sharpe
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Posts posted by sharpe
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The horror, the horror.
Do you imagine? Seriously
Kurtz saw nothing in comparison. Tippu tip was like father christmas
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Go for it.
My hypothesis is that in 2002 as a 5 year old you had your internet access taken away from you by your parents.
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There is an alternative scenario I am thinking of in which importing countries get to such a state of dependence that they cannot/never rebalance. Africa could be a good example.
Yes, a good voice from when common sense and honesty prevailed.
I agree the book is a classic
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None.
A revealingly defensive answer - I hypothesise some childhood trauma leading to this gross inadaquacy in debating style
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So you know that people are responsible for their inability to think and their ignorance?
Fair play.
Would be interested to know what aspect of your childhood leads you to consistently personalise economic discussions?
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This is a great article on gold and its huge influence on the economy.
Moderators might do well to read this before being so keen to move all gold topics. I would be suprised if this forum was self censoring topics.
Also a great chart on fiat reserves - is this helpful for those arguing gold is in a bubble?
The price of gold is the canary in the gold mine that the economy is in dire trouble - why censor discussion of this topic in a forum based around the economy?
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We are very much of a horse, dogs, golf, tennis, rugby and cricket family. We are getting tired of driving all over the place to do the things that we enjoy.
Prices in the Cotswolds are now roughly globally competitive when measured in Dollars. Depending on what happens to-morrow, we might think about buying a place in the UK. Prices might still drop by 50% but I would rather see that happening on 1/3 of the money that a similar house would cost in London.
We have continually switched between and urban and a rural existence. I like both but marginally prefer a rural existence.
You are not welcome around these parts. Clear off you city scummer.
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Read some posts by G Man,d2thdr and General Congreve!
As I have said before I think it's a good idea to hold some gold. I think Realist Bear is as bad as the two I have just noted with his "gold to collapse" posts. A sensible investor is neither for nor against gold, they view it as one form of investment.
I don't think it's cheap anyway. Historical records are no measure or I'd be rushing out to corner the market in tulip bulbs.
Another bitter paper bug
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OK, only a few posts on a blog, but made me laugh.
Denis Cooper said...
If we have a vital national interest in who owns BP then maybe we should buy it.
Which could be done very easily, through the Bank of England's existing Asset Purchase Facility:
It would only need George Osborne to send a letter to Mervyn King, telling him to include BP shares within the asset purchases and authorising the creation of the necessary central bank reserves - something like £50 billion at the present share price, apparently.
Reply June 14, 2010 at 09:59
Toby 2 said in reply to Denis Cooper...
It would be a bargain at 50 Billion, sooner or later the share price will return to pre-blowout levels, and it reamins ours !
Reply June 14, 2010 at 10:20
It doesn't add up... said in reply to Denis Cooper...
Excellent idea. Even if the worst case valuation of the clean up costs comes about, it is clear that the shares could be sold at a profit once wiser heads prevail.
Next stop, lets buy some junk bonds in some godforsaken african country. That sounds like a jolly good laugh, what ho, Stanley, theyre cheap right now.
Heck, we dont even have to raise taxes, the only fallout is rampant inflation, and the public will never link the two. £20 tin of beans cant be related to printing money to buy out failing companies.
Makes we wonder if any of those bloggers work for BP, have shares in BP, or are just in awe of BPs destructive abilities.
Its funny how tories suddenly become all socialist when its their money/pensions at risk.
DISCLAIMER: I still hate liebour more.
The IE claims Churchill was on BP's payroll. Puts his idea to use tax payers money to buy BP shares into perspective. BP is at the heart of the UK establishment.
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U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
[more]
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I guess we won't be leaving for a while.
Quick - dump all your lithium / gold etc... right now.
http://x3etfhell.blogspot.com/2009/11/history-of-douchebags-nov-19th-2009_19.html
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We didn't run out of stone
Piss poor rhetoric.
Must try harder
Natural Gas prices have collapsed. Literally 50 percent of a year or two ago. The new shale technology has meant enormous reserves are now easily reachable.
I recall the nazis had a technology to turn gas into petrol, this was used a lot in South Africa during the sanctions.
Might be a time to buy. Things might get a bit more expensive, but if it is just resource issue - not that much more expensive.
The last time governments were printing money in the 1970s there were MSM stories about running out of fuel etc... It is just an excuse for rising prices caused by money printing IMO
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Thanks for the replies. I will have a look at these websites. For information:
- I have about £60,000 saved up as a deposit for a house.
- I expect UK house prices to fall and sterling to fall with them. I expect the sterling: euro exchange rate to move to somewhere near parity once the public sector cuts and the HPC get going.
- So I want to take out an option to purchase (say) 75,000 euros. The strike price should be set at today's exchange rate. I should be able to exercise at any point from mid-2011 to about mid-2012. The rationale for this is that IMO this is the period when the cuts will really start to take effect and the HPC will have been going for several months.
- Once sterling has fallen I intend to exercise and take a profit in sterling. I don't want the contract to be settled by delivery of euros because the money is to buy a house in the UK.
- I don't want to take out a forward contract because I don't really know what I'm doing and I am scared that it could go wrong. A load of PIIGS countries defaulting on their debt, the end of the euro, that sort of thing. Although an option will be more expensive, it will (a) protect me from c*cking it up, and (b ) give me some comfort that I'll be OK even if sterling does turn to sh*t.
Further questions:
- How much is this likely to cost me?
- Could I make it materially cheaper by having a shorter exercise period?
- How much of an additional premium will I pay for taking out an option as opposed to entering into a forward contract?
- How much more would it cost me to take out an option over 100,000 or 150,000 euros, rather than 75,000 euros?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract
these should set you off. you can get the indicative volatility for a put or call on the soc gen warrants website. if i wanted to answer these questions i would put the formulas in a spreadsheet and have a crack.
or someone here might do it for you
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It's easy why,
This is spot on - though difficult to think of the target market for this video.
Was Keynes saying what the establishment wanted to hear?
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This is the interesting thing. The majority of the population is begging for the printing press. It's the easy option.
The printing press is actively being used as we debate.
In the EU recently they seem to have had this debate. With Germany presumably pushing for a Greek default and France pushing for ECB action to buy Greek bonds (printing). It looks like they agreed to print.
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Depends on the size of the option notional you would want.
Someone like CMC could easily do this for you but minimum size would be probably £100k to £250k
For smaller stuff, cash settled in sterling, then I think spread betting accounts like IG Index offer a decent selection of strikes/expiries.
Fx options vols are still pretty elevated right now so I'd think carefully about whether an option really is better than a spot position with a stop.
EUR/GBP rose quite a bit today mainly on the back of a UK clearer buying a couple of yards for a real-money account. GBP/USD traded heavy aswell all day (though to be fair it had gone up too much the prior day).
Google Soc Gen warrants
They have puts and calls on all major indices, currencies, some commodities and large companies
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I think this is just a personal attack on a HPC poster.
It is one thing debating in a thread about another HPCer's views but starting a thread so that you can ridicule or hurl abuse at another HPCer is just not on IMPO.
I think attacking what people say is not personal and absolutely fair game.
Although from a personal viewpoint I would admit to disliking polar bears especially those with glasses.
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Beware of deflation and the oversold PONZI threat and remeber gold is still worth about half the peak in 1980 (making gold the worst long term investment of all time):
Lower prices could mean deflation and double-dip recession
Chris "Christopher" Isidore, senior writer, On Tuesday June 8, 2010, 9:05 am EDT
Lumber prices are sinking. And while that might make a trip to Home Depot cheaper, it's also a sign that the global economic recovery and the U.S. housing rebound are in danger of stalling.
Only a few months ago, inflation was the main worry of many economists. But falling prices for the raw materials of many industries, including lumber, have set off deflation warning bells for some economists, who worry that they could signal another global economic downturn.
Great thanks - that is perfect
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With gold hitting new highs in the last day or so, it has subsequently fallen a fraction.
I am just wondering if we will get another paper ramping post from HPC comedy club resident Realist Bear? Usually along the lines of "gold 300 dollars an ounce by Christmas"
Come on - these have been appearing since gold was 600 dollars an ounce.
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Under Thatcher, in the 1980's, I seem to remember it went like this: The Tories inherited a mess from Labour and proceeded to make it worse. Then they successfully engineered a boom which created the 'Loadsamoney' era. Then came the bust, followed by a partial recovery by the time John Major's government left office. And during all that time, Britain's manufacturing base was being further eroded by 'inward investment', outsourcing and foreign takeovers of British companies. Let's hope David Cameron and Nick Clegg make a better job of things.
Billions of oil wealth were found at the time of thatcher - even a total inept fool could have brought the country out of recession in those circumstances. And thatcher being a total fool proved this.
However whilst Norway has a soverign wealth fund and massive pensions for norwegian citizens thatcher squandered our oil wealth - we have no soverign wealth fund.
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Liberal domestic spending programmes and liberal foreign policies since the days of Reagan and Thatcher - this is why we are in the current financial and political mess we are in, or not?
Just an idea.
Before it comes, neither Bushes were conservatives, particularly the last one who expanded the state massively, refused to cut spending and rolled out the biggest ideological foreign policy for over 100 years.
Reagan was the real capitulation of America to the military industrial complex. You could reasonably say reaganite policies bust america.
Thatcher made the UK into and non industrial country.
Both were long term strategic disasters where we are only starting to understand the calamity
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Well having sat through that excruciating bit of peacockery, the first phrase that springs to mind is that a watched kettle never boils.
While I agree with the stats presented, what is most important is the vast array of other material factors that were missing from his analysis, and the very short reach (not priot to about 1800) of his historical window.
I wonder if niall knows about nyquists theorem.
Good point fergusson is a twerp
Those who can do
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This Video goes back to last year, may have been posted before but should be seen again in light of the fact that Cameron is now PM.
What's the biggest 'too big to fail'? The housing market innit!
Could the boy Dave think the unthinkable and let it crash?
He was campaigning for an election.
No chance of this landed gentry representative doing anything to fix housing
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By international standards we have a successful food producing class, yet our economy is still in tatters, it's the same with the U.S too. More successful economies are usually concerned with high value goods such as cars, computers or robotics, food production tends to be fairly low value and may not be as suitable for exporting due to the quick degredation of the produce.
IFAIK the CAP was mainly about food security, like all EU projects it got out of hand but they're unable/unwilling to do anything it.
I am talking relative to say africa, the philippines, south america - how does the standard of living compare?
What I presented is empirically the case. A sort of necessity for a successful economy. CAP is a good thing, I would rather waste a few quid and see a few fat rich farmers than starve
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Apparently, due to the distortions that the CAP creates we produce far more food than we actually need and then set about dumping the surpluses in Africa at below cost price.
I don't see what the problem is, not from the African perspective anyway. They get a load of cheap food, subsidised by the hardworking EU taxpayer.
So why do so many people whittle on about the poor Africans and the nasty EU? If the boot was on the other foot I wouldn't mind, they could 'distort our markets' all they wanted if it meant that I was able to get hold of food at half it's current price. It was also release tens of thousands of farm workers from the land and they could start producing something else. It would make us richer.
It sounds like another piece of crap economic propaganda that everyone has bought into because it involves starving Africans.
Any successful economy needs a wealthy food producing class. This is just human experience. Any successful country in the world will have this - unsuccessful ones will not. (There are likely exceptions exporting natural resources).
EU and US dumping destroys this class in Africa - it is not accidental as the same people dumping protect their own food producing class relentlessly
Baby Boomers On Trial Bbc R4 8Pm Analysis
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Did you get coal for christmas in those days?
Face it codger - the years of spouting this guff are over - your generation is going to be brought to justice now.