I love how you know what I have studied.Birkeland wrote:Well, if you in contrast had been studying free market economics, instead of religious nonsensical kumbayah, you could have earned some money. In any case: the ludicrous conspiracy blamegame of pure ignorance is priceless - keep it up.junglelord wrote:That conspiracy crap has saved me and my friend quite a bit of money.
I have made more then double my investment.
I have also saved myself the loss that has hit.
I pulled when it was peaked.
Infact its big news today about the TSX.
I told my friends and even my own financial advisor that there was no immunity.
I still saved $5000 this month, and you tell me I need to study.
Thats a joke.
If had only known the first half, your half, I would be $5000 decreased in the last month.
Its clear your basis of decision would serve me no good, without the second half.
Hence the second half is worth $5000 more to me then the first half, just last month alone.
I intend to keep it out and see how much I do not lose. I did however call the entire deal based on insider information.
Now tell me who knows what is going on? The guy who saw all this coming and prepared and was not hit by the crap that hit the fan, or those that laugh at any conspiracy theory. I am laughing at my $5000 I saved right now. I am also laughing at how my financial advisor last year said this could NOT happen. Oh reallY>? I must be real lucky then. Or well informed.
I believe informed is much more reliable then luck. So far the Conspiracy Theoriest are batting dam close to 100%.
Thats quite amazing for something so miligned.
Meanwhile Atlas Shrugged. The Bloodless Coup of Wallstreet on Washington is almost complete.The Toronto stock market was down more than 500 points Thursday afternoon as investors were weighed down by bad news from the mining and banking industries.
The S&P/TSX composite index was at 7,940.57 at mid-afternoon, down 549.99 points from Wednesday's close and the second time Thursday that the wildly swinging benchmark fell below 8,000 points.
It's nearly five years since Canada's most-watched stock index has been 8,000, in December 2003, and represented a drop of 47 per cent from the TSX peak just five months ago at 15,073.
The Canadian dollar was down 1.93 cents to 77.90 cents US, after dropping to an intraday low of 77.28.
Toronto financial stocks were down 8.7 per cent after TD Bank (TSX:TD) disclosed $350 million in quarterly credit trading losses. Its stock lost $4.96 to $44.97, and all the other big Canadian banks were also sharply lower. Royal Bank (TSX:RY) lost 10 per cent to $37.10 and CIBC (TSX:CM) fell 12 per cent to $42.65.
Metal stocks slid 9.5 per cent. Teck Cominco Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) was down 18 per cent to $4.27 after it suspended dividends on its common shares to help cut debt taken on for the US$14-billion takeover of the Fording Canadian Coal Trust.
Kinross Gold Corp. (TSX:K) rose 55 cents to $14.49 on word it is paying US$250 million to buy the Lobo-Marte gold site in Chile from Teck Cominco and Anglo American PLC.
The TSX energy sector fell 9.1 per cent as crude oil dipped under the US$50-a-barrel mark for the first time since January 2007. The price was down $4.77 to $48.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gold stocks were the lone gainer, up 4.5 per cent, as the December bullion contract rose $12.70 to close at $748.70 an ounce.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gave up on a midday rally, and dropped 115.49 points to 7,882. The Nasdaq composite was down 17.48 points at 1,369 and the S&P 500 shed 19.16 to 787.
Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable.
A jump in weekly U.S. unemployment claims to a 16-year high was the latest piece of depressing economic data. The Labour Department said applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 last week, from a downwardly revised 515,000 in the previous week.
In other movers, Nortel Networks (TSX:NT) shares fell 11 per cent to hit a new low of 55 cents.
March Networks (TSX:MN) says a bank in Latin America signed a $6 million deal to provide networked video recording systems and investigation software for use at more than 1,900 bank branches and automated teller machines. Shares were down 13 per cent, or 24 cents, to $1.63.
Overseas, Japan's main stock index plummeted 6.9 per cent and other markets were also solidly in the red.
Naomi Klein: Bailout is ‘multi-trillion-dollar crime scene’
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008
The Bush administration has already handed out almost half of the $700 billion in bank bailout money authorized by Congress but has not even filled the mandated oversight positions to review how it is being used.
Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, has described the handling of the bailout as “borderline criminal” because of this and other problems. Klein spoke to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Monday to explain her accusations.
“We were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality,” Klein stated. “But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this. … Essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, ‘We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the Great Depression.’”
Klein sees three areas of borderline illegality. The first is that rather than being used to get banks lending again, the bailout money “is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers.”
The second is that, without Congressional authorization, “the Treasury Department pushed through a tax windfall for the banks, a piece of legislation that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the US government.”
The third problem, which dwarfs the $700 billion bailout itself, is that “there’s another $2 trillion that’s been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don’t really know who they’re handing the money out to, because, apparently, it’s a secret.”
“If the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans,” stated Klein, “there’s a very good chance the taxpayers aren’t going to be getting this money back. … So that’s why we’re calling this the ‘trillion-dollar crime scene’ or the ‘multi-trillion-dollar crime scene.’”
Klein argued that Congress should be challenging violations of the bailout legislation, but instead “what they’re saying is, we can’t afford to enforce the law … that somehow, because there’s an economic crisis, legality is a luxury that Congress can’t afford.”
“I’m quite concerned,” Klein stated, “that what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. … I think we should question all of it. Across the board, I think the assumptions are faulty.”
Klein is also concerned that rather than using the crisis as a mandate to fix the underlying problems, the world leaders at the recent G20 summit were talking about propping up the old system.
“Think about what these leaders could do if they really wanted to,” Klein suggested. “When you have a crisis like this, which so clearly shows the need for those types of regulations, when you have an election like there just was in the United States, where people have said clearly that this is a priority, the leaders have an opportunity to act. … But they blew that opportunity, and they actually called for less regulation.”
“This crisis isn’t over,” Klein warned, “and the same people who justified this bailout, who clamored for this bailout, are the very people who are going to turn around and say to Barack Obama, ‘We can’t afford for you to make good on your election promises. We can’t afford universal healthcare.’”
“The money has been given to the people who needed it least, and it’s going to be used to justify austerity measures imposed against those who need it most,” Klein concluded. “It’s going to be used to justify cuts to food stamps. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to Social Security, to health care, let alone being used to justify why more ambitious plans for a national health care program, for green energy are not affordable. So people have to be ready for this. You know, the next shock is yet to come.”
