Painting

North American 3 Months

2012-01-23T03:32:00.000-08:00

I have posted these charts for my own information stream. I am interested in how the US is doing compared to other funds I watch.

This is not advice and you should read my disclaimer and consult your own financial advisers.
I am not an adviser I am a painter!

North American 6 Months

2012-01-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

North American 5 years

2012-01-23T03:23:00.001-08:00

This Is Interesting...

2011-09-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/trader-on-bbc-sounds-alarm-about-market-crash.html

This is not advice and is for entertainment only and read the disclaimer etc...

European One Month

2011-09-01T03:43:00.000-07:00

European 5 Years

2011-09-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

MONEY SIX MONTHS

2011-07-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

FI SIX MONTHS

2011-06-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

FE 3 MONTHS

2011-01-23T06:25:00.001-08:00

FE one month

2011-01-23T06:21:00.000-08:00

TWO YEARS

2011-01-02T08:43:00.001-08:00

ONE YEAR

2011-01-02T08:38:00.001-08:00

SIX MONTHS

2011-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

THREE MONTHS

2011-01-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

ONE MONTH

2011-01-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

2010-12-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

yo!...got this from mish...innit?

petey : thanks mish..thanks nouriel

VOTING FOR CHRISTMAS

2010-12-06T04:35:00.000-08:00

yo!...gettin stuffed!...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
...capitulation day postponed...

...here in palookaville today...

...all eyes are on china...

...evvabody knows that the real deal kowloonside is birds...

...mish says that it's chickens...

...that they is all playin chicken with they dough...

...an that pretty soon or whenever...

...china, 'stralia an all...

...be gonna go pop...

AINT NOBODY IN HERE
...but us turkeys...

...include me in fo a early Christmas...

...snow onna groun an all...

...ahm lookin at ma 'vestments...

...lak I alus do at this time o yeh...

...an they a mess man...

...sho summa em's gone up...

...caint complain mostleh...

...trouble is...

...ah jus don unnerstan it all no mo...

...time was ya could place yo bets...

...an gravity worked...

THE UP ELLAVATER

...nah tho...

...gravity been postponed...

...an all eyes is on china...

...is all em birds be gonna be chickens...

...commin home ta roast...

TURKEYS DON FLY

...or is they gon be turkeys...

...oh yeah...this aint no advice...see the disclaimer...
all suckers is responsible fo they own investments...
an this is all my own opinions and jus fun...innit!

YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU HEAR IT

2010-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

yo!..jeremy grantham...innit!

from zero hedge

Jeremy Grantham: "The Fed Has Spent The Last 20 Years Manipulating The Stock Market"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/11/2010 10:16 -0500

petey : bout time we saw this...innit? thanks tyla!

oh yeah! this ain't no advice an look atta disclaimer suckers...

SUDIO SHOT

2010-09-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

...thought you might like a nebb at my studio and the new red works I am working on while the financial world goes to hell etc...petey

THE MISSING LINK

2010-09-05T04:05:00.000-07:00

yo!...good call...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

...capitulation day postponed...

petey : check out this great article...

...the truth...

...probably not the whole truth...

...but nothing else but the truth...

OH YEAH !

...better read this too...

NOT IF

2010-06-09T03:25:00.000-07:00

yo...clobberin time...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

capitulation day posponed

...in palookaville today...

...the truth about this 'recovery'...

...is leakin out...

THIS TIME IT'S THE SAME

...the debt is not back...

...it never went away...

...the politix mega-d-it-up...

...to bail out the bond holders, the banks, and the pals...

...now the drug is wearing off...

...and...

DON'T LOOK DOWN

...you cannot reduce debt with debt...

...you can fool most of the people...

...most of the time...

...now is not the time...

...

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS EVER LOUDER

2010-05-20T03:36:00.000-07:00

yo!...carpe diem...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

...capitulation day postponed...

....in palookaville today...

...deep inside fortress Europa...

...eurocratics await the birth of...

A EUROFEDERAL AND FISCAL DISUNION

...they know how to turn a good crisis to their advantage...

...they know that the only way they will achieve their long term goal...

...of a...

UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

...is to...

...sieze the day...

...break up or make up...

...time to wake up...

...the hard ECU would have been fine...

but...

...that would not have done the trick...

...would it?...

WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU...

2010-05-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

yo!...gemutlich!...not...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

...capitulation day postponed...

....in palookaville today...

...Angela Merkel has had herself carried down to the market...

...while traders stood back amazed...

...she commanded the markets to calm down and follow orders...

THEY THINK ITS ALL OVER

...later...

...everyone carried on trading as normal and the iron chancellor got wet feet...

YOU CAN'T BUCK THE MARKET

...earlier...

...here in palookaville the iron lady said that the markets would trade you out of business if

you tried it on...

...our great tory party kicked her out for telling the truth...

ITS THE TRUTH STUPID

...in palookaville they like us all to believe in their game of nanny knows best...

...we arn't allowed to vote on the euro or europe...

...when the poor old Irish vote no...

...they are told to shut the f**k up and vote again...

...only the markets can get at the truth...

...Europe is bust...

...its as simple as that...

WOODEN MERCEDES IN REVERSE

2010-03-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

yo!...you scratch my back...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

...capitulation day postponed...

....in palookaville today...

...people are impressed by the latest wheeze...

...to weaken the euro...

...German exports- scratch that- we can all use...

...a weaker currency...

...so Greece agrees to help out...

...hey guys...

...lets play fall out and fight...

...this will weaken the euro...

...and we can all sell more stuff...

...heads we win...

...tails we can't lose...

petey...only kiddin...innit!

DANSE MACABRE

2010-03-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

yo!...buggar thy neighbor...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
...capitulation day postponed...

...here in...

...palookaville...

...all bets are hedged...

...as we await the resumption of normal service...

...a V shaped recovery has been achieved in the financial markets...

...and the puppet masters have made loads-a-money...

IT TAKES ONE TO TANGO

...the states within the Eurodisunion...

...are locked in a dance of death...

...those that sell and those that buy...

...those who sell will not buy and those who buy must borrow to do so...

...those who lend fear they will not be repaid...

...the price of borrowing must rise for those who buy...

...those who sell...will not lend...

...round and round we go...

...until the music stops...

...when all must find a seat at the table...

...or fall to the floor...

...and must then sit out the game...

...in the corner...with the dunce's hat...

WE TWO KINGS

...Chi Na and Berlin...

...are kings of the castle...

...all the rest are dirty rascals...

STANDS WITH A BOWL

...our great leader...

...is asking for more...

...more time to rule...

...more money to spend...

...he can't get enough from all us palookas...

...so he stands with a bowl...

...begging for more money...

...so that he can pay the interest...

...on the money he has borrowed...

...mr bumble the beedle...

...wants to give him to the undertaker...

...who will bury him for good...

FATAL ATTRACTION

...but he just keeps emerging from the dead...

...consumate zombie that he is...

...the people of palookaville...

...will vote for death...

...so long as somebody else will pay for it...

BAGPIPE MUSIC

It's no go the merry-go-round, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumbbells to use when he was fifty.

It's no go the Yogi-man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tire and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs. Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife "Take it away; I'm through with overproduction."

It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Louis Macneice

	Malcolm Evison (9/16/2005 9:59:00 AM)
	Humorous as it may be with regards to Class and social mores, flirtations with theosophy etc., one is brought up with a start... the realization that this was written in 1937 and, the more specific social unrest in Spain and Germany... the fall of the glass is unstoppable!

...petey...

the more things change...innit!

THE BEAUTIFUL DEBT

2010-02-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

yo!...game over...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

...final score...

...here in palookaville...

...the game is up...

Recovery? Who are you trying to kid?

We are in a deep hole – and it looks like we’ll be down there for quite some time, says Jeremy Warner.

...course...jezzer used to be a booster...

...but...

...that was then...

JOIN THE CLUB

Portsmouth goes into administration

...hoping to win trophies with debt...

...debt and players wages bust the club...

...football is as bust as the banks...

...why not grow your own local players and...

...play football...

...not financial games...?

California is a greater risk than Greece, warns JP Morgan chief

...debt is doom...

THE SILVER BULLET

2009-12-03T04:56:00.000-08:00

yo!...kimosabe...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

Christmas Special

...this Christmas...

...here in...

...palookaville...

...a great hero rides to the rescue...

THE LOAN ARANGER

...even though the banks are all bust...

...and the government coffers are empty...

...public spending will rise...

...government debt will increase...

...suckers will keep us all afloat...

ONLY A FOOL WOULD SAY THAT

...when you have the lone ranger on your side...

...nothing can go wrong for long...

...he will fire his silver bullet at the debt...

...and it will disappear...

I HAVE SEEN THIS WITH MY OWN EYES

...it's all recorded in black and white...

...we used to see him every week on tv...

...even his horse is silver...

...he wears a mask...

...and has a native american sidekick...

...together they make the quantum jump...

petey...hiho silver aaaawwaaaaayyyyyyy!

GLOBAL WARNING

2009-11-29T03:40:00.000-08:00

yo!...what climate gate tapes?...innit!

PALOOKAGATE SCIENTIFIC
"numbers alone add up to nothing"

...here in palookaville...

...nobody reads the blogs...

...strictly come dancing...

...is how we run the news...

...every one knows that scientists...

...live by funding...

...so why would we be surprised...

...when they try to rig their data?...

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

...A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)...

...The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU"...Christopher Booker

SPIN THE WEB YA SPIDER BASTARD

...what sort of wimp would tell the truth...

...if it threatened their funding?...

LETS WORK TOGETHER

...united they stand...

...and the truth is buried...

...bullshit baffles brains...

...innit!..

THINGS TO DO IN DUBAI WHEN IN DEBT

2009-11-27T04:04:00.000-08:00

yo!...can't pay, won't pay...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
black friday

...in japan...

...In the deserts of Sudan...
...And the markets of Japan
From Milan to Yucatan
Every woman, every man

Hit me with your credit stick.
Hit me! Hit me!
Je t'adore, ich liebe dich,
Hit me! hit me! hit me!
Hit me with your credit stick.
Hit me slowly, hit me quick.
Hit me! Hit me! Hit me!

In the wilds of Borneo
And the banks of Bordeaux
Eskimo, Arapaho
Move their money to and fro....

THE BITCH IS BACK

...here in palookaville...

...people think it's all over...

Global markets hit by fresh bout of selling

Yen hits fresh 14-year high as investors dump stocks

Darling to admit recession is worse than he forecast

Ports face crisis as volumes fall

Dubai is just a harbinger of things to come for sovereign debt

..."Small wonder, though, that this minor tremor has sent such shock waves around the wider capital markets. The fear is that threatened default in this tiny desert kingdom is just a harginger of things to come for government debt markets as a whole. According to new estimates by Moody’s, the credit rating agency, the total stock of sovereign debt worldwide will have risen by nearly 50 per cent between 2007 and 2010 to $15.3 trillion. The great bulk of this increase comes not from irrelevant little states like Dubai, but from the big advanced economies – America, Europe, and Japan"....

...in japan...

...Tokyo warns of double-dip recession...

..."Fears that figures suggesting an economic recovery may have been a false dawn were intensified yesterday when Japan’s Prime Minister sounded an official alarm that the country risked falling into a “double-dip” recession.

With the bedrock of Japan’s export industry ravaged by both a recent plunge back into deflation and the soaring yen, Yukio Hatoyama said that “measures are required so that the economy will not fall into a double-dip recession”.

His comments are expected to spark alarm as other governments have quietly begun to acknowledge the possibility that the worst may not be over"....

THE KISS

2009-11-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/charles-stuart.html

FREE BUT DOWN IN THE GUTTER

2009-10-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

yo!...canned heat...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day+a year or so

...government sucks...

...the well known treasury department...

...has taken over the country...

...read mish...

OH DEAR...

2009-10-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

yo!...bummer...innit!

PENSIONS KAPUTNIK DAY

...here in palookagrad today...

...the planners are breaking the bad news to the proles...

...you have to work longer folks...

...THEY AIN'T NO JOBS...

...you have to come off incapacity benefit and go to work...

...only...

...THEY AIN'T NO JOBS...

POLITICAL SUICIDE

...everyone knows something has to give...

...but...

...not that it should be given by them...

...the fact is that the government has bust the country...

...and that their index-linked pensions are safe...

...not to mention their buy-to-let portfolios...

...paid for by expenses claims (us)...

don't worry

...we will not have to work longer though...

...because...

1. they ain't no jobs...

2. most middle class people work for the government...

3. that means index-linked pensions from age 60...

4. the rest will be on benefits...

5. only idiots who have saved money will pay...

6. obviously that is a very small number...

NO MEANS YES

2009-10-04T03:46:00.000-07:00

yo!...result...innit!

CAPITULATION DAY

...European Cup...

...Ireland 0 Germany 1...

WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU SAY YES

...debt put the Ice in Ireland...

...here in palookagrad...

...we don,t even get to play...

...our great leader...

...comrade mandelson...

...has denied us the chance of...

...victory in Europe...

PRESIDENT BLAIR

...the man who brought us...

...to where we are today...

...hopes to become the...

...first...

...unelected president of the...

EUROPEAN DISUNION

...rumour has it...he hopes to start the...

...next war...

...we are going to invade Iran...

...by proxy of course...

...he will send a team...

...of such...

...incompetence...

...that their economy will implode...

...even with all that oil...

...incompetence is his thing...

...having saved Irak...

...from peace and...

...some dismalness...

...he hopes for the same success...

...with...

IRAn

...with Ireland now fully...

...integrated into the new...

...DISUNION...

...perhaps the IRA can be...

...parachuted in to the desert...

...and paid to blow up the nuclear facilities...

...before the Israelis do...

PEACE IN OUR TOWN

...financial news follows...

...world trade has collapsed...

...tony blair and his team...

...have declared the recovery over...

...all the investor...

...has started to take profits...

...

THAT GREAT DAY HAS COME

2009-09-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

yo!...happy birthday...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day+365...

...all is quiet on the financial front...

...in palookagrad today...

...all is changed...

...prime minister mandelson and comissar brown...

...are awaiting re-election...

...on the back of their zombie recovery...

BEAR MARKET BULL

...since the chicken's head was bitten off...

...and the politix danced around the fires of the burning banks...

...all the talk is of the new bull market...

...the great recovery...

...how it was all just a panic...

...well maybe they are right

and we can sleep easy in our beds

and all the young unemployed can play football

travel, crochet, see a movie...

NEGATIVE FOR NEGATIVE'S SAKE

...baltic dry is down again...

...but only 40%...

...ships lie idle all over the world...

...but only 12%...

...house prices have stabilised...

...honest!..

...not...

...cars sales have risen...

...from the ashes...

...on free money incentives...

...in japan...

...they are spending like there's no tomorrow...

...in china inventories are up...

...flats are empty...

...but inventory is up...

SHORT FOR SHORT'S SAKE

...come on sh*t for brains...

...pile in now...

...this is the biggest free ride the politix will ever provide...

...capitulation day?...

...moral hazard...

...what a twat!..

halfcat : don y'all mind petey non...he jus a shadder o his ol sell...

petey : oh yeah...an this...

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said US bank loans have fallen at an annual pace of almost 14pc in the three months to August (from $7,147bn to $6,886bn).

"There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s," he said. "The rapid destruction of money balances is madness."

petey : ...disclaimer...an obviously...this aint no advice...etc. etc.

MAKE IT SO 如此做它

2009-09-03T01:57:00.000-07:00

yo!...defying gravity...innit!

財務的PALOOKAVILLE

投降日347

bloomberg...Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- China’s stocks rose for a third day, driving the Shanghai Composite Index to its biggest gain in six months, on speculation regulators will adopt measures to boost the nation’s equities following declines in the past month...

...The government may take measures to stabilize the market before the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, the start of a weeklong holiday.

“They want everything to be stable and in harmony,” said Francis Lun, general manager of Fulbright Securities Ltd., in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “They will approve more stock market funds and allow them to buy into the market.”...

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...all things are possible...

...but...

...most things are fixed...

...in theory...

...the gamblers bets should be winning all the time...

...except when they do not...

...of course...

...nobody knows when this must happen...

VD day

2009-08-31T04:25:00.000-07:00

yo!...top...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

capitulation day+345

...here in...

...palookaville...

...they think it's all over...

Now it’s looking like V for victory over recession

...everybody knows...

...government sucks...

WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU INVEST

...the souffle...

...will rise again...

...a recovery will be crammed down our throats...

...like it or not...

...he who prints the money...

...calls the shots...

VICTORY DEPRESSION DAY

...labor day to be renamed...

...every year the unemployed will get one day of work...

...it will mark the end of summer...

...the end of the recession that never was...

is it breakfast yet?

BABYLON BE THY NAME

2009-08-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

yo!..suckers...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

capitulation day+342

...the story so far...

nouriel : ..."In the last few months the world economy has been saved from a near depression...

...That feat has been achieved by a range of extraordinary government stimulus measures...

In the U.S. and in China, and to a lesser extent in Europe, Japan and other countries...

...governments have pumped liquidity...

...slashed policy rates...

...cut taxes...

...primed demand...

... and ring-fenced and back-stopped the financial system...

All of this has worked...

...but it has worked at a cost...

Governments have been spending and borrowing like never before...

...The question now is: how do they stop?

...This is not a simple problem...

...Restore normality too soon...

...and the risk is that a weak recovery will double dip into a second and deeper recession...

...Restore it too late and inflation will already be ingrained"...

PAINT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

petey :

...here in ...

...palookagrad...

...we are...

...uncertain...

...we would have been much happier...

...if the politix...

...had let the markets sort out the mess...

...but...

...vested interest...

...has stolen the day...

THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN

...yes the game is fixed...

...and yes you have to play...

...just don't be under any illusions...

...about efficient markets...

...or best advice...

...or rules...

...or solvency...

...smoke and mirrors...

...shifting sands...

...moving goal posts...

...it's economics jim!..

...but not as we knew it...

EARLY WARNING

2009-07-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

yo...?

Palooka毕业财务

投降日313

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...all eyes are on...

...中国...

WATCH THIS VIDEO

...the short view...

petey : hope the translation is ok...used a mac widget...innit...!

THE BULLISH EMPIRE

2009-07-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

yo!...tip of the iceberg...innit!

PALOOKAGRAD FINANCIAL

capitulation day

+305

...don't worry...

...be happy...

STATE OF PLAY

...the world economy has collapsed...

...world trade has disappeared...

...a deflationary spiral has taken hold...

...debt has replaced credit...

...politicians are in disgrace...

...not yet because they caused this disaster...

...but because many have been found to be fiddling their expenses...

...that they have increased their own salaries and pensions...

...whilst making us all...

...much poorer...

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT WE'VE DONE

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...we are so busy watching all the dreary sh*t...

...on state tv...

...that we are blissfully unaware...

...that we are bust...

...the politix are in hock to the banks...

...and have been made to bail them out...

...at our expense...

ALL TOMORROW'S PENSIONS

...the only money coming in to pay for all the public sector salaries and pensions...

...is being borrowed...

...when the suckers...

...figure this out...

...we will be in big trouble...

...for now...

...party on dudes...

PASSPORT TO PALOOKAVILLE

2009-07-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

yo!...suckers...innit!

PALOOKAGRAD FINANCIAL

capitulation day

+293

...nobody here in...

...palookagrad...

...gives a f**k...

...about the new price of a passport...

DEFLATION DEFEATED

...certainly not the commissars at the BBC...

...whose pay is so high that they cannot ever spend it all...

...not the politicians who are rolling in expenses and have vast earnings...

...from their clients in the lobbies...

...at £77 per adult...

...nobody here is going anyhere...

THE PALOOKAGRAD WALL

...the crisis in government caused by their inability...

...to fund the new wall to keep in all the proles...

...has been averted...

...we have a tape of the cabinet in the politbureau...

brown : we have to stop people traveling...

dark brown : the b*stards think that the world is their oyster...

light brown : we have increased the tax on petrol and diesel...

mc brown : we have taxed air travel...

golden brown : we have increased the cost of a passport by 4-500%...

bust brown : the f**kers won't catch the bus...

incapability brown : they'll catch the f**kin flu though...

new brown : we should tax bikes...

old brown : I'm onnit boss...

chairman brown : we will stop the b*stards saving if it's the last thing we do!!...

petey : pitiful...innit!

ONCE-UPON-A-TIME IN THE BUST

2009-07-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

yo!...going, going, gone...innit!

PALOOKAGRAD FINANCIAL

capitulation day

+292

...once-upon-a-time...

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...there was a tower called...

...................

...in those olden days there was a nasty witch...

...called bust...

...and this bust threatened to bring down the owners of the great tower...

...for some while the tower wobbled...

...and all the soothsayers argued about whether or when it would fall...

...about the same time there were rumours about an insurance company...

...that we worked in...

...the AAA magic that protected the company...

...was wearing out....

...due to non-performing...

...property investments...

20% OF THE SALES FORCE BRING IN 80%

OF THE BUSINESS

...the big hitters...

...had hit big...

...and made off with their commissions...

...the empty malls and towers...

...sucked the life out of the insurance company...

...AAA to AA+ to A to B...

...well you can guess the rest...

...and of course the tower fell as well...

NOTHING LIKE THIS COULD HAPPEN TODAY

...Insight: US property market central to economy...

Gillian Tett : ...So will US property prices stabilise? Not if you believe a startling presentation I saw this week from a large, global financial group. This particular bunch of analysts – who have done a remarkably good job at predicting the credit crisis during the past four years – are currently warning their clients to expect a peak-to-trough fall in US residential prices of more than 40 per cent in this cycle.

The good news is that in some US regions, prices have already fallen so sharply – often by more 30 per cent – that property is already very affordable, relative to incomes and on a historical basis.

But the bad news is that houses are not yet cheap enough to prevent more price falls. On the contrary, this particular team of analysts thinks that when the problems of excess house inventory and rising unemployment are added into the model, average US house prices will still fall by another 14 per cent in the next few years – on top of the declines seen so far.

That headline figure conceals some startling regional discrepancies. Colorado is reckoned to be through the worst. In New York, though, the pain has barely started. Prices there are projected to decline by another 30 per cent or so. Taken as a whole, these projections imply that about 25m households in America end up in negative equity.

This projection is gloomier than those made by the US government and many large US banks. But the 25m number is currently being echoed by other investment groups, such as Pimco. If it turns out to be correct, it raises two crucial questions. One is the degree to which the western banking system could face a secondary round of real estate losses (particularly as these analysts are even more alarmed about the commercial property outlook than the residential sector.)

But the second fascinating question is what further house prices falls might do to consumer psychology. America has never experienced negative equity on this scale before. Thus nobody is entirely sure how households might respond. Will they default en masse? Will voters become so angry that they demand more populist public bail-outs of the housing sector (or financial reform)? Will consumers cut spending further?..." Gillian...

THE CURE FOR DEBT

2009-07-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

yo!...more debt...innit!

PALOOKAGRAD FINANCIAL

+286...

...the story so far...

...the world has gone bust...

...having created too much credit during the Greenspan Bubble...

...the Wizard of Oz...

...failed to put on the brakes...

...before the wheels came off...

ELE

...the inventor of the black swan...

...says that the financial system is very fragile...

...and therefore...

...will crash...

...er...

...that would be...

...collapse...

...like world trade...

...US jobs report leaves markets gulping for air...

...after bankrupting the country...

...with his five year plans...

...comrade Brown...

...is hoping to cure the debt...

...with another credit binge...

...the cruel truth is...

...that the last great bubble was...

...just that...

...the bust began in January 2000...

...and the 2003 - 2008...

...period was a...

...zombie boom...

...the black swan guy...

...believes that they all...

...do not have a clue...

...about how to fix this bust...

HERE IS THE NEWS

...it's worse than that...

...it's dead jim...

...swop debt for equity..

...you can't fix debt with debt...

...ask mish, the tikka guy or the black swan guy...

WHACKOJACK

2009-06-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

yo!...the zombie king...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL

capitulation day

+278...

...today...

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...everyone is in mourning...

THRILLER

...the zombie king will sing and dance no more...

...but...

...the zombie banks will play and play...

King over the water

..."But Mr King’s differences with the Treasury and Financial Services Authority over the future of the UK’s tripartite system of financial regulation are of greater importance. In testimony this week, Mr King revealed the extent to which regulators in one of the world’s great financial centres have yet to agree on the lessons to be learnt from the banking crisis. Mr King’s claim that he has not even been consulted on the government’s forthcoming white paper on reform of financial regulation, which is likely to give the FSA a share in responsibility for financial stability, certainly does little to boost confidence that the Bank will swing into line in support of the UK’s proposed new regulatory framework...."

...LEX...

IT AINT ME BABE

...“All we can do at present, before a bank is deemed by the FSA to have failed, is to write our Finanicial Stability Report and give speeches. These are important things. But in the end I don’t believe that people change their behaviour simply because we publish reports. Now, that’s fine by me. I’m very happy with that position if you want us just to publish reports. I’m very content with that. But I do want it to be absolutely crystal clear that you in parliament understand the Bank of England can do no more than publish reports and make speeches.

“If you’re content with that, that’s fine by me. What you can’t do is turn around afterwards and say ‘You have the statutory responsibility, why didn’t you do something?’ when there is nothing we can actually do.
“So all I’m saying is just align carefully powers and responsibilities. But believe me I’ve got more than enough work on my plate at present. I’m not looking for a whole lot more.” king

"The feud between the Bank of England and the Treasury intensified on Wednesday as Mervyn King said he had not been consulted on the contents of the Government's imminent White Paper on financial services."

LEST WE FORGET

...it was Brown wot took away powers from the BOE...

...and give em to the FSA an the Treasury...

...his name is all over this bust...

...oh...

...and he sold our gold...

...at the very bottom of the market...

BROWN

the real king of the zombies

GROW YOUR OWN DOPE

2009-06-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

yo!..plant an investor...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+276...

...Wall Street struggles for direction...

...“I don’t think this is the start of a major pull-back,” said Jeff Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial Services.

“Buyers and sellers have come together and begun to agree on a fair price following the powerful rally, which is why we have seen sideways trade.”

But Tim Howkins, chief executive of IG Group, said: “Equities need to go down again. They bounced too quickly and the feeling is

we still need to see a complete capitulation.”...FT

NOT IF BUT WHEN

...here, this morning...

...in palookaville...

...we await capitulation...

...we have been denied for so long...

...the zombie forces ranged against us...

...are legion...

...and well entrenched...

...they believe that they know the correct prices for all the various...

...financial assets...

...until the forces of creative destruction...

...rally to the cause...

...the zombies will continue to hold sway...

CAPITULATION DAY

...will arrive...

...eventually...

...the longer it takes...

...the greater the eventual bill...

...two lost decades in Japan...

...have not taught the zombie masters...

...that they do more harm than good...

GET OUT OF DEBT FREE

2009-06-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

yo!...debt pays...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+275...

...struth...

...an they said the bum was in on housin...

...'We'll pay you £25,000 to take your mortgage elsewhere'...

...

DEBT AND BET

2009-06-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

yo!...casino capitalism...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+274...

...In palookaville today...

...everyone is a winner...

...the chinese have made all this cheap money available...

...for their many millions of gamblers...

...to play with...

...Chinese bail-out cash heads for Macau’s casinos rather than Guangdong factories...

and

...Xie: Chinese Banks Funding Commodities Speculation, Casting Doubt on Recovery...

...so...

...funny how so much of what we are told...

...by those pollyanna people...

...is proved bollox...

...eventually...

HERE IS THE NEWS

...the fruit machine has stopped...

...payouts are history...

...get a job...

...if you can...

IN GERMANY THEY DO IT DIFFERENTLY

...Berlin weaves a deficit hair-shirt for us all...

!NON!

...Sarkozy rejects austerity measures...

GOOD TIMES AND BAD Extended Recession Version

2009-06-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

yo!...for your pleasure...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+269...

..."me, I liked him. He had all the guts they ever made".

oh yeah...an this too

A Zombie Because

2009-06-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

yo!...this is not advice...

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+266...

..."The world is setting up for a big crash, again.

Market chatter over green shoots and rising prices has fueled a bear market rally that won't last, despite policymaker 'noise.'

Since the last bubble burst, governments around the world have not been focusing on reforms.

They are trying to pump a new bubble to solve existing problems.

Before inflation appears, this strategy works.

As inflation expectation rises, its effectiveness is threatened.

When inflation appears in 2010, another crash will come.

If you are a speculator and confident you can get out before it crashes, this is your market. If you think this market is for real, you are making a mistake and should get out as soon as possible. If you lost money during your last three market entries, stay away from this one – as far as you can."

petey : sounds about right to me....

always read the full article an we don't give advice. we just suckers like you...

Zombiegrad Spring

2009-06-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

yo!...good news week...innit!

ZOMBIEGRAD FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+265...

...this morning...

...here in...

...zombiegrad...

...even the msb...

...are carryin the real news...

GERMAY F**KED

..."Paul Krugman: The "Nipponisation" of the world economy with a bunch of "Argentinafications" playing a role in the acute crisis. But even after those are over, we have the Nipponisation of the world economy. And that's really something.

Will Hutton: What was the heart of the Japanese problem? What was at the heart of their 17 years of going nowhere?

PK: Well, my guess is that it was that the balance-sheet problems took a very long time to resolve. And it is difficult to get enough demand in an economy where you have really very adverse demography ...

WH: So, which countries look closest to being Nipponised - combining balance-sheet problems and ageing populations?

PK: Well, the US doesn't have the same combination. But in Europe, Germany and Italy look comparable. France is better and Europe as a whole is considerably better.

WH: Germany matches Japan to an uncanny degree. You talk about the Nipponisation of the world economy: I'm not so sure. But I would talk about the Nipponisation of Europe via a German economy at its centre in the grip of the same problem - and that starts to be a global problem.

PK: Germany has huge inadequacy of domestic demand. Their economic recovery in the first seven years of this decade rested on the emergence of gigantic current account surplus.

How is it possible that Germany, which did not have a house price bubble, is having a steeper GDP fall than anyone else in the major economies?

The answer is that they depended upon exporting to the bubble regions of Europe, so they actually got side-swiped by the loss of those exports worse than the bubble regions themselves got hit.

It's Germany on a global scale that is the concern. We worry about the drag on world demand from the global savings coming out of east Asia and the Middle East, but within Europe there's a European savings glut which is coming out of Germany. And it's much bigger relative to the size of the economy.

WH: And on top there is an unique and unaddressed huge potential banking crisis. The Germans pride themselves on their three-legged banking system, but it is incredibly interlinked. The IMF warns that Germany could have to take at least $500bn of writedowns, which its banks have not begun to recognise. German banks hold a trillion dollars - maybe more - of maturing collateralised debt obligations that can only be refinanced by crystallising the losses. We've had RBS and you've had Citigroup. Germany's GDP will fall 6% this year - before the banking crisis has hit it....

...PK: That the cause is primarily financial. Certainly, Lehman and all of that alerted us all. And it did trigger an immediate drop in demand. But the housing bust was going to happen regardless.

The fall in business investment is at least to a large degree a response to excess capacity, which is the result of falling consumer demand and the housing bust. So we don't know.

WH: I think we know more than that. The links between bank capital, loan losses, credit availability and economic activity and asset prices have never been clearer. That was why there was a threat of Depression.

PK: Clearly, re-establishing stability in the financial markets is a necessary condition for recovery. But we're not sure it's sufficient.

WH: That's very scary.

PK: Well, that is part of the reason why I am so depressed.

WH: In one of your lecture charts you seemed to be suggesting that we're 12 months into what you think could be a 36-month period of downturn, albeit at a slower rate.

PK: Easily.

WH: It's quite shocking that you think it will be that severe.

petey : Im shocked that you're shocked...Will

PK: If we measure the 2001 US recession by when the labour market finally started to turn around, it was a 30-month recession. It was really 30 months in before you started to see the unemployment rate come down."

...guardian...

wolfgang in the FT...

..."The March signs of revival turned out to be little more than a technical inventory correction, with no change in the underlying trend. The world economy is still contracting, though perhaps not quite as fast as at the start of the year.

As an analysis by economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke* shows, global industrial output is still on the same trajectory as it was during 1930.

The only question is whether we can avoid 1931 and 1932.

The answer is yes, but on conditions that seem increasingly implausible if we extrapolate current policies. We can avoid calamity if monetary and fiscal policies remain supportive throughout the duration of this crisis, if we fix the banking system and if we impose regulations to constrain a resurgent financial sector. We also have to be lucky to avoid another round of market turbulence in the near future.

In other words ... the answer may well be no. Central banks and governments therefore risk moving too swiftly out of a recession-mode strategy. When Axel Weber, president of the Bundesbank, publicly talks at this time about how to communicate a rise in interest rates, it tells me that the danger of a premature exit, at least in Europe, is clear and present....

...So at this point, I see the chances as roughly even between a global slump and a return to quasi-stagnation. What is so galling about this scenario is that it is avoidable. The central banks took the right decisions. But the political reaction has been near-catastrophic almost everywhere.

Instead of solving the problems to generate a recovery, the political strategies have consisted of waiting for a recovery to solve the problem. The Europeans are relying on the Americans to generate growth. The Americans are relying on the Chinese, who in turn are waiting for the rest of the world.

Even if the US were to generate some growth, as is likely after this summer, it would not benefit global exporters; China may be one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but it is only about half as large as the eurozone in dollar terms. And as Brad Setser** has pointed out in his blog, there is absolutely no evidence that China contributes to a global recovery. While Chinese investments are up by more than 30 per cent from last year alone, imports are down 25 per cent. All this hype about decoupling and China pulling the world out of recession is baloney. The data tell us that China’s exports and imports are both falling, and that imports are falling faster.

As everybody expects the others to move first, nobody ends up moving. In the meantime, the problems grow worse. US house prices, which are down by a little over 30 per cent from their peak, still have some way to fall. Until the US housing market hits rock bottom, perhaps sometime in 2010, there is no chance of a recovery in the securitisation market, without which there may not be sufficient credit growth....

...The only potentially good news in the past three months has been the receding threat of a currency crisis in central and eastern Europe. But I am not even sure that this is for real. The persistent refusal by eurozone policymakers to concede fast-track euro accession for central and eastern member states could yet prove destabilising.

Last week, the ECB had to provide €3bn in euro liquidity to Sweden’s Riksbank, in the absence of which Sweden may have experienced its second banking meltdown in less than two decades. The inevitable collapse of Latvia will have ripple effects on the Baltic region and may cause panic among investors in other central and east European countries.

This is why last week’s news about the withering green shoots is so important.

It tells us that the non-strategy of waiting until things get better is not working.

The March signs of life reinforced complacency.

Optimism will get us out of this crisis only if it is founded in reality.

Last week showed us that this is not the case."

...FT...

..."Neil Mackinnon, chief economist at ECU Group, said Washington believes European states are "free riding" on American stimulus, expecting the US to pull them out of crisis yet again.

Europe's industrial output continued to slide in April and was down 22pc from a year earlier, suggesting that talk of a "V-shaped" rebound is premature. At best, the pace of decline has slowed. Production fell 23pc in Germany and 24pc in Italy.

The ECB expects the eurozone economy to contract by 4.6pc this year and a further 0.3pc next year, with no recovery until mid-2010.

Structural rigidities of the region raise risks that it will remain trapped in slump well after the rest of the world has turned the corner, as it did after the dotcom bust.

This time Europe faces the extra head-winds of a strong euro, over-valued against the 45-odd countries such as China that are linked to the dollar. This currency effect is slowly "hollowing out" Europe's industrial core...."

...ambrose...

...oh yeah!..

...an this...

OF BONDS AND ZOMBIES

2009-06-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

yo!..as good as it gets...innit!

PALOOKAGRAD FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+261...

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...the zombie capital of the worst...

...the gangreene shoots of zirp forced ungrowth...

...have stolen our hearts away...

AFTER THE NEXT UNLECTION

..."It really is 1979 all over again – and perhaps even worse. I don't know whether that is something David Cameron is relishing or dreading, but I hope he knows what he's in for....

...we have not dealt with the massive overhang of debt racked up by individuals and governments over the past decade or so.
In the 1930s, the flipside of mass bankruptcy, bank failures and record unemployment was that in a relatively short time private debt levels dropped back down to manageable levels. This time, we have avoided the bankruptcy; the consequence is that we still need to repay the debt.

And, as I wrote last week, the slow reinvigoration of the financial sector is down to the Faustian pact it made with the Government: the public sector has assumed its enormous debts, on the proviso that the banks will operate on a shorter leash. Even amid signs of recovery, those banks remain nervy, paranoid institutions, unwilling to take even mild risks.

In the immediate future, they will remain zombie banks.

Barring another disaster of some sort (which should not be ruled out), the Bank of England will at some point in the next year start raising interest rates. All those households which have only survived because of near-zero borrowing costs will hit a massive financial wall.

They are zombie households.

Then there is the Government. As George Osborne pointed out in his speech to the Association of British Insurers this week, the biggest challenge in the coming decade is how to bring down the national debt. Britain has three options: default on the debt (fatal for our long-term prospects), inflate it away (near fatal, but feasible) or pay it back through a long period of austerity.

The latter course is by no means easy. The Tories insist it can be done through spending cuts, but they will almost certainly also have to raise taxes to get the books back in order. Don't be surprised if VAT is higher than 17.5 per cent before long.

This week, London has been crippled by Tube strikes that presage the next few years, which will be peppered with clashes between heavily unionised public-sector workers and a government with no choice but to bring down costs...."

...edmund...

..."Unveiling mixed results, which saw Homebase return to sales growth for the first time since 2005, Mr Duddy said he will "continue to plan cautiously" for the year ahead.

"I don't think we're strong proponents of green shoots at this early stage of the year," said Terry Duddy, chief executive of Home Retail, which owns Argos and Homebase. "The first quarter was helped by increases in disposable income because of lower interest rates, and it was not offset by unemployment. That could easily change," he said, citing forecasts of unemployment rising to 3 million by the end of the year...."

...telegraph...

..."Not that it will feel that good, because unemployment and company failures will continue to rise.
And the big worry is that the British patient, after a feeble recovery, could suffer a relapse.

If the upturn we are seeing now is in large part because of restocking, there will be a spike in orders which will inevitably fall back again. How far they fall back depends largely on the strength of consumer demand.

And there the picture is still pretty gloomy.

Consumers remain shackled by heavy debts, battered by the housing slump, fearful of unemployment and hampered by banks still reluctant to lend.

Public spending provides no alternative, since the massive burden of government borrowing is about to force severe cutbacks.

The industrial production figures show some signs of the hoped-for rebalancing of the economy away from its dependence on the indebted (zombie)consumer.

But without a big easing of credit or a strong rebound in export demand, the recovery is likely to be anaemic, if it is sustained at all."

...times...(petey ; my emphasis and zombie)

..."The fall in Chinese exports and imports accelerated in May, dashing hopes that a collapse in the country’s external trade flows had bottomed out and pointing to the continued weakness in global demand......

....“The global economic situation has hit a bottom but it will still take time to recover. I expect it to take one to three years,” said Hu Yifan, chief economist (global) at CITIC Securities in Hong Kong.

“A technical rebound [in exports] may happen in November but a demand-driven rebound will not come in the short term.”

Beijing has announced a Rmb4,000 ($586bn) stimulus plan after its exports-powered economy was hit hard by weak global demand.

The stimulus packages have spurred investment in government-supported sectors such as transport infrastructure, the power grid and housing, as reflected in a 38.7 per cent rise in fixed asset investment in May from a year earlier.

This marked a larger increase than in April, when FAI rose 33.9 per cent. For the first five months of this year, investments increased 32.9 per cent from the same period in 2008, compared with 30.5 per cent in the first four months of the year and against an estimate of 31 per cent.

“Fixed asset investment in China continues to increase on the back of state-directed projects ... This will help keep the economy growing but there are increasing concerns about the amount of lending that has been required to fund the projects,” said Alaistair Chan, economist at Moody’s Economy.com."...

...FT...

SOONER OR LATER
ONE OF US MUST BLOW

..."“Once the 30-year is out of the way, the market should have a window to rally,” said analysts at MF Global. “The bull story rests in higher mortgage rates slowing the recovery.”...FT

..."Now both groups are out on market patrol, trampling green shoots back into the dust. Every $1 rise in the price of oil costs global consumers $82m more a day. Meanwhile UK 10-year gilts on Thursday hit a seven-month high of 3.98 per cent, while US Treasuries sold for 3.99 per cent at auction, their highest since August.

Further rises would lynch the recovery. Then, as market strategist Ed Yardeni puts it, the vigilantes can go back home and do what they like best: nestle up with bonds...."

...lex...

The Unconamy...

2009-06-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

yo!...meadowlands...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+260...

...great change is not afoot here in ...

PALOOKAGRAD

...comrade brown has achieved...

...zombie status...

...knifed in the back...

...by cabinet colleagues and long time cronies...

...laughted at in the state controlled media...

...humiliated in the democratic elections...

...his new puppet master...

...father mandelson...

...has propped him up in the saddle...

...like el cid...

...and sent him out in westminster...

...as...

the lord of the flies

BETTER RED THAN DEAD

...as we look out this morning here in...

...palookagrad...

...there is still no sign of perestroika...

...comrades mandelson and brown...

...oversee the state planning as normal...

...yes...

...dead is the new normal...

...here in...

...palookagrad...

...a wall is being built to keep in all the palookas...

...rotten teeth and sallow faces...

...green around the gills...

...line dancing with a great zombie crooner...

..."he's not in debt with...

...billie jean"...

THRILLER

...the new five year plan is to rig the voting system...

...proportional representation is being dug up...

...instead of a change of government...

...we have a...

...zombie administration...

...in office...

..but not in life...

...with an economy...

...no longer dead...

...but not alive...

...not financed...

...by...

...zombie banks...

...but dead...

LIFE SUPPORT

...kept in half-life...

...by the zirp...

...and the money presses...

...the...

...unconomy...

...has twitched...

...in april and may...

...this is evidence...

...of life...

...of the end of the recession...

...say the commisars...

...well...

...they would say that wouldn't they...

HERE ARE THE FACTS

...the boom that was...

...is bust...

...the foreign money that financed it...

...has gone...

...there will be no return of the housing boom...

...not at these prices...

...leverage is history...

...what was unsustainable...

...has been unsustained...

...taxes will rise...

...to replace the revenue from booming sales...

...interest rates will rise...

...unemployment will rise...

...capacity will fall...

...inventories will have to fall...

...if only this labour soviet would fall...

Love Is Not The Drug

2009-06-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

yo!...cheap debt is...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+258...

...every day here in...

...palookaville...

...we have the famous fiesta...

ECONOMY OF THE LIVING DEAD

...it's official...

...our prime minister has achieved...

...zombie status...

...dead politician walking...

...all here agree...

...it's the right thing for a zombie economy...

IT'S LIFE JIM BUT NOT AS WE KNEW IT

...long ago there was demand...

...people bought what they needed...

...and were prepared to pay real money for it...

...or...

...pay decent interest rates in order to own their own home...

...now...

...the blood has drained away...

...demand can only be brought back to life...

...by the zirp...

THE ZOMBIE INTEREST RATE

...no one here in palookaville...

...will admit that the economy is dead...

...the banks are dead...

...and...

...our great leader is now dead too...

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE
EXCESS

...the zombie housing boom...

...is in all the papers...

...brown set out to bring it back to life...

...and has succeeded...

...like he succeeded with the banks...

...now everyone is happy again...

...except the savers and the pensioners...

...and the people who had the money...

...and the first time buyers who were waiting for prices to fall...

...in order for them to afford to buy...

ZOMBIE SAYS DO THIS

...the zombie economy...

...controls prices...

...and knows best what each asset is worth...

...nothing dies...

...nothing new is created...

...this may go on for some time...

..."Large swaths of Britain have been left excessively dependent on taxpayer-funded activity that has crowded out the private sector and stifled enterprise. The State accounts for more than two thirds of the economy in the North East, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Now, with a protracted period of austerity in public spending made inescapable by the Government’s record plunge into the red, these regions will suffer disproportionately as the Treasury is forced to retrench...."

Times

Brown But Not Out update 1

2009-06-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

yo!..for now...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+255...

...it's election time today...

...here in palookaville...

OUT BUT NOT BROWN

...nobody voted him in...

...but he's still here...

...all his ministers have gone...

...but he's still here...

...all his labour councils have gone...

...but he's still here...

...he robbed our pensions...

...let the banks bust the country...

...raised taxes...

...even on the poor...

...his agenda is...

...a client state...

...well...

NOBODY LIKES BIG BROTHER

...tax credits...

...state control...

...our money is their money...

BUY TO RUIN

...without this unfair system...

...there would have been no property bubble...

...people who lived in a town or village...

...could have afforded to buy homes where their parents lived...

...but nobody in government wanted to legislate...

...to stop this disasterous game...

...they did not want to tax it...

...they were all doing it themselves...

...big time...

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+256...

...liam...

..."We're paying a heavy price for Brown's successes

Everyone knows, of course, about Gordon Brown's policy failures. During his 10 years at the Treasury, the Prime Minister clearly spent recklessly and stored up massive future liabilities (many buried off balance sheet).

It would be tough to design a worse way to tackle poverty than Brown's complex, fraud-ridden tax-credits.

His annual raid on pension schemes, a policy buried in his first Budget, has also gained pariah status – depriving our retirement funds of some £130bn and counting, a stealth tax they can ill afford.

What's happening now, though, is that even Brown's policy "successes" – the basis of any claim he has to a "legacy" – are starting to unravel.

The 1997 Bank of England Act has often been cited as his masterstroke. Handing the Bank "operational independence" to set interest rates was clearly the right thing to do.

The Monetary Policy Committee hasn't been truly independent, featuring too many of Brown's stooges for my liking, but has worked quite well. Over the past 12 years, inflation has generally been lower than it otherwise would have been because populism has been tempered by economic common sense and rates set with at least an eye on price pressures.

In recent months, though, quantitative easing has destroyed even the pretence of independence. Brown and his henchmen have yanked control back from the Bank – creating money to buy government debt, a policy doomed to backfire.

Last week the other aspect of Brown's once-lauded 1997 legislation came under attack as the House of Lords' Economic Affairs Committee laid into his decision to strip the Bank of responsibility for banking supervision and transfer it to the newly-created Financial Services Authority.

This resulted in "an inadequate definition of roles and responsibilities of the Bank of England, the Treasury and the FSA", said the committee, causing "failures of regulation and supervision that contributed to the UK financial crisis".

Their Lordships infer the Bank was deprived of crucial information about specific institutions, hindering its ability to make well-informed decisions on overall financial stability.

A separate paper on the same subject by Sir Martin Jacomb, also published last week, went further. Brown's tripartite regime has been "disastrous" said the one-time Prudential Chairman, accusing the former Chancellor of splitting supervisory responsibilities between the FSA and the Bank in order to "divide and rule".

As Sir Martin says: "Brown's desire for ultimate control was decisive, and ultimately ended in failure"....liam...

THEY STILL THINK IT'S ALL OVER

...ambrose..."

Those of us who still question whether the world has purged its toxins are reduced to the same tiny band of moaning Druids from early 2007, when we shook our heads in disbelief as the carry trade swept Iceland to fresh madness and bankers laughed off sub-prime rot at Bear Stearns.

We learned then to thicken our skins with walnut juice, lie down in dark rooms, and dissent from Goldman Sachs. Such seclusion is called for once again as Goldman replays its BRIC anthem and raises its oil forecast to $85 a barrel this year, betting that the world will roar back on a tidal wave of liquidity....

...The elastic was bound to snap back, just as it did in the bear rally of early 1931. Whether the underlying economy has begun to heal is another matter. World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin said capacity utilization is running at an historic low of 50pc-60pc. Companies will have to fire a lot of workers. This is where the danger lies, and why he fears that deflation is creeping up on us.

Trade data from Asia are flashing warning signals again. Korea's exports were down 28.3pc in May, reversing the April rebound. Malaysia has slipped to -26pc, and India has touched a new low of -33pc.

US freight data is getting worse, not better. The Association of American Railroads said traffic was down 22pc in the third week of May from a year earlier. Canadian freight was down 34pc.

The American Trucking Association (ATA) said it saw fresh drops of 4.5pc in March and a further 2.2pc in April. Tonnage is down 13pc over 12 months. Bob Costello, the ATA's chief economist, said companies have not cut inventories fast enough to keep pace with declining sales. The contraction in truck volume has "accelerated".

Yes, the Baltic Dry Index for bulk shipping of resources has quadrupled since January, but this reflects China's bid to stockpile metals while prices are low....ambrose...

MIND THE DEBT

...irwin..."...Treasury IOUs are flooding the market to finance deficits that by White House estimates will take the national debt from 40% of GDP to 70% (the Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at 80%) by 2011, the highest level since the second world war. Throw in the printing of money to support the Fed’s efforts to prop up credit markets and investors have good reason to fear inflation and a decline in the value of the dollars with which the government will repay their loans. So they are driving up long-term interest rates. And dumping dollars.

If those trends continue, the green shoots will wither as higher rates abort the housing recovery, and make it more expensive for businesses to make job-creating investments. Bernanke told Congress that “we, as a nation, [must] begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance . . . [that] will require a willingness to make difficult choices”. This can only be interpreted as a warning to the administration that if it doesn’t get the deficit under control, the Fed will start contracting the money supply and allow interest rates to rise. Just how the president and Congress can be persuaded to make those “difficult choices” remains unclear.

Perhaps that friendly persuasion will come from the folks who, like the Fed, pose a threat to the Obama agenda: the Chinese who are sitting on about $1.4 trillion of America’s IOUs. On last week’s trip to China, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, was greeted with derisive laughter when he assured students at Peking University that “Chinese assets are very safe”. Their elders were more polite. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Construction Bank, helpfully noted that the dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency “in the short term” because the American “economy is No 1 in terms of competitiveness, in terms of innovation”. Longer-term prospects are being made clear by Chinese officials who are warning that unless America puts its fiscal house in order they will seek to reduce the role of the dollar in world trade and will not buy IOUs at anything like current interest rates....irwin...

THOSE GREEN, GREEN SHOOTS OF HOME

...david..."For me, one of the central questions is whether a pick-up in growth can be sustained even when bank lending remains weak. Amid the flurry of stronger news last week was some downbeat evidence from the Bank of England on lending.

Lending to households rose a modest 0.2% in April, the Bank said, and was up by 3.4% on a year earlier. But lending to nonfinancial companies fell by 0.9% and was a tiny 0.8% up on a year earlier.

This chimed with a survey from the Engineering Employers’ Federation, which showed that 45% of firms had seen an increase in the cost of their finance and only 4% had seen an improvement in credit availability in the latest three months. It is a familiar story throughout business.

Charlie Bean, the Bank’s deputy governor, buys into the story of a resumption in growth before the end of the year, but he also warned in a recent speech that bank lending was likely to remain subdued, at best, for some time.

“We are still some way from having banks feel sufficiently secure that they can lend normally, and from investors that have enough confidence in the banks to provide them with sufficient funds,” he said.

The government’s October banking measures were a straightforward rescue operation but its subsequent actions, particularly in January, have been intended to get lending flowing again. Quantitative easing, confirmed last week at £125 billion for now, was intended to boost lending and, while it is early days, is not doing so"....david...

...petey...

...inquirin minds should visit the links an read the lot...innit!

Special 'Flation Issue

2009-06-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

yo!...

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+250...

...people may think that...

...here in palookaville...

...we are firmly in the...

...deflationary camp...

WE DON'T DO CAMP

...eyes on the road...

...ears to the wall...

...watch out for Mr Inbetween...

..."It all depends upon unit labour costs and the state of demand in the economy. In fact, pay here seems to have responded more quickly to the economic downturn. Average earnings growth actually turned negative earlier this year. Although this was primarily due to the impact of sharply lower bonuses in the City, the figure was also boosted by continued strong pay growth in the public sector. And that can't last. In the private sector not a day goes by without another company announcing a freeze or even a cut in regular pay.

So the upshot is that the deflation danger is not yet old hat. People are watching the wrong thing. Don't look at the short term twitchings of the RPI or CPI but rather at the behaviour of wages and salaries.

Of course, if the Chancellor is right and by the end of this year the economy is bouncing back strongly, then the deflation danger, like all the others, will quickly melt away as the strengthening economy eventually boosts employment prospects, pay rates harden and firms are more able to push prices up. But if you want to back that particular horse, I would strongly advise you to put your money on each way."

...Roger Bootle...

Mortgage Meltdown, More Pain To Come

..."What can't be paid back will be defaulted on. Consumers with no job have no chance of paying back those debts. Many others who could, won't (because it is in their best interest to walk away). The Alt-A and Option ARM defaults are going to be massive.

Think this leads to inflation? Think again."

...mish...

Vigilante Man

2009-05-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

yo!..million pound note...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+249...

...nobody here in palookaville...

...knows anything about bonds...

THE END OF MORAL HAZARD

...but we know about debt...

...bad debtors pay more...

...credit is...

...where credit is due...

FEAR OF 'FLATION

...he who pays the piper...

...calls the tune...

...not so good when you're in a hole...

STOP DIGGING

..."The Treasury bond sell-off is now putting pressures on other markets in the economy. We should worry most about housing where borrowing rates are rising notwithstanding the Federal Reserve purchase programme. Indeed, according to data released on Thursday, already 12pc of US households are facing difficulties meeting their mortgage payments.

Housing is still central to the stabilisation and eventual recovery of the US and global economies. Any further decline in house prices will erode the collateral many Americans borrowed against, dampen their already-fragile consumption appetite, and increase the headwinds facing a banking system that is finally regaining its footing. The US can ill-afford a further sell-off in US bonds at this stage in the economy's rehabilitation process. Yet there is no easy way for policymakers to address this challenge.

As an illustration, consider the dilemma facing the Federal Reserve. Should the central bank step up its purchases of both Treasuries and mortgages in order to stabilise interest rates, but at the risk of adding to the distortions in these markets; or should it refrain from intervening further and risk a return of widespread economic and financial disruptions?

I suspect that, when push comes to shove, policymakers will opt for greater purchases of mortgages and Treasuries – not because they really want to, but because the alternative is viewed as worse.

Believe it or not, there is a silver lining in all this. As they contemplate this difficult situation, they can draw some comfort from one thing: with the anchoring of the short-term policy rate near 0pc, the steepening of the yield curve is generating significant profits for banks.

Remember, banking is fundamentally about mobilising cheap deposits (at the short end of the curve) and, supported by deposit insurance and central bank liquidity windows, lending at the longer-end of the yield curve. Come to think of it, the smartest trade for investors today is to find a bank that, unencumbered by legacy issues, is able to take advantage of an enormously attractive environment for old-style banking."

...Mohamed El-Erian is chief executive of Pimco....

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME

...or...

...follow the money...

...me...

...I wonder about the banks, the shadow banks, and the men that run them...

...has it all been deliberate?...

...surely not...

...who would benefit...?

..." For a long time, this column has warned that the bond-market vigilantes would ultimately rebel against the Western world's profligate borrowing and spending – not least the ill-judged, cowardly and ultimate grotesque "bail-out" packages for well-connected banks that should anyway be allowed to fail...."

...Liam Halligan...

Rising, Rising, Rising...

2009-05-29T03:45:00.000-07:00

yo!..rawhide...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+247...

...the story so far...

...the clever b*stards that run the financial world...

...have bust the banks...

...in turn...

...the banks have bust the sovereign states...

...the sovereign debts...

...have spooked the bond market...

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD

...apparently...

...it all started with property speculation...

...caused by bubble money...

...when the bubble burst...

...many, many, many...

...suckers got taken out...

...the politix...

...were busy with their expences claims...

...and their business interests...

...they are either responsible for the current mess...

...or incompetent...

...that is...

...guilty...

...or...

...stupid...

KEEP THEM RATES A RISING

..."Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds have risen relentlessly since March when the Fed first announced its plan to buy $300bn (£188bn) of US government debt directly, a move that briefly forced rates down to nearly 2.5pc, a level thought to be the Fed's implicit target.

Yields have jumped to 3.69pc – after spiking as high as 3.74pc on Wednesday – pushing up the standard 30-year mortgage loan to 5.08pc and lifting the borrowing cost for corporations...."

...Daily Telegraph...

LOSE THE DOLLAR

...here in...

...palookaville...

...we can't gloat...

...as we have our own currency problems...

...we could all go down together...

SLOW BOAT TO NOWHERE

...in China...

...they are hoping for a new world currency...

...and a new world order...

...first though...

...they may have to start buying some of their own stuff...

RALLY ROUND THE RALLY

...sucker, sucker...

...off the wall...

...will still be long...

...when markets fall...

THEY ALSO THINK

...that have no brains at all...

...it's the property stupid...

...the collateral is not what it was...

...every time it falls...

...well it's not...

...pennies from heaven...

Remorse : The New Bull Market

2009-05-13T00:18:00.000-07:00

yo!...pitchforks averted...for now...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+231...

...here in palookaville this morning...

...the talk is all about...

...forgiveness...

SERIOUS REMORSE

...the recession...

...caused by the ending of polititions expence claims...

...is almost over...

...as new money will be created...

...by...

...increasing their salaries...

...to compensate for their loss of privilige...

THE GOOD NEWS

...is that...

...this will increase their pensions...

...and this is a much more secure form of income for them...

...maybe now that they won't be spending all their time...

...working out how to claim maximum benefits...

...they will be able to find jobs for the 2.2 million newly unemployed...

TAKE AND GIVE

...the great debt...

...caused by the massive cost of MP's expences and pensions...

...is to disappear...

...they are to give back all of their extravagent takings...

...the national debt...

...will now not be...

...£240,000,000,000,000...

...after all...

The Green Green Shoots of Home

2009-05-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

yo!..capitulation up...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+229...

...the old town looks much the same...

...as I step down from the train...

...and there to greet me...

...are...

...my momma an poppa...

RIDING ALONG ON THE CREST OF A WAVE

...here in palookaville this morning...

...everything goes along as if nothing has happened...

...world trade has collapsed...

...ships are mothballed...

...the newly unemployed are in their homes and not on the streets...

...the boarded up shops go unnoticed...

...there is no return on our savings...

...the country is bust...

...but our government still sits in westminster...

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

...still cramming their pockets with our money...

...while raising our taxes...

...and robbing our pensions...

...no wonder that no-one was at the helm...

...when the banks went bust...

RALLY ROUND THE FLAG

...they are starting to talk about a melt-up...

...as stock prices have risen for 9 weeks...

SUCKERS

...it's a bear market rally...

...but a long one...

...all the talk is of panic among the fund managers...

...afraid to miss the train...

...the last train to palookaville...

In Danger of Talking Ourselves Out of Recession

2009-04-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

yo!...credit is debt...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+210...

...here in palookaville...

...the talk is all about the green shoots...

THEY THINK IT'S ALL OVER...

...of course they don't...

...but...

...what they think and what they say...

...are two different things...

THE BANKS ARE BUST

...this is not often alluded to...

...there will be no return to boom...

...this time it really is different...

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY

...they say that the consumer will return...

...that banks will lend as before...

...that people will borrow again...

...like they did last summer...

...i don't think so...

We are not even half-way through the

banking crisis - IMF

..."The simple truth is laid out in page 33 of the Global Financial Stability Report , published today in Washington: "if banks were to bring forward to today loss provisions for the next two years, before expected earnings, US and European banks in aggregate would have tangible equity close to zero."In other words, the entire global banking system would be bankrupt - kaput - if its institutions immediately wrote off all the toxic assets still sitting in their vaults without any government assistance...." Telegraph...

...this from the big picture...

..."So we keep the system going. Now, where are we today?

We are at the Great Deleveraging.

We are seeing massive losses and destruction of assets, on a scale that is unprecedented. There was massive destruction of assets during the Great Depression, which caused a lot of problems, and we are seeing the same thing today. We are watching trillions simply being poofed (another technical economics term — which will drive my poor Chinese translator crazy!). We are watching people pay down their credit lines, which is one way of saying the supply of money and credit is shrinking.

This is not just in the US, but all over the world. Because when you start adding European cash-to-credit, and Japanese cash-to-credit, and Indonesian and Chinese cash-to-credit, it becomes multiple tens of trillions, and we are watching a goodly portion of that credit be vaporized. So we — individuals and businesses — are trying to find that $2 trillion in real cash and get some of it to pay down our debts. We are reducing that massive leveraged money supply down to some smaller number. We are hitting the Blue Screen of Death. We don’t know what it is going to reset to, but we have permanently seared the psyche of the American consumer, and it is going to get reset to some lower number, about which I will speculate in a minute.

Now to give you some idea of how important credit was in our recent period of economic growth — and I keep using this slide, but it is an important slide because it shows you what would have happened in the economy without mortgage equity withdrawals. The red lines are what GDP would have been without MEWs. Notice that in 2001 and 2002 we would have had negative GDP for two years, that’s 24 months. It would have been as long as or longer than the current recession. Not quite as deep, because we had the Bush stimulus and Bush tax cuts at the time. The Bush tax cuts were very important in keeping the economy rolling over in 2001 and 2002.

But notice that the recovery for the next four years would have been under 1%. We would have had under 1% GDP for four years running, without mortgage equity withdrawals, without people being able to spend more. That doesn’t even count the leverage we increased on our auto loans, on credit cards — you saw the two charts that Louie [Gave] and Martin [Barnes] used yesterday about the growth of credit, and we are now seeing it in reverse. Do you think George Bush would have stood even a small chance of being reelected without mortgage equity withdrawals?

GREEN SHOOTS

..."The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer...." dylan thomas

...IT IS NOW

..."In other words, if you thought the immense amounts of taxpayer cash funnelled into the system over the past couple of years was enough to bring us back to good health, think again.

It is an extremely worrying verdict, particularly coming at a time when many had been assuming that green shoots were starting to sprout and the recession was coming to an end.

But it underlines one simple but undeniable truth:

that this recession is different.

It is the consequence not of a simple one-nation housing crash or a consumer slowdown but a catastrophic collapse of the financial system. And with that system still in a wreck normal service will simply not be resumed without more costly bail-outs - or else we must accept the consequence that money will be far more expensive to borrow in the future, and that economic growth will be far less in the future." Telegraph...edmond conway blog...

petey : it were me wot done the italics an stuff...

IT'S THE PENSION, STUPID !

2009-04-17T02:47:00.000-07:00

yo!..pay now, pay later...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+210...

...here in palookaville we have pensions paid for by the state...

...they tell us that all pensioners are equal...

...but...

...some are more equal than others...

Vampire pensions could be a corporate nightmare

By Charles Millard

Published: April 16 2009 21:57 | Last updated: April 16 2009 21:57

While economists worry about “zombie” banks holding back lending, vampire pension plans may soon be stalking a company near you. The underfunding of America’s corporate defined benefit pensions poses a daunting challenge, threatening not only their 40m beneficiaries but the entire US economy.

Recently enacted funding rules require underfunded pension plans, and that’s most of the big ones, to suck needed cash from salaries and jobs just when suffering companies need scarce resources to survive. Under 2006 legislation, companies that have underfunded pensions must put extra funds into their pension plan to close the gap within seven years. After precipitous drops in assets, most plans now have serious funding gaps....more...

...heh heh heh...

...of course this is just an american thang...

...innit ?...

THEN WHAT ?

2009-04-01T01:48:00.000-07:00

yo!...over capacity...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+194...

...in palookaville today...

...a great pow wow is taking place...

...as the great and the not so great...

...meet to try and fix the boom that's bust...

...they are to kill some chickens and drink their blood...

..and dance around and loose their selves...

...in a frenzy of fire and liquor...

THE ZOMBIE BOOM

...here in palookaville they just don't get it...

...the money they created yesterday...

...was used to buy tomorrow's stuff...

...now we all shopped out...

...an deep in debt...

...our friends in the east have invested heavily...

...in machinery...

...to make the stuff we want...

...at ever faster rates...

...and ever cheaper prices...

...in order for us to buy their stuff...

...they bought our debt...

AFTER THE MUSIC STOPPED

...all good things must come to an end...

...and in august 2007...

...the band stopped playing...

...the hope today...

...here in palookaville...

...is that by bringing the dead world boom...

...back to life...

...normal service will be resumed...

...but...

...the boom was unsustainable...

...so what next?...

GARAGE SALE OF THE CENTURY

...all over palookaville the garages are emptying out the stuff that no one wants...

...they want to put their new cars in there...

...yes...

...they have a new car already...

...and now they want out of debt...

TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH

...too many factories...

...not enough buyers...

...time to grow your own home markets...

...y'all want to export your stuff...

...an keep the money...

...well...

...where's that got ya ?...

Now taxpayers bail out MPs' pensions

A fresh row over MPs' pay and perks erupted after taxpayers were asked to foot an £800,000-a-year bill to bail out their gold-plated pension scheme.

Under the plans unveiled by the Leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, the Exchequer will increase its contribution from £12.4m to £13.2m a year. MPs will each have to pay an extra £60 a month to help fill a £51m black hole in the parliamentary pension fund.

The package was published after government financial experts found a growing deficit in the pension scheme because former MPs were living longer.

The Government Actuary said that taxpayer contributions to the scheme – already one of the most generous in the country – would have to increase by £2.1m a year to cover the shortfall.

Ms Harman said she wanted MPs to increase their payments into the scheme from 10 per cent to 11.9 per cent – equivalent to £60 a month – to help limit the extra bill for the taxpayer.

Steve Webb, the Liberal Democrat pensions spokesman, branded the decision a "spectacular own goal for MPs". "The pensions of MPs and other well-paid public sector workers have to be brought in line with reality. With members of the public losing their jobs and seeing their pensions plummet, MPs cannot insulate themselves from the harsh realities of the recession."

Susie Squire, the campaign manager at the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Asking for more money to plug the deficit in politicians' gold-plated pensions is an utter disgrace. These pensions have been a bottomless pit for too long, and continuing to pump in taxpayers' money is no solution in the long term.

"Why should taxpayers fund politicians retiring into the lap of luxury when they have seen their own pension reduced out of recognition? If MPs want such a generous pension, they must pay for it out of their own salary and not simply keep dipping into the pockets of hard-working people."...indy

Leading article: Time for root and branch reform

RULE THE PEOPLE : LIVE LIKE THE PEOPLE

...here in the loft...

...beulah an me an the gang...

...believe that the people who make the laws...

...should live by the laws...

...politicians should send their children to state schools...

...politicians should only use public hospitals and services...

...politicians should keep all of their assets on shore...

...and available to normal tax rates...

...they should not be able to make laws for us and avoid them themselves...

...they should have the same pension scheme as those that they rule...

...they should not have ridiculous levels of expenses...

...no government person of any government should get a tax free salary...

...ever...

...no taxation without the taxer's paying the same...

REMEMBER POMPEII

2009-03-29T03:45:00.000-07:00

yo!...only fallin ashes...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+192...

...here in palookaville they think it's all over...

...stock markets have rallied 20%...

...and a bank has passed a stress test...

...deflation has failed to raise it's head in the rigged figures...

...and the value of retail sales rose a bit...

...under the carpet there are so many things...

...and soon people will begin to trip up...

DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO

...by saving banks and automakers...

...governments have fallen into the protectionist trap...

...the game is rigged...

...always was...

...while all was going up...

...no one seemed to mind...

...now though...

...people have started to notice...

CLUSTER'S LAST STAND

...many here in palookaville...

...have their hopes pinned on the G20 clusterf*ck...

...divided they stand...

...rather than united they fall...

...well...

...we'll see...

DISMAL SCIENCE

...everyone said there would be no recession and that the financial crisis...

...would stay in the bank vaults...

...well...

...what the f*ck do they know?...

GLOBAL AND LOCAL

...world trade has collapsed...

...because the bank credits are unavailable...

...boeing has seen orders fall by 50%...

...ships lie idle in the harbour roads...

UNLIKE GERMANY

...they told us that we were failing...

...because we didn't make stuff and export it...

...unlike germany...

...we were house mad...

...unlike germany...

...we spent beyond our means...

...piled up debt...

...unlike germany...

...well...

...you know the rest...

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG ARTIST

2009-03-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

yo!...ayyyeeee,nevvvvvv...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+191...

...here in palookaville we pay tribute today...

...to our teacher and friend...

Stewart Lees

...Artist and teacher...

Published Date: 08 October 2008

Born: 15 January, 1926, in Auchertool, Fife. Died: 1 August 2008, in Edinburgh, aged 82.

Then, late in his career, he became fascinated by the way in which the sea animated a landscape, and he began to find inspiration for his colourful and strongly textured pictures among the cliffs and beaches of the northern coast of France.

Lees was born in the village of Auchertool in Fife and brought up in Buckhaven, where he attended the local high school. His father managed a private railway on the Wemyss estate which took coal down to the port of Methil.

In 1947, after his war service, he started at the Edinburgh College of Art, choosing, because of an interest in the relationship of art to architecture, to study in the school of design. His contemporaries included Elizabeth Blackadder and her husband, John Houston, who remained close friends. Among his teachers were Sir William Gillies and Leonard Rosoman, who was working on major commissions for the Festival of Britain and the Scottish Enterprise Exhibition.

After graduating from the Edinburgh College of Art in 1952 – where he had won the Alexander Grant travelling and post-graduate scholarships – he was an assistant art teacher at the Waid Academy as well as being a peripatetic art teacher within Fife. Then in 1960 Lees took a post at Nottingham College of Art, eventually becoming head of the foundation course. (The college has become a component part of Nottingham Trent University). He retired in 1984.

All the while, however, Lees managed to combine teaching with painting, and he exhibited widely, including shows in Scotland at the Traverse Gallery and Gallery Paton in Edinburgh, and the Loomshop Gallery in Fife; in England at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, the Leeds City Art Gallery and twice at the Upstairs Gallery at the Royal Academy (with Michael Rothenstein and Christopher Saunders); and in France at the Galerie Santa Maria Del Olivio in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.

Lees was elected to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1987 and to the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour five years later.

In 1968 he was granted an Arts Council scholarship sabbatical year and in 1991 he was a Cornellision Prize winner.

Lees's work can be found in many public collections including those of Glenrothes New Town, Liverpool Education Committee, Fife County Council, the universities of Glasgow and Nottingham, the Nuffield Foundation, the Imperial Tobacco company, Sheffield City Art Gallery, the Leverhulme Foundation, the Scottish Arts Council, Esso, the Cavendish Medical Centre and Amoco.

The American merchant bank AT Kearney held a major collection of his work at its office in Berkeley Square in London. His work is also held in private collections all over the world.

Lees wrote of his paintings: "My work is based on two basic principles, frontality and texture. Frontality means looking directly at the facades of buildings or removing the facade to create a corridor of space, and I almost always use a single point of perspective. I believe the architectural nature of my art derives from my earlier interest in murals, stained glass and mosaics, all of which relate to their architectural setting and space."

He confessed, however, that, much as he loved stained glass, and despite professional training, he had produced very little stained glass apart from a window at Grantham Hospital. Lees said this was because he liked to be in control of his work, and with stained glass there were inevitably too many other people involved.

And it was true that many people found Lees's somewhat robust personality – reflected in the boldness of his art – difficult to work with. He also loved playing the part of an artist, wearing a black fedora or a velvet jacket and bow tie at dinner parties where he enjoyed expounding his views. "I strongly believe that the most wonderful thing about painting is to surprise yourself," he said. He was a very extrovert figure...The Scotsman

petey :

...he wasn't a mate of course...

...but he interviewed me for art college entrance...

...advised me how to go about qualifying...

and gave me the encouragement and leadership...

...that I needed at that time...

...without stewart maybe there would be no peteypaint...

...no palookaville financial...

...no father of depressionist painting...

...

THEY WILL NEVER ALLOW THIS ON THE BBC

2009-03-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

yo!...stands with a bowl...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+190...

...here in palookaville all we watch is the msm...

...which is why this will not be seen by the voters...

IF ONLY...BUT ALSO

2009-03-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

yo!...down the plughole...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+175...

AND THE NEXT 'FLATION WILL BE

lex : ..."Anyway, what might trigger a rise in inflation? That is the biggest stumbling block for worry-worts. The unwinding of the credit boom of the past 10 years will require higher savings, weak consumption and low investment, probably well into the next decade. That ensures demand will remain weak, and with it inflation too...."FT

'Sell every asset except gilts'

Conventional assets – even gold – are no good as hedges against the inevitable deflation, says one asset manager.

AND

Inflation will kill the gilt rally in the end

The announcement by the monetary authorities in the UK that a policy of quantatitive easing (QE) would be implemented was greeted with euphoria by the gilt market.

BUT ALSO

EXPORT I MANUFACTURE I MANUFACTURE I EXPORT

...here in palookaville we have always been told...

...our economy is f**ked bescause we have too small...

...a manufacturing base...

...we do not export enough...

...but look around the world and what do you see...

...world exports falling off a cliff...

...the great manufacturing economies...

...collapsing with them...

IF ONLY

...christopher fildes...

...spoke of the 'if only' brigade...

...if only the BOE were independent...

...if only we exported more...

...if only we manufactured more...

...if only we had a strong currency...

...if only the banks would lend more...

...if only we could re-start the boom...

...if only people did not talk the economy down...

...if only we could stop the short sellers...

WELL

IF ONLY

THE POLITIX WOULD STOP FIDDLING

...like taking power from the BOE and giving it to the FSA...

...like robbing the pension funds...

...like robbing the savers...

...scrapping PEPs...

...increasing tax complexity...

...creating a client state...

...busting the economy...

...increasing the national debt...

...busting final salary pension schemes...

...while MPs have voted themselves...

...bigger salaries and better pension entitlements...

NB chart is uk based and funds reflect the effect of currency movements

charts from equitable life are used as an illustration of sector performance comparisons only
and not as a commentary on their investment performance. no opinion is offered here either for or against equitable life as a pension company...

...they just happen to have these charts...
...which i find very helpful...
...when comparing sector fund performance...

...THERE IS A DISCLAIMER AT THE TOP O THE PAGE...

...THIS AINT ADVICE AN WE AINT IN BUSINESS...

...WE JUS SUCKERS LAK YOU...

...PISSIN INNA WIND...

ROBBIN B*STARDS

2009-03-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

y0!...daylight robbery...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+171...

...here in palookaville all the talk is about the local outlaw...

...his band of merry men and women...

...with guaranteed, index linked pensions...

...who are stealing the pensions from the poor...

this robbin band

...STEALS FROM THE POOR...

...GIVES TO THE RICH BANKERS...

...AND THOSE WORKING FOR THE STATE...

...meanwhile...

...the serfs here in palookaville are all watching the football...

...or phoning in their votes for some reality tv idiot...

...they do not know about how they have been robbed...

...they have been told that...

...the boarded up stores are part of some american problem...

Retirement plans of millions of Britons at risk after Bank of England 'prints money'

The retirement plans of millions of Britons have been put at risk after the Bank of England's controversial plan to create money tore an unprecedented hole in pension schemes.

..."The Bank was accused of hammering the final nail into the coffin for Britain’s final salary pension schemes, which have seen their deficits climb in recent years, partly as a result of Gordon Brown’s decision as Chancellor to levy a £6 billion tax raid on pension funds’ dividends.

Some 2.5 million workers are currently signed up for these schemes which provide retirees with a guaranteed annual income when they reach the appropriate age.

Having enjoyed a small surplus only a year ago, these funds have also been hit by the fall in the stock market over the past year.

However, the effect of the Bank’s scheme has been to increase the deficit between what is in the funds and what is needed to pay out future pensioners by an almost instant £100 billion. Although some expect the deficits to fall in the years ahead as the economy improves, insiders warned that this could be the final straw that persuades companies to shut down these schemes altogether and turn instead to far less generous defined contribution plans.

However, experts warned that even these more parsimonious schemes, which 8 million workers are subscribed to, will suffer as a direct result of the Bank’s actions. The amount these people receive from their pension depends not only on the size of pot they amass over their working life but on the rate of the so-called annuity which provides them an annual income from the moment of retirement...."sunday telegraph

painty : now watch the companies with these pension deficits...
...see their share prices come under even more pressure...

HOUSE OF THE SETTING SUN

2009-03-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

yo!...itz property wot done it...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+165...

...

There is a house in many a town
They call the Rising Debt
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm it

My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new bluejeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a mortgage and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk

------ organ solo ------

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Debt

Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to Rentin a room
To wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Settin Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

NB chart is uk based and funds reflect the effect of currency movements

...THERE IS A DISCLAIMER AT THE TOP O THE PAGE...

...THIS AINT ADVICE AN WE AINT IN BUSINESS...

...WE JUS SUCKERS LAK YOU...

...PISSIN INNA WIND...

A TRUDGE IN THE SLUDGE

2009-02-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

yo!...itz the economy stupid....innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+160...

...here in palookaville we drag ourselves forward...

...against the tide...

...the politix have seized the means of production...

...they have used this crisis to implement their own agenda...

...brown and obama plan to entrench social control of the economy...

...more taxes, more regulation, more state control...

SWAMPTHING

tim : ..."In my view, 1982 through 2007 was the golden age of capitalism. No one announced its beginning, and very few people realized its end, but as measured by the pendulum of social and economic change, I believe the generational timespan of that quarter-century embodies the resurgence, and then self-immolation, of American capitalism.

Off the top of my head, those years, we had:

Reagonomics;
Yuppies;
The great bull markets of 1982-1987 and 1991-2000;
Lower taxes;
A more docile IRS;
A resurgence in Republican strength (think Newt Gingrinch);
A strong America capable of winning major wars in 72 hours;
Historic IPOs like Netscape and Google;
The rise of Silicon Valley from obscurity to the center of the world;
Economic globalization (think BRIC);
The collapse of the USSR;
Hero-worship of the rich (including hedge fund managers);
Widespread popularity of books about money and assets;

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

The pendulum has just started to swing the other way, and I don't think it's a little bobble before we return to the above. I seriously think we are in for just as long as period - - and just as deep a change - - as the era above. We'll be stumbling our way back to where things were in the late 1970s..........malaise, weakness, and Billy Beer.

What would people think if, just six months ago, you speculated that Citigroup would be a nationalized institution? Would they laugh at you? Look at you as if you were insane? Cart you off to a rubber room?

That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. When Obama speaks of a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to change the government, he isn't talking about remodeling the oval office. The "opportunity" is the most dramatic expansion of the government and its instrusions than any of us have seen in our lifetimes.

All I'm saying is that the market's 50%+ plunge is signaling the changes to come, and then the market finally bottoms (and my best guess is that this is going to be in the 4000 area on the Dow), we will have been witness to exploited "opportunities" that we can scarcely imagine today." slopeofhope.com

irwin: ..."Some features of the Obama plan make sense. The tax-deductibility of mortgage interest distorts investment flows, directing too much money to housing, as Margaret Thatcher realised. Taxing pollution makes sense, although cap-and-trade is a flawed means of reducing carbon emissions. Profits from the operation of hedge funds more closely resemble income than capital gains, and should be taxed as such. And estate taxes fall on the undeserving winners of the sperm lottery.

But

...these virtues are more than offset by the more radical features of Obama’s plan: spending at levels previously thought unimaginable, deficits as far ahead as the eye can see, a significant redistribution of the nation’s income from wealth creators to dependants on the state, government takeovers of significant sectors of the economy, more regulation of almost every business...."sunday tim

SHOCK AN AWE III

ambrose : ..."Judging by the latest Merrill Lynch survey of fund managers, investors have a touching faith that China is going to rescue us all and re-ignite the commodity boom. How can this be? Taiwan's exports to China fell 55pc in January, Japan's fell 45pc. These exports are links in the supply chain for China's industry. Manufacturing output in the Shanghai region fell 12pc in January.

My favourite China guru, Michael Pettis from Beijing University, is in despair – as you can see on his blog (http://mpettis.com). The property bubble is bursting. Developers have built more offices in Beijing since 2006 than the entire stock in Manhattan. There is a 14-year supply glut. We have seen this movie before.

Factory output is collapsing at the fastest pace everywhere. The figures for the most recent month available are, year-on-year: Taiwan (-43pc), Ukraine (-34pc), Japan (-30pc), Singapore (-29pc), Hungary (-23pc), Sweden (-20pc), Korea (-19pc), Turkey (-18pc), Russia (-16pc), Spain (-15pc), Poland (-15pc), Brazil (-15pc), Italy (-14pc), Germany (-12pc), France (-11pc), US (-10pc) and Britain (-9pc). Norway sails blissfully on (+4pc). What do they drink up there?

This terrifying fall has been concentrated in the last five months. The job slaughter has barely begun. Social mayhem comes with a 12-month lag. By comparison, industrial output in core-Europe fell 2.8pc in 1930, 5.1pc in 1931 and 3.9pc in 1932, according to RBS.

Stephen Lewis, from Monument Securities, says we have been lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of "soup kitchens". The visual cues from Steinbeck's America are missing. "The temptation for investors is to see this as just another recession, over by the end of the year. But this is not a normal cycle. It is a cataclysmic structural breakdown," he said."...

sunday telegraph

EURODISNEYLAND

Breaking point for the eurozone?

Ireland's 'miracle' economy has turned terrifyingly sour - and as it strains against the inflexibility of the euro, its next crisis may shake the entire EU.

"Joschka Fischer, Germany's former foreign minister, darkly suggested that we would soon find out whether the eurozone would turn out to be "a disaster", while the German finance ministry is vacillating on whether it would be prepared to bail out insolvent states.

The current thinking is that Germany and France, as the strongest economies in the zone and "lenders of last resort", would have to bail out failing states: the prospect of the eurozone breaking up would bring the future of the EU into question.

But the most startling fact to emerge this week is that the country which is seen as the most vulnerable, and therefore the most likely to ditch the euro, is not Slovenia, or Cyprus, or Greece, but Ireland."

Daily Telegraph

Golden Parachute

Dire data and bank fears drive down sentiment

Unrelenting market gloom

BYE BYE EURO GOODBYE

2009-02-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

yo!...free meal deal...innit!

PALOOKAVILLE FINANCIAL
capitulation day
+153...

..all the talk here in palookaville is about...

...the euro...

WHO PAYS THE PIPER...INNIT!

...will it be saved by german largesse?...

...or sunk by revolt at german diktat?...

...don't panic! don't panic!...

...they won't like it up em!...

...who the germans or the 'others'..?

...this thing has further to run...

...has legs as they say...

...everybody march in step...

...and don't mention the goose..!.

HOLIDAY OF HOLIDAYS

...beulah an me are lookin forward...

...to more holidays in italy and spain...

...it really is ridiculous that we should have to buy euros...

...to spend there...

...what idiot made prices the same in all the european countries???

...but not wages!..?

...we want our cheap holidays back...

...and you want to keep your jobs...

...so come on guys...

...get with the plan...

...bring on the lire and peseta..

...set your own interest rates...

...and float...

...let the market decide what your currency is worth...

YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

...so what is wrong with flexibility?...

...if the trees don't bend in the wind...

...they snap...

...we love to visit you and eat your food...

...but you are pricing us out of your market..

...let the germans and the french...

...be the expensive destinations...

...