big thanks for the link to http://www.my10000dollars.com/etf-time-decay/ that one led to the aha moment. Was overthinking it all. For those still messing with short and “leveraged” etfs, take the time and realized that outside of very specific circumstances these things are garbage hell bent on approaching zero… (or at least slowly decaying downward).

“Beijing (AFP) April 09, 2007
China’s farmland is becoming increasingly polluted, with coal-dependent factories and polluted waterways causing billions of dollars in damages, state press reported Monday. Heavy metals contaminate 12 million tonnes of grains each year, leading to direct losses of more than 20 billion yuan (2.6 billion dollars), the China Daily said, citing the nation’s environmental watchdog.
More than 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres), or 10 percent of China’s farming land, has been ruined, the paper said, citing other reports in the state-run press.

China’s coal industry, which supplies about 70 percent of the nation’s energy needs, is having a major impact.
More than two billion tonnes of coal is burnt each year, discharging around 2,000 tonnes of mercury into the environment.

Much of the highly toxic heavy metal ultimately seeps into the soil, the paper said.

Vegetables and fruit have also been polluted by excessive amounts of nitrate reaching the ground, it added.
China’s rapid economic expansion over the past few decades has come at huge environmental cost.
More than 70 percent of China’s waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to previously released government figures, but the impact on soil has never been measured.
To get an accurate picture, Chinese authorities are currently undertaking their first-ever national survey of soil pollution…”
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Farmland_Across_China_At_Risk_From_Pollution_999.html
~~
“…The air smells acrid from squat gas burners that sit outside homes, melting wires to recover copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. Migrant workers in filthy clothing smash picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing as much as 3kg of lead dust.

For five years, environmentalists and the media have highlighted the danger to Chinese workers who dismantle a large portion of the world’s junked electronics. Yet a visit to this small southeastern town regarded as the heartland of “e-waste” disposal shows little has improved. In fact, the problem is growing worse because of China’s own contribution.
China now produces more than 910,000 tonnes of e-waste each year, said Jamie Choi, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace China in Beijing. That adds up to roughly 5 million TV sets, 4 million refrigerators, 5 million washing machines, 10 million mobile phones and 5 million personal computers, Choi said.
“Most e-waste in China comes from overseas, but the amount of domestic e-waste is on the rise,” he said.

This ugly business is driven by pure economics. For the West, where safety rules drive up the cost of disposal, it is as much as 10 times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries. In China, poor migrants from the countryside willingly endure the health risks to earn a few yuan, exploited by profit-hungry entrepreneurs….”
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/11/20/2003388743

but, you forget, China exports a huge quantity of Ag Produce to the U.S., and around the World..

see: “…China produced one third of the world’s vegetable exports in 2000, and its acceptance in the WTO in December 2001 was expected to boost China’s share of international produce markets even higher. However, excessive and poorly regulated levels of pesticide residues in Chinese produce are threatening its agricultural exports to its biggest markets, Japan and the EU.
The magnitude of the pesticide residue problem in China is illustrated by studies inside and outside of the country. In Yunnan province, residues of two highly toxic pesticides banned for use in vegetable production were found in 34% to 100% of vegetable samples taken by the local government in the years 1994-2001. Approximately 47% of domestic produce tested by the Chinese government in 2001 had pesticide residues above government standards. In Japan, pesticide residues in some samples of vegetables imported from China were up to four times the agreed-upon limits. This finding led Japan to impose much stricter controls on imports from China, and was largely responsible for a new amendment to strengthen the Japanese Ministry of Health’s policy on pesticide residues, set to take effect in April 2003…”
ht tp://ww w.panna.org/node/1365

No, no, no. They’re not “buyers” of precious metals. They’re consumers of precious metals, as in ingestors of precious and heavy metals. Chinese peasants consumes lots of metals. It’s just that they consume them orally.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5271376/Chinese-ordered-to-smoke-more-to-boost-economy.html

Chinese leaders reckon that their economy is getting better, but the world’s is getting worse and will do so for some time.

Their optimism about their own country is based on the supposed intelligent actions of the central government in the face of a recession and its quick action of putting more than $500 billion in stimulus into the financial system.

The rest of the large nations around the world will not be so fortunate. According to Reuters, “The global financial crisis is still spreading and the world economy is going to get worse before getting better, China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan said.”

It is hard to see how that assessment could be correct. Even if the investment that China is making in its economy helps to temporarily boost factory production and consumer spending, China’s massive export machine must do well for the country’s GDP to maintain rapid growth.

If Wang Qishan is right a recovery in Japan and the West is far off. That almost certainly means that these markets will be much smaller importers. Given China’s central position as the largest trading partner of a number of other large nations, it cannot sustain improvements in its own economy without a sustained recovery around the world.

If China is right and the rest of the world is still falling apart, it is only a matter of time before that collapse overwhelms the benefits of China’s huge investment in its own economy.

So in the end if you make nothing you will have nothing to save and something the charts do not show is the amounts of money they are saving or the fact that they have no safety nets like SSI, Social Security but then again of course our Social Security will most likely be imploding in 2010 so KA BOOM the whole world has been destroyed by crooks and the obamageddon is in their pocket.

Incompetency knows no gender, age, ethnicity, educational or socio-economical gap.

The video of the incompetent female FED IG has really irked me. How long do incompetent females get a free ride. In my career, I have spent an inordinate amount of time supporting incompetent female bosses who have been rushed to the front to counter claims of discrimination.

Q) Where has the 1 trillion dollars gone ?

A) What do you mean ?

what a f’n idiot.