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by Ashraf Laidi
Posted: Feb 22, 2010 5:00
Comments: 2338
Posted: Feb 22, 2010 5:00
Comments: 2338
Forum Topic:
USD
Discuss USD
In the past year, we've written a lot about the similarity between the rally of early 1930 and the one we had through April of this year.
The early 1930 rally came after the market had fallen nearly 50% in the fall of 1929. The spring 1930 rally took the market up nearly 50% again, to a level that was only about 20% below the previous peak.
That rally, of course, was also the biggest sucker's rally in history. After the market peaked in April 1930, it crashed again, eventually ending up down 89% from the 1929 high and more than 80% from the 1930 high. The market did not reach the 1930 high again for another quarter of a century.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19729161/Havent-We-Been-to-This-Show-Before-Dan-AlpertWestwood
on June 7, 2010
By Scott Lanman and Joshua Zumbrun June 7 (Bloomberg) Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank will raise its benchmark interest rate from a record low before the U.S. economy returns to full employment or inflation surges. It will be the case that when we start the process of tightening policy that the economy will not yet be back at full employment, Bernanke said during a question-and-answer session with Sam Donaldson , the ABC News journalist, at a dinner hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
http://bit.ly/9vhpzH
Let's start with the worst newsblame for bad loans. Despite all of the stories proliferated about fraud (80 percent of which is committed by lenders, according to the FBI) and other forms of banker abuse, a full 53 percent of Americans believe that borrowers are responsible for taking out unaffordable loans, not the lenders who push the loans. This simply does not make sense. Let's imagine the best-case scenario for the lender, in which both the borrower and the lender have an educated, sober view of housing options, and nobody is being defrauded. This view is essentially presented by J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Economist James Glassman in a recent note to clients:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/04/jpmorgan-chase-memo-goldman_n_562459.html
Folks may like to hear that someone else is to blame for the mistakes they made, but everyone knows--including those who bought houses far beyond what they could afford and then walked . . . that Wall Street isn't the only culprit in the housing debacle.
Glassman's best defense of the banks is, in essence, that it takes two to tango. But unlike the borrower, the banker is supposed to be a professionalit's the banker's job to make sure that he isn't extending loans that cannot be repaid, and he gets paid very well to exercise this judgment. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but it's absurd to argue that it only extends to one party in a transactionespecially the party who isn't getting paid.
This belief that personal responsibility does not extend to bankers creates an unfair and irrational moral burden on borrowers who find themselves in over their heads. A full 80 percent of the general population believes that it is not acceptable for a borrower to stop paying his or her mortgage, even under conditions of financial distress. Even more astonishing, 61 percent of borrowers who have already missed payments on their mortgage believe the same thing.
Bankers intentionally propagate this insane ideology in order to profit from it. That's why high-ranking people like Glassman publish "research notes" castigating his bank's own customers. The Wall Street bonus machine feeds on irrational borrower guilt. If you're stuck in a mortgage you can't afford, refusing to pay is your only real defense against that machine.
read more here :http://www.alternet.org/economy/147106/why_banks_try_to_make_borrowers_feel_like_sinners_when_they_can't_pay_off_their_mortgages
Ten years is a long time in Forex, and of course that is discounting Europes debt.
Good luck out there
by Bryan Rich 06-05-10
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/u-s-stocks-offer-important-signals-for-currency-investors-39304?FIELD9=1
As an investor, its always important that you anticipate plausible scenarios. Because if a China conflict scenario plays out, you can expect the outcome to be bad for global growth, bad for global stocks, bad for commodity demand and likely good for the continued safe haven appeal of the U.S. dollar.