The Newly Annointed Commander and Chief

This little poem sums up the results for Super Tuesday, of both the Democratic and Republican Party:


ANOINT, v.t.
To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood,
So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.

Judibras

Ron Paul on the coming Economic Collapse

Click here to watch the full interview 38.35min

How Should a Patriot Act?

As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, Bush has applied his claim to be above the law far beyond the issue of wiretaps. Bush has acted on the belief that he may seize anyone, even an American citizen living within the United States, and hold him as he deems fit in a military prison, there to be subject to harsh treatment that does not fall short of torture. Greenwald has rendered an inestimable service by his clear and cogent analysis of gross presidential usurpation of power. More...

The Real Scandal

HOW THE FEDS INVITED THE MORTGAGE MESS

PERHAPS the greatest scandal of the mort gage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards - done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.

At the crisis' core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards - no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness?

From the current hand-wringing, you'd think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards - at the behest of community groups and "progressive" political forces.

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What if House Prices Fall by 30% Worldwide?

by Gary North

In the midst of local house-buying manias, the classic mark of the end is when buyers line up to buy a house and bid against each other. This is the best way to sell a house and the worst way to buy one.

Why do buyers do this? Because they have missed out again and again by offering less than the listed price. The buyers who offered the listed price bought the house.

[I did this in February, 2005 for my home. The other family thought that $90,000 for a 4-bedroom house was too much to pay. They were wrong.]

Then the panic escalates. Those offering the listed price get left behind. They wait too long. "Too long" means more than one day after the house comes on the market. They hesitate. He who hesitates is lost in a seller's market.

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Shadow of European Slowdown Looming

LONDON (MarketWatch) - Central bankers meet Thursday in London and Frankfurt, shadowed by growing evidence that U.S. economic woes are threatening prospects for growth in the United Kingdom and in the 15 European nations that make up the euro currency.

While recession fears have seen the Federal Reserve downplay inflation worries to slash interest rates, the Bank of England has eased at a cautious pace and the European Central Bank has held its fire.

In recent weeks, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has signaled that slowdown worries slightly outweigh inflation concerns, analysts say, while ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has remained steadfast in emphasizing price stability as the all-encompassing concern of continental monetary policymakers.

Markets now widely expect the Bank of England to trim its key lending rate by a quarter point to 5.25% Thursday, while the ECB is still expected to hold its key rate steady at 4%.

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Taking a Dump

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is reporting that Switzerland's central bank is to dump a further 250 tons of gold. The stink you smell is manipulation.

There are two ways in which you can look at this situation:

1. Gold has continued to rise over the last seven years, amid Central Banksters dumping their Gold reserves. Without this overt manipulation, who knows where the price of Gold would have been today? Central Bank Inflation will continue to play a major role over the next couple of years. Trying to hide it by pushing down the price of Gold , will have the opposite effect on the price of Gold in the long run. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
2. Huge sell-offs like these might drive the price of Gold down, but inadvertantly, that creates an opportunity to buy more Gold at a lower price. Also, remember that the cost for mines to produce an ounce of Gold has gone up immensly. If the price of Gold is too low, there will be little incentive for mines to consider investing in future mining projects. On top of that, South-Africa's production levels are decreasing at an alarming rate. As of January 2008, China has overtaken SA as the world's number one gold producer.

Therefore, unlike the Central Banks, I don't have any intention of taking a Golden dump.

FMM comment: Please note that I'm not dishing out any investment advice. I'm just sharing my oppinion.