied, was hedge fund kingpin Paul Tudor Jones was calling a market top. That caused a bout of selling which naturally increased volume from those weak handed investors. Nevertheless, PTJ's PR people stated: "Phooey" and that was that. There may also be some nervousness over current and impending arrests for insider trading. The bigger news is the divergence of emerging markets from previous "got to own" status to just the opposite as some $10 billion has come out of linked ETFs and markets are selling-off. With rumor denials confirmed meant a sharp late day recovery rally seemed logical as dip buyers are still ever present. The obligatory "buy program express" hit the tape late to keep losses to a minimum while the clear market leader DJIA (window dressing for the tourists) eked-out a slight gain. The Fed had tossed in another round of POMO and late in the day trading desks have to do "something" with it. Earnings continued to roll-in with impressive results. Coke came in with solid earnings that met expectations for example. Economic data was slim with more impressive stuff for Thursday. Then there was the much discussed ("what does it mean" news) that the German Bourse and NYSE will merge. The world gets smaller and perhaps more efficient while New York and perhaps Chicago lose some prestige and business…’

Cisco And Akamai Are Getting Crushed After Hours, So NASDAQ Futures Are Diving Weisenthal, On Wednesday February 9, 2011, 4:59 pm EST ‘It's going to be a pretty ugly day tomorrow for big tech. At least if the action right now is indicative.Two big names are diving.The first is Cisco, which is down 7% after hours on pretty meh earnings. The number was fine, but on the call the company has revealed margin pressure, and this is basically looking like a repeat of last quarter when the stock tanked after earnings.The other is Akamai, which is also down hard, on a revenue outlook that's less than impressive. The revenue outlook was well below expectations.With these two players diving, it's no surprise that NASDAQ-100 futures are getting whacked after hours, indicating a slide of more than 0.5%.Tech, of course, has been particularly hot of late.’

Is the Market Headed for a Sell-Off? Zaky [ Yes … I agree, except that fundamentally the longer term prospects are even worse than his bearish outlook suggests (don’t forget the debasement of the dollar, manipulation, and spending / printing money the nation doesn’t have in real terms behind this manipulated uptick) and summarized as follows: ‘I suspect that this rally is on its very last legs. We should see a very healthy 10% or so correction within the next 1-2 week period ... This market is headed for a sell-off. ]

2011 Update: Another Lost Decade for Stocks - Are You Prepared? [ I agree that this is but a (manipulated) bull cycle in a secular bear market with substantially worse to come! ]Kopas ‘In February 2010, we published an article on Seeking Alpha entitled “Another Lost Decade for Stocks - Are You Prepared?,” wherein we argued that the year 2000 marked a secular (long-term) peak for U.S. stocks. A secular bear market is formed when a series of business cycles are linked together, establishing an extended period of stock market under-performance. Our objective here is to bring you up-to-date on the progress of this secular bear market and help you prepare for the next ten years…’

How to Squeeze the Most Out of a Late-Stage Rally Maierhofer ‘Something curious happened the last two months. In December, the investment community turned extremely bullish on stocks. By some measures optimism shot through the roof and eclipsed some of the readings seen at the 2007 all-time highs.Such extremes usually lead to some sort of a correction. In October 2007 they were followed by a 50%+ decline, in April 2010 by a near 20% decline. But not in December, prices kept climbing and curiously, sentiment starting fading away from the December extremes.In general, that is good news for anyone owning stocks, but sentiment is still elevated to a degree where being long stocks is quite risky. Testament is the fear barometer - the VIX (Chicago Options: ^VIX) fell to a 3 year low yesterday.

Technical Cracks

In addition to a constant flow of bad news domestically and abroad, some technical indicators are flashing red flags.Since the last mini sell-off on January 28 (when Egypt made front-page news), volume has dropped precipitously. Over 1.3 billion shares were traded on the NYSE when the S&P (SNP: ^GSPC), Dow Jones (DJI: ^DJI), and Nasdaq (Nasdaq: ^IXIC) dropped about 2% on January 28.The last five trading days saw volume of less than 1 billion shares (see chart below). According to technical analysis 101, low volume up days and high volume down days isn't exactly bullish. [chart] A look at the percentage of stocks trading above their 50-day moving average also conveys weakness. Five weeks ago 80% of stocks trading on the NYSE were above their respective 50-day MA. Since then the S&P (NYSEArca: IVV - News) has tagged on 5%, but the percentage of stocks above their 50-day MA has fallen to 75%.

2011 Performance - 52%?

Year-to-date the S&P 500 is up 5% - that's 5% in five weeks or 1% a week. At this pace the S&P is on course to gain 52% in 2011. Is that realistic?At some point in the not too distant future, traders are likely to look at the year-to-date performance and say, that's too good to be true!We've seen such 'too good to be true moments' in January and April 2010. Below is a small sampling of headlines that appeared within a day or two of the April 2010 peak, and days before the May 'Flash Crash.'

Bloomberg: 'U.S. stocks cheapest since 1990'

Wall Street Journal: Consumer mojo lifts profits'

Reuters: 'Greece contagion fears unfounded'

Yahoo Tech Ticker: 'S&P could hit 3000 by 2020'

Newsweek: 'America is back - The remarkable tale of an economic turnaround'

In contrast to that warm and fuzzy feeling, the ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter warned on April 16: 'The message conveyed by the composite bullishness is unmistakably bearish. The pieces are in place for a major decline.'The Fed-funded money flow has kept a constant bid beneath prices, but the common expectation that this pre-Presidential election year is going to be gang busters, particularly after a strong January, is reason for suspicion.

Safety Nets

The easiest way to guard against an unwanted decline is simply to sell. This locks in profits but often comes with the annoying side effect of having to watch stocks go up, while you are sitting on the sideline.Before buying or selling anything, investors should ask themselves whether they prefer to be on the sideline while stocks go up, or be fully invested when stocks go down. One of the two scenarios is bound to happen, at least temporarily.If you are not ready to cut loose from your stocks, you may consider buying put protection. $420 buys you the right to sell SPY at 132 anytime before May 20, 2011. If you want to spend less money for an earlier expiration date, the April put sells for $320, and the March put for $230. Like an insurance policy, this gives you piece of mind for a small premium.

Eagle Eye

As per the VIX, complacency is ever present right now, but that's exactly the time you want to be on guard. Like a thief, the market strikes when least expected.An effective way to limit risk and maximize profits is to set sell stops at major support levels. The market often tests support before resuming its uptrend. If support fails, watch out.Back in November, the ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter highlighted the pivotal role of the 1,170 level. The S&P tested - but never broke below - that level five times before continuing its diabolical up trend.Where is today's key support level? As per the ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter a failed low-risk entry would be the sign for a trend reversal. What is a failed low-risk entry? This signal is based on the percentR indicator, a measure of relative strength.In a strong market, particularly after a long up trend, percentR will hover above 80. A powerful enough decline can result in a drop below 80. Once percentR closes below 80 it will trigger a bullish low risk entry.It triggered such low-risk entries on January 19 and 28. It would have taken another down day and a close below that day's low, to get a failed low-risk entry. In January, it would have taken a close below 1,279 and 1,275 to confirm a low-risk entry. It never happened.Since stocks have gained about 4% since the last low-risk entry, it's likely that the next low-risk entry will occur at higher prices. To pinpoint this major support now would be speculation. It's for sure, though, that no bear market will start without a failed low-risk entry…’

Stocks End Mostly Lower Midnight Trader ‘4:32 PM, Feb 9, 2011 --

• NYSE down 35.86 (-0.4%) to 8,343.99
• DJIA up 6.74 (+0.06%) to 12,240
• S&P 500 down 3.69 (-0.3%) to 1,321
• Nasdaq down 7.98 (-0.3%) to 2,789

GLOBAL SENTIMENT

• Hang Seng down 1.36%
• Nikkei down 0.17%
• FTSE down 0.64%

UPSIDE MOVERS

(+) TTWO easily beats with results.
(+) DIS beats with results.
(+) TSTC CEO buying shares.
(+) RL beats with results.
(+) CHBT beats with results.
(+) CHKP hikes buyback program.
(+) BIDU upgraded.
(+) PLAB guides higher.

DOWNSIDE MOVERS

(-) JOE exploring alternatives, including possible sale.
(-) FSLR inks new deal.
(-) WFC continues drop seen after announcing CFO retirement.
(-) BCDS misses with results, outlook.
(-) SNY warns for declining profit.

MARKET DIRECTION

Stock averages end narrowly mixed after spending a soggy session mostly in negative territory. Still, the blue-chip Dow's late-day spurt lands it barely in positive territory, just enough to extend its win streak to eight sessions. Strong consumer names such as Coca-Cola (KO) and Disney (DIS) gained, limiting the Dow's drop, after upbeat earnings reports. Wall Street is cooling off a bit as averages hit fresh multi-year highs earlier in the week. Major benchmarks are up more than 5% so far this year. Stocks also slipped as investors digested Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's continuing testimony on the economic outlook and monetary and fiscal policy to the House Budget Committee. Speaking before the committee, Bernanke said that last month's jobless rate decline to 9% from 9.8% offers some reason for optimism, but said it would likely be several years before the unemployment rate returns to more normal levels, according to MarketWatch. Bernake said, despite economic improvements, the central bank will continue with its $600 billion stimulus plan. There were no major economic reports out today.

In company news:

Visa (V) was down on plans to buy PlaySpan, a privately held company whose payments platform handles transactions for digital goods in online games, digital media and social networks globally. According to the company, the acquisition will complement its 2010 CyberSource acquisition and extend its capabilities into one of the fastest-growing segments of eCommerce - digital and mobile commerce.

eBay (EBAY) was down following a Bloomberg report that the online auction company is planning to lay out a three-year plan tomorrow to expand its PayPal unit business and repel threats from Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL). PayPal is eBay's fastest-growing business. The service is set to generate more sales than eBay's e-commerce market place, the report said.

Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) shares were lower despite positive drug trial news. Teva said results from a Phase III study of QNAZE HFA, its nasal aerosol corticosteroid in development to treat perennial allergic rhinitis (PAR) and seasonal allergic rhinitis, achieved all primary and secondary efficacy endpoints, demonstrating significantly greater relief of nasal symptoms, including runny nose, nasal congestion, nasal itching and sneezing, compared with placebo.

Goldman Sachs (GS) shares were down after Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said the company bought too many hard-to-sell assets before the financial crisis in 2008, Bloomberg reported. The comments came from a conference in Miami hosted by Credit Suisse. Viniar said that Goldman was "buying more illiquid assets than we probably should have."

French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) was down following news that ongoing efforts to win over its takeover target U.S biotech Genzyme (GENZ) has prompted the firm to expect an earnings decline this year of between 5% and 10%. The company said it expects generic competition to accelerate next year and predicts a 5% to 10% decline in 2011 business earnings per share. The forecast does not assume a return of generic competition to cancer treatment Eloxatin in the U.S., or any benefit from the possible acquisition of Genzyme, the company said in its only reference to Genzyme in the quarterly earnings statement.

Investors are awaiting results from networking giant Cisco Systems (CSCO) due after the close today. Analysts are looking for Cisco to report EPS of $0.35 per share. In particular, analysts will be looking to see if CEO John Chambers joins other executives who are becoming more upbeat about the global economy.

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) and BP (BP) are planning to close and sell refineries in the United States and Germany due to declining demand for fuels like gasoline, Bloomberg reports.
In earnings news:
--Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) reports Q4 EPS of $0.27, vs. Street estimates of $0.24 per share. Revenue was $993 million, better than expectations of $970 million.
--Coca-Cola (KO) reports Q4 adjusted EPS of $0.72, up 9% from the year-ago quarter and in line with the Thomson Reuters mean analyst estimate. Revenue of $10.5 billion tops the $7.5 billion seen a year ago. The Street expected $9.96 billion.
--Polo Ralph Lauren (RL) posted net income of $168 million, or $1.72 per diluted share, for the third quarter of fiscal 2011, versus net income of $111 million, or $1.10 per diluted share, for the same period in fiscal 2010. The Street view was $1.29 per share in earnings.’

Expanded Free Trade: Exporting Jobs [ When you come right down to it, this has been america’s most significant export. Indeed, this irrevocable structural shift, hailed by cia men hw bush and clinton (clinton couldn’t have survived without them) by way of NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread was indeed in no uncertain terms condemned and warned against by Perot, a man of honor who, unlike his opponents, could not be bought, which is the reason, in pervasively corrupt america, he could never have been elected. Interestingly, you may have noticed the good (but not great, other than the spotlight on pervasive bribery including judges, police, politicians, etc., being far too light) the film ‘The Untouchables’ getting a wide re-airing of late, purporting to be a significant part of american folklore / history / culture. However, the reality is that in america, and certainly today, the real story with impact is that of ‘The Touchables’. The reality is that Elliot Ness died a broken man; bankrupt, unable to even win election to the mayoralty of his then current hometown. He was incorruptible; and hence, in the real america, unelectable at the least if not also all but unemployable (he and his are among those few genetic anomalies in america as I’ve previously alluded to. How far america has fallen from even false perception! Pervasively corrupt, meaningfully lawless america can’t even fake it anymore. See, for example, http://albertpeia.com/CIAAgentAffidavit1.jpg http://albertpeia.com/FBIAgentAffidavit11.jpg , and of course, corrupt legal / judicial processes, etc., Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on offensive (defensive a misnomer / propaganda) military spending than all the nations of the world combined, and by a large margin at that. Do you see a pattern emerging here [ I unfortunately only belatedly did, and the feds, fed employees, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality in the most nefarious sense ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ) ]:

CRIME STATISTICS > TOTAL CRIMES (MOST RECENT) BY COUNTRY SHOWING LATEST AVAILABLE DATA (america’s No. 1).

Rank	Countries	Amount
# 1	United States:	11,877,218
# 2	United Kingdom:	6,523,706
# 3	Germany:	6,507,394

… The following youtube video is well worth the look and explains how and why the frauds on wall street have gotten away with their devastating fraud thus far. The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed. ( UPDATE: MORE CLAIMS OF RACE BIAS AT JUSTICE... CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ex-Justice official quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims US v. AZ... Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama broke promises ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw&feature=PlayList&p=2EFAB57B44063742&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1. [ The Obama Deception Number 1 on U.S. Google Trends ]

‘The Obama Deception’ Censored ‘The Obama Deception’ has been censored In light of this development, I provide an archived site version which appears to be complete (but will be compared with earlier version and replaced with same if incomplete) http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv

Then there is the well researched, produced, and informative ‘ESOTERIC AGENDA’ which explains how we’ve gotten to this forlorn point: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7052400717834950257#

For the Same Reason I’ve Included Here a Web Site Archived FLV Version of Esoteric Agenda http://albertpeia.com/esotericagenda.flv

] Lounsbury ‘In January Steven Hansen observed that, through November, the trade deficit for manufactured goods was the equivalent of 1.3 million workers earning the median manufacturing wage in the U.S. Well, the trade deficit has been with us in a major way for nearly two decades. I am reminded of the 1992 presidential campaign where one of the three candidates, Ross Perot, argued against the adoption of NAFTA, The North American Free Trade Agreement. The other two candidates supported NAFTA.Perot is famous for his statement that a free trade agreement that was not a two way street would create a “giant sucking sound” of jobs going south to the cheap labor markets of Mexico. Both of Perot’s opponents (George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton) argued that NAFTA would create jobs in the U.S. because of business expansion.However, the goods balance of trade for the U.S. with Mexico has been negative and steadily growing over the years. In 2010 it amounted to $61.6 billion, which was 9.5% of the total goods trade deficit last year.

So Perot has been vindicated in his opinion; expanded free trade has not been accompanied by an increase in jobs in the U.S. relative to the vast numbers of jobs created in the rest of the world as NAFTA became just a stepping stone on the pathway to global commerce.

Veronique de Rugy has produced a graph which shows how manufacturing output and manufacturing employment have varied over the years 1975 – 2010.

click to enlarge images

[chart]

The giant sucking sound actually started in 1980 as manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. The decline in employment in 1980-83 can be associated with the double recessions of that time period, which was also evidenced in the drop in manufacturing output. But when the recovery took hold, manufacturing resumed strong growth but employment gradually declined from 1984 to 2000, after which the decline accelerated.

Now, to be fair, not all the employment decline was due to increased employment overseas. Trade deficits remained fairly benign by 21^st century standards. Employment declined significantly because of productivity improvements as more and more automation replaced manual labor. However, some of the decline was undoubtedly due to increased importation of goods to the U.S.

The rapid growth in the trade deficit for goods began in the early 1990s and we will start our detailed examination of the data with 1992, in deference to Mr. Perot.

Growth of the Trade Deficit for Goods

The first two tables show pertinent annual data. The table on the left shows the trade balance for goods. The table on the right shows the value of U.S. manufactured goods and manufacturing payroll employment.

[chart]

The sources for the data used in these tables are:

• Trade Balance: Goods, Balance of Payments Basis (BOPGTB)
• MANEMP Non-Farms Payrolls Manufacturing
• Total Value of Manufactured Products Federal Reserve Statistical Release G.17, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: Table 9

Productivity Improvement

In 19 years the value of U.S. manufacturing output has risen by 58% while manufacturing employment has declined by 31%. It only took 2.5 manufacturing employees in 2010 to produce what 5.8 employees produced in 1992. The dramatic improvement in labor productivity (and loss of jobs) is emphasized by the following graph.

[chart]

Jobs Equivalent to Manufactured Goods Trade Deficit

One cannot say that there is a U.S. jobs loss exactly equal to the trade deficit for manufactured goods. Here are some reasons:

• The goods trade deficit may have led to a more favorable balance of exchange in other areas, for example in export of services. This would have produced more U.S. service jobs.
• The trade balance deficit may have produced foreign investment in the U.S. that would not have otherwise occurred, creating domestic jobs.
• The trade deficit may have actually increase demand for exports of goods still manufactured in the U.S.
• Foreign employment may have been created for U.S. citizens that would not otherwise have occurred.
• If the manufacturing had remained in the U.S. productivity gains might have been even greater than have been experienced.

However, it is not unreasonable to make the assumption that a significant portion of the manufacturing jobs equivalent to the trade deficit would have been created in the U.S.

The U.S. manufacturing jobs equivalence of the goods trade deficit is shown for each of the years starting with 1992 in the following table, along with the cumulative total. Hereafter we refer to the jobs equivalence as “jobs exported”.

[chart]

The jobs exported each year are shown in the following graph.

[chart]

The following graph shows that there have been a cumulative total of almost 29 million jobs exported over the past 19 years.

[chart]

Unemployment Today and the Counterfactual Labor Shortage

The total number of people employed today according to the latest BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data is 139.3 million. If just half of the exported jobs were retained in the U.S., there would be about 153 million employed. The current civilian labor force is only 153 million so there would be no slack in the labor force at all. However, the labor participation rate has fallen from 67% in 2000-01 to 64.2% today. If the participation rate returned to 67% the civilian labor force would be 160 million. With 153 million employed the unemployment rate would be 4.4% and we would be complaining of labor shortages.

The Sweet Spot

If only some, even less than half, of the manufacturing that has been outsourced had been retained in the U.S., it is likely that there would still be an emerging market boom, but there would not be the severe structural unemployment problem that exists today in the U.S. It seems, looking at these numbers, that where we are is not the result of doing a fundamentally bad thing. It could be argued that it is actually the result of taking a good thing too far. It seems we missed the sweet spot and simply botched a beautiful shot.

Free Trade is a very good thing, but free trade taken too far is destructive. Hard data shows why.

Related Article

USA Trade Deficit Exports 1.3 million Jobs by Steven Hansen’

Ron Paul holds first hearing to scrutinize Fed Raw Story | Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul on Wednesday held his first official hearing to examine the policies of the Federal Reserve on unemployment and economic growth.

Derivatives: The Real Reason Bernanke Funnels Trillions Into Wall Street Banks Seeking Alpha | Bernanke is printing money and funneling it into the Wall Street banks for one reason and one reason only.

Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring And Won’t Be Hiring Charles Hugh Smith | Small business can’t afford to believe in myths and fantasies. They are dealing with the harsh reality of adapt or die.

Gold at EUR1,000/oz – Strong Physical Demand Leading To Illiquid Conditions With the physical gold market remaining very small when compared to the futures and paper gold market (futures, CFDs etc) there are increasing concerns of illiquidity due to the scale of demand and lack of supply.

Derivatives: The Real Reason Bernanke Funnels Trillions Into Wall Street Banks We’ve been over the numerous BS excuses that US Dollar destroyer extraordinaire Ben Bernanke has made for QE enough times that today I’d rather simply focus on the REAL reason he continues to funnel TRILLIONS of Dollars into the Wall Street Banks.

ABC Consumer Comfort Index Plunges To Year Lows On Surging Gas Prices Once again the ABC Consumer Comfort index indicates that it is leaps and bounds more relevant than the ADP Private Payroll number.

Shocking Video Of Howard Dean Declaring That It Is The Job Of The Government To Redistribute Our Wealth In the shocking video you are about to watch, Howard Dean declares that it is the job of the government to redistribute our wealth.

Bernanke's Worst Nightmare Is This Man's Boxes: Caroline Baum BusinessWeek Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ben Bernanke arrived at his office a week ago and came face to face with his worst nightmare. Staring out at the Federal Reserve chairman from page C1 of the Feb. 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal was a photo ... The Associated Press Video: Republicans Grill Bernanke Over Inflation, Debt Paul calls Fed's Bernanke "cocky" in House hearing Reuters [ Yeah … Come on! … The incompetent ‘no-recession helicopter ben’ has nothing whatsoever to be cocky about; he’s clueless as to what to do; satisfied to be helping the frauds on wall street; but in the end, this will end … quite badly! ]

(2-9-11) Dow 12,239 +6 Nasdaq 2,789 -8 S&P 500 1,320 -4 [CLOSE- OIL $86.79 (-54% for year 2008) (RECORD TRADING HIGH $147.27) GAS $3.11 (reg. gas in LAND OF FRUITS AND NUTS $3.35 REG./ $3.53 MID-GRADE/ $3.62 PREM./ $3.68 DIESEL) / GOLD $1,365 (+24% for year 2009) / SILVER $30.29 (+47% for year 2009) PLATINUM $1,845 (+56% for year 2009) / DOLLAR= .72 EURO, 82 YEN, .62 POUND STERLING, ETC. (How low can you go - LOWER)/ http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/update 10 YR NOTE YIELD 3.65% …..… AP Business Highlights ...Yahoo Market Update... T. Rowe Price Weekly Recap – Stocks / Bonds / Currencies - Domestic / International This Is a Secular Bear Market and The End of Buy and Hold … and Hope MARKET MANIPULATION AND HOW THE LATEST BUBBLE-FRAUD PRE-COMING CRASH IS BEING ACCOMPLISHED 3-11-10 6 Theories On Why the Stock Market Has Rallied 3-9-10 [archived website file] Risks Lurk for ETF Investors The bull market that never was/were beyond wall street b.s. when measured in gold Property Values Projected to Fall 12% in 2010 Jan 31, 2010 The Week Ahead: Risk Is Off the Cliff; Unwind Has Begun Jan 31, 2010 01-13-10 Forecast for 2010 from Seeking Alpha Contributor THE COMING MARKET CRASH / CORRECTION 1-28-10 Maierhofer (01-15-10) 11 Clear Signs Economy Sinking Economic Black Hole 1-22-10: 20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover Current Economic / Fiscal Charts Trendsresearch.com forecast for 2009 1-7-10 Crash is coming! ‘WORST ECONOMIC COLLAPSE EVER’ Must Read Economic / Financial Data This Depression is just beginning The coming depression… thecomingdepression.net MUST READ: JEREMY GRANTHAM’S QUARTERLY UPDATE 25 January 2010 (850 on the S&P) by TPC The Next Wave of Collapse is Coming Sooner than you think Sliding Back Into the Great Depression ABSOLUTELY, ABSURDLY, RIDICULOUS! SELL / TAKE PROFITS WHILE YOU CAN SINCE MUCH, MUCH WORSE TO COME!

National / World

Alex Jones Exposes “See Something, Say Something” as Patent Fraud Kurt Nimmo | There is no mechanism available to report real terrorism because it does not exist.

“See Something, Say Something” Exposed As Hoax Paul Joseph Watson | Alex Jones proves it’s impossible to report terror threats because the government has no interest in preventing terror.

DC News Station Covers “V For Victory” Campaign Infowars | Congress is questioning a new Homeland Security campaign called “If you see something, say something.”

As Government Prepares to Ban Lightbulbs, Americans Stock Up Paul Joseph Watson | Iconic Thomas Edison invention to be replaced with toxic mercury-filled, illness-causing CFLs by 2014 unless Ron Paul can lead successful fight back.

“Inexcusable”: TSA STILL Refusing To Release Naked Scanner Safety Reports Steve Watson | TSA once again lies, tells media machines are not capable of storing images.

TSA Blocks Airports From Hiring Private Security Back in January there was a healthy sign that a handful of airports around the country were saying no to the TSA and its sexual molestation searches and naked body porno scanners. Airport managers said they are opposed to the federal government telling them how to run security.

Leftists Attack Arianna Huffington For Selling Out To “Megacorp” AOL “She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she’s cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.”

Obamacare Advocate: Make Refusniks Wear Gold Stickers A leading advocate of Obamacare told NPR yesterday that Americans who refuse to pay for health care should be forced to wear gold stickers on their foreheads and refused emergency hospital treatment, in a chilling throwback to how Jews were persecuted by being made to wear yellow stars by the Nazis during the occupation of Europe.

Blago lawyers claim tape of phone call with Rahm Emanuel has disappeared from evidence NBC Chicago | Attorneys for former governor Rod Blagojevich have asked a federal judge to order prosecutors to produce two phone calls his lawyers say are mysteriously missing from evidence.

Man says ex-CIA agent Posada gave him explosives for hotel bombing Raw Story | Otto Rene Rodriguez said that he was given C-4 explosives and $2,000 by Luis Posada Carriles to enable the bombing at Havana’s Melia Cohiba hotel on Aug. 3, 1997.

‘Welfare Bum’ JP Morgan: We Need Gold! By making the announcement, J.P. Morgan is effectively saying gold is as rock solid an investment as triple-A rated Treasurys, adding to a movement that places gold at the top tier of asset classes.

Alex Jones: Feds Admit Emergency Takeover System Commissioners voted last week to require television and radio stations, cable systems and satellite TV providers to participate in a test that would have them receive and transmit a live code that includes an alert message issued by the president.

China police stop spread of Egypt news: activist Police in southwest China have barred activists from distributing leaflets about anti-government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, deeming the news too sensitive, one dissident said Wednesday.

Drudgereport: Oil hits $101 again...
Paul Ryan confronts over Fed's purchases of debt...
Soaring debt pushes Portugal towards bailout...
House GOP Targets Dozens of Gov't Programs...
CUT, CUT, CUT...
White House to Slash Heating Program for Poor…but still no pros of massive frauds on wall street which fines and disgorgement of would yield huge amounts to cover spending... [ Howard Davidowitz on the Economy: "Here Are the Numbers ... WE'RE BROKE!" 11-25-10 ‘The U.S. economy "is a complete disaster," Howard Davidowitz declared here in July, the most recent in a string of dire predictions from Tech Ticker's most entertaining guest.On the eve of Thanksgiving, I asked Davidowitz if he had any regrets, or was ready to throw in the towel given recent signs of economic revival. Are you kidding me? "Here are the numbers...we're broke," Davidowitz declares, noting the U.S. government goes $5 billion deeper into debt every day and is facing $1 trillion-plus annual deficits for the next decade. "In other words, we're bankrupt."As with the economy, Davidowitz is unwaveringly consistent in his views on President Obama, calling him "deranged, dysfunctional and discredited."Results of the midterm election show "the people of this country think we are in a catastrophe," he says. "I'm with them."Check the accompanying video for more of Howard's unfettered opinions and stay tuned for additional clips from this interview. And...Happy Thanksgiving! Aaron Task is the host of Tech Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter at @atask or email him at altask@yahoo.com’ Timid Tuesday: Is it Safe? Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘ ]
UNDERDOG: CNN POLL: 51% SEE NO SECOND TERM FOR OBAMA...
71% OF ALL VEGAS HOMEOWNERS UNDER WATER...
'New normal' in housing bust...
STRESS...
Job openings fall for second straight month...
HOUSE VOTES NEXT WEEK TO BLOCK OBAMACARE FUNDS
WE'RE ON 'ROAD TO RUIN'

UPDATE: Egypt sees largest demos since start of revolt...
NEW WORLD TRADES...
Global Stock Exchanges Headed for Major Consolidation...
D Börse, NYSE in advanced talks...
London takes Canada...
Exchange chiefs seek new global powerhouses...

SAUDIS TOLD OBAMA 'NOT TO HUMILIATE MUBARAK' [ Sounds like they’re hearing footsteps…Previous: Egyptian capital teeters on anarchy Mubarak asks cabinet to resign as anti-regime protests intensify (Washington Post) [ Mubarak should have been looking in the mirror as he asked his cabinet to resign … 30 years is a long time, and coincidentally, time for him to go. In Egypt: Access denied (Washington Post) [The day part of the Internet died: Egypt goes dark [I disagree! Part of the internet didn’t die, but rather the order to so darken the nation heralded the demise, at 30 years and counting, of the so-called leadership in the persona of Mubarak. Time for him to go! After all, he’s been in a position, with Egypt among the only Mideast nations to have signed a peace treaty with israel, to have stepped up with substantial credibility in taking a strong position against israeli transgressions, violations of international law / u.n. resolutions, war crimes, etc., which beyond soft-touch, he failed to do. And, of all places, he sends his family to Orwellian england; he still loves those colonial masters … how pathetic. I mean, 30 years … how free-flowing does anyone think the election process is at this point … and one could ask the same regarding the entrenched powers that be in pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america, to be fair. Then there’s saudi arabia; talk about do nothing hypocrites. How does one family claim ownership of all the oil reserves of a sovereign nation; I suspect only when foreign corporations say so. The only Mideast nations showing backbone are Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, and, of course the perennially propaganda painted bad-boy Iran among possibly some of the smaller emirates, ie., Qatar, etc., (I lack sufficient information regarding these other nations). ] (AP) Internet cutoff fails to silence Egypt protests (AP) - AP - In its effort to silence protesters, Egypt took a step that's rare even among authoritarian governments: It cut off the Internet across the entire country. Mubarak fires Cabinet, defends army’s efforts Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:20:58 GMT Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dismisses his Cabinet, calls on the army to help put down rising potests... Egypt's Mubarak sends in army, resists demands to quit (Reuters) - 1 hour agoReuters - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused on Saturday to bow to demands that he resign after ordering troops and tanks into cities in an attempt to quell an explosion of street protests again... ] Embattled leader's move falls far short of demands that he give up his 30-year authoritarian rule, leave the country and permit fresh elections. ]

Go to following pages for above links:
http://www.albertpeia.com/currentopics2ndqtr10108.htm
http://www.albertpeia.com
http://www.albertpeia.com/alresume.htm

http://www.albertpeia.com/wallstreetlunacy2ndqtr10108.htm

http://www.scribd.com/alpeia

You may post a comment on my blog on any topic: http://alpeiablog.blogspot.com

Debt relief for states proposed (Washington Post) [ I’ve heard of the ‘blind leading the blind’, but the ‘bankrupt borrowing from the bankrupt’ seems to be a nouveau american phenomenon destined for ‘clichedom’. Previous: Governors plan painful cuts amid budget crises (Washington Post) [ This truly is a disaster in the making, with consequences even more dire than the grim outlook set forth by Meridith Whitney, if that could even be fathomed. It’s really going to be all that bad…see infra, The Economic Collapse, ‘#10 The municipal bond crisis could go “supernova” at any time. Already, investors are bailing out of bonds at a frightening pace. State and local government debt is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. According to Meredith Whitney, the municipal bond crisis that we are facing is a gigantic threat to our financial system….

“It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy.”

Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan is convinced that things are so bad that literally 90% of our states and cities could go bankrupt over the next five years…. ‘ ] Governors across the ideological spectrum are embracing the politics of austerity in a desperate effort to balance the books. ] Proposal would ease financial burden on many state governments in the wake of the recession.

At CIA, mistakes by officers are often overlooked (Washington Post) [ Duuuh! I want to know of even one thing that’s not overlooked concerning those incompetent mental cases at the cia; from assassinations, to illegal drug dealing, to illegal arms sales, to corruption, to disinformation, etc., to america’s and the world’s (ie., those WMD’s in Iraq, etc.) substantial detriment. See also, ie., http://albertpeia.com/CIAAgentAffidavit1.jpg http://albertpeia.com/FBIAgentAffidavit11.jpg , and of course, corrupt legal / judicial processes, etc., Defacto bankrupt, fraudulent america also spends more on offensive (defensive a misnomer / propaganda) military spending than all the nations of the world combined, and by a large margin at that. Do you see a pattern emerging here [ I unfortunately only belatedly did, and the feds, fed employees, cia, all 3 branches of the u.s. government, etc., are included in this evolved american trait of inherent criminality in the most nefarious sense ( http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm ) ]:

CRIME STATISTICS > TOTAL CRIMES (MOST RECENT) BY COUNTRY SHOWING LATEST AVAILABLE DATA (america’s No. 1).

Rank	Countries	Amount
# 1	United States:	11,877,218
# 2	United Kingdom:	6,523,706
# 3	Germany:	6,507,394

… The following youtube video is well worth the look and explains how and why the frauds on wall street have gotten away with their devastating fraud thus far. The frauds on wall street et als should be criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed. ( UPDATE: MORE CLAIMS OF RACE BIAS AT JUSTICE... CIVIL RIGHTS PANEL TO PURSUE FED PROBE IN BLACK PANTHER CASE... ex-Justice official quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims US v. AZ... Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud Obama broke promises ):

‘THE OBAMA DECEPTION’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw&feature=PlayList&p=2EFAB57B44063742&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1. [ The Obama Deception Number 1 on U.S. Google Trends ]

‘The Obama Deception’ Censored ‘The Obama Deception’ has been censored In light of this development, I provide an archived site version which appears to be complete (but will be compared with earlier version and replaced with same if incomplete) http://albertpeia.com/obamadeceptionhighqualityversion.flv

Then there is the well researched, produced, and informative ‘ESOTERIC AGENDA’ which explains how we’ve gotten to this forlorn point: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7052400717834950257#

For the Same Reason I’ve Included Here a Web Site Archived FLV Version of Esoteric Agenda http://albertpeia.com/esotericagenda.flv

]

Four charged in 'brazen coverup' of insider trading (Washington Post) [ 'The alleged conspirators "lacked a mobster's better-honed instinct for conversational discretion," said Janice K. Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York field office.'... Isn't that the truth; not like the big mobsters at goldman sachs, et als, who were well connected with plenty of juice and whose hard drives, conversations, etc., seemed never to make it to the crosshairs of real scrutiny, though any such prosecution of even the small fries like these wall street frauds should be welcomed, but with a sense of bewilderment as to how the aforesaid biggest frauds have yet to be prosecuted for the largest fraud in the history of this world with the consequences of their fraud 'now marked to anything' as they cashed out(that legislated FASB rule change / accommodation /complicity). ] Hedge fund manager allegedly tells colleague: Go to the office and shred "as much as you can."

Humility on the Nile Will: Maybe America's finally realizing the limits of its influence abroad. (Washington Post) [ I believe the power of Mr. Will’s article is twofold: First, that humility thing for america and the concomitant limits of american influence abroad. Like no other time in america’s short-lived history, america has a lot to be humble about. Afterall, america is defacto bankrupt, pervasively corrupt across all institutions whether they be governmental / judicial / private, and literally crime-ridden with crime rates exceeding by large margins those of other so-called civilized / tier one nations. Moreover, much like america’s commander(s) in chief, wobama the b (for b*** s*** - and war criminal bush), words are belied by actions / misdeeds. Indeed, the propping up of corrupt / criminal / oppressive regimes and the war crimes accompanying destruction and taking of innocent lives are facts lost on no one in this age like never before of ubiquitously available information which renders america’s once formidable propaganda machine now impotent in relative terms.Truth / reality works against america in every way. Second, and as important is that former global dichotomy that Mr. Will references; viz., the cold war and communism versus non-communism. No such simple lines now exist, nor can they be drawn owing to america’s failure, corruption, and meaningful lawlessness on so many levels and with such negative consequences. ]

This is that unmentionable reality as I alluded to earlier on close scrutiny of the data, ‘that stock prices have been manipulated to the upside beyond any and all rational basis‘ and as I previously wrote: Perception vs. Reality: Four Reasons to Remain Cautious on U.S. Equities [ Hey, Abbott … That’s Lou Costello calling him from the other side … Wake up! … Just kidding … but I’m not kidding when I say that contrary to Abbott’s view, infra, if you’re not a successful market timer you should rethink your position as an equity investor. Moreover, in contradistinction to Mr. Abbott’s implication, if you’re not a successful speculator (there are very few), you should rethink your position as a short seller: reason…, you could be wiped out, lose more than your principal, forced to cover (that’s why the same is considered a contrary market indicator, particularly in these manipulated, contrived markets). When I did my MBA thesis (1977, NYU, GBA, Eve.Prog., Finance), a review of the data revealed even then (and much more so now with computer programmed market manipulation) that the market remained biased / propped up (artificially, especially now with computerized manipulation) to the upside for far longer periods of time than for the downside which meant that dollar-cost averaging (through regular, periodic investment, for example), meant you were accumulating shares at higher prices generally for longer periods of time skewing the average cost to the upside (dollar-cost-averaging in declining markets was ok if analysis / forecast saw resurgence based on fundamentals - now absent – which is timing, as even senile wall street / gov’t shill Buffet would attest, that ‘greedy when others are fearful thing’). Abbott discusses perception which is the psychological factor involved in security evaluation / analysis; but investors need not and should become nuts themselves, particularly when as now, the inmates are running the asylum. ] Abbott ‘Perception determines short-term market movements. The difference between perception and reality determines the direction of major market trends. Though I generally try to avoid making macro prognostications, I believe bottom-up analysis can be informative about the current level of stock prices. I want to share what my recent work tells me about where stocks are (and where they might be headed). I will outline some various nuggets of collective wisdom that are taken for granted right now by stock bulls, and I will attempt to demonstrate how reality is likely to differ from these perceptions.

First, a disclaimer. This is not a market timing call. At all times, I stay away from market timing predictions. I think that's a loser's game in the long run. Even if I'm correct about the discrepancies between the following perceptions and realities, there's no saying when people will change their minds or shift their focuses. That said, let's dive in.

Perception vs. Reality #1
Perception: Low Interest Rates, Questionable Bond Outlook Means Stocks are Attractive
Reality: Interest Rates Are Being Artificially and Deliberately Manipulated

It's no secret that the Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy and quantitative easing efforts have held interest rates very low for very long. However, when people talk about stock market implications of bond yields, they rarely mention the fact that bond yields are artificially low. In an unmanipulated market, bond prices and stock valuations should be related, but I regard that connection as highly dubious right now. Investors who say that stocks deserve higher multiples (lower earnings yields) because bond yields are so low may well be setting themselves up for disappointing returns/frustrating losses when bond prices normalize. Again, this isn't a market timing call, and yields may remain low for quite some time. But, eventually this discrepancy will correct itself, and stock performance is likely to suffer at that time.

Perception vs. Reality #2
Perception: Earnings Growth Has Been Strong and Will Remain That Way
Reality: Top-Line Growth Will Have to Pick Up; Cost-Cutting has Run Its Course

Earnings growth has certainly been robust, but much of the strength has come from companies running lean cost structures and wringing as much efficiency as possible out of their employees and their assets. Though the recession has ended, the economy is not yet healthy enough to fuel strong sales growth. Companies can only boost profits by cutting costs and increasing productivity for so long. Therefore, top-line growth will have to play a larger role going forward than it has over the past 4-6 quarters. Whether or not economic growth is strong enough to drive revenue increases is unsure, but the current level of stock prices undoubtedly assumes it is. Any stagnation of the recovery and concomitant sluggish sales will likely hit stock prices.

Perception vs. Reality #3
Perception: European Debt Crisis Drives Short-Term Volatility, but It's Not a Long-Term Concern
Reality: Crisis May Be a Harbinger of What's to Come in the U.S. if States, the Feds Don't Improve Balance Sheets

So far, turmoil in Greece and Ireland has served only as a temporary headwind to U.S. stocks. In keeping with the investment world's increasingly short-term focus, people seem more concerned with what fiscal crises in Europe mean for U.S. stocks over the coming days and months than with what they might mean down the road. I believe that this interpretation misses the mark. Since the U.S. fiscal situtation is generally considered to be stronger than that in many European countries, U.S. federal and municipal debt issuance has been relatively smooth, and interest rates have only risen modestly. If the U.S. doesn't get serious about its fiscal woes, eventually the crisis will arrive on American shores. There's no way of telling when this might happen, but the current level of stock prices seems to imply that it never will.

Here's the problem with that. To fix the federal balance sheet and/or to improve state and municipal balance sheets, legislators will have to raise taxes and/or cut spending. Tax hikes and spending cuts both reduce consumer spending. This hurts growth. There's no way around this. Stocks can certainly continue to rise for some time, but austerity will be bearish if/when it comes. If it doesn't come, we're in for a much bigger crisis some time down the road.

Perception vs. Reality #4
Perception: Everywhere You Look, You See Good Companies at Cheap Prices
Reality: It's Hard to Find Genuine Bargains, but There are Intriguing Short Prospects Everywhere

There is no shortage of stock market commentators who claim that they see bargains everywhere they look. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places, but I've been having a difficult and increasingly impossible time finding good companies at reasonable prices. I use similar criteria to assess long and short investments, and I find intriguing shorts in lots of sectors right now. This tells me that valuations are stretched. Certainly they can become more so before we get a selloff, but every day that stocks rally, they get more expensive.

I've written on Seeking Alpha about a number of stocks which I regard as expensive (CRM, OPEN, GMCR), and take my word for it: there are plenty more than these whose shares I do not want to own at present levels. A few weeks ago, I also mused about the Facebook-Goldman deal and argued that this valuation is indicative of excessive investor enthusiasm. Bargains are hard to find, and as valuations go up, so does positive sentiment. While this is not a prediction of an impending correction or bear market, it is a message of caution for people who think stocks are cheap right now.

All that said, I always try to consider both sides of any investment issue, and there are some reasons for optimism. Job growth has shown signs of improvement, and some economic data have been increasingly (though not uniformly) positive. The Federal Reserve remains accommodative, and I'm skeptical about whether or not there is political will for austerity. For these reasons, stocks could continue onward and upward. That said, I see too many reasons for caution, and investors are turning a blind eye to these concerns as their complacency rises.’

Stock Momentum Trumps Valuation Warning Minyanville / Suttmeier ‘ Stocks began the week continuing the melt-up that began December 1. Within the first hour of trading, all weekly risky levels were violated, becoming pivots for the remainder of the week; 12,142 Dow Industrial Average, 1316.2 S&P 500, 2770 Nasdaq, 5077 Dow Transports, and 800.13 Russell 2000. These levels have an 85% chance of being tested again before the end of the week. The only major risky level is my quarterly risky level at 2853 for the Nasdaq. Keep in mind that the October 2007 high for the Nasdaq is 2861.51. Stocks are ignoring higher 10-year note and 30-year bond yields and the stronger dollar as the euro has declined from 1.3860 on February 2 to 1.3511 into Monday.

• The Dow Industrial Average (12,162) -- My monthly value level is 11,759 with week’s pivot at 12,142.
• The S&P 500 (1319.1) -- My quarterly value level is 1262.5 with this week’s pivot at 1316.2.
• The Nasdaq (2784) -- My monthly value level is 2611 with a weekly pivot at 2770 and quarterly risky level at 2853.
• Dow Transports (5071) -- My monthly value level is 4962 with a weekly pivot at 5077 and my annual pivot at 5179. Transports lag its January 18 high at 5256.80.
• The Russell 2000 (801.32) -- My annual and quarterly value levels are 784.16 and 765.50 with a weekly pivot at 800.13.

We are trading under a ValuEngine Valuation Warning -- 16 of 16 sectors overvalued and only 33.8% of all stocks undervalued, below the 35% threshold by this measure.

The US Treasury 10-Year Yield -- (3.648) My annual value level is 3.791 with a weekly risky level at 3.525.

Comex Gold -- ($1350.0) My quarterly, weekly and annual pivots are $1331.3, $1342.8 and $1356.5 with monthly, quarterly and semiannual risky levels are $1412.4, $1441.7, and $1452.6. The $1356.5 level is being tested this morning.

Nymex Crude Oil -- ($87.25) Closed below my semiannual pivot is $87.52 with weekly and monthly pivots at $91.62 and $91.83. The $87.52 level should be a magnet today.

The Euro -- (1.3583) My quarterly value level is 1.3227 with a weekly pivot at 1.3511 and monthly risky level at 1.4225.’

Hold Off on the Dow - Consider Malaysia and Taiwan ETFs Gordon ‘Turmoil in Egypt set the markets back for a single day on 1/28/11. In fact, since the Egypt crisis mummified equities, the Dow Jones Industrials Diamonds Trust (DIA) has embarked on a seven-day winning streak.So ... what’s the frequency of seven consecutive days of gains? It’s only happened eight other times in the past decade.In spite of the odds that something ... anything ... might shake the faith, the bearish voices have been utterly silenced. Heck, the only bearish discussion in the media has been Meredith Whitney’s claim that U.S. municipalities will default on billions of dollars in debt obligations. No discussion of stock calamity or black swans ... only muni bond woes.Where have all the perma-bears gone? Weiss, Roubini, Hussman ... if the bull has any chance of survival, we’re gonna need you to convince your followers to “go short” on this seemingly unstoppable uptrend. As of now, the short sellers haven’t completely thrown in the towel as evidenced by a put-call ratio that’s yet to fall below 0.35.Think about the headlines that could have caused a meaningful sell-off. Last week’s jobs report was utterly pathetic ... no matter how you define “unemployment.” The ongoing rise in bond yields is a legitimate threat to real estate. And the additional rate hike from China is, if nothing else, a constant reminder of inflationary pressures worldwide.Correction or no correction, however, the real story is the exodus from emerging markets. The largest outflow in three years occurred last week, and the money has been heading for the seemingly sunnier shores of the U.S. of A.In my estimation, that’s a mistake. It’s not necessarily a mistake to sell your emerger for a big gain when it has hit a stop-limit loss order off a November 2010 high. It’s a mistake to chase U.S. equities that, while not overvalued by fundamental Forward P/E standards, are overbought in ”standard-deviation-above-the-50-day-and-200-day” standards.Essentially, as difficult as it is to be patient with your cash, you may have to practice delayed gratification. If you have confidence in U.S. companies, wait for a meaningful dip in the Dow Jones Industrials Diamonds Trust (DIA). And if you don’t have confidence in the ability of emerging markets to bounce back ... you’re too fearful. So consider buying funds that fuel China’s middle class consumption.Two of my favorites? Malaysia has manageable inflation, solid GDP growth and a trade surplus with China. The iShares MSCI Malaysia Fund (EWM) avoids interest-rate sensitive sectors like energy and materials, while capitalizing on China’s needs for simpler things like vegetable oil and rubber.In addition, China is likely to see its own version of an Internet boom in 2011-2012. Where do they get the products, services and expertise from? Taiwan. iShares MSCI Taiwan (EWT) has a 60% weighting in Information Tech.’

QE2 Failure: Investors Flock to Overvalued Stocks Suttmeier ‘The yield on the 30-Year bond rose to 4.74 on Friday increasing the drag on equity valuations. Both the 10-Year and 30-Year yields are above their December trading ranges, raising consumer interest rates such as mortgage rates. Because of this, I say QE2 is a failure. This is forcing investors to increase allocations to stocks just when they become less attractive, more overvalued fundamentally and move overbought technically. Last week, the Dow Industrial Average reached a new high for the move at 12,092.42. Dow Transports and the Russell 2000 remain below the highs of mid-January.

· The Dow Industrial Average (12,092) begins the week between my monthly value level at 11,759 and this week’s risky level at 12,142. The weekly chart remains extremely overbought.

· The S&P 500 (1310.9) begins the week my quarterly value level at 1262.5 with this week’s risky level at 1316.2. The weekly chart remains extremely overbought.

· The NASDAQ (2769) begins the week between my monthly value level at 2611 with a weekly pivot at 2770 and quarterly risky level at 2853. The weekly chart remains extremely overbought.

· Dow Transports (5056) begins the week between monthly and weekly pivots at 4962 and 5077 and below my annual pivot at 5179, and below the January 18th high at 5256.80. Dow Transports is below its 50-day simple moving average at 5086 and will fall out of overbought territory on its weekly chart this week.

· The Russell 2000 (800.11) begins the week above my annual and quarterly value levels at 784.16 and 765.50 with a weekly pivot at 800.13 with the January 14th high at 807.89. The weekly chart remains extremely overbought.

· I cannot be overly bullish or bearish in the current market environment.

We are trading under another ValuEngine Valuation Warning - 16 of 16 sectors overvalued and only 34.73% of all stocks undervalued, below the 35% threshold by this measure.

The US Treasury 10-Year Yield – (3.650) The trading range set in December has been broken to the upside with my annual value level at 3.791 and weekly risky level at 3.525.

Comex gold – ($1349.5) Tested my annual pivot at $1356.5 last week, but could not get a weekly close above that level. My semiannual value level is $1300.6 with quarterly, weekly and annual pivots at $1300.6, $1331.3, 1342.8 and monthly, quarterly and semiannual risky levels are $1412.4, $1441.7 and $1452.6.

Nymex crude oil – ($88.90) Has not been able to sustain gains above $92 per barrel. I show weekly and monthly pivots at $91.62 and $91.83 as barriers for this week with my semiannual pivot at $87.52.

The euro – (1.3578) Could not sustain gains above 1.38 last week. My quarterly value level is 1.3227 with a weekly pivot at 1.3511 and monthly risky level at 1.4225. The weak euro versus the dollar on Thursday was offset by perceived positive comments from Fed Chief Ben Bernanke.

Bernanke Blunders - Fed Chief Bernanke expects the economy to improve this year with low inflation, despite the jump in commodity prices. The rise in commodities prices has been a factor for ten years, and consumers are feeling it at the gas pump, grocery stores and utilities bills.

The Federal Reserve is more worried about unemployment, but monetary policy has not helped create jobs on Main Street USA. Main Street depends upon construction jobs and these jobs are declining month after month.

Another blunder is the $600 billion QE2, which is aimed at jump-starting lending and making stock ownership more attractive. You can not increase lending when consumer rates such as mortgages are rising, and making stocks a less attractive alternative to US Treasuries. The main purpose of QE2 is to lower long term US Treasury yields, but the 10-Year yield is now 133 basis points higher since in October. Sure, stocks are higher, but buying now puts consumer capital at risk as stocks are overvalued and overbought. Consumers are buying stocks just as they bought new homes in 2005 and 2006.

Bank Failure Friday – The FDIC closed thee more banks last Friday and none were publicly traded.

· 25 banks failed in 2008

· 140 banks failed in 2009 with a peak of 50 in the third quarter

· 157 banks failed in 2010

· 14 banks have failed year to date in 2011

· 336 banks have failed since the end of 2007

· I still predict 500 to 800 bank failures in total by the end of 2012 into 2013.’

Monthly Market Valuation: Investors Are Too Bullish, Valuations Are Too High [ The conclusion of the following detailed, documented analysis: ‘Wolinsky :In conclusion, the market is over-valued based on the above data. Tobin's Q, Shiller P/E and AAII data are all indicating that investors are too bullish and valuations are too high.’ ]

Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring And Won’t Be Hiring Charles Hugh Smith | Small business can’t afford to believe in myths and fantasies. They are dealing with the harsh reality of adapt or die.

59.9%? Americans Are Racking Up Huge Credit Card Balances at Outrageous Interest Rates Economic Collapse | It appears that the American people have fallen off the wagon and have gotten a taste for credit card debt once again.

Obama Budget Proposes Broader Unemployment Taxes Wall Street Journal | Proposal would aim to restock state unemployment-insurance trust funds by raising the amount of wages on which companies must pay unemployment taxes.

ECONOMIC CRISIS ARCHIVE

Stocks Remain Poised for Steep Decline McCurdy ‘When the second round of quantitative easing was announced late last year, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke indicated that one of the primary objectives of the program was to inflate risk assets such as stocks. In that respect, the program has been an unqualified success, as the S&P 500 index has now gained more than 26% during the course of 5 months.

However, as a result, the index P/E ratio has increased to more than 18, and the most reliable forecasting models based upon current earnings and dividends indicate that expected 10-year annual returns are now slightly more than 3%, regardless of whether or not the economy is in fact experiencing a sustained recovery.

Thus, from a purely investment perspective, stocks are priced to deliver very poor results during the coming decade. Additionally, the short-term outlook now favors the development of a potentially violent correction.

On Friday, the S&P 500 index moved up to another marginal new high for the rally from September, pushing an overextended advance to yet another extreme.

click to enlarge images

[chart]

The current short-term cycle from the end of November is now 46 trading days old, and it has yet to enter the final decline of the beta phase, suggesting that it will likely terminate in the 55 to 60 day range. The previous cycle had a duration of 63 trading days. These are moves of extremely long duration, well above their historical average of about 39 trading days.

[chart]

Of course, to truly put the overextended nature of the move in perspective, it must be viewed in the proper context afforded by the big picture. Below is a monthly chart of the S&P 500 since the current secular bear market began in 2000.

[chart]

Notice how the character of market behavior changed materially with the crash in late 2008. Since then, stocks have been moving effectively straight up or straight down. This type of volatile price action is typical for this stage of the bear market and indicates that we are still several years away from the terminal phase of the secular decline.

Returning to the short-term view, our Cyclical Trend Score (CTS) has been negatively diverging from price action since October, and the CTS is currently holding slightly above its December low.

[chart]

Although the CTS is not a near-term timing indicator, this negative divergence reflects a gradual deterioration in underlying strength. The developing weakness is also manifested by broad market internals such as breadth and volume, as both continue to negatively diverge from price behavior.

[chart]

[chart]

Finally, our Sentiment Score continues to hold near the lowest level since late 2007, reflecting irrationally excessive bullishness that leaves the market vulnerable to an abrupt decline.

[chart]

Of course, overextended rallies of this type have a tendency to continue making marginal new highs until, at some point, an unexpected catalyst sets in motion the inevitable correction, which will likely be fast and furious, wiping out several weeks of gains in a matter of sessions.

From a big picture perspective, the character of the next correction should provide a great deal of clarity with respect to long-term direction. A relatively weak retracement followed by a return to recent long-term highs would predict a subsequent breakout and continuation of the cyclical bull market, while a powerful, sustained downtrend would suggest the development of a long-term top.’

Rich Get Richer When Governments Tout Austerity Remember all that stuff about how the credit crunch was going to usher in a new age of austerity? The financial industry would shrink; the gulf between the haves and the have-nots would close; and taxes would rise for the top earners, forcing them to contribute more to society.

Ratigan And Fleckenstein Explain The Fed’s Role In Recent Food Price Ignited Revolutions For over a year now, Zero Hedge has been predicting that in its foolhardy attempt of “inflation or bust”, the Fed’s actions would sooner or later lead to mass rioting and possible revolutions.

The Golden Dragon Asian investors are demanding more and more precious metals, and fund managers are gladly obliging by providing them with new exchange-traded securities—like ETFs—in order to quench Asia’s thirst for precious metals.

Is the Market Headed for a Sell-Off? Zaky [ Yes … I agree, except that fundamentally the longer term prospects are even worse than his bearish outlook suggests (don’t forget the debasement of the dollar, manipulation, and spending / printing money the nation doesn’t have in real terms behind this manipulated uptick) and summarized as follows: ‘I suspect that this rally is on its very last legs. We should see a very healthy 10% or so correction within the next 1-2 week period ... This market is headed for a sell-off. ]

2011 Update: Another Lost Decade for Stocks - Are You Prepared? [ I agree that this is but a (manipulated) bull cycle in a secular bear market with substantially worse to come! ]Kopas ‘In February 2010, we published an article on Seeking Alpha entitled “Another Lost Decade for Stocks - Are You Prepared?,” wherein we argued that the year 2000 marked a secular (long-term) peak for U.S. stocks. A secular bear market is formed when a series of business cycles are linked together, establishing an extended period of stock market under-performance. Our objective here is to bring you up-to-date on the progress of this secular bear market and help you prepare for the next ten years.

The first benchmark we monitor is U.S. stock prices adjusted for inflation. In this chart below, we compare the U.S. stock market to the Shiller 10-year Price/Earnings ratio. This P/E ratio is an indication of investor confidence; a lack of that signals extreme valuation levels. Our conclusion is that investor psychology is still too optimistic and has a long way to go before reaching an undervalued stock market level.

[chart] click to enlarge

Updating our duration and valuation benchmarks, again we find progress, but not yet achieving the truly undervalued levels we expect to see toward the end of a secular bear market. Based upon previous cycles, it appears we are only slightly past the half way mark in terms of years, number of recessions, and valuations. A look at our chart and table comparing this to earlier secular bear markets illustrates our conclusion. We expect that a major bottom for inflation adjusted stock prices is still years away before stocks finally gravitate toward the target area outlined below.

[chart]

New Benchmark: Tobin Q Ratio

In this update we introduce another relative valuation benchmark created by Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate James Tobin, hence the name Tobin’s Q Ratio. The Q ratio is calculated as the total value of the stock market divided by the replacement cost of all its companies. Values greater than 1 indicate stock prices sell above their replacement cost and are therefore “expensive.” A reading below 1 indicates stocks can be bought below replacement cost and therefore indicates that it is cheaper to buy a company than to build one.

A long-term view of the Q ratio gives investors a good understanding of value, information about current risk levels and a method to assess probable returns for the long term. Secular bear markets historically bottom when the Q ratio declines to a bargain level less than .4, meaning stock prices sell for just 40% of replacement value. Today’s reading of 1.03 is above the average reading of .75 and considerably higher than the average secular low reading of .33. Investors beware; stocks have considerable more downside potential before the Q ratio truly reflects a great valuation. Buy and Hold tactics will continue to frustrate investors, just as they have in the past decade.

[chart]

In conclusion, none of the benchmarks we evaluate indicate we are anywhere close to a secular stock market bottom yet. In the meantime, a prudent and profitable investment strategy should be flexible enough to actively adjust portfolio asset allocation, depending on where we are in the business cycle and the direction of the secular trend.’

Shiller Ratio Points to U.S. Equities Being Significantly Overvalued [ Yes they are indeed; so take this especially great opportunity to sell, take profits since there’s much, much worse to come! That computer-programmed spike into the close to keep suckers suckered does not change the aforesaid. This is particularly evident in their attempt to cash in on that superstitious scam known as the ‘January effect’ by way of these manipulated bubble-making buy programs; you know, loosen / soften the suckers up for the coming year’s new fraud / scam. ] The 'January Effect' Is More Market Myth Than Sound Analysis ... Kumar ‘…January of 1929, for example, was off to a brisk start as the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed to 317 from 307. But investors would be slammed later in the year by a historic stock market crash that heralded the start of the Great Depression. January of 1987, too, began nicely. The Dow climbed to 2160 at the end of the month after starting out at 1927. But Black Monday would hit investors in October of that year, leading to the sharpest historical stock market decline in percentage terms. More recently, January 2001 had a strong showing when the Dow Jones finished the month at 10,887 after starting at 10,646. Those reading it as an auspicious beginning would be hit first by the further fallout from collapse of the dot-com bubble and then the massive decline following the September 11 terrorist attacks. See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/cyaPDT ‘… Then, more recently there’s ‘The stock market scored a strong gain and locked in its first positive finish for January since 2007 (we all know what happened after that! Crash!) with help from the energy sector, which climbed sharply in response to a spike in oil prices.(Yahoo/Briefing.com) … Higher oil prices … riiiiight! … that sounds bull(s***)ish … on fraudulent wall street. ]

12 Economic Collapse Scenarios That We Could Potentially See In 2011 What could cause an economic collapse in 2011? Well, unfortunately there are quite a few “nightmare scenarios” that could plunge the entire globe into another massive financial crisis.
The Economic Collapse Jan 20, 2011 ‘What could cause an economic collapse in 2011? Well, unfortunately there are quite a few “nightmare scenarios” that could plunge the entire globe into another massive financial crisis. The United States, Japan and most of the nations in Europe are absolutely drowning in debt. The Federal Reserve continues to play reckless games with the U.S. dollar. The price of oil is skyrocketing and the global price of food just hit a new record high. Food riots are already breaking out all over the world. Meanwhile, the rampant fraud and corruption going on in world financial markets is starting to be exposed and the whole house of cards could come crashing down at any time. Most Americans have no idea that a horrific economic collapse could happen at literally any time. There is no way that all of this debt and all of this financial corruption is sustainable. At some point we are going to reach a moment of “total system failure”.

So will it be soon? Let’s hope not. Let’s certainly hope that it does not happen in 2011. Many of us need more time to prepare. Most of our families and friends need more time to prepare. Once this thing implodes there isn’t going to be an opportunity to have a “do over”. We simply will not be able to put the toothpaste back into the tube again.

So we had all better be getting prepared for hard times. The following are 12 economic collapse scenarios that we could potentially see in 2011….

#1 U.S. debt could become a massive crisis at any moment. China is saying all of the right things at the moment, but many analysts are openly worried about what could happen if China suddenly decides to start dumping all of the U.S. debt that they have accumulated. Right now about the only thing keeping U.S. government finances going is the ability to borrow gigantic amounts of money at extremely low interest rates. If anything upsets that paradigm, it could potentially have enormous consequences for the entire world financial system.

#2 Speaking of threats to the global financial system, it turns out that “quantitative easing 2″ has had the exact opposite effect that Ben Bernanke planned for it to have. Bernanke insisted that the main goal of QE2 was to lower interest rates, but instead all it has done is cause interest rates to go up substantially. If Bernanke this incompetent or is he trying to mess everything up on purpose?

#3 The debt bubble that the entire global economy is based on could burst at any time and throw the whole planet into chaos. According to a new report from the World Economic Forum, the total amount of credit in the world increased from $57 trillion in 2000 to $109 trillion in 2009. The WEF says that now the world is going to need another $100 trillion in credit to support projected “economic growth” over the next decade. So is this how the new “global economy” works? We just keep doubling the total amount of debt every decade?

#4 As the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve continue to pump massive amounts of new dollars into the system, the floor could fall out from underneath the U.S. dollar at any time. The truth is that we are already starting to see inflation really accelerate and everyone pretty much acknowledges that official U.S. governments figures for inflation are an absolute joke. According to one new study, the cost of college tuition has risen 286% over the last 20 years, and the cost of “hospital, nursing-home and adult-day-care services” rose 269% during those same two decades. All of this happened during a period of supposedly “low” inflation. So what are price increases going to look like when we actually have “high” inflation?

#5 One of the primary drivers of global inflation during 2011 could be the price of oil. A large number of economists are now projecting that the price of oil could surge well past $100 dollars a barrel in 2011. If that happens, it is going to put significant pressure on the price of almost everything else in the entire global economy. In fact, as I have explained previously, the higher the price of oil goes, the faster the U.S. economy will decline.

#6 Food inflation is already so bad in some areas of the globe that it is setting off massive food riots in nations such as Tunisia and Algeria. In fact, there have been reports of people setting themselves on fire all over the Middle East as a way to draw attention to how desperate they are. So what is going to happen if global food prices go up another 10 or 20 percent and food riots spread literally all over the globe during 2011?

#7 There are persistent rumors that simply will not go away of massive physical gold and silver shortages. Demand for precious metals has never been higher. So what is going to happen when many investors begin to absolutely insist on physical delivery of their precious metals? What is going to happen when the fact that far, far, far more “paper gold” and “paper silver” has been sold than has ever actually physically existed in the history of the planet starts to come out? What would that do to the price of gold and silver?

#8 The U.S. housing industry could plunge the U.S. economy into another recession at any time. The real estate market is absolutely flooded with homes and virtually nobody is buying. This massive oversupply of homes means that the construction of new homes has fallen off a cliff. In 2010, only 703,000 single family, multi-family and manufactured homes were completed. This was a new record low, and it was down 17% from the previous all-time record which had just been set in 2009.

#9 A combination of extreme weather and disease could make this an absolutely brutal year for U.S. farmers. This winter we have already seen thousands of new cold weather and snowfall records set across the United States. Now there is some very disturbing news emerging out of Florida of an “incurable bacteria” that is ravaging citrus crops all over Florida. Is there a reason why so many bad things are happening all of a sudden?

#10 The municipal bond crisis could go “supernova” at any time. Already, investors are bailing out of bonds at a frightening pace. State and local government debt is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. According to Meredith Whitney, the municipal bond crisis that we are facing is a gigantic threat to our financial system….

“It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy.”

Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan is convinced that things are so bad that literally 90% of our states and cities could go bankrupt over the next five years….

#11 Of course on top of everything else, the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble could burst at any time. Right now we are watching the greatest financial casino in the history of the globe spin around and around and around and everyone is hoping that at some point it doesn’t stop. Today, most money on Wall Street is not made by investing in good business ideas. Rather, most money on Wall Street is now made by making the best bets. Unfortunately, at some point the casino is going to come crashing down and the game will be over.

#12 The biggest wildcard of all is war. The Korean peninsula came closer to war in 2010 than it had in decades. The Middle East could literally explode at any time. We live in a world where a single weapon can take out an entire city in an instant. All it would take is a mid-size war or a couple of weapons of mass destruction to throw the entire global economy into absolute turmoil.

Once again, let us hope that none of these economic collapse scenarios happens in 2011.

However, we have got to realize that we can’t keep dodging these bullets forever.

As bad as 2010 was, the truth is that it went about as good as any of us could have hoped. Things are still pretty stable and times are still pretty good right now.

But instead of using these times to “party”, we should be using them to prepare.

A really, really vicious economic storm is coming and it is going to be a complete and total nightmare. Get ready, hold on tight, and say your prayers.’

Poor Recovery: The Problem Is Institutional [ Well it’s true that the problem is institutional as in pervasively corrupt, incompetent, nonproductive in real terms relative to their cost / damage (still no pros on the wall street fraud which is ongoing in terms of the last crisis, the worthless paper marked to anything, and the current bubble fraud that’s high-frequency computerized churn-and-earn high-frequency commissioned / sold into, 360 tons of $100 bills disappear in Iraq, etc.. What do they get paid for?) ( Peter Schiff: Washington a parasite to economy ‘US foreclosures hit record highs in 2010, but that may not be the worst of it. 2011 may be even worse. Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase exceeded market expectations, announcing a 47% rise in quarterly profits and released details on a $28.1 billion pay and bonus pool. Peter Schiff, the President of Euro Pacific Capital said Washington and Wall Street are becoming one force and are sucking the underlying American dry like a parasite’.); but the problem is structural, as in transfer of jobs, industries, etc. (among the sources of the huge over-compensation to wall street, company executives), never to return in any meaningful sense; and as in the defacto bankruptcy of the nation with insurmountable record debt / deficits or stated another way, broke. Unlike in the past, once beyond the propaganda, rhetoric, and smoke and mirrors / obfuscation, there is no prospective way for america to grow its way out, nor are there funds in real money with which to do it. Quite simply, america’s broke / bankrupt in every which way. ] Loundsbury ‘Harold Meyerson, Op Ed Columnist at The Washington Post, has hit the nail right on the head, in the opinion of GEI. Meyerson says the debate about whether the recession and poor recovery is a cyclical problem or a structural problem is misguided. He says the problem is institutional - - - and is he ever right!

In a column last week, Myerson points out that the devastation of The Great Recession has fallen disproportionately on the blue collar population, those without a college degree. And he traces the rolling over of median family income in this century, not just in the downturn, but since the turn of the century. Even at the peak, in 2007, median family income was less than in 2000.

What Meyerson doesn't point out is that average incomes have faired better in the 21st century and in all of the past 50 years. In fact, average family income has risen more than 2.5 times as much and median income over the last 30 years. Why is this important? Because the more there is a fat tail of ever higher incomes for a few, the greater the difference between average and median income becomes.

Myerson says:

The great sociologist William Julius Wilson has long argued that the key to the unraveling of the lives of the African American poor was the decline in the number of "marriageable males" as work disappeared from the inner city. Much the same could now be said of working-class whites in neighborhoods that may not look like the ghettos of Cleveland or Detroit but in which productive economic activity is increasingly hard to find.

This grim new reality has yet to inform our debate over how to come back from this mega-recession. Those who believe our downturn is cyclical argue that job-creating public spending can restore us to prosperity, while those who believe it's structural - that we have too many carpenters, say, and not enough nurses - believe that we should leave things be while American workers acquire new skills and enter different lines of work. But there's a third way to look at the recession: that it's institutional, that it's the consequence of the decisions by leading banks and corporations to stop investing in the job-creating enterprises that were the key to broadly shared prosperity.

Since Meyerson has chosen income disparity as a cornerstone of his argument, let's look at how incomes have grown over the last 50 years. These are shown in the following graph, not adjusted for inflation.

click to enlarge images [chart]

Real median income and average income seem to grow similarly in the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of average income starts to pull away in the mid-1960s and appears to continue to gain gound for the the next 40+ years. The more average income deviates from median income the more money is found in the high income tail on the distribution curve. This is often called a "fat tail", which is very appropriate in this discussion because that is where the fat cats are. The fat tail has not gotten so because ten times as many people equaled the incomes of the former fat cats, but more because a few fat cats have received 10 times the income. This is exemplified by the often quoted statistic that average CEO salaries were 40x average worker pay 50 years ago and today are more like 400x.

The change income distribution that seems to be appearing in the above graph becomes more apparent in the following graph where real income gains are shown for the last six decades starting with the ten years from 1949 - 1959 (the 1950s) and ending with 1999 - 2009 (the 2000s). [chart]

The 1950s and 60s were real boom years. Starting with the 1970s a lower level of income growth was established, but even that lower level could not be maintained in the 2000s.

After the 1950s every decade has seen average real income grow more than the median. The fat tail has gotten fatter over the past half century in every decade, without exception. Yes the average did decline in the 2000s, but the median declined 76% more!

The most dramatic pattern of change is evident when the data is divided into two halves: 1949 to 1979 and 1979 - 2009. This is done in the following graph: [chart]

For thirty years after World War II the wealth of the country increased in a balanced manner. The average income containing the greater contribution from the top earners of the day, grew at a rate very similar to the income growth of the broader population, represented by the median.

Yes there were "fat cats" and they had significantly larger incomes than the bulk of the population. And these top incomes grew over those three decades, but at almost the same rate as the majority of the populace.

Then something happened. From 1979-2009 it appears that the American pie suddenly got smaller. In the later three decades the real median income growth was less than 10% of the rate seen from 1949 to 1979. And as the pie got smaller, the fat cats took a much larger share. The average income grew at a rate 254% that of the median income. You might say that, as the cow gave less milk, the top of the economic ladder skimmed more and more cream off the top.

Meyerson identifies the force majuere to be corporate America:

Our multinational companies still invest, of course - just not at home. A study by the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Council Foundation found that the share of the profits of U.S.-based multinationals that came from their foreign affiliates had increased from 17 percent in 1977 and 27 percent in 1994 to 48.6 percent in 2006. As the companies' revenue from abroad has increased, their dependence on American consumers has diminished. The equilibrium among production, wages and purchasing power - the equilibrium that Henry Ford famously recognized when he upped his workers' pay to an unheard-of $5 a day in 1913 so they could afford to buy the cars they made, the equilibrium that became the model for 20th-century American capitalism - has been shattered. Making and selling their goods abroad, U.S. multinationals can slash their workforces and reduce their wages at home while retaining their revenue and increasing their profits. And that's exactly what they've done.

Meyerson doesn't get into some of the other areas that might be brought to bear on the current condition of the American economy:

• He doesn't address the fact that the U.S. ranks below some third world countries in education.
• He doesn't discuss the increasing burden of health care, both because costs have been running out of control and because an ever increasing portion of the population is kept from making the contribution they might have otherwise because of poor health.
• He doesn't discuss the capture of much potential domestic capital by financial engineers who find it much easier to get rich in a rigged casino than to make money the old fashioned way.

Part of the problem is that Americans have fallen into the way of the easiest path, where, either by credit card or by making quick trades, the desires of the moment are satisfied with no seemingly current cost.

It seems that few want to think about the needs of tomorrow. This is true starting with the masses who kiss off the idea of working hard in school to prepare for what they will need 20 years down the road. This is also true of the "capitalist" who finds that skimming a few percent off each of many deals a year to get quick, large quarterly returns is much easier than investing and building something that will will make much larger returns extending over decades and producing things of real economic utility.

There are a number of things that Meyerson does not address, but if you want to hit one nail at a time, I think he has picked the baddest nail in the plank. He finishes his column thusly:

Our economic woes, then, are not simply cyclical or structural. They are also - chiefly - institutional, the consequence of U.S. corporate behavior that has plunged us into a downward cycle of underinvestment, underemployment and under-consumption. Our solutions must be similarly institutional, requiring, for starters, the seating of public and worker representatives on corporate boards. Short of that, there will be no real prospects for reversing America's downward mobility.

If we were to address all the other issues I mentioned previously and did not address the institutional problem Meterson has identified, we would not ultimately solve our economic puzzle.’

20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010 2010 was quite a year, wasn’t it? 2010 will be remembered for a lot of things, but for those living in the United States, one of the main things that last year will be remembered for is economic decline…The Economic Collapse Jan 14, 2011 ‘2010 was quite a year, wasn’t it? 2010 will be remembered for a lot of things, but for those living in the United States, one of the main things that last year will be remembered for is economic decline. The number of foreclosure filings set a new record, the number of home repossessions set a new record, the number of bankruptcies went up again, the number of Americans that became so discouraged that they simply quit looking for work reached a new all-time high and the number of Americans on food stamps kept setting a brand new record every single month. Meanwhile, U.S. government debt reached record highs, state government debt reached record highs and local government debt reached record highs. What a mess! In fact, even many of the “good” economic records that were set during 2010 were indications of underlying economic weakness. For example, the price of gold set an all-time record during 2010, but one of the primary reasons for the increase in the price of gold was that the U.S. dollar was rapidly losing value. Most Americans had been hoping that 2010 would be the beginning of better times, but unfortunately economic conditions just kept getting worse.

So will things improve in 2011? That would be nice, but at this point there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about the economy. The truth is that we are trapped in a period of long-term economic decline and we are now paying the price for decades of horrible decisions.

Amazingly, many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media have declared that “the recession is over” and that the U.S. economy is steadily improving now.

Well, if anyone tries to tell you that the economy got better in 2010, just show them the statistics below. That should shut them up for a while.

The following are 20 new economic records that were set during 2010….

#1 An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#2 The number of homes that were actually repossessed reached the 1 million mark for the first time ever during 2010.

#3 The price of gold moved above $1400 an ounce for the first time ever during 2010.

#4 According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, approximately 1.53 million consumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, which was up 9 percent from 1.41 million in 2009. This was the highest number of personal bankruptcies we have seen since the U.S. Congress substantially tightened U.S. bankruptcy law several years ago.

#5 At one point during 2010, the average time needed to find a job in the United States had risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.

#6 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs, which is believed to be a new record low.

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” was the highest it has been in at least five decades during 2010.

#8 The number of American workers that are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work reached an all-time high near the end of 2010.

#9 Government spending continues to set new all-time records. In fact, at the moment the U.S. government is spending approximately 6.85 million dollars every single minute.

#10 The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 43 million by the end of 2010. This was a new all-time record, and government officials fully expect the number of Americans enrolled in the program to continue to increase throughout 2011.

#11 The number of Americans on Medicaid surpassed 50 million for the first time ever in 2010.

#12 The U.S. Census Bureau originally announced that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that was the highest number of Americans living in poverty that they had ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping. But now the Census Bureau says that they miscalculated and that the real number of poor Americans is actually 47.8 million.

#13 According to the FDIC, 157 banks failed during 2010. That was the highest number of bank failures that the United States has experienced in any single year during the past decade.

#14 The Federal Reserve brought in a record $80.9 billion in profits during 2010. They returned $78.4 billion of that to the U.S. Treasury, but the real story is that thanks to the Federal Reserve’s continual debasement of our currency, the U.S. dollar was worth less in 2010 than it ever had been before.

#15 It is projected that the major financial firms on Wall Street will pay out an all-time record of $144 billion in compensation for 2010.

#16 Americans now owe more than $881 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

#17 In July, sales of new homes in the United States declined to the lowest level ever recorded.

#18 According to Zillow, U.S. housing prices have now declined a whopping 26 percent since their peak in June 2006. Amazingly, this is even farther than house prices fell during the Great Depression. From 1928 to 1933, U.S. housing prices only fell 25.9 percent.

#19 State and local government debt reached at an all-time record of 22 percent of U.S. GDP during 2010.

#20 The U.S. national debt has surpassed the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever and it is being projected that it will soar well past 15 trillion during 2011.

There are some people that have a hard time really grasping what statistics actually mean. For people like that, often pictures and charts are much more effective. Well, that is one reason I like to include pictures and graphs in many of my articles, and below I have posted my favorite chart from this past year. It shows the growth of the U.S. national debt from 1940 until today. I honestly don’t know how anyone can look at this chart and still be convinced that our nation is not headed for a complete financial meltdown….[chart]

14 Eye Opening Statistics Which Reveal Just How Dramatically The U.S. Economy Has Collapsed Since 2007 Most Americans have become so accustomed to the “new normal” of continual economic decline that they don’t even remember how good things were just a few short years ago. ‘The Economic Collapse Jan 10, 2011

’Most Americans have become so accustomed to the “new normal” of continual economic decline that they don’t even remember how good things were just a few short years ago. Back in 2007, unemployment was very low, good jobs were much easier to get, far fewer Americans were living in poverty or enrolled in welfare programs and government finances were in much better shape. Of course most of this prosperity was fueled by massive amounts of debt, but at least times were better. Unfortunately, things have really deteriorated over the last several years. Since 2007, unemployment has skyrocketed, foreclosures have set new all-time records, personal bankruptcies have soared and U.S. government debt has gotten completely and totally out of control. Poll after poll has shown that Americans are now far less optimistic about the future than they were in 2007. It is almost as if the past few years have literally sucked the hope out of millions upon millions of Americans.

Sadly, our economic situation is continually getting worse. Every month the United States loses more factories. Every month the United States loses more jobs. Every month the collective wealth of U.S. citizens continues to decline. Every month the federal government goes into even more debt. Every month state and local governments go into even more debt.

Unfortunately, things are going to get even worse in the years ahead. Right now we look back on 2005, 2006 and 2007 as “good times”, but in a few years we will look back on 2010 and 2011 as “good times”.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and the very bad economic choices that we have been making as a nation for decades are now starting to really catch up with us.

So as horrible as you may think that things are now, just keep in mind that things are going to continue to deteriorate in the years ahead.

But for the moment, let us remember how far we have fallen over the past few years. The following are 14 eye opening statistics which reveal just how dramatically the U.S. economy has collapsed since 2007….

#1 In November 2007, the official U.S. unemployment rate was just 4.7 percent. Today, the official U.S. unemployment rate is 9.4 percent.

#2 In November 2007, 18.8% of unemployed Americans had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. Today that percentage is up to 41.9%.

#3 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#4 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, whichis almost four times as many as were receiving it back in 2007.

#5 More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the “recession” began in December 2007.

#6 According to one analysis, the United States has lost a total of approximately 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

#7 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, an all-time record of 43.2 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program.

#8 In 2007, the U.S. government held a total of $725 billion in mortgage debt. As of the middle of 2010, the U.S. government held a total of $5.148 trillion in mortgage debt.

#9 In the year prior to the “official” beginning of the most recent recession in 2007, the IRS filed just 684,000 tax liens against U.S. taxpayers. During 2010, the IRS filed over a million tax liens against U.S. taxpayers.

#10 From the year 2000 through the year 2007, there were 27 bank failures in the United States. From 2008 through 2010, there were 314 bank failures in the United States.

#11 According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of U.S. families with children living in homeless sheltersincreased from 131,000 to 170,000 between 2007 and 2009.

#12 In 2007, one poll found that 43 percent of Americans were living “paycheck to paycheck”. Sadly, according to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, approximately 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

#13 In 2007, the “official” federal budget deficit was just 161 billion dollars. In 2010, the “official” federal budget deficit was approximately 1.3 trillion dollars.

#14 As 2007 began, the U.S. national debt was just under 8.7 trillion dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt has just surpassed 14 trillion dollars and it continues to soar into the stratosphere.

So is there any hope that we can turn all of this around?

Unfortunately, the massive amount of debt that we have piled up as a society over the last several decades has made that impossible.

If you add up all forms of debt (government debt, business debt, individual debt), it comes to approximately 360 percent of GDP. It is the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.

If the federal government and our state governments stop borrowing and spending so much money, our economy would collapse. But if they keep borrowing and spending so much money they will continually make the eventual economic collapse even worse.

We are in the terminal stages of the most horrific debt spiral the world has ever seen, and when the debt spiral gets stopped the house of cards is going to finally come down for good.

So enjoy these times while you still have them. Yes, today is not nearly as prosperous as 2007 was, but today is most definitely a whole lot better than 2015 or 2020 is going to be.

Sadly, we could have avoided this financial disaster completely if only we had listened more carefully to those that founded this nation. Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson said the following….

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.’

Tipping Point: 25 Signs That The Coming Financial Collapse Is Now Closer Then Ever The financial collapse that so many of us have been anticipating is seemingly closer then ever. Over the past several weeks, there have been a host of ominous signs for the U.S. economy.

The Economic Collapse
Dec 17, 2010

The financial collapse that so many of us have been anticipating is seemingly closer then ever. Over the past several weeks, there have been a host of ominous signs for the U.S. economy. Yields on U.S. Treasuries have moved up rapidly and Moody’s is publicly warning that it may have to cut the rating on U.S. government debt soon. Mortgage rates are also moving up aggressively. The euro and the U.S. dollar both look incredibly shaky. Jobs continue to be shipped out of the United States at a blistering pace as our politicians stand by and do nothing. Confidence in U.S. government debt around the globe continues to decline. State and local governments that are drowning in debt across the United States are savagely cutting back on even essential social services and are coming up with increasingly “creative” ways of getting more money out of all of us. Meanwhile, tremor after tremor continues to strike the world financial system. So does this mean that we have almost reached a tipping point? Is the world on the verge of a major financial collapse?

Let’s hope not, but with each passing week the financial news just seems to get eve worse. Not only is U.S. government debt spinning wildly toward a breaking point, but many U.S. states (such as California) are in such horrific financial condition that they are beginning to resemble banana republics.

But it is not just the United States that is in trouble. Nightmarish debt problems in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and several other European nations threaten to crash the euro at any time. In fact, many economists are now openly debating which will collapse first – the euro or the U.S. dollar.

Sadly, this is the inevitable result of constructing a global financial system on debt. All debt bubbles eventually collapse. Currently we are living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and when this one bursts it is going to be a disaster of truly historic proportions.

So will we reach a tipping point soon? Well, the following are 25 signs that the financial collapse is rapidly getting closer….

#1 The official U.S. unemployment rate has not been beneath 9 percent since April 2009.

#2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are currently 6.3 million vacant homes in the United States that are either for sale or for rent.

#3 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit with China could hit 270 billion dollars for the entire year of 2010.

#4 Back in 2000, 7.2 percent of blue collar workers were either unemployed or underemployed. Today that figure is up to 19.5 percent.

#5 The Chinese government has accumulated approximately $2.65 trillion in total foreign exchange reserves. They have drained this wealth from the economies of other nations (such as the United States) and instead of reinvesting all of it they are just sitting on much of it. This is creating tremendous imbalances in the global economy.

#6 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were approximately 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#7 The United States now employs about the same number of people in manufacturing as it did back in 1940. Considering the fact that we had 132 million people living in this country in 1940 and that we have well over 300 million people living in this country today, that is a very sobering statistic.

#8 According to CoreLogic, U.S. housing prices have now declined for three months in a row.

#9 The average rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage soared 11 basis points just this past week. As mortgage rates continue to push higher it is going to make it even more difficult for American families to afford homes.

#10 22.5 percent of all residential mortgages in the United States were in negative equity as of the end of the third quarter of 2010.

#11 The U.S. monetary base has more than doubled since the beginning of the most recent recession.

#12 U.S. Treasury yields have been rising steadily during the 4th quarter of 2010 and recently hit a six-month high.

#13 Incoming governor Jerry Brown is scrambling to find $29 billion more to cut from the California state budget. The following quote from Brown about the desperate condition of California state finances is not going to do much to inspire confidence in California’s financial situation around the globe….

“We’ve been living in fantasy land. It is much worse than I thought. I’m shocked.”

#14 24.3 percent of the residents of El Centro, California are currently unemployed.

#15 The average home in Merced, California has declined in value by 63 percent over the past four years.

#16 Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has come up with a new way to save money. He wants to cut 20 percent of Detroit off from essential social services such as road repairs, police patrols, functioning street lights and garbage collection.

#17 The second most dangerous city in the United States – Camden, New Jersey – is about to lay off about half its police in a desperate attempt to save money.

#18 In 2010, 55 percent of Americans between the ages of 60 and 64 were in the labor market. Ten years ago, that number was just 47 percent. More older Americans than ever find that they have to keep working just to survive.

#19 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.

#20 The U.S. government budget deficit increased to a whopping $150.4 billion last month, which represented the biggest November budget deficit on record.

#21 The U.S. government is somehow going to have to roll over existing debt and finance new debt that is equivalent to 27.8 percent of GDP in 2011.

#22 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.

#23 According to an absolutely stunning new poll, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to bail out of the profession over the next three years.

#24 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#25 All over the United States, local governments have begun instituting “police response fees”. For example, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come up with a plan under which a fee of $365 would be charged if police are called to respond to an automobile accident where no injuries are involved. If there are injuries as a result of the crash that is going to cost extra.

16 Nightmarish Economic Trends To Watch Carefully In 2011 The American Dream Dec 15, 2010 ‘If you only watch the “economic pundits” on television, it can be very confusing to figure out exactly what is happening with the U.S. economy. One pundit will pull out a couple statistics that got a little bit better over the past month and claim that we have entered a time of solid recovery. Another pundit will pull out a couple statistics that got a little worse over the past month and claim that we are headed for trouble. So what is the truth? Well, if you really want to get a clear idea of what is really going on you have to look at the long-term trends. There are some economic trends which just keep getting worse year after year after year, and it is those trends that tell the real story of the decline of our economic system.

As you examine the long-term trends, you quickly come to realize that the U.S. is trapped in an endless spiral of debt, the middle class is being wiped out, the U.S. dollar is being destroyed and America is rapidly becoming a post-industrial wasteland.

Posted below are 16 nightmarish economic trends to watch carefully in 2011. It is becoming exceedingly apparent that unless something is done rapidly we are heading for an economic collapse of unprecedented magnitude….

#1 Do you want to see something scary? Just check out the chart below. Since the beginning of the economic downturn, the U.S. monetary base has more than doubled. But don’t worry – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has promised us that this could never cause inflation. In fact, Bernanke says that we need to inject even more dollars into the economy. So if you are alarmed by the chart below, you are just being irrational according to Bernanke….

[chart]

#2 Thousands of our factories, millions of our jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth continue to be shipped overseas. In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year. In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars. Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.

#3 The United States is rapidly becoming a post-industrial wasteland. Back in 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall. Sadly, the truth is that America is being deindustrialized. As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#4 The number of Americans that have been out of work for an extended period of time has absolutely exploded over the last few years. As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#5 The middle class continues to be squeezed out of existence. According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans ”always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck. That was up substantially from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

#6 The number of Americans living in poverty is absolutely skyrocketing. 42.9 million Americans are now on food stamps, and one out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government. Unfortunately, many of those that have been hardest hit by this economic downturn have been children. According to one new study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

#7 Many American families have been pushed beyond the breaking point during this economic downturn. Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. The final number for 2010 is expected to be even higher.

#8 The U.S. real estate market continues to stagnate. During the third quarter of 2010, 67 percent of mortgages in Nevada were “underwater”, 49 percent of mortgages in Arizona were “underwater” and 46 percent of mortgages in Florida were “underwater”. So what happens if home prices go down even more?

#9 More elderly Americans than ever are being forced to put off retirement and continue working. In 2010, 55 percent of Americans between the ages of 60 and 64 were in the labor market. Ten years ago, that number was just 47 percent. Unfortunately, it looks like this problem will only get worse in the years ahead. In America today, approximately half of all workers have less than $2000 saved up for retirement.

#10 In the United States today, there are simply far too many retirees and not nearly enough workers to support them. Back in 1950 each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.

#11 Financial assets continue to become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. For example, the “big four” U.S. banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) had approximately 22 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions back in 2000. As of the middle of 2009 that figure was up to 39 percent.

#12 The Federal Reserve has been destroying the value of the U.S. dollar for decades. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 would cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 would cost you $440.33 today.

#13 Commodity prices continue to soar into the stratosphere. Ten years ago, the price of a barrel of oil hovered around 20 to 30 dollars most of the time. Today, the price of oil is rapidly closing in on 100 dollars a barrel and there are now fears that it could soon go much higher than that.

#14 Federal government spending is completely and totally out of control. The U.S. government budget deficit increased to a whopping $150.4 billion last month, which represented the biggest November deficit on record. But our politicians can’t seem to break their addiction to debt. In fact, Democrats are trying to ram through a 1,924 page, 1.1 trillion dollar spending bill in the final days of the lame-duck session of Congress before the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next year.

#15 The U.S. national debt is rapidly closing in on 14 trillion dollars. It is more than 13 times larger than it was just 30 short years ago. According to an official U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt is projected to climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

#16 Unfortunately, the official government numbers grossly understate the horrific nature of the crisis we are facing. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has calculated that if the federal government would have used GAAP accounting standards to measure the federal budget deficit for 2009, it would have been approximately 8.8 trillion dollars. Not only that, but John Williams now says that U.S. government debt is so wildly out of control that it is mathematically impossible for us to “grow” our way out of it….

The government’s finances not only are out of control, but the actual deficit is not containable. Put into perspective, if the government were to raise taxes so as to seize 100% of all wages, salaries and corporate profits, it still would be showing an annual deficit using GAAP accounting on a consistent basis. In like manner, given current revenues, if it stopped spending every penny (including defense and homeland security) other than for Social Security and Medicare obligations, the government still would be showing an annual deficit. Further, the U.S. has no potential way to grow out of this shortfall.

The more one examines the U.S. economic situation, the more depressing it becomes. The U.S. financial system is trapped inside a horrific debt spiral and we are headed straight for economic oblivion.

If our leaders attempt to interrupt the debt spiral it will plunge our economy into a depression. If our leaders attempt to keep the debt spiral going for several more years it will just make the eventual crash even worse. Either way, we are headed for a financial implosion that will be truly historic.

The debt-fueled good times that we have been enjoying for the last several decades are rapidly coming to an end. Unfortunately for the tens of millions of Americans that are already suffering, our economic problems are only going to get worse in the years ahead.’

Jobless Recovery?: 25 Unemployment Statistics That Are Almost Too Depressing To Read ‘… Unemployment is up again! That’s right – even though Wall Street is swimming in cash and the Obama administration is declaring that “the recession is over”, the U.S. unemployment rate has gone even higher. So are you enjoying the jobless recovery? Economic Collapse Blog Dec 4, 2010 ‘Guess what? Unemployment is up again! That’s right – even though Wall Street is swimming in cash and the Obama administration is declaring that “the recession is over”, the U.S. unemployment rate has gone even higher ... Times are really, really tough and unfortunately the long-term outlook is very bleak. We should have compassion on those who are out of work right now, because soon many of us may join them.

The following are 25 unemployment statistics that are almost too depressing to read….

#1 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate for November was 9.8 percent. This was up from 9.6 percent in October, and it continues a trend of depressingly high unemployment rates. The official unemployment number has been at 9.5 percent or higher for well over a year at this point.

#2 In November 2006, the “official” U.S. unemployment rate was just 4.5 percent.

#3 Most economists had been expecting the U.S. economy to add about 150,000 jobs in November. Instead, it only added 39,000.

#4 In the United States today, there are over 15 million people who are “officially” considered to be unemployed for statistical purposes. But everyone knows that the “real” number is even much larger than that.

#5 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#6 The number of “persons not in the labor force” in the United States recently set another new all-time record.

#7 It now takes the average unemployed American over 33 weeks to find a job.

#8 When you throw in “discouraged workers” and “underemployed workers”, the “real” unemployment rate in the state of California is actually about 22 percent.

#9 In America today there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. In fact, there are now approximately 5 unemployed Americans for every single job opening.

#10 According to The New York Times, Americans that have been unemployed for five weeks or less are three times more likely to find a new job in the coming month than Americans that have been unemployed for over a year.

#11 The U.S. economy would need to create 235,120 new jobs a month to get the unemployment rate down to pre-recession levels by 2016. Does anyone think that there is even a prayer that is going to happen?

#12 There are 9 million Americans that are working part-time for “economic reasons”. In other words, those Americans would gladly take full-time jobs if they could get them, but all they have been able to find is part-time work.

#13 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.

#14 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#15 The United States has lost at least 7.5 million jobs since the recession began.

#16 Today, only about 40 percent of Ford Motor Company’s 178,000 workers are employed in North America, and a big percentage of those jobs are in Canada and Mexico.

#17 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.

#18 Earlier this year, one poll found that 28% of all American households had at least one member that was looking for a full-time job.

#19 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

#20 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#21 As the employment situation continues to stagnate, millions of American families have decided to cut back on things such as insurance coverage. For example, the percentage of American households that have life insurance coverage is at its lowest level in 50 years.

#22 Unless Congress acts, and there is no indication that is going to happen, approximately 2 million Americans will stop receiving unemployment checks over the next couple of months.

#23 A poll that was released by the Pew Research Center back in June discovered that an astounding 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the economic downturn began.

#24 According to Richard McCormack, the United States has lost over 42,000 factories (and counting) since 2001.

#25 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

But this is what we get for creating the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. For decades we have been digging a deeper hole for ourselves by going into increasingly larger amounts of debt. In America today, our entire economy is based on debt. Even our money is debt. We were fools if we ever thought this could go on forever. Just think about it. Have you ever gone out and run up a bunch of debt? It can be a lot of fun sitting behind the wheel of a new car, running your credit cards up to the limit and buying a beautiful big house that you cannot afford. But in the end what happens? It always catches up with you. Well, our collective debt is starting to catch up with us. There is a sea of red ink on every level of American society. It is only a matter of time before it destroys our economy. IF YOU THINK THAT THINGS ARE BAD NOW, JUST WAIT. THINGS ARE GOING TO GET A WHOLE LOT WORSE. A HORRIFIC ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IS COMING, AND IT IS GOING TO BE VERY, VERY PAINFUL.’

Howard Davidowitz on the Economy: "Here Are the Numbers ... WE'RE BROKE!" 11-25-10 ‘The U.S. economy "is a complete disaster," Howard Davidowitz declared here in July, the most recent in a string of dire predictions from Tech Ticker's most entertaining guest.On the eve of Thanksgiving, I asked Davidowitz if he had any regrets, or was ready to throw in the towel given recent signs of economic revival. Are you kidding me? "Here are the numbers...we're broke," Davidowitz declares, noting the U.S. government goes $5 billion deeper into debt every day and is facing $1 trillion-plus annual deficits for the next decade. "In other words, we're bankrupt."As with the economy, Davidowitz is unwaveringly consistent in his views on President Obama, calling him "deranged, dysfunctional and discredited."Results of the midterm election show "the people of this country think we are in a catastrophe," he says. "I'm with them."Check the accompanying video for more of Howard's unfettered opinions and stay tuned for additional clips from this interview. And...Happy Thanksgiving! Aaron Task is the host of Tech Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter at @atask or email him at altask@yahoo.com’

Timid Tuesday: Is it Safe? Davis ‘… This is how we pay off our current debts and I think bondholders are simply happy to get anything out of a country that admits it owes $15Tn (1/4 of global GDP) but probably owes closer to $60Tn (entire global GDP) in the form of unfunded liabilities. The funniest thing about this (and you have to laugh) is to see Conservative pundits get on TV and talk about how we need to cut $100Bn worth of discretionary spending to "fix" this (while continuing to spend $1Tn on the military and $1Tn on tax cuts for the top 1% each year). There is no fixing this and even a Republican said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. THIS HOUSE OF CARDS IS TEETERING FOLKS – PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! ‘

17 Things Worrying Investors Lloyd's Wall of Worry

Worry Count: 17


CHINA: 1,330,044,605 people can’t be wrong.

The PIIGS: Fasten your seatbelts. It’s gonna be a long, bumpy, expensive, weird, (insert your own adjective here) freak show of a ride.

CALIFORNIA AND THE OTHER 49 STATES: Not yet as dire as “The PIIGS”. Might I suggest the classier moniker of “The Prosciuttos” for the American basket-case states?

QE II: Gobble?

U.S. ECONOMY: The “Punky Brewster” of the global economic landscape.

UNEMPLOYMENT: Only thing worse than losing your job, losing your unemployment check. At least there’s the holiday season to cheer everyone up (read: heavy sarcasm).

TAXES: Praying to the Financial Market Gods that we don’t have another TARP-like vote fiasco.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PART II: Still two years before the Pres. election and the peanut gallery is already pleading for a Hail Mary Pass to get them back in the game.

HFT: Instead of beating up these liquidity supplying traders, let’s honor them with their very own stock exchange. But wait -- with no retail saps to pick-off they will never get that Day 1 opening bell tick. Perfect.

XMAS 2010: As my professor friend Nick says, “Nowadays Americans are dining off of two menus – The Million Dollar and the $0.99 Cent.” And both are pissed about it.

CURRENCIES: Poor Mr. Greenback. Does someone need a hug?

HOUSING CRISIS: Price Stabilization – Are we there yet? Just a little bit more. Are we there yet? Just a little bit more. Are we there yet? Just a little bit more….

INFLATION/DEFLATION: Fed Chief Ben B. comes out swinging from his heels in defense of inflation promotion. Don’t punch yourself out as this one is likely to go the distance.

COMMODITIES: Corrected but still sky high; fortunately these prices are only affecting core, basic, life-sustaining necessities and sparing our electronic gadgets and plus-sized SUVs. Whew!

INSIDER TRADING: Another black eye for Hedge Funds. I estimate that makes black eye number 6,597.

INTEREST RATES: South Korea and China slowly turning up the dial to “11”. On the other hand the U.S. has removed the dial altogether. This never ends well….

NORTH KOREA: Here we go again. (and now Egypt, etc.)

Consumer confidence down, LiveLeak.com - Loonie closes above U.S. dollar … dollar for first time closes below parity on Canadian loonie … hey, hey, hey … 'Huge' stock decline — but not yet MarketWatch - Brimelow ‘Commentary: Adens … ‘mega trend’ looks grim … The Adens expect a hyperinflationary collapse … ‘ Oh come on! Manipulated dollar decline with inflated earnings, stock prices thereby, etc., … we’ve seen this all before … the last few crashes … Jobless rate jumps to 9.8% as hiring slows (Washington Post) [ The reality is not a mystery! The nation’s been thrown under the bus for the greater good (wealth) of the very few (frauds on wall street, etc.); wall street giving out record bonuses from their accomplished fraud (with no-recession b.s. bernanke help) of $144 BILLION: Come on! This is gettin’ even more downright ridiculous (if that’s even possible)! Pending home foreclosure / distress sales up, oil prices (and oil stocks) up, debased dollar down, plus a little familiar ‘better than expected’ thrown in along with prospects of a ‘no-recession bernanke’ market-frothing bull session on 60 minutes and, voila, suckers’ rally into the close to keep the suckers suckered! What’s good for the frauds on wall street is bad for just about everyone else which includes the vast majority of people and businesses, domestically and globally, as current dollar manipulation / debasement ultimately results in higher costs and loss of purchasing power (ie., oil, etc.). Clearly, this is one of those fraudulent wealth transfers to the frauds on wall street et als which will ultimately be paid for by those who least are in a position to afford it, courtesy of the ever more worthless Weimar dollar, etc., inflating earnings, eps, lowering p/e multiples, etc., see infra. This is an especially great time to sell / take profits while you can since there's much worse to come! Previous: Rosy numbers on consumer sentiment, unemployment (far better than private forecasts) from the government prior to the holiday so-called ‘shop till you drop’? How can anyone believe anything they say? Najerian interviewed by Motek chimes in with the reason for good retail cheer; viz., people have stopped paying their mortgages and are using the funds to purchase retail goods; while Davidowitz adds that with record numbers of americans on food stamps, real unemployment at 17+, and wall street giving out record bonuses from their accomplished fraud (with no-recession b.s. bernanke help) of $144 BILLION … the high end stores / jewelers will do well … daaaaah! And, with insiders and wall street frauds selling into the bubble as preceded last crash, this is an especially great opportunity to sell / take profits! Suckers’ rally on light volume, full moon, and government complicity (false data / reports) to keep suckers suckered (easy for the wall street frauds to do with just a mouse click / push of the button – and, they know all those technical trade lines that are easy to program in this current phase of the scam/fraud with the debased dollar). Keep in mind, the totally mindless blather from the ‘cottage industries’ of and fraudulent wall street itself in talking up lower P/E multiples when the same is a direct result of the debasement of the dollar and the consequent manipulation / translation (not real, see Davis, infra) which preceded the financial crisis / last crash. Unemployment, trade, deficit, etc., numbers continue decidedly worse than expected along with other negative data (and in the ‘wrong direction’, that spin accorded ‘down but not as bad as before’ b*** s*** ) yet the market has rallied like no tomorrow with used home foreclosure / distressed sales, though abated owing to ‘foreclosuregate’, the other ‘heralded’ good news. Moreover, the dumbo lemmings of Europe have jumped on the fraudulent defacto bankrupt american crazy train propelled to the precipice also as if no tomorrow. This is about keeping the suckers sucked in with the help of a market-frothing pre-election debased dollar for favorable currency translation and paper (but not real when measured in, ie., gold, etc.) profits which preceded the last crisis, inflating a bubble as in the last crisis to facilitate the churn-and-earn, particularly with computerized (and high frequency) trades and which commissions they’ll get again on the way down. There is nothing to support these overbought stock prices, fundamentally or otherwise. These are desperate criminals ‘at work’. Even wall street shill, the senile Buffett is saying we’re still in a recession (depression) [ Davis: ‘… all profits are inflated by 10% (from falling, debased dollar) and that 10% is the E that gets divided from the P and gives us a much better price/multiple to hang our hats on and that gets investors to BUYBUYBUY …’ The bull market that never was / were beyond wall street b.s. when measured in gold ] This is a great opportunity to sell / take profits (these lower dollar, hyperinflationary currency manipulations / translations to froth paper stocks will end quite badly as in last crash)! This is a global depression. This is a secular bear market in a global depression. The past up moves were manipulated bull (s***) cycles (at best) in a secular bear market. This has been a typically manipulated bubble as has preceded the prior crashes with great regularity that the wall street frauds and insiders commission and sell into. This is a typical wall street ‘programmed computerized high-frequency churn and earn pass the hot potato scam / fraud as in prior crashes ( widely reported, high-frequency trading routinely accounts for more than 50% of daily U.S. equity trading volume and regularly approaches 70%. )’. This national decline, economic and otherwise, will not end until justice is served and the wall street frauds et als are criminally prosecuted, jailed, fined, and disgorgement imposed.The Stock Market's Long Decline Has Begun Smith ]

National / World

Obama Launches Total Takeover of Media System Kurt Nimmo | The government has once again imposed an unreasonable and absurd mandate on business and the American people.

Poll: Ron Paul Has Greater Chance Of Beating Obama Than Palin Does In 2012 Steve Watson | Will the Libertarian Congressman take up the mantle?

Kleptocrats at Work Paul Craig Roberts | Kleptocracy is as old as government.

Evidence Shows Pole Shift Hysteria Hyped Test Pilot | There is good physical evidence that the magnetic poles of the Earth have inverted from time to time.

Confirmed: FBI Got Warning Day Before OKC Bombing Paul Joseph Watson | Documents released under Freedom of Information Act show feds tried to coerce Terry Nichols into accepting responsibility for phone call warning of imminent attack in return for protecting him from death penalty.

House Seen Blocking Obamacare Funds The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote to block funding for President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.

Poll: Ron Paul Has Greater Chance Of Beating Obama Than Palin Does In 2012 A Rasmussen poll released Monday indicates that Congressman Ron Paul has a better shot of beating Obama in the 2012 presidential election than Sarah Palin would, should both decide to run on the GOP ticket.

Obama Launches Total Media Takeover System Even the Washington Post describes it like something out of Orwell’s 1984. The FCC has approved a presidential alert system. Obama may soon appear on your television or call your cell phone to warn you about the next specious al-Qaeda underwear bombing event.

Karzai in talks with US on permanent Afghan bases Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that he was in talks with the United States about the possible establishment of permanent US military bases in his war-ravaged country.

Ron Paul On Verge Of Announcing 2012 Presidential Bid Political pundits are speculating that Ron Paul could be on the verge of announcing his much awaited 2012 presidential run, after the Texas Congressman agreed to give a speech in Iowa at an event entitled “presidential lecture series” that will feature other likely Oval Office candidates.

WORLD NEWS ARCHIVE

WORLD AT WAR ARCHIVE

Freed young leader energizes Egyptian protests (AP) In this still image taken from video, Google Inc executive Wael Ghonim cries during an interview in Cairo February 7, 2011. One man's tears provided a new impetus on Tuesday to protesters in Egypt seeking to keep up momentum in their campaign, now in its third week, to topple President Hosni Mubarak. Ghonim, who was detained and blindfolded by state security for 12 days, broke down in a television interview on Monday after his release saying a system that arrested people for speaking out must be torn down. Image taken from footage dated February 7, 2011. REUTERS/Dream TV via Reuters TV (EGYPT)

Egypt VP favored by Israel to succeed Mubarak, cables show [ Which of course is the best reason in the world, in addition to suleiman being both mubarak’s and the cia’s choice, to not allowing that succession to go forward being contrary to all notions of democracy (the dictator’s choice?). ] Israel has long seen Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s recently appointed vice president, as the successor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, US State Department cables released by secrets outlet WikiLeaks show.

Drudgereport: UNDERDOG: CNN POLL: 51% SEE NO SECOND TERM FOR OBAMA...
71% OF ALL VEGAS HOMEOWNERS UNDER WATER...
'New normal' in housing bust...
STRESS...
Job openings fall for second straight month...
HOUSE VOTES NEXT WEEK TO BLOCK OBAMACARE FUNDS
WE'RE ON 'ROAD TO RUIN'

UPDATE: Egypt sees largest demos since start of revolt...
New video shows brutal mob justice...
Israel Army Chief: Prepare for all-out war...
Released GOOGLE exec reveals he was behind FACEBOOK page...
Freed young leader energizes protests...
Saboteurs attack gas pipeline; cuts off flow to Israel, Jordan...
CAIRO DAY 12: Locked in standoff...
Mubarak clings to power as son quits ruling party...
Gov't seeks to ease Mubarak out...
Hopes to ride out protest wave...
Anderson Cooper in 'Undisclosed Location' After Another Attack; Couric, Williams Flee Egypt...
GOOGLE Exec Who Went Missing In Egypt Now Spokesman For Opposition Group...
MOTOROLA AD MOCKS 'APPLE ZOMBIE SOCIETY'...
Mafia 'holds Silvio Berlusconi photos'...
SUPER BOWL MOST-VIEWED TV IN HISTORY...
THE PACK PULLS IT OUT [ Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers! ]

Governors plan painful cuts amid budget crises (Washington Post) [ This truly is a disaster in the making, with consequences even more dire than the grim outlook set forth by Meridith Whitney, if that could even be fathomed. It’s really going to be all that bad…see infra, The Economic Collapse, ‘#10 The municipal bond crisis could go “supernova” at any time. Already, investors are bailing out of bonds at a frightening pace. State and local government debt is now sitting at an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP. According to Meredith Whitney, the municipal bond crisis that we are facing is a gigantic threat to our financial system….

“It has tentacles as wide as anything I’ve seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy.”

Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan is convinced that things are so bad that literally 90% of our states and cities could go bankrupt over the next five years…. ‘ ] Governors across the ideological spectrum are embracing the politics of austerity in a desperate effort to balance the books.

Egypt protests continue as Mubarak's government offers concessions (Washington Post) [ Come on! Let not all of us join america’s / israel’s, et als, and mubarak’s delusions. After all, here’s an 82 year old tyrant, in power for 30 years, yet in some parallel universe appears to think he’s calling the shots. Other than literal and quite foolish shots against protesters, even journalists, see infra, there are few indeed that would trust his mindset, such as it is, much less his judgment, so flawed as he has now shown it to be. What is obvious is that this long overdue ‘people’s election’ cannot be thwarted by platitudes and small talk, but resisting the inevitable will turn an american quasi-ally into an anti-american breeding ground because there’s just no reconciling a pro-mubarak, however slight, position with american / israeli, et als war crimes in the region. Restless Cairo protesters hoping for U.S. support (Washington Post) [ The sad reality here is, much like wobama’s Afghanistan fiasco, that america has ‘bought it’. This is truly yet another ‘loss, loss’ scenario as is true of america’s mideast policy generally. Defacto bankrupt america’s initiatives in the region particularly, though generally true of all american policy, is the ‘square pegs in round holes’ approach to almost everything they do, which certainly is not lost on the rest of the world. Coddling and caving in to israeli / neocon / zionist paranoia despite the war mongering intransigence of the former is devastating to a nation as pervasively corrupt america which is facing insurmountable domestic problems of its own, economically, financially, politically, and geo-politically. This should bring to mind the missteps of a former fading empire in this same region desperately trying to remain relevant. Indeed, from Balfour’s Despoliation to arbitrary boundaries, etc., Orwellian britain’s demise (decline) as a real player globally was, as america’s currently, significantly and irrevocably hastened. Quite simply, pervasively corrupt, defacto bankrupt america will increasingly be viewed as a bunch of ‘muck-ups’ who can’t handle their own substantial problems much less those of other nations; and in fact, invariably exacerbate existing conditions / problems, particularly when pandering to israel’s self-interested concerns. ] While the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak remains the most pressing concern for protesters, the role of U.S. is far from absent in the dialogue. { Previous: Amid Arab protests, U.S. influence has waned (Washington Post) [ And that’s just the way israel likes it … and to america’s detriment, of course … which is not lost on even George Soros … Drudgereport: Soros: 'The main stumbling block is Israel'...

Egyptian protesters plan new push Government detains foreigners, says it's willing to open talks (Washington Post) [ Open talks? ‘bout what? Building a pyramid in mubarak’s honor before stepping down? He’s done … finito … burnt as an over-micro-waved burrito! The following from the Post is indeed the straw that broke the riders with whips he sent on camels’ and horses’ backs! ‘Wants to die in Egypt? How touching, or the reality, he’s just plain touched as in totally ‘out of it’. ‘…In what the U.S. State Department called a "concerted campaign to intimidate," several dozen journalists were rounded up by security forces and detained for hours, along with foreigners working as teachers, engineers and human rights researchers. Across the city, angry bands of supporters of President Hosni Mubarak also beat journalists; several reporters said that they were threatened with death…’ ] Cairo seeks to shift blame for clashes by rounding up journalists; U.S. worries renewed protests could spark more violence from Mubarak supporters. Demonstrations in Egypt take bloody turn In Cairo square, Mubarak backers confront anti-government crowds (Washington Post) [ Not too difficult for desperate and done mubarak to contrive: Mubarak Says Egyptians Have to Choose Between “Chaos” and Him … Then Sends In His Thugs to Stir Up Chaos (Infowars.com) In order to justify staying in power until elections are held in September, President Mubarak said on tv that the people had to choose between him and “chaos”. ] The coordinated nature of day's events suggested that Mubarak's supporters were determined to show, as he had warned, that the country faced a "choice between chaos and stability." [ Previous: Mubarak's pledge seen as not enough Egyptian president plans to stay in office to transfer power (Washington Post) [ Let me put it another way: Mubarak is as done as an over-cooked tamale … He seems to be stalling for time and even in his age impaired mind certainly knows his position is untenable, unsustainable, and even more irrational as each second passes. There is a possibility that he’s using same to move money / treasure for himself and others, literally as well, buying time. See infra … Previous: Mubarak seeks dialogue, shows no sign of relenting Demonstrators call for massive protest but lack leadership (Washington Post) [ He relented when he resorted to media / internet blackout. Indeed, this lack of sign thing is a testament to how far from reality 30 years has taken him, not to mention the other 52 years that have taken their toll on his cognitive processes. Whether it is plaques ‘on the brain’ or outright senility, that he is so disengaged from the events unfolding around him, one may only wonder how he lasted this long. Nor did his choice of cia standin / shill, new VP Suleiman enhance his now untenable position which leaves him as ‘done as a burnt enchilada’. Kissinger on Egypt unrest – “This is only the first scene of the first act of a drama that is to be played out” [ The import of this so-called interview, and it is here that I part company with alex jones, et als (who by the way, censored me for this very thesis, which puts him and his at the top of my hypocrite list), is that the so-called elite have orchestrated these events and ‘are in control’. First, there are no elites in this world; you can’t derive elites from apes, notochordates, and initially single celled organisms. Second, almost by definition and certainly by history, there are no elites in america even if you were to accept the first proposition (though true) as untrue. What you do have, in this world and america particularly (with few exceptions as I’ve discussed elsewhere / comments / my website), are inherent criminals and mentally ill people of varying degrees of unscrupulousness and insanity who do commit crimes, both small and large, to further their interests or fortunes (sociopaths / psychopaths). The ’so-called alpha-dogs’ of the human species at most, but still incompetent vegetables who, if you look at anything they touch (to use a term term of such incompetent vegetables as historically pertains to their role in the mideast – and generally the state of the world) it invariably goes ‘pear shaped’ (english term). What hasn’t zionist kissinger not messed up as appointee or ‘consultant’ – what does he get paid for? No! The fact is, they have absolutely no idea how this unfolds and as with most of their lives, they will predictably choose the most sordid, despicable, and diabolical course at every turn because … that is their inherently criminal, mentally ill / unstable nature to do so. ]

] Fragile steps to end crisis seen as plans take shape for a transition process that would allow Mubarak to remain as a figure head until new elections.

} ]

Obama prods U.S. firms to help economy (Washington Post) [ Sounds like a plan! Riiiiight! Unfortunately wobama, unlike capital hill, and with bean-counters / number-crunchers / financial analysts paid to look beyond your next election cycle, there are few if any rational investment projects that comport with your politicking goals, particularly in light of your perpetual wars and the defacto bankruptcy of the nation … The Gipper's true heirs (Washington Post) [ ‘Wobama the b’ (for b*** s***), quite remarkably, seems to imply he is one. Yet, his ‘ask what you can do for your country’ entreaty to the ‘corporate execs’ (wake up wobama, they’ve already done it, shifting production / jobs irrevocably overseas, etc., while engaging in the largest fraud by way of wall street in the history of the world, with apparent impunity I might add as per professional criminal courtesy via you and your department of injustice) sounds awfully John F. Kennedyish; yet never the twain should meet (in fact, Reagan and his friend, William Holden reportedly lifted a glass and cheered Kennedy’s assassination – not totally ill-intended since they bought into that ‘Kennedy treason’ propaganda being pushed by the cia et als. Actually, Reagan’s greatest (and most unlikely going in) achievement was the peaceful transition from communism he helped initiate and facilitate with Russia’s rational and astute Mikhail Gorbachev which made way for substantial peace dividend for both nations.) Yes, wobama seems to be suffering from a form of multiple personality disorder which has invariably been interposed in defense of missteps and ‘bad behavior’, but as is true now, without success. ] Robinson: Republicans claim the Reagan mantle, but Democrats act almost like Reaganites.

Stocks Remain Poised for Steep Decline McCurdy ‘When the second round of quantitative easing was announced late last year, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke indicated that one of the primary objectives of the program was to inflate risk assets such as stocks. In that respect, the program has been an unqualified success, as the S&P 500 index has now gained more than 26% during the course of 5 months.

However, as a result, the index P/E ratio has increased to more than 18, and the most reliable forecasting models based upon current earnings and dividends indicate that expected 10-year annual returns are now slightly more than 3%, regardless of whether or not the economy is in fact experiencing a sustained recovery.

Thus, from a purely investment perspective, stocks are priced to deliver very poor results during the coming decade. Additionally, the short-term outlook now favors the development of a potentially violent correction.

On Friday, the S&P 500 index moved up to another marginal new high for the rally from September, pushing an overextended advance to yet another extreme.

click to enlarge images

[chart]

The current short-term cycle from the end of November is now 46 trading days old, and it has yet to enter the final decline of the beta phase, suggesting that it will likely terminate in the 55 to 60 day range. The previous cycle had a duration of 63 trading days. These are moves of extremely long duration, well above their historical average of about 39 trading days.

[chart]

Of course, to truly put the overextended nature of the move in perspective, it must be viewed in the proper context afforded by the big picture. Below is a monthly chart of the S&P 500 since the current secular bear market began in 2000.

[chart]

Notice how the character of market behavior changed materially with the crash in late 2008. Since then, stocks have been moving effectively straight up or straight down. This type of volatile price action is typical for this stage of the bear market and indicates that we are still several years away from the terminal phase of the secular decline.

Returning to the short-term view, our Cyclical Trend Score (CTS) has been negatively diverging from price action since October, and the CTS is currently holding slightly above its December low.

[chart]

Although the CTS is not a near-term timing indicator, this negative divergence reflects a gradual deterioration in underlying strength. The developing weakness is also manifested by broad market internals such as breadth and volume, as both continue to negatively diverge from price behavior.

[chart]

[chart]

Finally, our Sentiment Score continues to hold near the lowest level since late 2007, reflecting irrationally excessive bullishness that leaves the market vulnerable to an abrupt decline.

[chart]

Of course, overextended rallies of this type have a tendency to continue making marginal new highs until, at some point, an unexpected catalyst sets in motion the inevitable correction, which will likely be fast and furious, wiping out several weeks of gains in a matter of sessions.

From a big picture perspective, the character of the next correction should provide a great deal of clarity with respect to long-term direction. A relatively weak retracement followed by a return to recent long-term highs would predict a subsequent breakout and continuation of the cyclical bull market, while a powerful, sustained downtrend would suggest the development of a long-term top.’

Go to following pages for above links:
http://www.albertpeia.com/currentopics2ndqtr10108.htm
http://www.albertpeia.com
http://www.albertpeia.com/alresume.htm

http://www.albertpeia.com/wallstreetlunacy2ndqtr10108.htm

http://www.scribd.com/alpeia

You may post a comment on my blog on any topic: http://alpeiablog.blogspot.com