Nation of Imagi

2008-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

all roads now lead to transmutation

The Unraveling of Neoliberalism

2008-03-27T01:40:00.000-07:00

The end of capitalism as we know it?

The Western world is in an economic crisis similar in scale to the oil shock of 1973.

What we are seeing is nothing less than the unraveling of neoliberalism – the dominant economic and ideological model of the last 30 years.

The disintegration of Anglo-Saxon-inspired markets has come about largely because of the confluence of two tendencies of the "free market": speculation and monopoly capitalism.

Contrary to received opinion, free markets – unless subject to civil regulation, asset distribution and persistent intervention – always tend to monopoly.

Similarly, there is nothing inherently efficient about free markets
– they do not of themselves promote sound investment or wise management.

Rather, when markets are conceived wholly in terms of price and return, and when asset wealth and the leverage that this provides becomes as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (which is a scenario we are approaching), then markets encourage nothing other than gambling masking itself as sound investment.

For example, before 1973 the ratio of investment to speculative capital was 9:1; since 1973, these proportions have reversed.

So huge have the numbers, leverage and derivative instruments become that their value now far exceeds the total economic value of the planet.

For instance, in 2003 the value of all derivative trading was $85 trillion, while the size of the world economy was only $49 trillion.

These ratios have risen with the latest estimates that the value of all traded paper instruments exceeds the underlying value of the assets on which they are written by 3:1.

The fact that these assets may themselves be devaluing by up to 50 per cent (US housing values have declined by 25 per cent in two years) means that the overall ratio of global paper value to its leveraged base may indeed double.

This average global figure itself masks even more extreme levels of leverage.

The Carlyle Group de-faulted on $16.6bn (£8.4bn) of debt last week. The private equity firm had been speculating assiduously on its AAA-rated mortgage base – by some estimates, at the end of its life, Carlyle's loan-to-value ratio and hedge exposure was at 36:1. There are, of course, many other private equity firms in a similar position.

This incalculable level of speculation is abetted by the huge concentration of wealth that has occurred since 1973.

Why?

Because if markets tend to monopoly then smaller groups of people control larger amounts of assets.

The latest figures demonstrate this admirably: the richest 10 per cent of the UK population increased their share of the nation's marketable wealth (excluding housing) from 57 per cent in 1976 to 71 per cent in 2003.

Over the same period, the speculative capital that could be deployed or inves-ted by the bottom 50 per cent of the British population fell from 12 per cent to just 1 per cent.

Indeed, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, on current government figures, now control more than a third of all the marketable wealth – and this ignores the vast sums held in offshore tax havens.

The New Economics Foundation has shown that global growth has not aided the poor.

In the 1980s, for every $100 of world growth, the poorest 20 per cent received $2.20; by 2001, they received only 60 cents. Clearly neo-liberal growth disproportionately benefits the rich and further impoverishes the poor.

Real wage increases in the top 13 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been below the rate of inflation since about 1970 – a situation compounded in Britain as the measure of inflation massively underestimates the real cost of living.

Thus wage earners – rather than asset owners – have faced a 35-year downward pressure on their standard of living.

Indeed, the golden age for the salaried worker, as a share of GDP,
was between 1945 and 1973 – and not this vaunted age of liberalisation.

The trouble is that nobody in power recognises this crisis for what it is
– an asset insolvency crisis brought about by massive debt leverage.

Neo-liberals are still reacting as if the emergency was one of liquidity.
They are wrong.

Governments should bail out not banks and speculators but the customers who now have every reason to fear for the future.

What exactly is the Fed all about?

2008-03-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Fed Is Just One Part
Of Much Bigger Scam

My Two-Loop Theory

By Dick Eastman MS, MA

3-25-8

The important matter is not gold backing or gold itself as the national currency. Monetarism -- pick any token and establish it in the proper way to condition it as a positive reinforcer effective that figures in their exchanges with other people and it will be money -- and its supply and demand can be altered by those who have exclusive issue of this token system.
But what is important today is the existence of 1) a credit monopoly; 2) a two-class financial system -- what I called two-loop system in my writings of the late 1990's. The global elite are international and they own the debt of the world. The Fed is the institution. It is the link between the elite international loop and the domestic debt-slavery tax-slavery loop of M1 money. (The plebian loop is that of the domestic commercial banks, their regulation by the Fed, their system for creating demand deposits by making loans under a fractional reserve system and the ability to borrow from the Fed at the discount window.) The international banks are free of all the laws that constraign the domestic (plebian) loop. Because international banks are unregulated by the authorities -- the elite loop (Money Power, international finance, called investment banks or merchant banks) live with completely different interest rates at which they borrow and at which they lend. The internationalist can receive an deposit rate (when they maintain liquidity) of say 8.75 percent but have a loan rate that is very very very little higher than that 8.758 let us say -- the London interbankm offer rate.) Thus there is almost no spread between the international "offshore" rate at which internationally held dollars outside the domestic loop are borrowed by the elite and the international "offshore" rate at which they can receive money on their deposits.

But here is where the blade touches our necks: While the elite international financier can both borrow at approximately the same interest rate -- the ruling elite have regulated the US domestic economy so their is a gigantic spread between the best interest rate on a deposit and the best interest rate on a loan. The lowest borrowing rate at which the best (plebian) credit can borrow is the U.S. Prime Rate (for their best corporate customers) and the best rate someone locked in the plebian loop can get on a deposit is the US Certificate of deposit rate. So we see how the international elite can make their money -- and it isn't only by "making money out of air" with the fractional reserve money multiplier. They have created -- by regulation since they own the Congress -- a domestic financial system that creates a great spread between what the people can earn in interest on deposits of their money and what they must pay in interest to get a loan even at the best rate. Yet every day the international banker can get his international dollars (and there are a lot more dollars outside the loop in the hands of the international money power than there are in the the purchasing power starved plebian loop of the domestic debt-slave and tax slave economy.

The international financier can borrow from London merchant bankers' rate and always lend out in the plebian US domestic loop for signficantly less. But on the same day the same financier can borrow money from the domestic loop US Certificates of Deposit bought from the FED (which interconnects the two loops) and lend it to the US domestic debt slaves at the U.S prime rate or even better rates (mortgages etc. -- one reason why mortgages have been securitized btw.) So, rather than the financial elite being great entrepreneurs and developers of the world economy -- they just the opposite of course -- they have bought Congress and devised this system creating an artifical spread between deposit rates and lending rates (in efficient unregulated markets this spread would not exist, just as it does not exist in the economic environment of international finace -- the spread is insigificant, showing efficient unhampered markets only for the elite) -- so the international financial masters can alway borrow from the elite loop at much lower rates than they can lend that money in the US domestic loop and they can get interest on deposits at a much higher rate than people in the domestic US economy (buying US Certificates of Deposit.)
Now, we know that the FED owns a lot of US debt. These holdings are bought and sold in open market operations at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These open market operations are the real power of the money elite over the US economy. The power of the Federal Reserve is not the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board -- he is just an errand boy. And the twelve Federal Reserve Board bank presidents are nothing. The Fed open market committee has a little power - but only under supervision of the greater power I shall mention next. The FOMC can change the discount rate (a minor tool -- called by the media "the Fed setting the interest rate" -- when the rate set is only the loan rate between the Fed and the commercial banks of the domestic system. The FOMC meets only eight times a year. It is not the center of policy and power.

The real power resides with a small group of investment bankers and with the President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and in particular with Open Market Account Manager and his staff consisting of staffers loyal only to the merchant bankers. The open market operations are decided by them and they inform the FOMC what they have done. That is how it really works. The directors of each Federal Reserve Bank -- who were supposed to be the governors of the system when the system was sold to us in 1912 -- are locked out of these decisions as are Federal Advisory Council. (As powerless as the US presidents cabinet in forming foreign policy, for example.) Yes, the member banks "own" the Fed, but the ownership is purley symbolic -- in fact. de facto, a public relations lie.
Remember, the powr of the money elite over the United States is the power of the investment bankers of the elite loop to switch buy and sell securities with the FED in open market operations. The policy is that the domestic loop is kept on starvation rations and the elite loop has all the money it wants to invest around the world (but never here) simply by selling its securites to the Fed for cash which it then uses abroad. And the US pays interst on those securities with taxes. The tax system is not needed to fund government, but to fund the predations of the interntaional financial elite -- including their investments in China --with our savings (long gone) and our tax money.
They fleece us by this money machine in the internaitonal loop --our debt slavery and our tax slavery and our credit starvation and capital starvation and purchasing power starvation stem from this system.
This is how it works. I have studied the subject from the viewpoint of the average American citizen -- which no one else familiar with the banking system ever seems to do -- and I have passed my findings on to you. I have shown you your slavery. Now you can get back to wondering whether Hillary or Obama will run against McCain -- as if either of those three have either a clue to the problem or the slightest inclination to free you from this vampire. Not even Ron Paul has shown that he understands how the present system dominates the country. A gold system is not the answer. Populist government is the answer.
All I can suggest politically is that you join me in attempting to draft Bob Bowman.
Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington

In 2003 I wrote:
Derivatives are a way that financial insiders could take the whole price
structure collapse and shift the burden to the rest of us. That's what derivatives,
futures, swaptions etc. are for -- shifting risk upon others. That is
good if regulated properly and if there is not insider manipulation that
converts "risk managment" to scam in rigged markets (not only inside
knowledge, but inside manipulation by the government, quasi-governmental
(the Federal Reserve) and other NGO institutions (world bank, IMF etc.)
the insiders control for their own purposes.
Don't believe me?: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/frameup/message/3625
===================================
And here is the basis of the above statement -- the real nature of this economy. (Written in 1999.)

In article 8547ul$kqe$1@nnrp03.primenet.com>,

"Lawrence Tseung" wrote:

The Strategic View Of Banking And Investment

There already is much international pressure for China (the Communist-
held mainland) to adopt the American (also called "globalist") system
of central banking and money supply/interest rate management.

If this system is adopted it will prove a great wealth-making
boon to the financial elites of the New China, but it will mean
the constant impoverishment and indebtedness of the masses of
the Chinese people. The foreigners will bribe heavily for China's
political leaders to adopt their kind of system (they will share
mightily in the transfers of wealth!)

I offer the following letter which was meant to warn Americans
of the abuse and corruption of their economic system. The astute
Chinese student of economics will at once see the relevance to
his own country's situation.

If you are a student I urge that you bring this to the attention
of your economics professor. I claim no authority for this essay
based on my name. (I hold a Masters degree from Texas A & M where
I studied Macroeconomics under Dr. Akira Takayama and Banking under
Dr. Richard Saving; but this analysis does not stem from their
treatment of this topic.)

How the Future Was Stolen
by Dick Eastman

Everything you hear about the Federal Reserve (and the Euro Central
Bank for that matter) raising interest rates to "combat inflation"
is private disinformation from a deviant banking elite intended to
conceal the fact that the middle-classes are being robbed blind and
their hopes for the future are being stripped from their existence.

Unfortunately the same elite has dumbed down most of us to the
point where it is difficult to follow an explanation of how this
super-theft is accomplished. So copy this and go someplace where
you can concentrate.
* * *
The middle class is shrinking because the money supply that the
middle class uses, M1, is being contracted while the wide-transaction
monies exclusively used by the financial elite and multinational
corporations are being expanded. So instead of the whole economy
undergoing a boom followed by a bust as the state alternately
inflates a commonly shared currency and bank credit and then
tightens it; today we see the middle class languishing on an
M1- money contracted "bust loop" (the internal "little people's
economy) even as big banks, multinational corporations and
billionaire currency traders enjoy an easy money boom that
captures most of the real-goods "economic pie" for itself and,
more important, all the claims to future economic pie (the
result of savings/investment on the elite loop) while the
middle class, lacking even the money to meet its
expected commitments goes into debt (receiving pieces of
"negative economic pie" for the future).

The M1 money supply (think: cash and check-book money, or
in bigger words, domestically circulating currency and
bank-loan generated checking accounts called demand deposits),
both as a stock and as a flow, has been SHRINKING with very
little fanfare since the current Fed Chairman assumed his
position under Ronald Reagan. This means the circulating
money media of the middle classes--which the middle classes
use to pay their debts, buy clothes for school, and take
the family out for dinner, fix up the house, buy a new car,
or make donations to the local orphanage --has been less and
less each year. (This explains the shocking rise in middle
class debt(that the prostitute press downplays falsely
attributing the rise as the result of "spend-now-rather-than-later"
decisions of middle class people themselves--as if they had
any choice in the matter!

But while the Fed has been shrinking M1 it has been
allowing the monies of the elite, the so-called "wide
transactions monies," M2 and M3 to expand. Under Greenspan
and during the Presidencies of Reagan, Bush and Clinton,
the Fed has been holding M2 and M3 (each of which includes
M1 monies, but then adds the wide transactions money-supply
components used the multinational-loop transactions of of
elite institutions. I'm talking about money market deposit
accounts and general purpose money market mutual funds, but
more important, the overnight Eurodollar deposits issued to
US residents from foreign US banks and, most powerful of all
the overnight and continuing contract REPURCHASE AGREEMENTS.
These are the privileged money-supply components that the
middle class never gets to touch. What owner of a vacuum-cleaner
repair shop or a machine shop parks his "excess liquidity" at
a commercial bank in the form of a short-term loan to the bank,
with a REPO, redeemable the next day for principle and interest?
And which middle class guy with "an idea for a better mouse trap"
gets to borrow that cash?

By the way, don't be fooled by the "overnight" aspect of these loans.
The banks accepting these loans know that they can count on
sufficient "parked money" each and every night to permit
highly significant, i.e., huge, loans on the basis of them.
This is a source of money that the little "building and loan
association" managed by "good ol' George Bailey"
could never touch for the residents of Bedford Falls
(the character in Frank Capra's populist film of pre-WWII
Americana: "It's a Wonderful Life.")

The REPO is a computer data entry that, for all practical
purposes is money. I'll go even further: since it is a banks
IOU and can claim the creation of new demand deposits when
it is electronically "turned in" it functions exactly like the
private-bank generated monies of the early days of the Republic,
in the relatively unregulated days before the (American) Civil War.

I am telling you that the elite have their own private loop for
their own less-regulated AND more-privileged monies. It is these
monies of the elite that are the components of money-supply
definitions of M2 and M3 within the definition of M2 and M3
that have expanded as the M1 component has been shrinking.
(In other words, the relative share of M1 has been shrinking
against the REPO's and CD's within M2 and M3.)
Thus M2 appears to be stable, to be "held relatively constant,"
ostensibly to "keep inflation under control" in the manner of
monetarists.

This money circulates in the multinational corporate and
financial realms of Wall Street, not in your home town or
backwater state. (WHY are some states backwater states?; a
related topic for another time.)--and when it is spent it is
spent on new factories on the Communist mainland of China,
or a new Wal Mart that will put "Ma and Pa" stores of your
home town OUT OF BUSINESS. (Ma and Pa spend their PROFITS in
your town; Wal Mart sends its profits to Arkansas. Get it?
The Waltons (billionaires) get the profits that used to go to
middle-class mom and pop. (Ma can be seen today offering you
free samples of cheese spread as an a senior-citizen employee
of Wal Mart. (I am not knocking Wal Mart. I'm just saying
that the capital for those giant stores came from a lending
source unavailable to Ma and Pop. And before someone tells
me that Wal Mart is better than Ma and Pa; let's switch our
example to restaurants. Could your grandmother cook a better
meal than McDonalds? Then why hasn't she driven McDonalds out
of business? Maybe she does not belong to the little circle
of pals on the closed investment loop, closed to little guys
that is.

At this point we need to consider the effects of a monetary
contraction.

The 1929 crash destroyed a third of the money supply.
That monetary contraction (caused by the mass calling in
of bank loans to meet the cash demands brokerage houses that
investors meet their margins (they had bought stock on credit
during the good times) plus downward rigidity of
wages (there is less money circulating and lower prices at
the stores but no one cuts wages to bring them into balance
with other depressed prices--they settle for firing a third
of the work force instead, so that those who kept their jobs
now have their old wage and lower prices in the store. That
is why those who kept their jobs in the Great Depression where
much better off than before, as one can see by comparing the
average home build in the twenties with the average home of
the 30's. (And I think the massive margin calls by brokerage
firms was deliberate--why else would Winston Churchill have
been on Wall Street that day? (Britain needed the crash because
Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had set the gold
content of the Pound too high considering the weakened economic
condition of Britain after WW1; Wall Street Relatives were
willing to help out, and wipe out a lot of their competition
from middle-class businessmen at the same time.) It is true.
It is as John C. Calhoun said back in 1836: "A power has
risen up in the government greater than the people themselves,
consisting of many and various and powerful interests,
combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive
power of the vast surplus in the banks." Today such a vast
surplus exists, but only for the benefit of those with
access to the privileged money-circulation loop.

The elite-serving media denies that the middle class
is hurting. The truth is the upper income groups have had
great growth in income and wealth accumulation, the poor
are slightly better off (except for their prospects
of entering the middle class someday), but the middle
has been hollowed out. Real wages of the middle class are
dropping in the Clinton "boom." Think of the manufacturing
jobs (the "elite of the blue collar" jobs) gone to China.
Think of the middle-management jobs eaten up by mergers and
downsizing (increasing monopolistic concentration of firms).
Think of the Ph.D.'s driving cabs. Think of the burger-flipping
jobs awaiting college graduates. Think of the small businesses
that have vanished due to Wal Mart and a middle class that
can no longer afford their advantages. Think
of the designer tee-shirts that pass for fashion. (It is
amazing how the servitors of the Establishment can conceal
our own impoverishment from us. (Kids today have no clue
how good it once was for the typical person). And the
gains of the poor are not moves towards the middle class
but toward greater dependency: more transfer payments
(the result of vote buying) and benefits at the expense
of middle-class, not fat-cat,
taxpayers. (A good example of the deception is the way
legislators call an increase in the minimum wage "middle-class
legislation."--unless the middle-class teens on their first
jobs are all the middle class they are talking about)--the
minimum wage increases ruin small-business restaurants
for example. The point is, that is small potatoes as help
for the middle class.

There is an identity recognized by all economists
which can be simply stated as
MV = PQ.
Which means that the money exchanging hands in a year
(MV) equals the total of receipts for goods and services (PQ).
M= money supply, V=velocity,
P=price of goods and services.
Q equals the goods and services purchased.
(P can be thought of as an average or index or, or a mathematical
vector and so can Q).

Now velocity (V) is fairly constant due
to institutional factors such as: 1)the fact that we are usually
paid every two weeks or every month; 2)that we usually receive
government transfer payments every month etc.--so if EVERYONE
was paid every month V would equal 12,
get it?)

But if V is constant than MV = PQ means PQ is a function
of money supply (M) alone.

But a change in M can affect
either P (meaning inflation or deflation)

or Q (meaning more or less economic pie,

a change in the standard of
living as measured by consumption of goods and services).

If M has been shrinking we must have either deflation
(P goes down) or people ending up worse off (Q goes down).

Now the question is: Should the Federal Reserve use M1
as the money supply it watches or one of the wide-transactions
definitions, M2 or M3, the equation MV = PQ?

Milton Friedman suggested and argued for M1 and Greenspan
says he "sometimes" looks at M2, but has definitely stopped
monitoring M1. But if M1 is all that a large segment
of the economy (the middle class) ever cycles through its
household and if that M1 is contracting then these
households are either experiencing deflation or a fall
in their standard of living. (You'd better read that again.)

But prices ARE holding steady. Then the middle class
must be losing in goods and services, since in MV = PQ
both V and P are relatively constant and M (here M1) has fallen.

The lower middle class only have M1 (far from being
financial asset holders, over 51 percent of American
households have 0 or negative net wealth; (due to
mortgage, consumer debt etc. think of the
rise in bankruptcies.)

(By the way, the advent of electronic banking does nothing
to alter this picture--accept insofar as the banks offering
the online banking are the banks most likely to send the
money electronically deposited as investment capital to
China to build giant factories manned by new-coolie labor.
The profits generated by this move never filters down to
the "lower loop" to fertilize local American business
enterprise. Our "savings for the future" takes away our
capacity to earn what it takes to buy those goods that
line Wal Mart shelves.

Now as for my contention that M1 is middle class life
blood here is a list of different components that go
into this complex reality we are calling M (money supply)
and that economists use to distinguish definition M1 and
broader definition M2.

1. Currency (outside the Fed and the reserve deposits
of banks because they never circulate)

2. Traveler's checks

3. Demand deposits ( checking accounts; created when
banks S & L's etc. make loans)

4. ATS checkable deposits

5. NOW accounts

6. Credit Union share draft accounts

All of the above are M1, the familiar "spending money" of the economy. But
there are other liquid assets that function as money in MV = PQ. Let's go
on:

7. Savings deposits

8. Money market deposit accounts

9. Small-denomination time deposits

10. General Purpose Money Market Mutual Funds

11. Overnight Eurodollar deposits issued to US residents
from foreign US banks

and most critical to my argument:

12. overnight (and continuing contract) repurchase agreements:
component of M that has displaced M1 money in the overall economy.
--but these non-M1 monies circulates in the corporate and
financial realms of Wall Street in Middle America. town--and
when it is spent it is spent on new factories in China or a
new Wal Mart that will put Ma and Pa stores of your home town
OUT OF BUSINESS. Ma and Pa spend their profits in your town;
Wal Mart sends its profits to Arkansas. Get it? The Waltons
(billionaires) get the profits that used to go to middle-class
mom and pop. (Ma can be seen today offering you free samples
of cheese spread as an employee of Wal Mart.)

MV =PQ is an always-true identity called
"The Equation of Exchange" but when you assume that V is constant
it becomes "The Quantity Theory of Money."

As for you Keynesians, (I'll bet of the ten people that read this
post have used Samuelson's textbook in college.

To convert my Marshallian analysis (Keynes was a pupil of
Alfred Marshal) to the Keynesian framework, merely mark the
dollars spent in a year, i.e., MV, according to whether they
were spent by consumers, by by investing
businesses, or by government, and MV is thus redefined as
C + I + G. And you have the simple Keynesian model:
PQ = C + I + G

This slight of hand trick by Keynes enabled him to confuse people
and conceal the real role of money. Thanks to Keynes, now when you
want to increase Q you merely goose government spending, G.
And when you want to fight inflation you merely reduce C
(through taxation of consumer income).

Future standards of living are based on present investment.
The savings (foregone consumption) allows the investment to
take place.

I'm distinguishing between middle-class enhancing investment
(Ma and Pa's business) vs. that billionaire who built the
sneaker factory in China and Vietnam. (Much profit to
him--lost wages to the American shoe factory workers--ignoring
the national security ramifications not relevant to my explanation.).

Well, today the M1 money supply is being contracted, but
you do not hear about it. The Wall Street Journal does not
regularly report M1 (although the superior Investor's Business Daily
does) and when it does it does not do so prominently.

The shrinking of M1 is a great secret (known only to economists
and others who have reason to consult the statistics). During
the chairmanship of Greenspan the FED started tracking M2 and
M3 and interest rates, i.e., the money the corporate and
International (Eurodollar) loops circulate--the money that
never touches the wage earner or the small businessman of
the middle-class loop. The interest rates of course,
the per year "prices" of loanable funds are of course of
importance to the bond-holding Establishment, Greenspan's
number one constituency and concern.

... In the old days we had inflationary boom and then
bust for the entire U.S. economy. Now we have ongoing boom
for the corporate and international (elite loop) transactors
and perpetual bust for the domestic little-guy transactors
(let's call it the "schmo loop"), you and me.

From the Nation and Rolling Stone to Human Events and
Readers Digest, to current economics text books, the
verdict has been in: we are losing the middle class.

As the middle-class small firm alternative jobs dry up
and all that is left is working for the oligopolist/oligopsonist
firms of the Post-Industrial State, in the new "Service Economy"
(read Servant Economy.)

If anyone wishes to comment on this on this ng, please e-mail me at

deastman@ewa.net so I can see what you have to say and maybe respond.

I am not interested in discussing your investments opportunities.

Dick Eastman
Yakima
U.S.A.

Every man is responsible for EVERY other man

Here is another article I wrote in 1999 -- I've always considered it my finest -- it is my first -- making the point about moneyed elites and not overpopulation being the root of our problem.

When a man looks at the condition of his countrymen today it is not obvious how much better the world would have been without the planetary disease of finance globalism. We cannot see the cost that our deviant ruling elites have inflicted upon the households of this planet. This essay is intended to partially remedy that blindness.

YOU SAY THE BILLIONAIRES HAVE STOLEN YOUR FUTURE?

By Dick Eastman

It is a bitter pill for middle-class baby boomers that their parents are dying without seeing the fabulous future which they once reasonably expected would emerge, certainly by now, from their years of collective sacrifice and toil.

No one can deny that some marvels have been developed more or less as predicted fifty years ago. Consider, for example, the ease, speed and reliability with which computers gain access to incredibly informative websites and newsgroups . Nevertheless, one need only peruse a few old magazines to see how very far today's world falls short of the old prospective "World of Tomorrow" our parents and grandparents were living to see.

Pick up a 1968 edition of McCall's magazine and you will find the entry form for a chance to win a voucher for an all-expense-paid trip to the moon with first-class lunar hotel accommodations, redeemable in 2001. Open a 1950's copy of Forbes and read John von Neumann predicting that by 1980 all power likely would be virtually costless and that by 2000 the weather would be scientifically tamed for the benefit of farmers everywhere--not bothering to consider the use international commodity speculators might make of such technology if they secretly got it first. Gaze at the fascinating cover art of an old issue of Popular Mechanics and read the caption: "Robots will be Waiting on You by 1970." Finally--if the poignancy is not already too much--peer into a 1966 issue of American Home and find the following:

"By the turn of the next century only 10 percent
of us will be engaged in 'work.' The computer
and automation will relieve us of drudgery and
allow 90 percent to spend time on whatever pleases
them. The machines will do the work, create the
wealth which will allow every family to follow the
leisure path.
"...the computer-financed economy will provide
families with a guaranteed annual income, with
cash to buy their own computer system.

"...One expert has predicted, 'With the machines
taking on the tasks that now that now consume all
but a fragment of our days, we will be free to
undertake completely new tasks, most of them
directed to perfecting ourselves, creating beauty,
understanding one another better.'"

"Certainly opportunities for further education,
development of talents in art, music, design,
writing, will proliferate. The home-centered
skills--gardening, cooking, sewing--will be
approached not as make-work but as great works.
...We will want to create our own art forms
and become artists at home."

How tragic that the average American adult today has 30 percent less leisure time than the day those words were written; that at this moment millions of people, too tired and otherwise constrained to enjoy once normal social lives, fill their spare minutes with autistic sexuality (catch the euphemism here) fanned by curvacious pattens flashing on cathode-ray tubes or by hot-button words carried over Alexander Graham Bell's somewhat older invention, as the controlling few rake in the cash.

The mind simply boggles at this and plentiful other evidence of the gigantic larceny that, blasting all dreams of futurity, has plunged the world's middle classes into today's debt-slavery backwash; the predictably non-utopian result of trying to tread standard-of-living water in foredoomed labor-service competition with the throw-away New Coolies of the billionaires' 'global plantation.'

How is it that we have inherited this world that we never wanted, a world more resembling C.M. Kornbluth's vision (in his 1953 novel, The Syndic) of a society shaped and directed by organized-crime and aiming only at affording maximum individual sovereignty to its "friends?" ('Individual sovereignty' is Lord Rees-Mogg's honorific term for the liberty of billionaires no longer bridled by governments of the people, by the people,... etc.)

What happened?

Ironically enough, it was H.G. Wells, the twentieth century's leading apostle of Mankind's potential for a limitless future, who 50 years ago fully answered that question. During the first half of this century he assiduously championed the idea of 'putting things in order' for the speedy attainment of a highly desirable worldwide scientific utopia. But Wells was also a well-connected and astute more-populist-than-Fabian social critic and the first popularizer of nonchauvinistic history from a species perspective, a vantage point from which he eventually came to see the darker fate overtaking his civilization. His last two books, are, unfortunately, his most prophetic.

In his 1939 book, The Future of Man (in the USA; it is The Future of Homo Sapiens elsewhere), Wells explained how the Anglo-American elites had recently grabbed the reigns of the collapsing liberalized world order of his time--that great, good, but never-fully perfected achievement of nineteenth-century optimism and good will-- and did so for their own self-serving-and-to-hell-with-everyone-else ends:

"The disintegrating British Empire is now, one has to
recognize, a system of government almost completely
out of popular control. Practically it has undergone
a reactionary revolution in the last decade, and a
loose-knit combination of court, church, army and
wealth, intensely class conscience, intensely
self-protective, has resumed control of affairs. It
is an oligarchy skillful in assimilation of useful
or formidable individuals but without the slightest
disposition to amalgamate with anything else on
earth. Its ruling motive is fear of dispossession.
Decisions of peace and war are made without
consulting any surviving popular will, and the
whole capitalist press, the cinema, the radio
and indeed all possible means of influencing
opinion, concentrate upon the assertion of the
rightness and inevitableness of these decisions.
Dissent is a muffled and ineffective squeaking,
and any inconvenient facts are kept from the
public by requests for suppression that are in
effect commands."

Such a development, spells death to any hope of the majority of mankind to live any kind of rewarding personal-achievement oriented middle-class life. In his last book, Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), Wells 'signs off' with these words:

"Homo Sapiens in his present form is played out. The
stars in their courses have turned against him and he
has to give place to some other animal better adopted
to face the fate that closes in more swiftly upon
mankind. ...The cinema sheet (i.e., screen --DE) stares
us in the face... Our loves, our hates, our wars and
battles are no more than phantasmagoria dancing on
that fabric, themselves as unsubstantiated as a dream.
...There is no way through the impasse. It will be
the Dark Ages over again, a planetary instead of a
European Dark Ages. ...Mankind, which began in a
cave and behind a windbreak, will end in the
disease-soaked ruins of a slum."

The point of the present essay is not, as Well's final words might suggest, that we give up and trust fabled space aliens to genetically engineer mankind's more-promising replacement. Nor is it that we must avenge our betrayed parents by killing off the billionaires, as not a few today doubtless privately contemplate. Rather, we must attack the root of why our future was lost and do what must be done to get it back again. To that end I conclude with these words, written at about the same time as those of Well's above, the creed of a little man who excelled even Wells as a true friend of mankind's future:

"Exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by
effecting the destruction of a few millionaires, but
by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching
them to non-cooperate with their exploiters."

"The moment the slave resolves that he will no
longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees
himself and shows the way to others. Freedom
and slavery are mental states. Therefore the
first thing is to say to yourself, 'I shall no
longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not
obey orders as such but shall disobey when they
are in conflict with my conscience.O The
so-called master may lash you and try to force
you to serve him. You may say, "No, I will not
serve you for your money or under threat." This
may mean suffering. Your readiness to suffer will
light the torch of freedom which will never be put
out."

Certainly there is unfailing hope for a future in that.
Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington

Every man is responsible to every other man.

----- Original Message -----

From: Dick Eastman
To: Israel Shamir ;
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: selling soil?

There are two causes of declining population 1) social or natural disaster; 2) transformation to middle class culture with higher standard of living, middle class values (misnamed, perhaps, by Max Weber, the protestant ethic), education, moving from the farm or corrupt economies where offspring are substitutes for farm equipment and family is the only "others" you can trust.

The Rockefellers and other Malthusian-eugenicists believe starting war and plagues is serving nature -- they do not realize the potential of a free man in free association with other free men who have control of some capital is an asset that far outweighs his "eater" characteristics

-- only the aristocratic mind-set views human population as a liability --

starves them of capital and surplus above subsistence so they will not breed away the beautiful planet, and creates plagues (got flu?), weather disasters (got chemtrails), and wars (got trade towers?) and economic depressions (got Federal Reserve and investment banks?) -- they pen the surplus in slums and hold them there with the welfare state, with closed off "government lands in the US west), with starvation of invesment capital in the hand of small people, with tight money that creates inescapably a debt slavery society

-- BUT IT IS THE RULING MALTHUSIAN ELITES WITH THEIR SPURIOUS DOCTRINES OF "SUSTAINABILITY" AND "OVERPOPULATION" WHO HAVE ENGINEERED ON PURPOSE THE FAILURE OF THE EARTH -- WHO HAVE BOUGHT UP AND LOCKED AWAY PATENTS THAT WOULD HAVE GIVEN US THE ATTRACTIVE WORLD THAT WAS ENVISIONED WHEN I WAS A BOY IN THE 1950'S.

R. Buckminster Fuller and even Lyndon LaRouche have pointed to things that are possible with doing more with less -- if we apply mankinds gift of intelligence with free gain of knowledge and removal of barriers to application of the innovations people discover.

The importation of cheap labor, even doctors and technicians from globalist India, is merely a species of middle-class sabotage. There cannot be an upper class if a middle class non-servant-economy option is offered to every hard working sober man. To fill a large house with servants a nice house for a free man must be made unavailable etc. Unemployment is necessary to destroy bidding power of labor -- to create a buyers market etc. Outsourcing to places abroad and 'dumbing-down' the wage here are essentially the same tactic. ...

I really do believe this and have believed if for a long time -- and I see support of it nearly every day in the news developments I pass around each day.

Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington

Every man is responsible to every other man.

Paper Promises

2008-03-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Dominos: How Bear Stearns default threatens the entire world financial system

When we hear of turmoil in world financial markets, it can be difficult to understand how so much chaos can result from a relatively small number of defaults on individual home mortgages. Paul Solman, the business and economics correspondent for PBS's NewsHour, undertook to explain how those modest defaults could escalate to the point where they "now threaten the entire world financial system."

Solman began by noting that "the money you borrow to buy your home no longer comes from the local bank. It comes from investors from all over the world."

A firm like Bear Stearns buys up the mortgages on lots of houses, combines them into a pool, and sells slices of that pool to investors. This has been an attractive investment, because it offers a high rate of return, and it has also been considered extremely safe, because even if one mortgage defaults that will have little effect on the pool. With the US housing market booming thanks to the easy credit these deals opened up, it seemed there was no way that anyone could lose.

However, the problem was that "the more investors got into the act, the greater the pressure to lend." Lenders were competing with one another to offer more favorable mortgage terms. Eventually, new buyers had so little actually invested in their homes that if any problems arose, it was easiest to just walk away from both house and mortgage.

Making things worse, the return on these mortgage pools was so high that the big lenders began investing in them on their own, often using money borrowed at a lower rate from banks like Citicorp and JP Morgan. And the banks were also investing directly in securities backed by mortgages, credit cards, or auto loans. Even more investments went into so-called "derivatives," essentially side bets on these other loans.

Everybody wanted to get in on the action and nobody was using their own money, so the debts quickly multiplied from billions to trillions. And the only thing of real value holding up the whole house of cards was the homes owned by individual buyers. If the value of those homes drops -- as it now has -- and too many of the buyers walk away, the whole structure can collapse.

If that happens, as Solman explained, there's a further problem. "The world financial system runs on credit -- on paper promises. If big borrowers and lenders don't make good on those promises, panic can set in, and the biggest financial institutions in the world can find themselves under siege."

That sort of panic was the reason Bear Stearns became unsustainable. And if a firm like Bear Stearns goes down, its creditors -- the major banks -- can become unsustainable as well. That is why the federal government has stepped in to try to salvage the situation.

And, Solman concluded, "That's why they call it the domino effect."

Love Everybody Gives Away Jim Cramer's "Stay Mad for Life" Book Ending

2007-12-27T15:34:00.000-08:00

...After having bought six books.

Okay, well... Here's a summary of the ending of Jim Cramer's new book, "Stay Mad for Life."

Ten Things Pros Do Right but Amateurs Get Wrong

1. Pros always have cash.

2. Pros learn to start living and stop worrying about the quarterly report.

3. Pros try not to invest in things they don't know.

4. Pros recognize that not everything is analyzable.

5. Pros want to know the downside, not the upside.

6. Pros always look; they never avert their eyes from a downturn.

7. Pros accept that not everything works or is going to work at once.

8. Amateurs are worried that they aren't making enough,
...but pros are worried about making too much.

9. Pros know that cuffing it without doing homework can reduce you to--
...well, no offense --- an amateur!

10. Pros understand the upside, but they know that things can go wrong.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cramer Names Five Bull Markets

1. Aerospace and Defense

2. Agriculture

3. Oil and Oil Service

4. Minerals and Mining

5. Infrastructure

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cramer Picks Twenty Stocks For The Long Term

1. Caterpillar (CAT)

2. Goldman Sachs (GS)

3. ConocoPhillips (COP)

4. XTO Energy (XTO)

5. Transocean (RIG)

6. Hologic (HOLX)

7. Inverness Medical Innovations (IMA)

8. CVS Caremark (CVS)

9. McDonald's (MCD)

10. Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)

11. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)

12. Corning (GLW)

13. Google (GOOG)

14. International Game Technology (IGT)

15. Pepsi (PEP)

16. Procter & Gamble (PG)

17. New York Stock Exchange (NYX)

18. Union Pacific (UP)

19. Boeing (BA)

20. Sears Holdings (SHLD)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cramer Recommends Some Mutual Funds

...Agressive Growth

1. CGM Focus Fund (CGMFX)
2. Dreyfus Premier Strategic Value (DAGVX)
3. Bridgeway Aggressive Investor (BRAGX)
4. Rice Hall James Micro Cap Portfolio (RHJSX)
5. Legg Mason Partners Aggressive Growth (SHRAX)

-

...Growth

1. Buffalo Small Cap (BUFSX)
2. FBR Small Cap (FBRVX)

-

...Value

1. Putnam Small Cap Value (PSLAX)
2. Heartland Value (HRTVX)
3. Berwyn (BERWX)
4. Muhlenkamp (MUHLX)

-

...Honorable Mentions

1. SSgA Aggressive Equity Fund (SSAEX)
2. Robeco Boston Partners Small Cap Value II (BPSCX)

-

And, that's it. Now you know.

Ben Bails Out Wall Street (...& World, sort of)

2007-09-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

Well, the Fed lowered the Fed Funds rate,
which is the interest rate that affects the American consumer,
... by half a percent, to 4.75%.

Popular consensus thought they'd only lower it by a quarter percent.

This was the first time that these interest rates had been cut in over four years.

It also lowered the discount rate, which banks use to borrow money from the Fed,
for the second time in recent weeks,
by a half percent again.

So, as a result, stocks soared; and the US dollar fell.

Basically, a supposed global credit crisis was diverted for now,
although I'm sure the Chinese aren't thrilled
that all those American dollars it holds
are losing more and more of it's value.

But,...

Regarding stocks...

It seems like the stocks in Cramer's "Six Wild Bull Markets" will work again;
...as well as "The Four New Horsemen of Tech"
... & certain other tech stocks.

So for trading call options,
or if I was inclined to buy stocks,
these are the ones I'm betting on to do well
for the remainder of 2007.

Then, I'll re-evaluate.

If one was interested in what I thought about
the whole recent global credit crunch situation,
I wrote about it HERE.

Pink - "I Got Money Now"

2007-09-11T08:54:00.003-07:00

Staying in the Stream

2007-09-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

Well, it's finally becoming fairly apparent to me
what my stock worldview is for now,
...and pretty much until about Fall of 2009.

And that is...

1.) Apparently, the American economy, the value of the dollar, the housing situation, etc...
is actually capable of slowing down global growth & companies' access to capital worldwide.

2.) The ARMs mortgages are only starting to adjust now in the U.S.,
and will do so all through 2008,
and when one realizes that data shows that Americans as a whole
have a negative savings rate &
can no longer refinance and get more money out of their home
which is declining in value, ...
& when you see that wages have not increased over recent years,
but that gas & food & insurance & tuition, etc...have, well,...

3.) And when you see that hedge funds are being forced to sell their best,
most profitable stocks
to come up with cash
because investors want their money back,...

4.) And when you see that credit lending standards
are now being tightened worldwide,...
and that this is going to prevent most people from having a chance
at being qualified to be first-time homeowners,
... & how any company, big or small,
is going to have to already be sitting on lots of cash,
because it's gonna be tougher to qualify to borrow money
for their businesses,...

5.) And once it becomes common knowledge that the world is dependent
on the Americans & their consumptions habits
to make the whole globalization/free trade thing work,...
(which is why China & other countries loan the U.S. so much money).

And, let's just say they're already not happy about how they just found out they got burned by buying these "junk" American mortgage bonds that were deceptively rated as Triple-A & safe,...not to mention they're already not too happy that they've lost a ton of money by virtue of owning American dollars...as the dollar gets weaker & weaker.

6.) So basically it's gonna take some time for things to sort themselves out
and the markets figuring out what the actual value of these "bad" bonds are (whether ten cents on the dollar, or what),
...and also to find out who is really exposed & how much.

7. ) It's gonna depend on what kind of government intervention
is involved worldwide, including the U.S. and the Fed,
...and whether they can affect much.

8.) It's gonna depend on political events, as well; even the weather.

9. ) For now, buying puts (selling stocks short) on days when the stock market goes up is one of the few ways to play the market.

10.) A little riskier is betting on stocks
which have a monopoly on their industry,
or have accelerated revenue growth
and are virtually exploding from a little
to a massive company.

11.) That's about it.

Once things sort themselves out a couple years from now,
& Americans' standard of living improves,
perhaps there will be a legitimate worldwide bull market.

12.) Until then,...

13.) I guess we should focus on how
we live in an expanding Universe.

And that we live in a world in which lack does not exist.

And, that once we realize
we do not have to compete for limited resources,
we will all thrive.

Until then, we as individuals are entitled to thrive
by thinking this way, regardless of what everybody else does.

Or the market does.

And if you're gonna stay in stocks in the near term,
then your money will be the least at risk in defensive stocks,
otherwise known as "staples."

These stocks include food & beverage stocks and drug companies.

These stocks will deliver good earnings even in a bad economy,
...because consumers need the products these companies sell,
because they are necessities,
regardless of whether the consumers' spending budgets
are tight.

Examples include: Schering-Plough, Pepsi, Colgate-Palmolive,
Procter & Gamble, Kellogg,...

These stocks are considered safer when an economy
seems likely to be heading into a recession.
And mutual funds send their clients' money to those places for safety.

It still doesn't mean you'll make money when you're invested in a market
which is filled with fear, uncertainty & expectations of further bad news.
But, you'll lose less money.

But, anyway.

It's always advised
to be aware of where the exits are
when you enter a bar.

It All Pours The Same

2007-09-11T08:53:00.002-07:00

You Are the Creator of Your Own Reality...

2007-08-17T22:34:00.001-07:00

You are the creator of your own reality because you are the chooser of the thought right now.

Don’t be hard on yourself.

If you’re standing in a place
where you’ve been chopped off at the knees,
where you’ve been hit in the gut,
where you’re feeling awful, don’t feel bad.

Don’t beat up on yourself for not being able to choose
the best thought you’ve ever thought.

Just choose the best thought you can find from where you are.

In other words, just fork off gently
in the direction of what is important to you.

And before you know it, your path will get brighter and sweeter,
and brighter and sweeter.

And the people who watch you will say, “You know, you amaze me.
Things go well everywhere you go. Why is that so?”

And you say, “I’ve come to expect it.”

And many of them will say, “Agh.”

They don’t want to hear how you expect things to go well.

They’ll say, “Oh, that’s because you’re rich.
Oh, that’s because you have an entourage that travels with you.”

We promise you, no entourage can buck your current.

There is no one in the world who can prepare your path for you, you see.

You are all as rich as everyone else
because you all have the resources of the Universe
at your fingertips.

And when you take the time,
when you care enough to take the time to find the better-feeling thought, now, you’re moving toward something that will please you.

Every step you take, you are marching toward a manifestation.

And if you feel good while you’re stepping
—you are marching, marching, marching
toward things that are going to delight you
when they get there.

And if you are ornery, if you’re unhappy,
if you are frustrated, if you are blameful,
if you are angry, if you are hateful,
if you are revengeful, if you are fearful,
if you are depressed
—you are marching, marching, marching
toward things that are going to augment
that feeling of depression, of anger,
of frustration.

In other words,
the way you feel must net you more stuff
that feels like the way you feel.

The better it gets, the better it gets, the better it gets,
the better it gets, the better it gets, the better it gets,
...
the worse it gets, the worse it gets, the worse it gets,
the worse it gets, the worse it gets.

You cannot defy the Laws of the Universe—please give it up!

Stop trying to use your words and your action
for the stuff that attitude and mood, and vibration are to do.

In other words, mold yourself into place.

Do the vibrational work before you do the action work,
and the action work will be a fraction of what it has been before.

If you take the time to do the vibrational work first,
you won’t have to offer nearly as much action.

You’ll begin to discover that the things
that are important for you just unfold for you
because the Universe is at your fingertips.

The fairies of the Universe are there for you.

You are the center of an enormous entourage that means to please you.

And when you, through your magnificent deciphering of contrast,
give birth to a rocket of desire,
that rocket of desire is duly noted, understood,
and absolutely agreed with by all of the resources
of the Universe.

And now all you’ve got to do,
is to get in the vibrational compliance
with what you are asking for.

(Isn’t that nice to know?)

There are 3 steps to the Creative Process:

Step One, you don’t have to worry about;
contrast makes you take that step.

Contrast causes you to desire or focus, or prefer.

Step Two, not your work, anyway.

Source and all of the resources of Source answer your request.
That’s that vibrational alignment.
That’s that one point of vibrational relativity that happens instantaneously.

So, your only work is Step Three.

And Step Three is: Can I find a thought right now that feels a little better than the thought I’ve been thinking?

That’s all Step Three is.

Finding a thought that causes me to feel a vibration (or a feeling) of relief.

So, there is allowing of what I want, or disallowing of what I want.

There is allowing of what I want, or resisting what I want.

You are either practicing the art of allowing, or the art of resisting.

When you’re forking off toward things you want,
you’re practicing the art of allowing.

When you’re forking off to things you don’t want,
you’re practicing the art of resistance.

And every day, and every moment of your life experience
is a perfect reflection of how you’ve been forking. (Good.)

Abraham-Hicks

Law of Allowing

2007-08-13T19:11:00.001-07:00

The Science of Getting Rich (...a summary)

2007-08-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.

A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imagined by thought.

Man can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.

In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; otherwise he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive in spirit.

Man may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him. Gratitude unifies the mind of man with the intelligence of Substance, so that man's thoughts are received by the Formless. Man can remain upon the creative plane only by uniting himself with the Formless Intelligence through a deep and continuous feeling of gratitude.

Man must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become; and he must hold this mental image in his thoughts, while being deeply grateful to the Supreme that all his desires are granted to him. The man who wishes to get rich must spend his leisure hours in contemplating his Vision, and in earnest thanksgiving that the reality is being given to him. Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of frequent contemplation of the mental image, coupled with unwavering faith and devout gratitude. This is the process by which the impression is given to the Formless, and the creative forces set in motion.

The creative energy works through the established channels of natural growth, and of the industrial social order. All that is included in his mental image will surely be brought to the man who follows the instructions given above, and whose faith does not waver. What he wants will come to him through the ways of established trade and commerce.

In order to receive his own when it shall come to him, man must be active; and this activity can only consist in more than filling his present place. He must keep in mind the Purpose to get rich through the realization of his mental image. And he must do, every day, all that can be done that day, taking care to do each act in a successful manner. He must give to every man a use value in excess of the cash value he receive, so that each transaction makes for more life; and he must so hold the Advancing Thought that the impression of Increase will be communicated to all with whom he comes in contact.

The men and women who practice the foregoing instructions will certainly get rich; and the riches they receive will be in exact proportion to the definiteness of their vision, the fixity of their purpose, the steadiness of their faith, and the depth of their gratitude.

(... above was ... the conclusion to the book, "Financial Success ... Through the Power of Creative Thought" ... by Wallace D. Wattles.)

Cramer Appeals To Bernanke

2007-08-07T00:18:00.001-07:00

Stop The Madness, Bernanke ... Cramer pleads. (below)

CLICK HERE to watch the video of Jim Cramer explaining why he felt it so urgent for him to say what needed to be said last Friday afternoon during a segment called "Stop Trading!," on CNBC.

Updated Stock List for Remainder of 2007

2007-07-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

Due to what appears to be a problem with liquidity in the corporate credit market & the disaster that is homebuilders, banks & brokerages, I'm already gonna update the stocks I like for the rest of the year based on my viewpoint today, at least.

I begin again.

4 Horsemen of Tech

Amazon.com,
Apple,
Google,
Research in Motion,

7 "Wild Bull" Markets

Agriculture, Machinery,
Infrastructure,
Aerospace, Oil & Gas,
Minerals ... and Defense

Agriculture:

Deere,
FMC Corporation,
Monsanto,
Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan,
PPG Industries,

Machinery:

Caterpillar,
Cummins,
PACCAR,
Terex,

Infrastructure:

Fluor,
Foster Wheeler,
McDermott International,
Washington Group International,

Aerospace:

Boeing,
Lockheed Martin,
Precision Castparts,
Textron,
United Technologies,

Oil & Gas:

Apache Corporation,
Baker Hughes,
CNOOC, Ltd.,
ConocoPhillips,
Devon Energy Corp.,
Diamond Offshore Drilling,
ExxonMobil,
FMC Technologies,
Marathon Oil,
National Oilwell Varco,
PetroChina,
Royal Dutch Shell,
Schlumberger,
Total S A ,
XTO Energy,

Minerals:

Southern Copper,
Cleveland-Cliffs,
Freeport McMoRan,
Companhia Vale do Rio Doce,
Rio Tinto,

Defense:

Alliant Techsystems,
General Dynamics,
Honeywell,
L-3 Communications,
Lockheed Martin,

Honorable Mention:

Air Products & Chemicals,
Allegheny Technologies,
Eaton Corporation,
Johnson Controls,
Praxair, Inc.,
U.S. Steel,

Okay, that's what I've got so far.

I'll dig up some tech & biotech names soon, now that we're in that sector cycle.
Highlighted stocks above are ones I like now.
The un-highlighted ones above are ones I'm still researching.

I'm currently "long" with call options for Apple,
McDermott International, Freeport McMoRan,
Apache Corporation, Marathon Oil, Manitowoc,
Allegheny Technologies and Terex.

And, I'll most likely be trying to "short" 2 of the big brokers
throughout this year.
(Goldman Sachs & Bear Stearns).

$80 Stocks Become $120 Stocks

2007-07-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Jim Cramer says that right now we're in a "runaway bull market."

"Leading stocks attract money, and money sends them higher, cementing their status as leaders," Cramer explained.
"This keeps the virtuous circle going."

According to Cramer's theory,...
when a stock goes to $80 in a bull market,
there's a good chance it'll go to $100.
From there, it's usually smooth sailing to $120.
"And once a stock hits $100," Cramer said,
"the only way it goes back down is if it splits.

Following his $80-$120 strategy is the "laziest way to approach the market, but it works," he said. "And we're gonna keep doing it."

The stocks he mentioned are:

1. Boeing

2. Caterpillar

3. ConocoPhillips

4. Energizer

5. Air Products & Chemicals

6. Apache

7. Terex

8. Manitowoc

Four New Horsemen of Tech

2007-07-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

According to Jim Cramer, there are "four new horsemen of tech."

1. Research in Motion

2. Amazon.com

3. Google

4. Apple

Research in Motion is "the undisputed winner of the handheld."
(as in BlackBerry)
It's competitor, Palm, has got "nothing on it."

Google is a cheap stock "destroying everything in its path."
And has left its competitor, Yahoo, "in the dust."

Amazon.com is "one of a kind."
It has the "mechanics to dominate for years"
and is a double threat as a tech and a retailer.
Growth drives the company, and it's "full of growth."

Apple owns the MP3 player market with its iPod product, and now it's getting into phones---"a genius move." "It's an aspirational brand, which means the sky's the limit for the stock," said Cramer.

Jim Cramer called Research in Motion, Amazon, Google and Apple
all "gigantic names that are so good they can't be competed with anymore."

The complete article is HERE.

Six Wild Bull Markets

2007-07-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

A little over a month ago, stock market expert, Jim Cramer, said that right now the Federal Reserve is on hold, and the economy, while "anemic," is not in a recession. And during economic weakness, the wild bull markets should be the first to recover.

He listed six wild bull markets, and I've linked the stocks I like.

1. Agriculture. (Deere)

2. Machinery. (Caterpillar)

3. Infrastructure. (Foster Wheeler) and (McDermott)

4. Aerospace. (Boeing)

5. Oil and gas. (Royal Dutch Shell)

6. Minerals. (Freeport-McMoRan)

The full article is HERE.

The Secret to Riches

2007-06-13T23:29:00.001-07:00