Mover Mike

Interest rates on 30-year U.S. Treasuries have flatlined for the last two years between 4.75% and 3.51%.  In the same time period Gold has gone from on an up-escalator ride from $859 to $1,565.  Silver has gone from $11.82 to almost $50.  The CRB has gone from 209 to 370 and Crude oil has gone up from $46.72 to above $114.

Interest rates might have stayed flat if the USD had moved higher, but the USD Index has dropped from 87 to 74 back to 88 and now 73!

With the dollar falling, commodities moving higher, and the U.S. monetizing its debt, someone soon will demand a higher return for buying our bonds.  I think that time may come within the next several weeks.  Already the 200 day moving average is moving higher, we are at the recent lows of 4.38 and a daily buy signal would come at 4.5% and next week a weekly buy signal would come at 4.5%.

Some say that we are another Greece in the making.  Why in the world would you accept this low of an interest rate to take on the risk of inflation or default?  Barring a collapse in precious metals, expect higher interest rates soon.

BTW, if you are like me and crunching numbers and balancing budgets are your strengths? Check out online degree accounting

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Tags: Government, Investing, Precious Metals, Predictions for 2011, USD, trading by MoverMike
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I am waiting for the new alternative energies to be announced. As fossil fuels become more expensive or we near peak oil, I expect some new Tesla-inspired energy source to be announced.  Today, we learn that scientists may have found a way to do away with solar panels by means of an “optical battery“.

Light has electric and magnetic components. Until now, scientists thought the effects of the magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored. What Rand and his colleagues found is that at the right intensity, when light is traveling through a material that does not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects that are 100 million times stronger than previously expected. Under these circumstances, the magnetic effects develop strength equivalent to a strong electric effect.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could focus sunlight on a non conductive material that would become a charged battery?

Hat tip to ActivistPost at Before It’s News.

Tags: Energy by MoverMike
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This Sunday on “60 Minutes” Lara Logan returns to CBS to recount her experience in Egypt at the hands of a mob.

Jeff Fager, the chairman of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” said that the segment about the assault on Ms. Logan would raise awareness of the issue. “There’s a code of silence about it that I think is in Lara’s interest and in our interest to break,” he said.

Tags: Current TV by MoverMike
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At a cost of $26.6 billion, the 1,600m-tall Kingdom Tower would dwarf the current tallest building in the world, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which is half its height.

Tags: Energy, culture by MoverMike
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Obama’s birth certificate released today has the name of the hospital that delivered him as Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.

To quote Wikipedia: The facility was originally founded by Queen Kapiolani as the Kapilani Maternity Home in 1890 for which she held bazaars and luaus to raise $8,000 needed to start the Home. Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital opened in 1909 named for Emma Kauikeolani Napoleon Mahelona (1862­1931), the wife of Albert Spencer Wilcox (1844-1919).[1] In 1978, it merged with Kapiolani Maternity Home to become Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children.

However, as of 1978 (up to the date of the actual merger) the maternity part of the hospital was still known as the Kapi`olani Maternity Home. Obama was born in 1961, 17 years before the name change. How did “Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital” get on his bc?

Hat tip Devvykid.

Tags: culture, politics by MoverMike
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I just ordered two new novels from these mysteries and thrillers:

New Mystery & Thrillers

Tags: Book Review by MoverMike
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BigGovernment.com from Andrew Breitbart has a video of a professor and a self-proclaimed communist union official jointly giving a class on Violent Union Tactics.  The schools, the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), were conducting the joint class and are public institutions funded by tax payers.

In the class, the Professors not only advocate the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage, they outline specific tactics that can be used. As one of our colleagues pointed out, its the matter-of-factness of it all that is so disturbing.

What is your son or daughter learning in college that you may be paying for?  Does the college undermine your beliefs?

Tags: Education, Government by MoverMike
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Listen to the politicians. They think a solution to our fiscal problems is to raise taxes on the rich or increase a particular tax or find a new tax. They don’t think you and I or some special group isn’t paying its fair share. Have you looked at the kinds of taxes we pay now? Isn’t it time to say enough? Wouldn’t you like to spend the money you earn in the way you see fit?

Inheritance tax
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
Capital Gains Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
City Tax
Corporate Income Tax
County Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

According to Charlie Reece in his final column in the Orlando Sentinel, not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago!

Tags: Government, Government Spending by MoverMike
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I saw “The Return of the Great Depression” advertised on Kindle for $1.59 and I couldn’t pass it up.  I’m glad I didn’t.  The book was published October 29, 2009 and is just slightly out of date, because we have a lot more money spent on QEs and the national debt has ballooned $4 trillion.

Vox Day graduated in 1990 from Bucknell University with degrees in Economics and Asian Studies. He is a blogger at  Vox Popoli blog.In Chapter 10 he outlines six scenarios for the near, economic future of the U.S. and lists their probability.

Scenario 1 is St. Bernanke and the Green Shoots.  This is the one favored by the Blue Chip Consensus, economists from the IMF, Donald Luskin and the Wall Street economists.  This is the “V” shaped recovery.  Probability nil.

Scenario 2 is The Jobless Recovery (or the “U” shaped recovery).  They include the likes of Paul Krugman and Joseph Stigletz who don’t believe the U.S. has stimulated enough. Considered to be too optimistic by the author.

Scenario 3 is the Whiskey Zulu India or the hyper-inflation.  Proponents of this scenario include Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Jim Sinclair, Peter Schiff, Bill Fleckenstein to name a few; classical economists of the Austrian School.  The author believes this scenario is the most likely except that commodities collapsed along with oil and precious metals at the time the book was published.

Scenario 4 is The Great Recession. Proponents here include Stephen Roach, Bill Gross and Robert Reich.

Scenario 5 is Great Depression 2.0. This scenario is the one the author favors, including Mish Shedlock. One in which debt is deflationary and leaves us with a depression that is 35% worse than the 1930s variety.

Scenario 6 is Fallout 4 Live.  The second least-likely scenario is Armageddon

I favor the Whiskey Zulu India scenario. Commodities have made a recovery from 2009 and are setting new highs in corn, wheat, soybeans, oil and the CRB index. Silver has closed over $46 today and the author says in order for this scenario to be correct, we would need to see Gold over $1,500 by the end of 2010. Well, we missed it by four months. That’s close enough for me. I don’t believe the government’s figures and think inflation is much worse that announced and that consequently shows us that GDP is not increasing. Expect more QE ad infinitum!

Welcome Dollar Collapse!

Tags: Government, Government Spending, Inflation, Investing, Precious Metals, Predictions for 2011, USD, trading by MoverMike
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I love the ads on radio about muni bonds. The announcer reads the fine print before the tout about tax free income. One of the risks is to capital if interest rates go up. Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge points out how Greek bonds have fallen in half. What started out as a 4.6% Greek long, treasury bond at par is now a bond trading at 50.56% of par and the current yield to new buyers is 9.7943%. Interest rates have gone up in Greece due to their financial shambles. The same thing will happen here. In my life time I’ve seen 13% Oregon munis issued at par. I’ve seen Oregon electric utilities bonds at 17% at par. Soon we will see U.S. Treasuries with 10% yields.

Tags: Government, Government Spending, USD by MoverMike
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