The US is Enron to me. I recently read "Smartest Guys In The Room" about Enron and the parallels with the US government right now are incredible and frightening. Great read if you get a chance...
The $USD is poo and becoming more poo - it lost 2% last week just on the hint the US might wrap up rate hikes (lies and more lies). Imagine what a 2% USD drop does to the books of a country like china?? or any of the other countries of the world who hold collectively 50% of their reserves in USD$ denominated issues... Did I hear mention of this on CNBC? Was it at all newsworthy the worlds foremost currency lost 2%. All I heard about was google and what a steal it is at 80X earnings....It is bordering on criminal how biased CNBC is and what a snow job they put up to disguise the fact that the US economy is in a lot of trouble.
U.S. has stopped publishing m3 data?? this reminds me of enron... its a shell game at this point. us has to raise 3 billion dollars a day to finance their deficit/debt. if they stop raising interest rates , which they cannot and absolutely won't, we are fubed.
when we do raise rates - 7%,8%,9%,10%,11%,12%,20% - the us housing market will go poof. 9 trillion in consumer mortgages . 2 trillion of this amount will be reset this year at 2+% higher interest rates this year. considering 40% of all newly issued mortgages are arms - and that the average net savings rate of the american consumer is negative - this will be the straw that breaks the camels back...
not helping is 75$ oil - which might as well round that up to 100$. I call GM and ford bankrupt in the next few years which symbolically will be the wake up call for those who don't quite see the writing on the wall yet.
We are at a precipice where the US is losing control of their world power. Brazil, Russia, India, China, growing at 10% +. Us 3%? minus 4-12% inflation (once the printing press really starts to finance our problems)... where would you put your money? I really noticed the shift of power this past week with China's president Hu treating georgy Push like a peasant-bitch (really more then georgy deserves) and telling him to look after his own poo currency and poo problems thank you very much.
Really the only thing we have going for us is all the commodities (esp oil) and currencies are USD based. THis forces a certain amount of participation in the USD for the time being. Isnt it proof positive of the woes of the US to see piles of money driving into the Euro - which is really quite hilarious considering how new and really unknown/unstable this currency is?
It's tough - because lately i actually see a lot of good value in cetain US companies. but tough to justify buying anything that is denominated in poo.
just a small terrorist push in the US could also be a catalyst in my opinion. its on such a verge i feel. just a slight push
the only positive in this for traders i can see is how easy it is to participate in other markets and currencies. i have been spending as much time as possible researching these alternatives.
Finally, the real proof to me is the insane strength is Gold. First real pullback in a while last week and it got gobbled up faster then jenna jameson on a nob.
i dunno - maybe being too negative about this stuff.... but call em like i see em???
With oil at $75 just need the ignition source.