Here is a very profitable game that Saudi Arabia also can play.

southamerica, I cannot believe some of the stuff that you are writing, because it just seems so unbelievable and untrue

for example you suggest a breakthrough in flex-fuel technology by Brazilian car manufacturers, do you really mean the likes of GM, ford, volkswagen (they don't sound Brazilian to me)?

you obviously haven't driven through the ConocoPhillips refinery in Montana, if you did you would probably be the first to say it should be shut down (do me a favor and drive on I90 through Montana, I'm sure it will come as a shock to you)?

have you ever bought Brazilian government bonds, and do you know how easy or difficult it is to sell them?

those beloved Generals of yours obviously didn't confiscate your land and tell you to piss off, so that they could plant plenty of sugar cane for the people of their country and save the world from the oil companies (how patriotic or should i say pathetic)?

sounds like you never ran a business in your life, and may be it is better that you don't, you may corrupt yourself! (now wouldn't that be such a terrible thing)?
 
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1000: southamerica, I cannot believe some of the stuff that you are writing, because it just seems so unbelievable and untrue - for example you suggest a breakthrough in flex-fuel technology by Brazilian car manufacturers, do you really mean the likes of GM, ford, volkswagen (they don't sound Brazilian to me)?



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May 26, 2007

SouthAmerica: Reply to 1000

You are one of these people who need further clarification to be able to understand what I said on my posting.

I am going to tell you two secrets here – Please don’t spread this confidential information:

1) First, you said: “for example you suggest a breakthrough in flex-fuel technology by Brazilian car manufacturers”

Fiat is not a Brazilian car manufacturing company – Fiat is an Italian company.

2) Second, there is no Brazilian car manufacturing company in Brazil – all the car companies operating in Brazil are international companies such as GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda and so on….

The president of Fiat was sharing with the people present at the forum the experiences that his company (Fiat a Italian company) had in the Brazilian market and what they had to do to adjust to the needs of the local changing market. I am sure that the breakthrough in flex-fuel technology was not unique to Fiat in Brazil, and I am also sure that all the other international car manufacturers operating in Brazil are watching what each other are doing in Brazil.


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1000: have you ever bought Brazilian government bonds, and do you know how easy or difficult it is to sell them?



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SouthAmerica: today there is a market for just about anything – and you can find buyers and sellers at the right price.


**************


1000: those beloved Generals of yours obviously didn't confiscate your land and tell you to piss off, so that they could plant plenty of sugar cane for the people of their country and save the world from the oil companies (how patriotic or should i say pathetic)?



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SouthAmerica: Are you trying to imply that the generals confiscated the land for Brazil to be able to develop the ethanol system that we have today in Brazil?

You also said: “(how patriotic or should i say pathetic)?

The only thing that is Pathetic here is how you arrived to your conclusions.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the generals did not go around killing people and confiscating and chasing people out of their lands.

The generals did it by giving tax incentives for people to invest in that area of the economy and by helping the private sector in their effort of investing money in sugar cane production and ethanol.

Various members of my family were involved in large-scale sugar cane production and ethanol. They sold their ethanol refineries to international companies but they still own the land around these refineries and the sugar cane plantations and they have long-term contracts with the refineries to deliver the sugar cane raw materials.

No, there were no land confiscations in Brazil, and people were not chased out of their lands - other than for business reasons like in the United States when people go bankrupt for one reason or another and the bank take over their farm.


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SouthAmerica should understand that all this anti Free Market talks that he rants like a preprogrammed psychopath are actually showing his deep rooted hatred for something that he himself does not know about but subconciously has transformed or channeled that 'attitude of vengence' against US and Free Markets. South America you should visit some hypnosis expert who might find the real reason of your ONE-SIDED hatret towards US and any major item related to it. May be some GENERAL type teacher bashed your rear real bad and planted hatred in you mind.........check, seek and explore, you will find the answer of your obssesive thinking.

Former Socialist/Commie Countries like Russia, China, India, Brazil have doubled their GDPs in the last 15+ years, standards of living have gone up by far and now people have developed a self belief instead of 'fear of the future'. All this has to be credited to FREE MARKET practices adopted by these nations. In Russia's case some 'fly off the handle' type practices were adopted and they paid the price until Putin brought in more calculated, disciplined and solid approach from which Brazil, China, India benefited immensly and Russia is starting to now.

SA, to have opposing views is ok but you got to analyse situations with fair mind and practical thinking. There are several things that I do not like in Free Market set ups but when reaching the bottomline, we find that Free Market system when applied with good solid ethics and fairness can yield probably the best results for the human society.

I know that you will write a long long answer to this post, but other than accepting few points from the dozens presented by your one sided thinking, I will only be more than happy to wish some cure for your deep rooted hatred.
 
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May 26, 2007

SouthAmerica: Reply to Libertad


You said: “To be energy self sufficient...should be of the utmost importance to the sovereignty of any country...”

If I were the president of the United States I would make it a priority during my administration for the US to be energy self-sufficient ASAP.

You also said: “And now that Brazil has accomplished this....some Latin countries can follow suit and accomplish this....perhaps before the US has the ability to be energy independent...because of size and current usage requirements....”

It is very complex for the United States to change its ways regarding its energy usage.
In the United States it does not matter what the population wants - the lobbying class in Washington buys the politicians and the politicians follow what their masters tell them to do it.


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Cesko: My answer to you for attacking free market principles which, of course, are far from perfect. To single out one problem and make a general statement like the above proves again your total lack of common sense. Nothing new for the most other people on this site.


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SouthAmerica: I used to be very naïve and I used to believe on 100 percent free market solutions.

Today I am a realist and a lot more skeptical about free market thinking. I know that the free market is a tool for profit maximization and not to solve real problems – you don’t have to look further than the healthcare crisis that is ahead in the United States.

Free markets also need government regulations to be able to work properly and be useful in the long run.

OK you said I single out one problem and made a generalization…..

I give you another major problem that will blow up in the US financial markets just like a nuclear explosion – and the word meltdown comes to mind.

Here is an example of how stupid people have become around here:

First companies did not fund properly their pension funds when they had the chance, because most corporations play games with these things.

There are many reasons why these corporations ended up with pension funds that are away under funded based on their future obligations - and these American pension plans are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) - a US government agency responsible for insuring certain benefits under private defined benefit pension plans.

What the free market geniuses do today to correct the under funding on most of these pension funds in the United States?

In a desperate effort to help these under funded pension funds the US government decides to allow these pension plans to invest part of their US government insured moneys on an unregulated industry – the anything goes Hedge Fund industry – basically what they are doing is taking US taxpayers money and saying put the money on number 36 and let the roulette go and just hope for the best.

These unregulated Hedge Funds with their supposed high returns is the solution to solve the problem of under funding on all these pension funds.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that many of these Hedge Funds are going to gamble these pension plan moneys away – and latter these pension plans – now even more under funded after the Hedge Funds gambled their pension money away – these pension plans will turn to the US government and the taxpayers for a bailout.

The future taxpayer bailout of the pension plan industry it will make the US$ 200 billion Savings and Loan bailout of the late 1980’s look like petty cash.

How stupid you have to be to allow such a strategy?

In my opinion, it is a very stupid strategy to allow Hedge Funds in a completely unregulated industry to gamble away money insured by the US taxpayers.

You can’t get more stupid than that.

And we are just at the beginning of this colossal mistake.

All we can do it is laugh about of how dumb the system is becoming.

I know the current administration has a simple solution for that problem as follows:

Let the Hedge funds piss the money away then turn the pension obligations to the US government – then the US government borrows the money from China to finance its budget deficits – problem solved.

In another words let the Chinese hold the bag – at least as long the US government can get away with that strategy.


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May 26, 2007

SouthAmerica: Reply to Toc

I still believe in free market economy but with a certain amount of government regulation to keep things from getting out of control.

Here in the United States we preach free market economics to the rest of the world – including the free flow of goods, services and everything else.

Everybody is supposed to open their economies and let the free market set the price of everything like we do here in the United States – and we can prove to the world that we practice what we have been trying to preach to everybody else around the world.

Our economy is completely transparent a free market model for the world to copy it – we don’t have tariffs, we don’t use agriculture subsidies to distort our free market costs of production, and above all we believe on a free movement of labor and anybody around the world who wants to come and participate on this free market economy of ours all they have to do is show up and start working here.

By the way, Free Market also means free global movement of labor.

As you can see the United States has a completely Free Market economy - and I rest my case.


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Excellent Commentary As Usual.............

Another issue regarding free markets in some of the smaller Caribbean and Latin countries...is that if it were not for government mandates.....a free market could not take hold...

The reason being is that in smaller countries....you often have just a few people who control product imports...and they simply can make a couple of phone calls to collude pricing...

It is not until the public becomes belligerent that prices are forced down via government impositions....

In other words ...in the smaller economies they are just basically oligopolies....and keep competition at bay....Prices that would have normally come about through competion in larger economies...is basically government forced....

Thus the question is can the free market work by itself...or is government intervention necessary....

After all ...what is a reasonable profit...and should profits be controlled from time to time by government imposition...

Thus government just becomes part of the capitalist system....and some companies will meander to those countries who have the capability to deliver the best outcomes for their products....

I am very optimistic about capitalism...with some government participation....which moves in accord with public harmony...which in itself changes with regards to the voting process....Not perfect...but as good as it gets....

Capitalism is going to be similar to finding cheap oil by some countries ....Look at Chinas stock market...in its infancy...

With the worlds exchanges consolidating and going electronic...and the transaction side becoming a commodity via efficiency....More and more of the worlds population can have a piece of the capitalist pie....

And if they want to question whether or not it is a good thing ....then quickly look at the total value of those assets not under a capitalistic vail...and those under a capitalistic vail...

This is just a simple question of the direction towards more money for similar effort....and there is no question the direction can go further to the capitalist side....

Each country will need to optimize its own assets....and of course energy self sufficiency is paramount a countrys valuation and well being....
 
southamerica, you are off your trolley, or may be you should get on your bike

If there are buyers for every seller given the right price, then prove it, prove what price is right, prove price discovery, prove price stability, prove liquidation, prove arbitration. The point is that you cannot i.e. if China decided to correct the value of its currency by 50% (because that is how distorted it is), then what effect will it have (I am asking you)? do you know?

You are now saying that trading is gambling, what is your mathematical correlation, what outcomes have you looked at, what mathematical models do you draw that conclusion from?

You also haven't looked at insuring the whole economic system, do you really think that big oil are uninsured?
 
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Libertad: Thus the question is can the free market work by itself...or is government intervention necessary....


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May 26, 2007

SouthAmerica: It is hard for government intervention to work in most cases.

For example: In Brazil the generals designed the right policies with the right incentives to transform the energy market in Brazil. It took 30 years for them to refine the system and get to the point that they are today – it took a lot of hard work to develop the state-of-the-art system that Brazil has today and other countries around the world want to copy it.

Brazil got lucky and placed the right policies and developed a wonderful energy system based on sugar cane. The United States had the chance of doing something similar, but the US chose the wrong path – they chose the development of ethanol from corn.

Here is the free market at work – one country makes the right decision and the other the wrong decision.

Americans could have corrected the direction of their ethanol industry development because the American scientists have been aware of what was going on in Brazil. But the US free market system it did keep the US ethanol industry going in the wrong direction anyway – and Americans have not seen as yet today the full impact of that mistake on their food prices.

Never mind that today you get 10 times more ethanol from sugar cane than from corn – and in the near future that ratio will be even higher – sugar cane ethanol will have an advantage close to 15 to 1 versus corn.

Why the US made such a mistake and continues today making that mistake even bigger?

Because the US government did not adjust its subsidy programs accordingly to this new use of corn – the US government subsidies that were in the books were geared for food production and not for the new use of using corn to produce ethanol for our cars.

By the way, this heavily subsidized corn production in the US also helped kill the entire corn production system of Mexico after they implemented the NAFTA agreement in the 1990’s.

Countries also try intervention in the currency markets – Japan’s government is always trying to affect the price of their currency in world markets – but it is harder and harder to intervene in such way because of the amount of money required for such a task.

The Brazilian government also try very often to intervene in the currency markets by buying US dollars to slowdown the appreciation of the Real against the US currency.


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Libertad: After all ...what is a reasonable profit...and should profits be controlled from time to time by government imposition...


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SouthAmerica: The answer to your question is on my article published in September of 2006 - While the American Dream Is Outsourced Brazil Drives the World into the Future
http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/9684/78/

The actual answer is on that article where I mentioned what Peter Drucker wrote on "Modern Prophets" about Schumpeter's "creative destruction" economic theory.

By the way, government price and wage controls it doesn’t work in the long run.


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SouthAmerica: I am also very optimistic about the future since we are living through a major turning point in economic history. We have very exciting times just ahead of us and I can’t even imagine what kind of issues we will be discussing ten years from now when we look back to what happened during the prior ten years.

The article that I just mentioned above combined with what is happening regarding wiki technology – translates into a global roller coaster ride like never seen before.

"Wiki technology" changes everything.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91453



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1000: If there are buyers for every seller given the right price, then prove it, prove what price is right, prove price discovery, prove price stability, prove liquidation, prove arbitration. The point is that you cannot i.e. if China decided to correct the value of its currency by 50% (because that is how distorted it is), then what effect will it have (I am asking you)? do you know?


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SouthAmerica: We have been taking about the US and Brazilian economies – now you are changing the subject to include also China on this conversation.

We have a thread on this Forum where we discuss China – check out the thread: “The China Price”

By the way, the United States has a special economic arrangement with China anyway – China supplies the United States with cheap goods and cheap capital and in exchange the United States export to China millions of good paying American jobs.


*********


1000: You are now saying that trading is gambling, what is your mathematical correlation, what outcomes have you looked at, what mathematical models do you draw that conclusion from?


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SouthAmerica: No – you missed the point that I was trying to make.

What I was trying to say is that they should not allow pension money insured by an US government agency to be gambled away by the Hedge Funds or Private Equity firms, since these types of investment vehicles are not government regulated.

When you design a defined pension plan you have a very good idea of when you will have to pay the money out to the beneficiaries – and they should be restricted to what kinds of investments they can make to make sure that the cash flow will be there when needed to pay the benefits promised by the pension plan.

Hedge Funds and Private equity firms are basically just parasites trying to take short term advantages by sucking the blood out of the entire system for short term gains – these types of organizations are not planting the seeds for long term prosperity they are just a bunch of grave robbers.

You also can see a discussion on this subject at:

Hedge Funds and the U.S. Financial Markets.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61875


You also can read what I wrote about Private Equity firms on the following thread regarding the Forbes magazine article:
Here is why the world’s smart money is being invested in Brazil.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1277864&highlight=Forbes#post1277864



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1000: You also haven't looked at insuring the whole economic system, do you really think that big oil are uninsured?


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SouthAmerica: On the book “Wikinomics” that I mentioned above the author mention the possibility of the oil industry becoming a dinosaur overnight and he gives a few examples to illustrate his point.

I want to see the big oil companies get insurance for that.

The use of Wiki technologies might be the reason for the possible demise of the oil industry.

Read the book then you understand how it can be done.


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SA, the items that Socialist/Commie nations took pride into, like social nest etc. ARE TAKEN FOR GRANTED IN THE WEST (US, CANADA, UK, AUSTRALIA) ETC.

So end of the day, comparing Free Market structures implemented with ethics and discipline to any best of the best socialist experiment is like comparing a Tiger to a Wolf (at best).

I will have more to say if you try to compare a Tiger to atleast a Leopard or Puma or Panther or Tomkat etc.

Also, you mentioned Free Market is Free Movement of Labor, does this mean 75% of South America, Asia and Africa should pour and park inside the US/Canada etc.?

Wanna, do some experiment.....for one year give South America in the hands of the US (total total total transfer) and in return one year US in the hands of the 'Selected Best 25%' of the South Americans (again total total total transfer). End of the year, I can predict with 90% confidence that South America will be a better place to live than the US........because it was in the better hands!

So free movement of labor or horsebuggies has to be looked little deeper into!
 
Quote from southamerica:


Why the US made such a mistake and continues today making that mistake even bigger?

Because the US government did not adjust its subsidy programs accordingly to this new use of corn – the US government subsidies that were in the books were geared for food production and not for the new use of using corn to produce ethanol for our cars.
More...
because the US also has the job of supplying corn to the UN to feed 780 million people, who go hungry everyday

i guess, it isn't a job that brazil is too keen to take on, and china, russia and india are just to full of **** that probably don't need to think about that


Quote from southamerica:

By the way, this heavily subsidized corn production in the US also helped kill the entire corn production system of Mexico after they implemented the NAFTA agreement in the 1990’s.
More...
what happened to CAFTA?


Quote from southamerica:

SouthAmerica: We have been taking about the US and Brazilian economies – now you are changing the subject to include also China on this conversation.

We have a thread on this Forum where we discuss China – check out the thread: “The China Price”

By the way, the United States has a special economic arrangement with China anyway – China supplies the United States with cheap goods and cheap capital and in exchange the United States export to China millions of good paying American jobs.
More...
i was only trying to make a point about currency manipulation and why it may happen and its consequences, and, it just so happens at this present moment that china is making a mockery of it

the US became wealthier during the Regan years because during his administration, the WTO rules were implemented as they should have been, but never since, and that is why no one goes around saying "you would have been really lucky to be in the stock market after the 80s"


Quote from southamerica:

SouthAmerica: No – you missed the point that I was trying to make.

What I was trying to say is that they should not allow pension money insured by an US government agency to be gambled away by the Hedge Funds or Private Equity firms, since these types of investment vehicles are not government regulated.

Hedge Funds and Private equity firms are basically just parasites trying to take short term advantages by sucking the blood out of the entire system for short term gains – these types of organizations are not planting the seeds for long term prosperity they are just a bunch of grave robbers.
More...
the above, about hedge and private equity funds, suggests that you are just guessing, i am sure that there is an SEC and a CFTC to protect the market
http://www.cftc.gov/cftc/cftcabout.htm
http://www.sec.gov/
 
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