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ARCHIVED DISCUSSION FROM 3/29/2003
All times are U.S. Mountain Time
(Yesterday's Discussion.)
mikal
(3/29/03; 23:23:55MT - usagold.com msg#: 100551)
Elements of global trade flows and the U.S. dollar
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_14/b3827029_mz010.htm
APRIL 7, 2003
BUSINESS OUTLOOK
U.S.: Lest We Forget: No Economy Is an Island -Excerpts:
"When the war ends, the U.S. will need trade partners more than ever.....
But there is a new issue in the outlook. Whether the war is short or long, at its end the White House must either repair its political relations around the world, especially in Europe, or face the economic consequences of its unilateral way of thinking. Assuring that the rebuilding of Iraq is a globally inclusive effort would be a step in the right direction, a topic that was surely discussed on Mar. 26-27, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with President Bush.....
Over the past year, the dollar's decline has been most acute against the euro, with a plunge of 25%. Compared with a much broader basket of currencies, though, the greenback has fallen only 4.5% (chart). Plus, the dollar is still more than 20% above its level of the mid-1990s, suggesting room for further downward adjustment in the coming year.....
The increasing urgency of America's growing external debt and its pressure on the dollar was evident in the fourth-quarter current account deficit, which showed a quarterly gap of $136.9 billion. At an annual rate, that's a record 5.2% of gross domestic product, an unsustainable trend, even given the U.S.'s high productivity, favorable cost structure, and powerful position in the world. Also, deficits of that size accruing to only one country create a threat to global economic stability.
A NEW AND DISTURBING TREND in the current account data is the growing imbalance of investment income. Because its external debt is so large, the income from interest and dividends that the U.S. pays foreigners on their holding of stateside assets now exceeds the income America earns on its assets abroad.....
By James C. Cooper & Kathleen Madigan"
Cometose
(3/29/03; 23:00:57MT - usagold.com msg#: 100550)
sector
Rumsfield is going to get his in NEW YORKER on Monday morning .....Excerpts from Drudge make your pan of this whole mess look not so surreal . Every one is going to get a reality check and perception boost in the next couple of weeks.....I completely agree with you these jerks not following their intelligence advice ......
Today we learn their are supply shortages of water and fuel and men and women on the front are down to one meal aday rations........
ARe there any CLOSERS out there? Any Pattons? Any Macarthurs????? YOU are wanted at the PENTAGON.......
THE computer when evaluating the Parameter screens for this war ....within the first 5 minutes came up with an answer.... and guidance......the response wasn't NO!!!!
IT WAS "HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!" with emphasis added....
a derivation on the same theme of your last comment on your post......
Who benefits when the decision is made to pursue a "bad war".......??????
mikal
(3/29/03; 22:48:44MT - usagold.com msg#: 100549)
Iraq oil problems compounded by war, history, neglect
http://www.businessweek.com
MARCH 27, 2003 WAR IN IRAQ -Excerpts:
Iraq's Oil: Good News And Bad Few wells are on fire, but most are in terrible disrepair. That means dreams of creating a super-giant among oil exporters are years away.....
If Iraq's oil industry manages to come through the war relatively unscathed, that would clearly mean good news for the occupying powers -- and for the future Iraq government.
A NEW NO. 2? Allied troops have largely secured Iraq's southern Rumaila field as well as export terminals on the Persian Gulf. Only the fate of the Kirkuk field in the north remains unclear. Barring setbacks, Iraq should be able to gradually resume exports, which have been halted, after the war ends. That could eventually free up some $14 billion in annual revenue.....
Still, the industry is under "severe stress," according to a U.N. report published in 2000. Trying to produce too much oil without sufficient maintenance has permanently damaged fields and led to their decline.....
The result: Production capacity has been declining by 4% to 8% a year, according to a recent study by Washington-based consultants PFC Energy. And it is likely to decrease further -- not increase -- in the near term. "The Iraqis face a mammoth task in just stabilizing production and rehabilitating the existing sector, never mind building more capacity," says Raad Alkadiri, a PFC Energy analyst. At least two years will be required to restore production to 2002 levels of 2.8 million barrels because most of the industry's infrastructure needs to be replaced.....
Only with tens of billions of dollars in capital, most likely to come from the international oil companies, can Iraq move up to the production big leagues. Yet the recent history of oil development in the region is not encouraging. OPEC quotas have discouraged countries from spending the billions needed to boost capacity. And oil inspires feelings of nationalism that impede the sort of profit-sharing arrangements that big petroleum companies seek. An inability to agree on how to develop reserves has held back dealmaking not only in Iran but also in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. "Hell will freeze over before we get a decent deal in the Middle East," says one top oil executive. If a new regime in Baghdad succumbs to similar nationalism, negotiating development programs may prove complicated indeed.....
By Stanley Reed in Kuwait City, with Laura Cohn in Doha, Qatar"
sector
(3/29/03; 22:25:50MT - usagold.com msg#: 100548)
Mr. G -- Next Week
Maybe yes maybe no for gold but for sure...FIREWORKS
Blair, Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz...short timers. UK Papers bomb Blair tomorrow...all the papers. Coup-de-grace.
The rest of the World is preparing a economic coalition against Bush.
Nigeria has already threatened to cut off US oil shipment, never a mind change to Euros. That's a little over 1 million bbls per day at their social-unrest reduced output. When they didn't support the Iraq war the US cut off their military aid the next day.
With the Venz running at less than half cap [Down 1.5 million bbls/day] that 3 million bbls /day is a fair chunk of our 19.8 million per day needs. Then we have uncertainty about Iraq's 1/2 million per day let alone the war booty of pipeline extras and the Kurd/Turkey mess up North.
Mexico has already announced the sale of their foreign exchange dollars [$50 Billion]. The Saudis will wait and then join the winning side.
The World has now seen that the President is, well...stupid. For ignoring both his intelligence agencies[DIA/CIA], Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State, firing [in an impulsive rage] his Secretary of Treasury and economic advisor for questioning the war costs [$200,000-Dec5th], announced the de facto termination of the UN and NATO and instead, ram-rodded an invasion plan pushed by Defense Advisory Board members with deep business and regional religious conflicts of interest.
The World does not want to hitch its wagon to that kind of impending train wreck [The dollar]. The mismanagement of the US is now in full, neon-light view.
The only remaining unanswered question for the World is what was the real war motive? That question will not go away.
Fireworks.
mikal
(3/29/03; 22:25:10MT - usagold.com msg#: 100547)
@21mabry
Thank you. The IMF is definately a tool. Their officials blatantly parrot out of both sides of their mouths. Ritualistically they misrepresent the health of the world's economy year after year. So they've become a parody of themselves, a burlesque and recently a bloody phantasmagoria.
No self-respecting reporter even quotes them any more than necessary to cover major stories and knowing that politically incorrect reporting wouldn't be printed.
21mabry
(3/29/03; 21:53:59MT - usagold.com msg#: 100546)
last quote I promise
'' The currency markets dictate the health of nearly all the other markets of the world.This is one area where having some understanding behind your charts is a real benefit. A currency crisis tends to whose focus is only on stocks off guard in a devestating way.'' From what I get from her, when the currency markets sneeze all other markets catch a cold,and no matter what markets you trade you must watch and understand the currency markets.
Mr Gresham
(3/29/03; 21:50:48MT - usagold.com msg#: 100545)
Forum contrary indicator, or, when all's quiet...
Only 23 posts today (24, counting this) : => : gold bust-out next week. (Seat of the pants, non-historical, non-analysis...)
21mabry
(3/29/03; 21:41:21MT - usagold.com msg#: 100544)
quote
Her predictions are of major currency crisis in the future as a result of the IMF side stepping the asian crisis.She states never turn your back on a currency crisis,you will only face a more sever one down the road.She states the IMF is the vehicle the U.S. TREASURY uses to interven in developing countries. She uses Mexico in 1994, and Korea in 1997 as examples and then discusses them.This woman is plugged in and knows whats going on.
21mabry
(3/29/03; 21:30:32MT - usagold.com msg#: 100543)
quote
''China's economy rests on a bubble of speculation fueled by excessive American bank lending for risky low return investments.America sees China as a growth market so american companies in particular those with export development expectations,would be hammered in a devaluation on several front lines.'' she is speaking about chinas threat to the IMF to devalue its currency during and after the asian crisis in the late 1990s
21mabry
(3/29/03; 21:21:25MT - usagold.com msg#: 100542)
quote
Mikal, here is a few quotes from her book.''one of the key signals that the world is losing faith in the strongest currencies is the growing upward trend in gold.''''What happened to the nasdaq in 2000 2001 is what will happen to the DJIA if a major currency crisis occurs.'' ''currency crisis will have a ripple effect on commodities interest rates and stocks.'' she is writing in 2001.
mikal
(3/29/03; 21:15:01MT - usagold.com msg#: 100541)
Growing "Cash Pile" looking for best ROI(return on investment)
http://www.reuters.com
Sat March 29, 2003 03:42 PM ET By Dena Aubin
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Excerpts: "U.S. investors yearning for higher returns and disheartened by the skimpy yields on money market mutual funds are being urged by some financial firms to shift cash into short-term bond funds. But others say that is absolutely the wrong move.....
Stung by losses in the stock market, Americans are getting warier with their investment dollars, so much so that assets in money market funds and bank savings accounts have topped $5 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve and iMoneyNet Inc. of Westborough, Massachusetts. The cash pile is becoming a subject of debate as financial firms push alternatives to low-yielding money market funds. "Short-term bond funds are not alternatives to money market mutual funds," said Bruce Bent II, president of the Reserve Funds. "You have to assume you can have some volatility in both directions, i.e., lose principal." Paul McCulley, a portfolio manager at PIMCO, the world's biggest bond fund, said in a report on the company's Web site that investors are "irrationally" parking too much money in cash in their search for perfect liquidity. For just a little more risk, investors could improve returns by shifting cash from money market mutual funds and into short-term bond funds, McCulley said.....
Many short-term bond funds stick with high-quality assets, but others buy at the lower rungs of the investment-grade spectrum to make themselves competitive and cover their higher fees, said Eric Jacobson, a Morningstar analyst.
MONEY FUND ASSETS SHRINK
"If you're buying a fund like that, it's worth realizing that you are making a very big step away from a money market fund," he said. Another risk is that short-term bond funds can suffer when interest rates rise, he said. They are less sensitive to rate increases than long-term bonds, yet both can lose money, he said."
mikal
(3/29/03; 20:14:32MT - usagold.com msg#: 100540)
"Practice makes perfect"?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,924172,00.html
BBC chiefs stress need to attribute war sources
Claims and counter-claims in the media
Ciar Byrne Friday March 28, 2003 -Excerpts:
"BBC news chiefs have met to discuss the increasing problem of misinformation coming out of Iraq as staff concern grows at the series of premature claims and counter claims by military sources. As a result the corporation has reinforced the message to correspondents that they must clearly attribute information to the military when it has not been backed up by another source. "There's been a discussion about attribution and it's been reinforced with people that we do have to attribute military information," said a BBC spokeswoman. "We have to be very careful in the midst of a conflict like this one to be very sure when we're reporting something we've not seen with our own eyes that we attribute it," she added.
On nearly every day of the war so far there have been reports that could be seen as favourable to coalition forces, which have later turned out to be inaccurate.....
"We're absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding they're not true. The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I've covered, including the first Gulf war and Kosovo," said a senior BBC news source. "On Saturday we were told they'd taken Basra and Nassiriya and then subsequently found out neither were true. We're getting more truth out of Baghdad than the Pentagon at the moment. Not because Baghdad is putting out pure and morally correct information but because they're less savvy about it, I think.....
Earlier this week the BBC's director of news, Richard Sambrook, admitted it was proving difficult for journalists in Iraq to distinguish truth from false reports, and that the pressures facing reporters on 24-hour news channels had led to premature or inaccurate stories."
TownCrier
(3/29/03; 20:13:57MT - usagold.com msg#: 100539)
Cometose
There have been some Sunday-Wednesday flashbacks or flareups which have been extinguished.
TownCrier
(3/29/03; 20:09:47MT - usagold.com msg#: 100538)
Note: the warnings pointed to are with respect to inflationary, not deflationary, likelihood
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=47926&Sn=BUSI
HEADLINE: Top bankers defend ECB monetary policy
(excerpts)
ECB's chief economist Otmar Issing in a speech:
"Truly optimal monetary policy cannot avoid that, at times, strains in the financial system might be such that deviations from the desired inflation rate during shorter periods of time have to be accepted in order to preserve price stability over the medium to long term," he said to an audience in Basle.
------(from url)------
Again, as a legitimate risk, deflation is not in the cards.
Cometose
(3/29/03; 20:09:18MT - usagold.com msg#: 100537)
TEST
TOWN CRIER:
COULD YOU GIVE ME A CONFIRMATION OF YOUR INTERCEDING ON MY BEHALF. If NOT WE COULD BE HAVING NETWORK DIFFICULTIES.
ONE PING ONLY ........
THANKS,
COMETOSE
mikal
(3/29/03; 19:56:57MT - usagold.com msg#: 100536)
@21Mabry
That TA sounds interesting. Can you please put up a relevant quote or two from her book? Thank you!
21mabry
(3/29/03; 19:37:10MT - usagold.com msg#: 100535)
(No Subject)
I have started reading a book about technical analysis.The author is a Constance Brown the book was written in 2001.In what I have read so far she said dollar would decline steeply'she predicted a nice rise in gold peaking in july of 2003 has some interesting work on currencies and the IMF.Much of what she said was going to happen has.
Boilermaker
(3/29/03; 14:24:21MT - usagold.com msg#: 100530)
Prophetic Analysis from 1996?
http://www.bdg.minsk.by/cegi/N2/Afg/Waraf.htm
snip;
It is increasingly apparent that the more likely type of war that the United States may become involved in during the next twenty years is guerrilla war. The success of the technicals in Somalia and the paramilitary forces in Bosnia suggest that it is in the best interests of U.S. military professionals to review the lessons of the last guerrilla war in which a super power was involved. Afghanistan is both past and prologue.
Soviet military power meets the Afghan warrior society
Fifteen years after its commencement and five years after its cessation, the Soviet-Afghan War remains an enigma in the West. Earlier successful Soviet military interventions in the Ukraine (1945-1951), East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968) and intermittent Soviet military pressure on Poland demonstrated that the stark military power of the Soviet state was an irresistible tool of Soviet political power. The West was thankful that nuclear deterrence maintained the Cold War balance and reluctantly accepted Soviet intervention within its socialist commonwealth and in the Soviet border regions as one cost of that balance.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a repeat of their invasion of Czechoslovakia. For months after the invasion, hardly a political or military expert in the world doubted that Afghanistan was now forever incorporated as a part of the Soviet Empire and that nothing short of a large-scale global war could alter the status quo. And global war was most unlikely as both super powers intended to avoid it. Some Westerners recalled the British experiences in Afghanistan and waited for a Soviet "Vietnam" to emerge, but most Westerners believed that the Soviets would ultimately prevail. Some even projected their European fears to southern Asia and envisioned a bold Soviet strategic thrust from southern Afghanistan to the shores of the Persian Gulf, to challenge Western strategic interests and disrupt Western access to critical Middle Eastern oil.
The initial active resistance by the Afghan military was confined to a short battle against the Soviet Spetsnaz 1 unit storming the Presidential Palace. However, the stunned citizens of this geographically isolated land immediately rose to defend their land. In defiance of the wisdom of conventional warfare, the citizens armed themselves, gathered into loose formations and began to attack and sabotage the superior occupying force's personnel, installations, depots and transport with any available weapons (to include flintlock muskets). Open resistance flared so quickly that only two months after the invasion, (on the night of 23 February 1980) almost the entire population of Kabul climbed on their rooftops and chanted with one voice "God is Great". This open defiance of the Russian generals who could physically destroy their city was matched throughout the countryside. The Afghan warrior society sent thousands of warriors against their northern invader.
comment;
The potential parallels of Russia vs. Afghanistan in the 1980's with US vs Iraq today are obvious. Whatever the motivation of the invader it seems that the invaded were not ready for "reformation". A US "victory" in Iraq may be followed by a long trail of escalating terrorism against US troops. I sincerely hope that this is not the course of this conflict but I sense that the depth of committment of this Islamic nation for its religion is stronger than its desire for democracy.
Whatever you may think about the merits of this war it is clear that the risks of a long and costly conflict are now starting to sink into the public perception. Heaped upon the ongoing weakness in the US economy, this war has the potential to add insult to injury.
The US$ is toast. Real things will be coveted. Gold is a real thing.
Boilermaker
Gandalf the White
(3/29/03; 13:14:58MT - usagold.com msg#: 100529)
Get ready to "ROCK & ROLL", SPOT and SPIKE !
http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.web?c=$GOLD,uu[m,a]daclyymy[pb50!b200!d20,2!b50!g10!e5!a!h.02,.20][vc60][iUb14!La12,26,9!Lp14,3,3!Lk14!Lo14!Lv25!Lw25!Lr14]
CAN you see what I see ?
Looking GOLDEN now !
<;-)
USAGOLD / Centennial Precious Metals, Inc.
(3/29/03; 13:03:33MT - usagold.com msg#: 100528)
In bookstores it retails for $14.95. But you know the author! Get it here for $5.95
http://www.usagold.com/cpm/abcs.html
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