But hey, let’s not play the blame game. Nothing to see here. Move along.

BB and Paulson said they expected full repayment with possibly some profit for the US. I expect a generation of taxes to pay for all the bailout costs. Remember how the invasion of Iraq was going to be paid for by oil, this is more lies from our leaders.

Wouldn’t it be nice if these things were paid for by identifiable surcharges in our federal taxes? A 4% surcharge to pay for Iraq, a 5% surcharge for AIG, 3% to pay for the Chrysler & GM bankruptcies and 12% to pay for the restructuring of CITI and BAC. A nice easy payment plan spread out over the next 25 years. There’ll be no more need to blame anyone then!

One doesn’t have to have an ideological belief in “rational” or “self-correcting” markets to oppose the Bailouts. The banks are bankrupt right now, regardless of the few hundred billion of TARP they received. We’re just choosing to ignore this fact. Someone asked what would have happened if the banks weren’t bailed out. Well, the shareholders would get zip, and the bondholders would take a severe haircut. That’s what would happen. No big deal. The banks don’t go away, they just change owners.

This BS about LIBOR “skyrocketing” or whatever is just over-the-top nonsense. LIBOR was up, sure, but why shouldn’t it have been up? Now it’s down again. Credit has a price — problems arise when people think that the price of credit shouldn’t be correlated with risk and its price is made artificially low. Of course, that’s precisely the course the Fed and the Treasury have taken. Instead of letting credit and risk be priced in the market, our great leaders have chosen to subsidize the price of credit at our expense — through TARP, TALF, TAF, PPIP, and all the other alphabet soup programs. It would have been far better to let private parties take the losses rather than concentrating all the risk on the Federal balance sheet. There is no free lunch, of course, and so instead of Lloyd Blankfein, Ken Lewis and their banks’ bondholders taking the hit, we the taxpayers will take the hit.

Besides, the Depression was NOT caused by Federal inaction. This is a popular myth, but it isn’t true. If we had let the zombies fail, we would have had some temporary dislocation. But we would have had a recovery much, much quicker. I don’t think we will ever “recover” as long as we continue the Bailouts. In any case, I’d much prefer freedom and capitalism to the crony socialism we’re getting right now. Did I mention I was angry about all this?

I’ve been coming around to using Fibonacci for my EMA’s. The 13EMA is pretty good for short term trends (so far). Instead of the 20/50 SMA cross I use the 21/55EMA cross. But all TA is just finding different ways of using price action to divine direction. It’s one of the reasons I prefer candlesticks. Outside of the fact they have been around much longer than western analysis, it’s pretty decent in determining market sentiment.

btw the Nikkei and Hang Seng are getting killed (-2.5% & -3.01% respectively).

And you really think the guilty will be charged and convicted?

Ha, pass the crack pipe, dude!

This is America, where the guilty roam and rule free.

You make a good argument…I’m no more qualified to make a judgement call than anyone else as to whether the snoball is now running down the hill…

So I’ll just give a list of the thoughts that run through my head on the subject (in random order)…

- I think the DOLLAR move can now be confirmed (albeit temporary)…Dollar has clear sailing to 84
- The dollar move “should” be bad for NASDAQ, OIL, & COMMODITIES, but I think something weird will happen…So far they’ve been doing what they should be doing, but (I’VE SAID THIS BEFORE), I think we’ll end up seeing a short ‘disconnect’ period (where the dollar continues to rise, but actually the Nasdaq & oil will rally back)…it won’t last long though…
- Bonds will continue to rally (but I think that’s just the FAST MONEY moving out of commodities into synthetic cash)…That’s why I think the “fastest” of that money will go right back into oil for a quick hit just to take a few suckers for a ride…
- So THAT is why I think the S&P still has one last breath to the upside (because it is well represented in the energy space)…
- Right now I can’t see the S&P getting past the 962-1007 level past mid-July…That’s when I think the party will be over…I still have S&P 560 on my calendar for October ’09…
- What people may MISS is that when equities eventually sell off, DEFLATION is going to be on the front burner again…I think Gold will sell down to its support levels…The day the S&P hits 560 I want to be adding to Gold positions…It won’t be the highest BETA play, but it will be the best LONG TERM play…It will be the last, best chance to own gold…
- Why?
- Because when the market dives to 560, Bernanke will be on the hotseat…Obama will need someone to blame, so he’ll blame Bernanke (because he is the last remaining relic)…He’ll appoint Larry Summers to be the new Fed chief in January ’10 and the printing presses won’t stop thereafter…
- Obama, at that point, will then officially own the economy and it will prove to become the largest economic catastrophe of all time…

- BTW – I’m more interested in the 233 day EMA and the 144 than I am the 200…The 144 gives you “support” around 905, and the 233 hasn’t even been “kissed” and is up at 970…

The S&P fought off closing below the rising window (gap up from 5/29-6/1). But it had a solid close below the 200 EMA. The 3LB has a turnaround day. So, has the snowball started rolling downhill?