Happy or Terrible?

I REALLY want to own some again. Unfortunately they are against zoning here (although it wouldn't stop me) if I had the time to care for the chicks before they're grown enough to put outside. Should I no longer be employed in the future I would get some & put them at my rural property near here (my kids live there). We ordered some chicks from McMurray Hatchery back in 1979 (unfortunately roosters were included - sure learned from that mistake). Built a corral in the basement with  heat light. Have to care for them, cleaning the pasting from their little butts, keeping water clean & watching for the stronger ones pecking the weaker. We put pine tar on the bleeding areas that were pecked at & it seemed to help.

But something happened to the chickens that remains a mystery still today. One night they did not come back to the coop to roost. The next morning we noticed chicken feet sticking out of the ground inside the fenced area. The rest of the birds were attached & buried with feet sticking out!! No signs of animals getting in, no signs of struggles, no feathers around, no anything. It was awful & I still wonder what could possibly have happened.

I find it absolutely criminal that bitcoins would hit the $9 handle overnight (and finally we see a correction) but manages to stay above the $8 handle today.

And gold? What does it do? It goes down. I suspect it'll end the day close to unch, but this active suppression is disgusting.

Well, my warning to the cartel is this - Let gold float or watch bitcoin gain even more traction. And bitcoin is all kinds of worse from your perspective than gold could ever be. You're going from the frying pan into the fire and you don't even know it.

Those comments by obama angered me, too. How dare he! We started our business with nothing but the ability to do manual labor & a manual typewriter at our kitchen table.

OK, I'm done. Sorry to be OT.

POSX looks terrible and I say we are in for a big selloff and lift in the metals as the DOC speaks!

Is this the one?: http://stovetec.net/us/

I think it's the same one I ordered.   I'm not sure because I just stored it away in its box when I got it, but basically it sounds the same.

An initial slap,that's all!

Love listening to his voice crack with nerves.He is shitting in his pants bc he knows what we are in for.

Chairman Johnson is a frickin' retard. A complete bumbling idiot. Fire his ass out of office.

WHO ELECTS THESE IDIOTS!?!?!

What is the difference between a bank that pays you nothing to hold your money and you holding your money and paying yourself nothing? I hope that helps. They need you. Remember that. Make them earn your business.

They knew exactly what they were doing. They understood that they were systemic necessities so they stopped making decisions as a free-standing business like you and I must. And even now, they are still wearing puppy-dog eyes and trying to look like the victims of unintended consequences. Humanity has seen it before.

I personally will not have another cent held more than 24 hours in any bank until at least 10 executives are publicly prosecuted for the 2008 crisis. Real people have been hurt. Real families have been wrecked. Real people have lost their real businesses and houses. Real people have committed suicide. And either by conquest or consent, this will have real consequences for banks.

I just may walk away from my screen for the day.This is all just so flat out stupid!

The markets except the metals all have been acting like QE is coming and I think we all know the groundwork has been laid for it.

All the jibberish that the fed members have spit out over the past couple of months and the economic # have been putrid as of late and getting worse!

If the metals get whaled today,it just proves what a fools game I am in!

I'm confident today will be a very positive development in both gold and silver!

Check out the " rocket stove". Sorry no link but, someone posted it a good while back.

Continuing the classroom theme, how many here want hyperinflation? Hands up.

" The hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic during the years 1922 and 1923 is an

example of a possible endgame for a country that spends much more than it earns. The

German mark-U.S. (gold) dollar exchange rate rose from 430 in 1922 to about

433,000,000,000 by 1924. If such a hyperinflation unfolded in the U.S. today and if gold

moved with the inflation rate, then the price of gold would exceed $163 trillion U.S.

dollars."  

http://theautomaticearth.org/Finance/report-qthe-golden-dilemmaq.html

The amount to have on hand that I have always seen is between 3 and 6 months worth of living expenses.  This amount allows you to weather a span of unemployment.  It also allows you to weather a protracted bank holiday.  Now if we're talking about a situation worse than these, where there is a prolonged breakdown in the services normally provided by your municipality, etc then the math isn't quite as "clean" as at that point how much will you have to pay for some food or water that you didn't prep supplies adequately before an event happened?  It is hard to know what things will cost or what you will need so it's hard to know how much to save.  On the other hand, me personally in that situation, I am no longer concerned with making sure that my Netflix bill gets paid or my water bill (since we're without its service, right?).  This means that your dollar needs are fluid because even though it was part of your 3-6 months of living expenses, some expenses disappear while others crop up and/or increase in cost.  I have nothing concrete to point you to in this regard, just my thought process about the same situation.  I would aim for at least 3 months of living expenses as cash-on-hand and then creep upwards from there if you have the need and/or feel as if you should.

Regarding where to store the cash-on-hand there are two primary considerations.  The first is the "on-hand" part.  You need to be able to get access to these funds when a situation arises.  This means NOT storing it in a safety deposit box or any other mechanism associated with a bank.  This tends to then seem as if you should keep it on your premises or any other location you have control over.  This leads to the second consideration of safety.  Safety from theft and loss (due to fire, flooding, etc).  Put it in a safe if you have one.  Get a small, portable fireproof/resistant safe to put it in.  Bury it somewhere.  Hide it in your attic.  Baseboards.  Put it wherever you feel comfortable that it is safe and not likely to be walked off with.  Of course the number one thing to remember is a military terms: OPSEC - Operational Security.  Or maybe better from WWII: Loose Lips Sink Ships.  In other words, if no one knows you have something of worth to steal your chances of having someone intentionally targeting you to steal this worth should drop to virtually zero.  This does not mean you won't or can't be robbed (or lose it in a fire) it just means that it is likely you won't be specifically targeted for what you are storing in your house.

My wife and a bunch of her friends got together and made rocket stoves one evening. Really cool little gizmos.

At this point I'm praying they hit all the stops and get us some $25 handle silver and $1525 gold. I don't think it will happen, though.

Nice piece from Rickards on Derivatives lie...

Derivatives Should Be Banned From Financial Markets

By James Rickards

July 16, 2012

The idea that the financial products known as derivatives pose a danger to the financial system is nothing new. Commentators have been pointing this out for years. Most famously, Warren Buffett referred to derivatives as "time bombs" and financial "weapons of mass destruction." Recently a complex derivatives trade caused over $5 billion in losses at J.P. Morgan.

Derivatives are bets between two parties that are made today with a payoff in the future based on the value of some stock, bond, or index. One party will profit if the reference security or index goes up in value and the other party will profit if it goes down. These bets usually settle up every three months based on value at that time, and then a new calculation period begins. There are many variations on this basic pattern, but almost all derivatives involve some form of a bet in which gains and losses are calculated and settled-up periodically.

If derivatives are as dangerous as the commentators suggest, why are they permitted? If they are such a threat to the financial system, why does the size of derivatives bets continue to grow? The answers have to do with several myths the big bank derivatives players have created. These myths are false and distract interested parties from doing what needs to be done to ban derivatives. It's time to demolish these myths once and for all.

Myth No. 1: Derivatives break up risk into parts and allow the pieces to be put into strong hands best able to absorb losses. Financial transactions do involve multiple risks. Even a simple loan can have interest rate risk, credit risk, and foreign exchange risk. The original idea behind derivatives was that these risks could be repackaged into separate financial instruments. In the simple loan example, one party could absorb the interest rate risk, another could absorb the credit risk, and still another could absorb the foreign exchange risk. Since each party specialized in a certain type of risk, it could offer the best prices so that the entire package would be cheaper to the customer than having a single bank absorb all of the risk on its books.

The problem with this simple view is that most derivatives do not derive from an original loan or investment, but are created exclusively to make new bets. Instead of moving risk into strong hands, derivatives actually create risk out of thin air. Risk is not being reduced by derivatives, it is growing exponentially.

Myth No. 2: Derivatives allow markets to get valuable price information about the underlying security or index on which the derivative is based. This process of getting market information from actual trading is called "price discovery." This rationale is heard frequently in the credit default swap market—basically bets on whether a company or country will go bankrupt. Supporters say that prices in the credit default swap market provide good information about the financial health of countries in distress such as Greece or Spain.

This explanation ignores the fact that such price information has always been available from the underlying bonds themselves. The market doesn't need credit default swaps to tell it Greece is in trouble. The market in Greek bonds shows directly that prices are falling and borrowing costs are going up and that Greece is in financial distress.

In fact, the actual bond market is a much better indicator of financial health than the swap market because bonds are widely held by a large number of investors, while the credit default swap market is tightly controlled by a small number of major bank dealers who set prices in a nontransparent way. The credit default swap market is much easier to manipulate than the underlying bond market and therefore it's easier to create a sense of panic which often benefits the dealers in this kind of credit insurance. Derivatives to not improve price discovery, they make it easier to manipulate markets.

Myth No. 3: Bank management has derivatives risks under control using mathematical models that capture the complex interaction of factors embedded in derivatives trades. This view is laughable on its face given the continual series of notorious derivatives fiascoes from Long-Term Capital Management to AIG to J.P. Morgan and many others.

Yet, this myth is pernicious at a deeper level because many bank managers actually believe it. They have constructed elaborate management tools based on empirically false assumptions about the frequency and severity of bad events and the correlations among them. Risk managers sometimes acknowledge these limitations but then say their tools are "better than nothing." This is false too. Bad tools are not better than nothing. They lead to bad investments with the taxpayers picking up the losses every time things go wrong. It would be more honest to admit what we don't know and limit derivatives until the state of the art improves.

The next time some derivatives proponent says that derivatives reduce risk, increase transparency, and are well hedged, stop them in their tracks and ask if they believe in tooth fairies, Easter bunnies and leprechauns. Actually, it's safer betting on the leprechauns than in the soundness of modern derivatives finance. Since markets seem not to have learned from past disasters, one should expect worse to come.

http://97.65.137.90/244901/derivatives-should-be-banned-from-financial-markets-by-james-rickards

silly and manipulated markets.

bernanke has said it before (more cryptically, yes) that he has no problems with more "qe" if deemed necessary to offset either deflation or a too sluggish job recovery.  

again today he said the same - but even more clearly.  .   

"qe" is coming.   where i had nagging doubts before - i don't any longer.   anyone think the job recovery is going anywhere soon?    anyone think there aren't going to be more deflationary forces?   the bernanke even poo pooed inflation indicators at this time as being low and steady - meaning he thinks the economy could handle the rise in inflation if flooded with more $.

he alluded to the fed being split - but that he was on the side of the easers.

qe will come - and probably sooner than later..

* should add:  he said at the "suggestion of deflation" - not after deflation is evident.

so if one is to believe his words (i know, i know) it should be fairly soon.