The credit card bill of rights has become a joke. I just got an agreement change from Chase that they were changing the 2% min. payment to 5% even though I have excellent credit and pay above the min. A $10,000 debt with min. payment of $200 will now shoot to $500. This appears to be following the path of the housing market foreclosure. Do you think this will tank the finanicals again?

Thanks

There appears to be some contradiction in your note – at one place you mention about a multiyear trek downwards and at another, you talk about years of range trading between S&P 6500 and 10500!

I do respect your views very much and shall be gratful for clarification.

Many thanks.

Raj
(London)

I would value your opinion about Seagrave’s book: Gold Warriors, the secret recovery of Yamashita’s gold.
I’m just readin it now, and if true it’s a wild wild card in the gold market.
hundreds thousands tons black gold, completely unacconted for, in the hands of CIA, bullion banks and US presidents.

that could explain unlimited bullion banks control of market, and spells very bad for us poor gold investors, though part of this immense black gold pool should already have been digested by market itself.

many thanks for your valuable thoughts!
ciao
Aldo

Recently, Mr. Grandich said in an interview – that it’s easier to see where we’ll be in five years than in six months; and usually it’s the opposite. Very true.

So in the World of my amateur Technical Analysis, we can be right about the long term, but direction can change frequently along the way in false starts to trends.

There are three logical scenarios for the general stock market, not listed in order of probability:

a) An abreviated 5th wave or a basing phase which takes us back to or toward the lows of March ‘09.

b) A final Fifth Wave down which could be extended, cutting the DJIA at least in half from the recent partial recovery high of 9,000.

c) Continuation of the uptrend which started in March 2009, perhaps taking the DJIA up to, but just short of 10,000. That would equal the 1930 recovery of 48%, and the exact number would be 9,945.

Perhaps probability favors (B) but we would need a fast close below the Neckline of an apparent top which has formed over the past two months. That would be below 880 on the S & P 500.

At the same time, some of the indicators are running out of steam to the downside, approaching points that in the past mark a reversal from a short term down trend to up. We need equity prices to fall decisively if Scenario B is to follow through.

——————————————

So what happens if equity prices stay above the Neckline for a week or two? Then the past two months might be a base to stage a continuation of the advance. The DJIA could finish up in the area of 9,700 – 9,945 in the late Summer months.

That would likely be the end of the ‘B’ Wave, and the ensiung ‘C’ Wave could carry the market much lower over a period of many months if not years. In the end, we’ll look back someday to see that the charts of the DJIA mirrored the decline of the US economy.

Future generations may see the recent rise from the Panic of 2008 as a last opportunity to exit, similar to the early months of 1930 which stretched for 6 months.

In the end, everything will be destroyed and Common Stock prices are the most vulnerable.

What you find is that all the factors that precipitated this crisis began in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The explosion in national debt, the explosion in consumer debt, the massive trade deficits, deregulation of all industries, but especially the financial industry, the origins of derivatives. Conservatives now try to pin the mess on Obama. But Obama is like the fire engine that is coming to try to put out the 100,000 acre forest fire. It is not Obama’s actions that created this mess. Obama has the choice of letting the forest fire burn and seeing the economy go into a 1930s style deflationary depression. Or he can take the FDR approach and try to stimulate our way out of the mess, which very well may lead to the inflationary catastrophe Peter Grandich and myself are worried about. In either case, we’re screwed. Go ahead and pick your poison. But don’t blame Obama for the catastrophe that’s coming. Because it was the credit bubble that created it. And Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and even my man Clinton’s repeal of Glass Steagall and allowing Phil Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act to squirrel it’s way through that led to this mess. In sum it is conservative economics that produce Great Depressions (think 1920s and last decade) and it is more often than not liberal economics that at the very least try to clean up the mess the conservative economics created.

Any updates on FAN – TSX?

Thanks

Many thanks.