Posted on 09/14/2008 10:45:28 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
I have often said that one of the best things in the world that colleges and even high schools could do for young people would be to teach them Dave Ramsey type personal finance.
Our young people seem incredibly naive about money and saving. They graduate high school and head off to college or get a job and someone is immediately shoving a credit card in their face.
The greedy sub-prime banking industry crooks must be held responsible in court, not repeatedly bailed out with tax dollars, and then on top of it issued massive monetary bonuses.
Global Stocks, U.S. Futures, Dollar Tumble on Lehman Bankruptcy
In the cookie-jar ploy, Fannie set aside an artificially large cash reserve. And — presto — in any quarter its managers could reach into that jar to compensate for poor results or add to it to dampen good ones. This ploy, according to Ofheo (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight), gave Fannie "inordinate flexibility" in reporting the amount of income or expenses over reporting periods.
This flexibility also gave Fannie the ability to manipulate earnings to hit — within pennies — target numbers for executive bonuses. Ofheo details an example from 1998, the year the Russian financial crisis sent interest rates tumbling. Lower rates caused a lot of mortgage holders to prepay their existing home mortgages. And Fannie was suddenly facing an estimated expense of $400 million.
Well, in its wisdom, Fannie decided to recognize only $200 million [of losses], deferring the other half. That allowed Fannie's executives — whose bonus plan is linked to earnings-per-share — to meet the target for maximum bonus payouts. The target EPS for maximum payout was $3.23 and Fannie reported exactly . . . $3.2309. This bull's-eye was worth $1.932 million to then-CEO James Johnson, $1.19 million to then-CEO-designate Franklin Raines, and $779,625 to then-Vice Chairman Jamie Gorelick.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109684359646434797.html?mod=Review-Outlook-US
Please.
Like in a market.
Oil is going to 50 by the end of the year.( It's dropping around a dollar a day)
So very, very true.
I will be glad when Bush retires. He has been a spending machine, he can’t help himself. He makes Clinton look like a conservative on the economy.
Anyone listen to Pat Kiley...?
He had this pegged a long time ago.
“the Church of Libertarian Economics”??
Whoa, hold on there- this is a result of Keynesian BS 101, not libertarianism. The global central banking system, a complete detachment from any real worth in our currencies, government intervention into markets of all kinds resulting in false price suppression or falsely sustained values, the list goes on— this is absolutely NOT libertarian philosophy.
Small government scenario- private banks issue their own currencies based on fiat, gold, commodity indices, whatever— and allow the market to decide which they’d like to use. Zero intervention by the Treasury Department, except to enforce standards of honesty. The badly run banks will go under and the currency holders will pay the price, meanwhile the market strengthens. That’s the (admittedly extremist) libertarian solution.
Gold investors are confused too, but some think it’s an attempt at price suppression and manipulation. intersting article here: http://www.dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00456
Oh by the way- I personally think (and you know what that’s worth) that gold and ammo are the best investments going right now.
That’s assuming the dollar doesn’t devalue any further.
U.S. money is fiat money.. We’re as broke as we want to be.. U.S. money is as tangible as you think it is..
Ask him about his income. Both deflation and inflation are and will continue to be sporadic and variable. Inflation will hit the things you need like food and fuel and deflation will hit the things you don't need like big TV's.
But things got screwed up earlier this year with Goldman Sachs and others creating an oil bubble. That wasn't really inflation and the resulting bubble pop taking down oil and gold isn't really deflation. The main reason to hold gold is to pay for tomorrow's food and fuel. But if food and fuel are going down (and they will keep going down for now), then you don't need gold right now either.
The bottom line is that with our debt burden we are caught in an XOR scenario. Credit will evaporate with a Lehman chapter 11, so pure deflation. But then the Treasury is afraid of the systemic risk so they are infusing credit (pure inflation). IMO ultimately inflation is going to win, I think Bernanke has made that clear all along. Gold will see 1000 again next year and go well beyond after that.
Lower oil also makes gold cheaper to mine.
A lot of gold bugs don't understand (or admit) the connection with oil.
In the long run the dollar is toast and we'll all be dead. But in the short run, the Euro is getting crushed by MBS that their banks bought, Russia and other factors. That is positive for the dollar. Also oil dropping is more positive for us than much of the world. So I wouldn't start shorting the dollar just yet.
Please elaborate. Just the other day, I was wondering if there’s a chart that shows oil priced in gold.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.