JimDiGritz

I am reviewing my new tenancy agreement and noticed this clause: If this tenancy is continued or run on as a periodic tenancy then the Rent will increase each year from the first Rent Due Date<snip>by the amount stated for the annual increase in the Index of Retail Prices (All Items)<snip> Is this usual? Thanks Jim

The real concern here, is not the piffling £60-80bn of debt that's been defaulted on, it's the trillions in Credit Default Swaps that the City boys have been gambling that Dubai would/would'nt default. If only a small percentage of those bets aren't matched or covered then that could be hundreds of billions of losses.... That's what happened last year to AIG. Rinse & repeat. Jim

The OP has an interesting point. For most people who can't be bothered to keep up with the economic news, last September is all just like a bad dream...green shoots are here and 2010 will be just like 2007. The truth is just as Justice stated, if the world hadn't effectively re-mortgaged it's house and all the houses of the next generation by printing and pumping in T R I L L I O N S of fiat currency into the system in 2008 then it would have been financial game over. As it is we have had to continue to pump money in just to SLOW DOWN the collapse. As it stands we managed to buy ourselves some more time (well, most of us.. cough Iceland.. cough), sadly the sovereign 'mortgage' payments are now due and we simply aren't earning enough to pay them. printy printy as the unmentionable one would say. Round 2 starts now.. sadly most people think Round 2 has something to do with the X-Factor... I'm dusting off my Sandwich board..... Jim

ATS Bullion

As importantly, Silver and Gold are hugely undervalued assets, because of the USD/Gold/Silver/AUS$ carry trades. If these unwind (which they could very easily if Gold/Silver - the 'stable' side of the hedge - increases in price to quickly) then we will see a huge dislocation and a return to the previously established value... Jim

I agree with him, and this is why: The Gold:Silver ratio has ranged from 14.9-to-1 in January 15, 1980 at the time of the record high gold and silver prices to 99.8-to-1 on February 22, 1991 when the price of silver was particularly depressed. During the past 5 years it has ranged from 43.6-to-1 (April 19, 2006) to 84.4-to-1 (October, 2008). It is currently at 64-to-1 having breached the 28 year support line of 58-to-1 (and 200dma) in August 2008. An analysis of the various trend channels indicates the following: a) The longer term channel upper resistance is 58-to-1 with a lower support at 43-to-1. b ) The medium term channel upper resistance is 54-to-1 with a lower support of 47-to-1. c) The short term channel upper resistance is 52-to-1 with a lower support is 50-to-1. Conclusions: There are many! Let’s look at the various price levels for gold and the various gold:silver ratios mentioned above one by one and see what conclusions we can draw. Let’s use today’s (Nov. 4th, 2009) price of $1085 for gold and apply the various gold:silver ratios mentioned above and see what they do for the potential % increase in, and price of, silver. Gold @ $1085 using the current 63:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $17.22 (Nov.4/09) Gold @ $1085 using the above 58:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $18.71 (i.e. +8.6%) Gold @ $1085 using the above 54:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $20.09 (i.e. +16.7%) Gold @ $1085 using the above 52:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $20.87 (i.e. +21.2%) Gold @ $1085 using the above 50:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $21.70 (i.e. +26.0%) Gold @ $1085 using the above 47:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $23.09 (i.e. +34.1%) Gold @ $1085 using the above 43:1 gold:silver ratio puts silver at $25.23 (i.e. +46.5%) Were we to apply the various channel upper resistance level prices for gold to the range of gold:silver ratios mentioned above we would arrive at the following potential prices for silver: Gold @ $1100 using gold:silver ratios between 63:1 and 43:1 puts silver between $17.46 and $25.58 Gold @ $1650 using gold:silver ratios between 63:1 and 43:1 puts silver between $26.19 and $38.37 Gold @ $2500 using gold:silver ratios between 63:1 and 43:1 puts silver between $39.68 and $58.14 Gold @ $3500 using gold:silver ratios between 63:1 and 43:1 puts silver between $55.56 and $81.40

Yes. Dislocation is the order of the day.

and Silver back up past $17.00 Post your rockets!

A friend of mine is the MD of a reasonably large firm and never hires anyone with a 'First', he insists that they are always , without fail, a bit odd Jim

+1 The real debate is small state vs totalitarianism. Left vs Right, Red vs Blue.. irrelevant. Jim

What's that you say? HSBC is going bust next week? "Get your money out!!!!!!" I'm tweeting and facebooking this breaking news as we speak!!!

Umm, I think we actually agree with each other! Jim

Yes, Oil is indeed finite. However I doubt that we will ever see a time when it has run out or the last barrel is pumped out the ground. Instead my point is that all the easy to get to and cheap to extract oil has already been found and used. So Peak Oil is more about how we intend to live with oil at $200, $300 or $500 a barrel. I'm willing to bet that there will always be many billions of barrels of oil left in the ground because it just won't make financial sense to extract and refine it. Jim

Oil isn't 'running out', it's just becoming too expensive to burn. With the Dollar facing a potentially massive devaluation, and with Sterling likely to be dragged down with it (Go QE!!) I think we will see Oil back up to $200/pb. Plus If the Renminbi de-pegs from the USD then all hell will break loose... Jim

I lost a lot of respect for Niall after the first few seconds of this interview when he praised the Investment Banks like Goldman Sachs for being so well run and thus profitable. He fails to mention that GS got TARP funds, as well as billions more through the backdoor by rights issues from the publicly bailed out AIG. That along with their highly questionable practice front running of the market... GS are more like Al Capone claiming disability benefits... Niall is a well respected financial historian, but in my opinion one who is unwilling to face the facts that the system is rigged. Jim

Very simple, they leave face sucking eggs on a distant world in the remains of an alien spacecraft with a distress beacon running... one day, far in the future, a hapless mining vessel will land to investigate and the Goldman Sachs facegrabbers start all over again growing into a fiendish cabal of front running, bailout profiteering and virtually unkillable monsters. Jim

This could be the ultimate bait and switch. Moot the idea of a debt jubilee, get the talkshows and coffee shops buzzing with the prospect (just like the prospect of Murray winning Wimbledon !) and wait for the world+dog to MEW, borrow and buy houses with reckless abandon in anticipation of the jackpot. Then announce it won't happen and then hoover up all the assets in a huge fire sale. meh, must be an angle for them somehow... Jim

Agreed. The other thing that raises my ******** meter is that this news site seems to just be a vehicle for spreading Catholicism, and this implies lots of agendas at work... Jim

Did someone ask for a pic of Brown in his bunker a la Downfall? I just knocked this together... made me laugh anyway!

There you go, fixed that for you. Jim

Well, Gloomberg is showing that FTSE 100 Futures indicate the market opening @ 3,517.50 (-121.00).. if the US jobless figures are extra bad then the DOW might drag the FTSE even further... I'm going to plump for a Friday close of 3,422.70

Jim? Jim Davidson is that you?

I had started a topic on this this morning, however since I am a new member I have to wait for the mods to approve it. My understanding is that effectively Barclays shunned the Government bail out last year, instead quoting it's fiscal position borrowed money from investors in the Arab Emirates. Some people wondered whether they did this so that they wouldn't have to reveal their books to the FSA - and maybe some systematic mis-reporting of losses from CDO's etc would be revealed. Hence why traders have been shorting this stock since the ban was lifted. Time will tell if this is the UK's Enron or Lehman Brothers. Jim

I saw these links in a post over at the LATOC forum, and have done some digging and am now very concerned that Barclays is in world of pain. http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/2009/01/y...ccounts-by.html and this article from todays Times: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle5533488.ece This may very well be a false alarm, but the fact that the City has started to short Barclays (as soon as the ban was lifted) seems to indicate that the traders are very bearish about what is going to be exposed in Barclays books when they have to expose them. Jim