Fleckenstein: The market is unshortable

[Maverick74]

You may be one of the few who regards my politics as orthodox. That makes me smile, because the rest think I'm a flaming communist. Just what is Schiff's time frame? I've always assumed it incorporates between now and when the Sun burns out. Correct me if I wrong, but isn't his message basically the Fed is screwing up, the sky is falling, buy gold, preferably from schiffgold.com.

No. Let me try a different approach. Let's change Schiff's name to Al Gore. And let's change the Fed to the environment. Al has been screaming that the sky is falling for a very long time. In fact I do believe he said NY would be under water shortly. He basically said it's too late, we're all going to die. Of course an ancillary benefit to his screaming is that he has become disgustingly wealthy scaring people into giving him their money. Al Gore will die a rich man. And NY will still be dry when he dies.

Now....do I believe he is wrong? In the long run, in the very long run, he is probably right. The world needs to properly pay for carbon. Carbon has been under priced for a very long time. This has led to over consumption of it. This has led to social costs which have not been properly bared. One day, not all, but many of the things he has spoken of will likely bear fruit. And I think he deep down he knows that it will never happen in his lifetime. But he has none the less chosen to profit from it. Judge him how you will.

Now are there some short term signs that there are problems to come in the environment? Absolutely. Are there some short term signs there are problems in our monetary policy? Absolutely. Is the world going to crash tomorrow? No, and neither will NY be under water tomorrow. In the future, there will be serious costs to pay for both our monetary policy and our environmental policy. Can and should we start making those changes today? Sure, it's cheaper to address problems early rather than late.

But Al Gore (who I presume you support) and Peter Schiff (who I presume you don't) are the same person. Al Gore has just been more successful at monetizing fear then Schiff. Both will probably be vindicated to some degree in the long run. Both will be properly mocked in the short run. Nothing is new here Piezoe. In the long run, all market distortions return to the mean. This one will be a real bitch when it does. Enjoy the show!

 

[piezoe]

No. Let me try a different approach. Let's change Schiff's name to Al Gore. And let's change the Fed to the environment. Al has been screaming that the sky is falling for a very long time. In fact I do believe he said NY would be under water shortly. He basically said it's too late, we're all going to die. Of course an ancillary benefit to his screaming is that he has become disgustingly wealthy scaring people into giving him their money. Al Gore will die a rich man. And NY will still be dry when he dies.

Now....do I believe he is wrong? In the long run, in the very long run, he is probably right. The world needs to properly pay for carbon. Carbon has been under priced for a very long time. This has led to over consumption of it. This has led to social costs which have not been properly bared. One day, not all, but many of the things he has spoken of will likely bear fruit. And I think he deep down he knows that it will never happen in his lifetime. But he has none the less chosen to profit from it. Judge him how you will.

Now are there some short term signs that there are problems to come in the environment? Absolutely. Are there some short term signs there are problems in our monetary policy? Absolutely. Is the world going to crash tomorrow? No, and neither will NY be under water tomorrow. In the future, there will be serious costs to pay for both our monetary policy and our environmental policy. Can and should we start making those changes today? Sure, it's cheaper to address problems early rather than late.

But Al Gore (who I presume you support) and Peter Schiff (who I presume you don't) are the same person. Al Gore has just been more successful at monetizing fear then Schiff. Both will probably be vindicated to some degree in the long run. Both will be properly mocked in the short run. Nothing is new here Piezoe. In the long run, all market distortions return to the mean. This one will be a real bitch when it does. Enjoy the show!

I am not in Al's fan club. Not only do I think Schiff is perennially wrong about almost everything, but I consider him to be an annoying huckster on the level of a Donald Trump.

My particular position with regard to the climate issue is that we don't know yet whether globally the atmosphere is warming. It appears to be warming a bit in some regions and cooling a bit in others. It is abundantly obvious we have insufficient data compared to the variance to decide this issue within acceptable error bounds. The surface based and satellite temperature measurements -- which are under different directorships -- are in fairly good agreement before the surface based measurements are "corrected". After correction the two data sets don't agree. I consider only the satellite data to be reliable with regard to global measurement, though it perhaps contains still some small systematic error. I am convinced, regardless of what may be happening to temperature, that CO2 is a very minor contributor, that feedback to any temperature change caused by rising CO2 is negative, not positive, as required by the Hansen hypothesis, and that the Hansen hypothesis is therefore -- and for a host of other compelling reasons -- wrong. It has been proven wrong beyond any doubt by observations made in recent years. Because Hansen continues to harp on his conjecture even after having been proved wrong, I consider his behavior most un-scientist like and am beginning to regard him as a quack. The opinions among those atmospheric physicists and meteorologists active in climate research are all over the map! There is no consensus among those most expert. Any consensus is among the general public and scientists on the periphery, fueled by the public media, unknowledgeable political discourse, and badly bungled IPCC reports. When one reads the primary literature, one gets a vastly different picture than is presented by the media. One can not do good science in a public forum.

There may be perfectly sound reasons for cutting back on fossil fuel consumption and moving toward more bio-compatible energy sources. But when we do that, as a scientist, I'd like it to be for the right reasons.

 

[bashatrader]

Also all the patents have already been filed.

 

[Arnie]

Have any of you met a real Gold bug in person? They are one of a kind.....