Under the Big (Market) Top
Courtesy of Phil of Phil's Stock World
1,332.
That is a 100% in the S&P since it's March 2009 low of 666 (see David Fry's chart). Does it matter? Can we expect even a LITTLE pullback after a 100% run or is it "to the moon Alice" and maybe Mars and Jupiter while we're at it as the Federal Reserve's multi-Trillion Dollar thrusters send us to the stars, breaking the bonds of gravity(and logic) as they send stocks every higher in an expanding universe of freshly supplied money. As fellow stock market physicist, Art Cashin said yesterday:
The Newtonian Rally Continues – A mild paraphrase of one Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of force and motion (inertia) says that a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by some counterforce. That seems to be the guiding rule for (Read More....)
What Egypt means to America?
That ultimately we too will fall…
By Jack E. Lohman
Americans do not like to talk of this, but it is inevitable. They are throwing rocks but we have guns. Ours won’t be as nice.
We at least have a semblance of fair elections, but increasingly they are controlled by the top 3% of the wealthy and the politicians that benefit from the payola. And the fact that our Constitution has been construed to make money = speech and corporations = people has made matters worse.
The Fat Cats have their personal vote, but they also control the purse strings that excite the politicians.
Looking at the Egyptian protests it is too soon to tell whether they are going to be ahead or behind when it’s all over. In any gathering of this type the Bell curve tells us that there are some very good people at one end and some very bad people at the other.
Who prevails will dictate (Read More....)
Today we have a wonderful guest article from Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson. They are the authors of a new book entitled Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis. What they have to say about Medicare, Social Security and the coming federal government debt crisis should be a huge wake up call for all of us. The truth is that the U.S. government is looking at a sea of red ink for as far as the eye can see, and our politicians are just going about business as usual as if our entire financial system was not about to come crashing down on our heads. I think that all of you are really going to enjoy the tremendous insights that Bittle and Johnson have shared with us in this article....
*****
Turning the Clock Back Isn't Enough: The Nasty Surprise Awaiting the GOP on Health Care and the Deficit By Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson, Authors of (Read More....)
Are you looking for some practical self-defense gifts for the 2011 holidays? Well, you came to the right place. We take personal security very seriously. The reality is that most people give gifts that end up getting returned to the store or that end up sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Instead, why not give gifts this holiday season that could literally save the lives of those receiving them? All of the self-defense gifts below are extremely practical and are also extremely affordable. The truth is that as the U.S. economy continues to collapse, crime is inevitably going to rise. Do you really want your wife or your daughter to be running around out there without any protection? Do you want to be running around out there without any protection?
The world is getting crazier every day. People simply are not as moral as they used to be. There are literally millions of criminals and predators out there, and at some point either you or a member of your family could encounter one of them. Are you and your family ready for that day?
The following are 10 of the best (Read More....)
All over the United States, new high-tech full body scanners are being installed at airports, and we are told that this is for our own good. Apparently it is in the interest of national security that we all be subjected to what amounts to "virtual strip searches" before we get on an airplane. But are these full body scanners actually going to make us safer? Are they actually needed for our personal security? Or are they just dehumanizing us and blasting us with needless amounts of dangerous radiation? Well, the debate continues to rage on but the Transportation Security Administration continues to install them anyway. At this point the TSA has spent more than $80 million for about 500 full body scanners. 133 have already been installed at U.S. airports, and the TSA plans to install about 1,000 more by the end of 2011.
But the debate about these full body scanners continues to grow. In fact, some travelers are getting downright angry. Just consider the following quote from a recent (Read More....)
The United States leads the world in one very unfortunate statistical category - crime. The truth is that we are not nearly as "moral" and "law abiding" as we would like to think that we are. In fact, more crimes are committed in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and more people are in prison in the United States than anywhere else in the world. The U.S. is experiencing an epidemic of murders, rapes and robberies, and that is only going to get worse as the U.S. economy continues to come apart. That is one reason why so many people are stocking up on home and personal security equipment. When people are desperate, they will do things that they never even imagined that they would do. As more people lose their jobs and lose their homes an increasing number of them will turn to crime.
The following are some really sobering statistics about crime in the United States....
*There are nearly 12 million crimes committed in the United States every single year. That is by far the worst in the world. No other country has more than about 6 million reported crimes per year.
*There are currently over 2.2 million people in prison in the United States. The U.S. leads the world in the number of prisoners and in the percentage of the population in (Read More....)
If it wasn't bad enough that our politicians and news media constantly bombard us with messages that we need to give up all of our liberty and freedom so that we can be safe, now toy manufacturers are producing toys that prepare our children for life in the futuristic Big Brother technocracy that our society is quickly becoming. Playmobil has released a new toy set called the "Playmobil Security Check Point"
The following is from the manufacturer's own description of this toy set.....
The woman traveler stops by the security checkpoint. After placing her luggage on the (Read More....)
Do you think that federal prison is a safe place to be? Well, according to a shocking new report from the inspector general of the Department of Justice, rape and sexual abuse of inmates by staff members in U.S. federal prisons has doubled over the last eight years. This does not even take into consideration the rape of prison inmates by each other, which has reached epidemic proportions. The new report issued by the inspector general of the Department of Justice found that there were 257 cases of sexual abuse of prisoners by U.S. federal prison staff there were referred for prosecution, but only 102 of those cases actually were prosecuted. Of the 102 cases that were actually prosecuted, 83 resulted in convictions.
Overall, there were allegations of sexual abuse of inmates by prison staff at all but 1 of the 93 prison sites under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Prisons. In addition, there were allegations of sexual abuse of inmates against staff in every single occupational category except human resources.
So what does this all mean? It means that this is a very, very widespread problem.
The rape and sexual abuse of prisoners by U.S. federal prison staff is a systemic problem and (Read More....)
