From OpEd News:

“Ahmadinejad warned that the mainstream media in the West has grown to become more dangerous and more threatening than any chemical or nuclear weapons.
“The media campaign has turned into a full-fledged war. I believe the West’s abundant arsenals of chemical and nuclear weapons are there to deceive and intimidate,” he said.
According to President Ahmadinejad, unbiased media does not exist in the West. “Claims of freedom of press are all lies, each and every one of the western media outlets serve the interests and policies of their states,” he said.“When I was in New York for the General Assembly, I was interviewed by several news networks, all of which asked the exact same set of questions,” he said.
“I asked them how can you call yourself an independent media, when all the questions you are asking me have been clearly dictated by your governments. Which one of these questions are posed in the interest of your people?” he noted.

My Comment:

I can’t speak to Ahamadinjad’s other positions. But on the media, he is one hundred percent correct. Mind control is a bigger threat than climate change…or the bankers…or anything else, since it’s fundamental to all of them – hence this blog.

This is an interesting piece from the end of August, published at Seeking Alpha, by Wayne Corbitt:

“In the chart below, I have plotted a spread between FXM (Mexican Peso – a riskier currency) and FXF (Swiss Franc – a more stable, defensive currency). When the black line is rising, money is flowing into the peso more than the franc, which is a sign that traders are embracing risk. When the black line is falling, more money is flowing into the franc and away from the peso, which says that traders are moving away from risk. I have also plotted the MSCI World Index [MSWORLD] as the red dashed line to show world equity performance in relation to the currency spread.Notice back in November/December 2008 (on the left side of the chart) how MSWORLD rallied while traders were moving away from risk in the currency markets. That party lasted about six weeks before the move away from risk caught up to equities. MSWORLD subsequently dropped 28% to its March low.

Following the volatility surrounding the March low, the spread and MSWORLD got back in synch in early July and moved higher together. Since early August, however, the spread and MSWORLD have been diverging badly, demonstrating that risk is once again being taken off the table. This is saying that the world-wide liquidity driven rally may be near its end.

When equities rise while traders are moving away from risk, there is not enough fuel in the tank to support prices at very extended levels. This is one more warning sign that must be heeded.”

My Comment:

This is a very interesting piece, but I must confess I’m in two minds about things.

On the one hand, I do believe that all the fundamentals, and many technical factors, call for a correction in the market rally (a bear rally) – and a substantial one. I think “green shoots” is simply PR.
On the other hand, there are other technical and economic data that are promising. And I think the powers-that-be are fundamentally committed to pushing up stocks.

So which of these two sides wins?

It’s a tug-of-war, with deflationists generally on the side of a negative outlook on equities going forward. I’m on that side, but I’m also not a theorist. And I have a suspicion of theories in this environment. I’d rather look at things and figure out how I want to position myself for the next 3 months going forward. Sometimes that works out, and sometimes not.

So, I can feel negative about the economic picture and still see why some people like Jim Grant and Marc Faber seem to feel investing in stocks makes sense over the next three years. I’m wondering if there isn’t so much concerted effort being put into this that the market might indeed be propped up further, despite the problems in the commercial real estate sector.

(By the way, in one extended analysis of the credibility of prognosticators, Faber is ahead of the pack, being right a bit more than half the time; Peter Schiff and Robert Prechter were pretty low down, being wrong more often than not, and considerably wrong). So you can be a pretty smart macro analyst (like Prechter) but be a pretty bad financial adviser.

The recent severe flooding in India has displaced millions of people, killed hundred, and seem to be a sinister portent of worse to come, in a country that already has a full plate of problems. Time Magazine, of course, tells us it’s due to climate change. How far that is true or not, I don’t know, but it’s also clear that government inefficiency (there is no systematic method of water storage), the destruction of small-scale farming leading to soil erosion, practices of deforestation by developers and nomadic herdsmen, have contributed a lot. However, I suspect there’s more to the story than meets the eye. When something shows up on a Time magazine cover in this way, whatever the merits of the issue, it’s usually been harnessed into state propaganda. Tell-tale signs of that may be the fact that the climate change expert quoted is a government outfit (IPCC), not an academic one, and that the ubiquitous Peterson Institute is also in the picture. Also connected to the Peterson Institute is Nandan Nilekani, ex-CEO of Infosys (India’s Microsoft), now the head of the Indian government effort to create a biometric ID (about which I blogged here).

More digging warranted….

From Time Magazine:

“Although flooding has recently become commonplace in India – in 2008, over 3 million people were displaced when the Kosi river in Bihar burst its banks – but this year’s deluge came as a shock because if followed a protracted drought, and a monsoon season branded a dud by the authorities. To experts who’ve tracked the effects of climate change, however, the flooding came as no surprise. In its fourth assessment report in 2007, the Inter- Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that more extreme droughts, floods, and storms, would become commonplace in the future, and that these intense weather conditions would follow in close succession to each other, often in the same areas. ….Meager monsoons mean meager crops, and meager income, for Indian farmers. This year alone, the loss to crop yields and property in the two states has totaled almost $7 million. Dr. William Cline, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics says that of all the potential damage that could occur from climate change, damage to agriculture is likely to be the most devastating. “In the southern parts of India, damage will be substantial and similar to that in other countries also located close to the equator,” he says. “In these locations, where temperatures are already at high levels, an increase in temperature will surpass crop tolerance levels.”
Already, food shortages have become a major concern for the government, as the retail prices of vegetables shoot up. Damage to the onion crop in the recent floods, for example, saw the vegetable’s price double within days.”

– More at Time Magazine.

I read this recently in a gold newsletter:

“More importantly, if I own gold, a peasant buying gold in China can directly affect the value of my holdings through the increase in demand when he buys it in his local village since we are both holding the same thing!”

Well, these are sweet thought to gold bugs, but the vast majority of peasants and rural workers in China can’t afford anything beyond subsistence. Gold may benefit from middle and upper class savings. But I am not sure Indian demand can keep up with the prices.

Having now lived in about a dozen countries (counting living as spending more time than a couple of weeks), and having window-shopped for property in all of them, here are a few things that I’ve learned.

1. Property websites differ widely. In some, the offerings are updated regularly and reflect current prices. Others are dated. Some carry photos for years after the property has been sold. So, if you write and don’t get an answer fairly promptly, move on.

2. Make a phone call whenever you can. Many sellers don’t take emails seriously. Or they’re tired of long explanations to scores of strangers who aren’t really interested. After the first few emails, get on the phone and talk to the owner or the broker.

3. Ask questions. But don’t ask just about what you’re interested in. Ask macro questions about the area, the market, other cities, demographics, employment.

4. Don’t ask so many questions that you don’t have time to listen to what the broker is telling you. Good brokers have a wide knowledge of the market and even a casual phrase can save you hours of research on your own.  Tap into professional knowledge whenever you can.

5. Don’t reveal too much of your own plans. It’s premature and can sabotage your ability to negotiate (this is often hard for me, being a rather open person). On the other hand, being too cagey provokes caginess in others too.

6. Don’t assume anything. Sometimes working directly with the owner does save you money. Sometimes, it can end up being costlier. Brokered properties are not necessarily more expensive. Brokers often have a better idea of a good sale price than owners. Many an owner has put his house on the market at an inflated price only to have it sit there for months. Then he has to reduce the price, and by then, the market has moved on.

7. Don’t be pressured into buying. If the broker has other offers coming in, don’t rush to beat them. Offer what you think you’re willing to pay, and if someone else offers more, then that’s the way the game went. There’ll be another chance some where else.

8. When you have done your research long enough, make your move. Endlessly nitpicking something is a dead-end. There’s likely to be some draw-back to buying any piece of property. You get the architecture you want, but along with it comes plumbing problems; the location with good rental returns might not have as good capital appreciation as the location with the good rentals; the glorious facade might open into a boxy lay-out; you love the terrace, but the bathrooms are pokey. That’s life.

9. Read up on real estate procedure and verify with locals exactly what needs to be done at each step. It would be a shame to lose a property because you didn’t get a piece of paper right.

10. Be very clear about your goals. Are you buying it for rent or for profit or because you always wanted to own a piece of beautiful architecture?

11. Be very clear about your feelings. Some people might be willing to lose money fixing an old building. Would you? On the other hand, would you enjoy owning something cheaper and plainer in a frumpy area? Only you know your tolerance level for different things.

My position is that the dollar bear is being over-hyped (despite the bad fundamentals) and manipulated, and as a consequence, I’ve been a dollar contrarian. I still kick myself for selling my initial gold long position way back in 2006 (I bought some in 2004) and then never regaining it because I was still convinced it would go lower. It did, but I wasn’t paying attention when it did. In trading, you can’t go long stretches doing other things and not watching the prices. The bullion banks both short and go long gold, in ways calculated to pick the pockets of the naive. Here’s a good analysis by Stewart Thomson at 321gold:

“The key point is that the US dollar bear market is now entering the stage of a publicly recognized and PROMOTED bear market. As of right NOW, you will start to hear from business owner investor acquaintances about the US dollar bear market. These idiots will parrot the Bloomberg stories, nodding their heads up and down, completely ignoring the fact that the dollar is down about 35% from the highs set about 7 yrs ago. NOW they show up and notice there’s a problem with the US dollar? We are in the later, most horrific stage of the US dollar bear market. The stage where the banksters begin buying USD with their infinitely deep pockets, while the institutions and public bail in terror and accelerate their doomed-to-fail leveraged carry trade scheme. Soon the banksters will be selling OTC derivatives on the US buck shorts, collecting, fees and interest before finally burning the thing into the ground via a new gold standard that will end the US dollar short party like a tomato hitting a cement wall.

15. It’s very important to stay focused on what the charts are indicating and buying gold weakness and selling gold strength only. This is the largest bankster play ever, as they load up on the US dollars sold by the bustout dollar bag holders worldwide who follow the bankster propaganda that the USD is “finished for the long term.”

16. We even have the head of the World Bank calling the USD a sell now, 7 years after the top. Then he says, “by the way, I’ve bankrupted the entire world bank, but I know the US Dollar is now in a bear market, 7 years after the top.” Gee, I wonder why his bank is worthless. He says what he’s paid to say to create WORLDWIDE panic and hysteria concerning the USD. The banksters are ready for the next stage of profit booking on their giant gold long positions as part of their plan to take over the major holdings of the US dollar.

17. They are looking to create fear in the US dollar market, and succeeding tremendously in terms of time and in terms of volume of fear. All it takes is for a tiny portion of the US dollars to make their way towards the gold market, a tiny portion of allocation by the institutions, and you have immediate mindblowing volatility in the gold market. There are hundreds of institutional traders handling vastly more money than that held by all the GCMs. If you are shorting gold, you must be prepared to handle price moves of $100, even $200 during a single day’s trading.

18. My strongest suggestion if you ARE short gold, is that you move towards trades drastically smaller than you are trading now. Few investors alive today understand what is coming in the gold market. The gold community has called almost every single top and bottom wrong. There’s one thing not a single person in the gold community has called wrong: The Big Picture. That makes you smarter in many ways that 99% of the world’s largest money managers. Take your credit. It is due.

19. Once the banksters have pointed terrified institutions towards gold, they will then seek to alternate bullish and bearish news to create massive whipsaw action. The banksters’ “grand slam” will be announcing that the “recovery” was in fact a warm-up act for their Trillion Dollar OTCD Main Act. “OTCD” being Over-The-Counter Derivatives. Once the economy is announced to be imploding via a truckload of new multi trillion dollar OTCD failures, the US Dollar bear market will not reverse. It will accelerate at hyperspeed. Gold’s rise will create terror amongst institutional investors that financial Armageddon is upon them. They understand full well what happens to gold if they all charge in at the same time. Many will turn to gold stocks to appear less panicked than they are.

20. There will be no “gold rush” for the public. They will be too busy screaming for President Obama to print more money to save them from the financial black hole they are in. In the meantime, it is more important that you continue to watch the charts for REAL overbought and oversold conditions. Don’t tell yourself excuses to buy or sell gold when the clear picture on the charts is not what you are pretending it is, what you want it to be.

21. I’ve heard a million reasons from many investors WHY gold will go up or down for the next leg. Who cares. Place your buys and sells in response to whether it IS up or down. All else will fail you….”

Sometimes identity does matter. I notice that in all the public commentary from France on Polanski, only a woman took into account the feelings and wishes of the victim:

“Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie was one of the few leading figures here to mention Polanski’s victim in her appraisal of Polanski’s case. The former justice minister said it “poses a problem” that the U.S. is still seeking his extradition – since Geimer herself wants to move on…”

For me, the issue is one of privacy – intrusion into both Polanski’s and Samantha G.’s privacy, at a point when any public interest in the matter has vanished long decades ago. Polanski’s “genius” is irrelevant or very little relevant; American puritanism is even less relevant. Americans are free to be as puritanical as they wish to be.

“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by its private citizens”

– Alexis de Tocqueville

More extensive child abuse than any committed by Polanski is the child abuse committed by Madeleine Albright:

“Did Maddow ask about Albright’s help in the starvation of a million Iraqis because of Saddam Hussein’s “WMDs”? Nope. Her statement that the killing of 400,000 Iraqi children through murderous Bush I-Clinton I sanctions was “worth it”? Nope. Meanwhile, Albright hopes to help kill Iranian children and adults because of Iranian “WMDs,” and Maddow is helping her. Can you believe I was dumb enough, when I listened to her old radio show, to think Maddow was pro-peace? Is she a neocon like Albright? No. Like virtually all progressives, she is a bloodthirsty warmonger when the Democrats do the murder.”

Blog post from Lew Rockwell.

My Comment

I’d correct the “all progressives” part. I think many progressives were unhappy with the sanctions, but didn’t know where else to go but the Democrat party. They’re just not convinced that the right is sufficiently critical of the corporate part of the corporate-state. I’ve always thought Rachel Maddow was smart. But she’s too much a part of the academic-government complex to criticize it effectively.