TFMR Podcast #21 - Jim Willie Returns

Jim Willie & John Butler... what a tour de force these interviews are. Stay thirsty for PMs my friends. And by all means send links to all your social contacts, this info is too compelling to ignore.

Jim Willie, said (and I'm paraphrasing a bit), "When the Tower collapses, it's going to create a black hole with tremendous negative suction."

Yikes - now that creates a vivid visual of the problems we're facing! Great interview - thanks Turd and Jim (once again).

[And Jim .. please don't eat Turd's dirty shorts, that's way too many nasty visuals for one day.]

I had to refresh my blackberry which wiped out my podcast link to TFMetals.  I re-subscribed, but it is not working and won't download any old or new podcasts.  Is anyone else having a podcast download issue?  

I also can't seem to find a link on the podcast page on how to set things back up.  If any Turdites or if any of the Moderators are on today and have any info on how to get my downloads working again I'd much appreciate it!

Listened to both interviews this morning though and they were excellent!  Thanks much for all you do Turd!

Feed the Turd and keep stackin' folks!  Happy Memorial Day (USA).

Update:  I found this address:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/TFMetalsReport?format=xml

plugged it into my blackberry podcast application and it allowed me to re-subscribe again to TFMR podcast channel.  However, it still shows no podcasts available and won't download anything.

Any ideas still much appreciated!  Thanks

Thanks to Turd and Jim for these excellent podcasts.  I consider Jim Willie to be one of the best big picture thinkers out there.  It's a rare treat to have a full hour uninterrupted with him.  I know there are limits to how often he can do this as he makes a living writing for paid subscribers.  Hopefully he will continue to pick up enough new subscribers to justify return visits.  

I hate that generalization.  "China has always thought long term."

No, they haven't.  Mao's rule was hopeless short term authoritarianism.  Hopeless.  

I'm trying to find a link to an article I recently read.  It was about the growth of capitalism in China.  It happened totally by accident is the best way to explain it.  Circa 1978, a lot of farmers and small town folks could see that the official party way of doing things was a horrendous counterproductive mess.  To make their own lives better immediately they simply started trading and doing things as though they were in a somewhat free market.  There was no planning of it and initially they had to use a careful alloy of hiding what they were doing and bribing who could be bribed to keep going.  Eventually, productivity improved and the party big shots were aware of the open secret that this wasn't allegiance to the words of Marx and Engels that was increasing the crop and the standard of living and Deng was at least smart enough to let it keep going.  Eventually the party came around far enough, to see themselves as possibly a sort of more tightly controlled Singapore and proclaim that it was beautiful to be rich.  But the whole thing grew out of the expedience and short term frustration of rural peasants.  There was no long term planning to it.  Hell, the official chinese long term planning said those people were supposed to be put to death.

Chinese history, the little that I know of it, is replete with just as much foolish short term centered decision making as that of other countries.  If they'd been thinking long term, they'd have seen how unscrupulous the British and others were at the turn of the 18th to 19th century and developed a sufficient military to protect themselves.  They didn't.  What resulted was the so-called "Boxer Rebellion" which was actually only the Chinese fighting back against the British forcing opium into China.  And why did the British force opium into China?  Because over decades of trade the Chinese had built up a huge surplus of SILVER from the British and other western nations.  They sold various goods to the west but really didn't buy much of anything back and over time had built up a massive supply of silver.  The British could find much of anything to sell back and so, in the absolute nadir of colonial attitudes, forced opium into China.  At the conclusion of the conflict, the Chinese were defeated and forced to pay huge reparations of (wait for it) . . SILVER. 

I'm not trying to pick a fight for a fight's sake.  That generalization is simply greatly overstated.

Found it!  The article below is a fascinating read.  I highly recommend it

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5469

If you really want to blow your mind about China, check out Gavin Menzies's book, here:

http://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338070664&sr=8-1

The next generation of undetectable unmanned assassination spy machines is on its way to being operational.   Let us all rejoice and share in plenty.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/11/us-navys-ufo-like-stealth-drone-reaches-new-milestone/?intcmp=sem_outloud

Isn't that what we essentially have whenever we have negative real interest rates?

A dollar in hand today has more purchasing power than a dollar promised in the future, earning piddly little gov't suppressed interest rates that don't keep up with inflation.

It means the "spot" price of a dollar bill is higher than the "futures" price.  Think about it.

Jim Willie's newsletter  is so prolific and comprehensive it takes about 4 hours to read through it all.

One thing that seems to come through  is his  integrity. I always get the feeling he is telling the truth ,as far as he can see, and thats alot farther than the  average person .

It takes a little gettin used to his writing style , but after a bit,  it sounds almost poetic,with a cadence that  eventually becomes appealing .  His interviews are ok,but fall far short of the presentation  in the  monthly newsletter. and the subscription is only about 200 dollars  a year, something like that . its a real bargain,and so far the only Macro analysis I have needed in a few years, aside from the free  websites like here and JS Mineset,  Trader Dan, and the other ones we all go to . 

The  generosity  Willie offers folks when he presents a free public  article is  more than people realize, because he says much of the  substance of his newsletter in the public articles, just presented about a week later. like this interview.  What subscribers get is a heads up, a week earlier, plus  much more detail and indepth  analysis. 

I like Willie's sense of honest  presentation,  but  these recent years, all Ive ever read from him has been so negative about the state of global affairs,and economic collapse, etc...that its always a very gloomy doom  forecast. I wonder if he was more positive 5 years ago. or if the global picture every improves, will his analysis  become more positive. not meant to be a criticism, he tells it like it is, but just be prepared for serious doom and gloom in a prolific presentation. 

Interesting observation Eric Original, you could apply this same logic to all fiat currencies with negative real rates.

GBP, JPY, EUR and arguably the AUD.

I am certain that that is not how it would look.

How often do you see the planet earth suck in satellites or other items in space on only one small portion of its 3-dimensional body?

I would think that the gravitational pull would be more even over the whole surface rather than sucking in one side first.
If there where any difference of the gravitational pull, as I understand it, it would be around the poles of the black hole given it had a rapid spin which would result in stuff being shot out rather than sucked in at those two points.

what movie is that by the way? Fantastic four silver surfer? New Star Trek movie?

I have looked at it now 15 times XD, and thinking that the black hole suddenly appeared at the surface of that side it makes a bit more sense but still not 100%. you might have seen the one side be sucked in first but it wouldn't explain the rapid expanse of how much is sucked in per time unit. Since at first it is sucking in like 1/10 of a radius of the planet and at the end it says *slurp* and a full diameter span is sucked in. The addition of the first half third mass of the planet would not account for the massive extra gravitational pull needed for that.

but anyway, very scary =)

longtime lurker.

thanks for all you do.'

some questions for the crew:

Does anyone think the JP Morgan problem is related to Lindsey Williams  "watch the derivatives market" comments (beginning of the end of $)?

When stacking, has anyone considered that Eagles (bullion/commodity) would fall under CFTC regulations and may have restrictions placed on them as opposed to US Silver/Gold coins (Morgan, Peace, Indian Head, Barber etc) which are legal tender?

Does anyone listen to One Radio Network (Wed shows) with Coin guy Andy Gause - he makes the case for numismatics over bullion (granted he sells them, but I am more interested your opinions on the bullion v legal tender coin).

For someone who is much smarter than I am:

Two questions come to my mind when I digest all the information that Jim Willie puts out, and causes me to question his conclusions.

First, if the banks have 238 TRILLION dollars of interest rate swaps, Where are they?  Jim says that these swaps are processes where banks borrow funds from the fed at zero interest and purchase treasuries at 2-3%.  Well there are only 12 TRILLION dollars worth of treasuries total.  If they purchased all the treasuries in the world, What are the other 226 TRILLION dollars worth of swaps?

Second,  if the FED is loaning all this (newly printed) money to the banks, should not this be reflected on the fed balance sheet?  Or are these 'loans' off balance sheet ?

Thanks, ahead of time,  for your responses in helping clear this up for me.

Regards,

Icarus

If the 10 year bond goes down to 1.50% doesn't this mean that home mortgage rates  go down as well?

If so, time to refi again...or conversely, the SHTF because of the derivative bust and the systemic failure Willie talks about wipes out all debt and we start over.

Any thoughts?

These are to trade for future services like gardening, housekeeping, modelo negra, donkey shows, etc... that I wish I can afford if metals  ever get out of their tail spin...