Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich discusses his thoughts on the best way to use government funds to end the financial crisis. He says government money may be better spent creating jobs than modifying mortgages.
12/9/2008
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
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December 11th, 2008 at 12:48 am
click this :
Blackberry Storm might buy it if it worked on Net10 and picked up WiFi in bars and coffeeshops without using minutes
on subject: best of luck undoing the deterioration … we globalized the world … now common commodities go to the highest bidder with the lowest labor cost spinning them into gold
oh … where is that Blackberry put together and how many chips (whos) are in it? The software was written in what country?
Who What Where When Why How
December 11th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Exclusive to TBP – day or 2 early posting to my favorite blogsite – should be in my hometown paper soon:
Letter to Open Forum
Viewing Finances and the big picture
Commodities
I am curious and forming an opinion (as a non-player) what local folks think on the
commodity markets traded in many places like CME. I’m beginning to think commodities
should only trade between product producers and end users. Cut out the speculators
(middlemen) who drive up the price on everything. I point to OIL. There are 2 schools of
thought imo: 1> a farmer / miner and friends can drive up prices and share in an
additional income 2> common folk consumers pony-up that additional cash. This
paragraph rings out loud of Capitalism and/or some form of Socialism or Fascism or
Utopianism.
Dollar Rotation
When I was a youngster, I remember hearing the dollar circulates 14 times. I may not
remember it exactly right and still don’t know what that statement meant, but it’s made
me think. Some posture it’s the number of times the dollar hits the Federal Reserve before
being destroyed into shredded confetti. I once had a bag of about $360 dollars from a
visit to the Chicago Fed Bank. Its free for the taking. But one day I found it all over my
office floor, I blame the dog. Maybe tmi.
It could also mean the number of times a dollar circulates before used to its fullest and
hence gone away. I will attempt to explain in these terms. A dollar theoretically could
circulate in a community forever under two conditions. 1> taxes do not remove dollars to
another territory 2> all needed commodities exist inside the community borders. I’ll add
in here that this theoretical area would see it’s wealth grow by coaxing outside dollars in.
I have been curious if there is a super computer and programming that can crunch my
2nd perceived definition, to balance a regions books, hense perpetual motion in finance.
GDP
I am beginning to form an opinion that Americas Growth Domestic Product (a
government statistic used to guide business and tout in elections) is riddled and heavy
with a term I invented “paper pushing jobs”. That term means our output as a nation is
pushed upwards by jobs that produce nothing of value outside the added value of
efficiently administrating the bureaucracy. Which the Queen of England, Russia or China
could care less, imo.
the big picture
Which the Queen of England, Russia or China could care less. Never become dull to the
fact that the business of capitalism is a paper and product pushing WAR.
Greg Stein
Oglesby, IL
December 12th, 2008 at 7:50 am
fyi – I just asked my paper editor Craig a favor:
I missed one ism. Communism.
ie: ” rings out loud of Capitalism and/or some form of ”
I read it thru a couple of times yesterday and spell checked it, but that one not included was not intentional. Should have slept on it and read it again but – wanted to turn it in to be a current as possible.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:10 am
and thanks editor Barry for this platform – happy holidays and best wishes to you on a happy & prosperous new year
and with that said and this being a blog – another thought from my head after sleeping on that letter –
from above – “A dollar theoretically could circulate in a community forever under two conditions ”
what if that community had a power player who hoarded his dollars –
well … in a small enough community shame would probably work – if not that, then, figure I’d expect to see a murder and for a time, the sheriff would get some of that cash to put back into the valley