Ha! I thought I was down on our favorite "investment" bank.... Check out Tarpley's rant.

More righteous ranting at the link, including an important point I agree with (although on a lot of issues I don't agree with Tarpley)..the tea party folks have been seriously compromised, mind faked, if they think the R party will do anything constructive with this set of events. Just like they equated unlimited campaign donations by corporations to be "free speech" instead of just looking and going "Hey, a bribe"! There will be no "reform" of the R party..or the D party for that matter..ever. Waste of time. The largest most constructive change we could do in the next election is *every* incumbent out, replaced by independents.

Seems an expensive balloon based telescope didn't quite make a good liftoff.

The planet runs on still cheap to get in terms of energy in to energy out petroleum. Now..what happens when demand outstrips supply?

There's a good clue in there that has been brought up before, the lack of many new refineries being built. Sure, some are going in, and you can point to a lot of costly regs, etc...but the lack of interest, especially with the US petrogiants is a major clue that they *know* that we already have enough refinery capacity and it won't be cost effective to build more *if there ain't gonna be much crude to run through them*. If they knew or best guessed that a couple new saudi arabias were going to be found anytime in the next few decades, they know enough to start building the refineries now...crickets. There are some niche ones going in to process ultra heavy crude, like for Venezuela's big stash..but besides that, not too many. They *know*, and if they know, you should too, and plan your energy needs for the future *now* unless you want to be wallet raped then.

I told folks this ten years ago, told them we hit peak cheap solar panels (ha, same time I told folks we hit peak bottom gold prices and get some then..I did both in that timeframe, took my own advice, proven correct now). We have very marginal efficiency gains offset by bad inflation and the rising cost of production of said panels...and the fix has been in somewhat, look at the dozens of "breakthroughs" you and I have read about over the years..but no buck a watt retail yet. And it is not likely to happen either with long term patents, and this looming energy crunch. Takes energy to build them things, even the new plastics based panels..petroleum plastics. Plus, a lot of the critical minerals and exotic metals needed hitting peak demand as well.

Anyway, snooze ya lose. Energy production facilities in hand, insuring some reasonable supply for you for the next thirty years, versus ..paper or electronic promises of future wealth, plus nebulous job security, that you are relying on to "pay the utility bill". I know I have a coupla goals for this upcoming decade, two of which are an electric truck with some reasonable range (just enough to get to town and back, thirty miles) that I can keep charged with my solar panels, and also a small electric garden tractor so I can raise food and haul in my firewood, etc, little personal chores and not worry about liquid fuels supply. In between charging those things I already have a bare minimum amount of solar to at least run some lights and a laptop, etc.

There used to be a spiffy product for firewood that evaporated, but I bet it could make a comeback if some company wanted to take another stab at it, a 12 VDC electric chainsaw. Not expensive and limited teeny onboard batteries, just jumper cables to run it from your big truck battery. They used to make the things with something like a 50 foot set of jumpers so you could drive your truck in, cut a load of wood, and still restart and get back out. They make 110 AC saws obviously, but one with just two electric clamps would be nice, and skip the whole inverter deal. Off the wall products like that *might be* a way to future proof employment, just go with the flow of more and more expensive liquid fuels, and see what sort of electric whatever that people will want and need, could be run from solar panels dealie could replace it. It is obvious they really want to do carbon tax and skim globally, so conventional electricity will be going up in price severely, no way around that. So that means..home solar or something that fits in your area, personal windcharger, small scale hydro, etc.

...from the jaws of victory. First, I can't believe how much they are defending wall street this go around. Scandal after ripoff, and about the bulk of the public is "fed" up to here with their excesses. So what does the stupid party do? Start freaking out like they want to "destroy capitalism". This is *epic fail*, alienate all the fence sitters again, and half the true believers. Why don't they just take out a lot of billboards "hey, mainstreet! We hate you and are going to take your lunch money....and breakfast money..and dinner money..and snacks.."

Anyway, a nice piece here on "frontloading" or how all the fast computerized trades from those whopper casino banks are basically working with "insider information" that is a license to steal money out of the market. This is one of the ways they "earn" profits. This also goes back, remember this story, where a programmer walked out with GS's trading program, and some doofus (I think in the SEC) said that "in the wrong hands, this could manipulate the market"? Correct, 100%, and is exactly one of the ways GS and a few others *have* been manipulating the markets.

Another reason to put investing back into the market, institute credible buy and hold time periods, like a year or two, and outright ban computer trades.

A few hints from a top Chinese economist on moves with the yuan coming soon. The biggest little clue, one I have been watching for as a precursor to the Great Dollar Dump, is he is quoted as saying they may decide to peg to a basket of currencies. Translated that means start dumping bucks, which would lead to a global rout.(as I have been saying, when the US loses world reserve currency status, that's it, the party is over, that's all she wrote, etc, the empire goes away, it collapses) There's pressure on China to revalue higher, from all quarters around the globe, the big O harangued them a little bit about it..but they won't do that *until they are good and ready*, and right now they *aren't* good and ready, and are still scarfing up cheap-to-them natural resources all over, locking them in.

  Their undervalued currency and massive manufacturing ability keeps letting them do this, it is a profitable loop for them, so they aren't in any hurry to change things. They can export and undercut most anyone, in return they get oodles of other nation's hard currency, which they turn around and use to get more raw resources via outright purchase or signed long term production contracts, etc. The other stuff they buy is advanced R&D, the means to keep doing what they have been doing. Anything at all to do with new tech, they get it, buy it, siphon it away, reverse engineer, whatever. They compound their own R&D budget immensely this way. Heck, they get foreign companies to put their own money up and come to China and build them even more factories!

Bribes, payoffs, cartel price fixing..it's all in there, how the casino banks bonked Birmingham.(and all sorts of other places, and are still doing it)

And even when they get busted, and convicted, all they get is a joke fine, small enough to be an inconsequential part of doing business.

Crime pays..as long as it is BIG crime.

An Obama appointment for a key trade negotiator for ag concerns. Basically a global food cartel guy. One of the funny/odd things about him is his lobby group is one of the main complainers about the whitehouse organic garden. 0_o

Fair analysis of the looming overlapping debt problem and when it will hit what they call the "Maturity Wall". A lot of good graphs that help you to visualize the time-line involved. I'd call it a serious heads-up.

Recently released documents showing what the Fed did in the beginning of the bailout, purchasing non US backed securities, indicate to the writer of the article that they weren't legal at all, that the Fed usurped congressional authority.

Score another one for *quality* imports, because USA made is "too expensive" and "not enough shareholder value"..and other sorts of globalist loot and pillage rubbish.

More info

Here's one I'd like to see them investigate. Who is looking at the steel to see if any radioactive waste is being slipped in, just to get rid of it cheap. I remember some years back they were having a prob with Brazilian (IIRC) steel like that, some of it going into cooking pots...

Just a comment I thought was interesting that I read at a news story about the Toyota acceleration problem. The commentator said that perhaps tin whiskers, because of the new no-lead solder industry uses, might be to blame, and also might explain why investigators can't reproduce it after the fact. The tin whiskers eventually grow to the point of creating a short, leading to the problem, then rapidly burn away with the current flow, so then when investigators look, they can't find anything.

Get it in your mitts..or you might be sorry come the big run time.

Transcript and links to some vids over the hearings at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on paper metals trading shenanigans. The gist of it is, if you follow the analysis of the hearings, is they could be trading paper metals at 100 to 1 over physical, and they are under no real obligation to provide physical metals when/if push comes to shove, which *could* happen and IMO is likely to happen.. they'll pay you off in emergency poof created fiat inflationary paper, that you *didn't* want in the first place, and keep the shiny stuff. Ain't that special.

    They just poof create ledger entries out of thin air and that's your "investment". Now is it making more sense why folks like the big Chinese banks demanded their gold to be brought back to their own vaults? They want it before it crashes, so they pulled theirs out of London. It isn't going to take too many more large players to do the same thing before that pushing and shoving starts...

The phrase that comes to mind is "snooze ya lose".

addendum: full video of the hearing, "Public Meeting to Examine Futures and Options Trading in the Metals Markets"

Isn't this interesting. That whistleblower was hit by an attempted hit and run driver, but other folks saw the hit and tried to block the car from escaping. Eventually they used a police helicopter to apprehend the still unnamed perp.

Just a coincidence, nothing to see here, move along now....

Sounds like well executed military-like planning. Ninjas bag the bling

An interesting article and series of email exchanges with a metals markets insider and his attempt to whistleblow about how the markets are manipulated by big traders.