Some Observations From Yesterday

I started my day as usual yesterday waking up at 4:30am to get ready for work. I knew it was going to be one hell of a day. I had tons of stuff to do at work with the big Fed announcement on interest rates and I was scheduled to take a road trip up to Simi Valley later in the day with a few Ron Paul supporters to see Ron Paul at a pep rally after the debate last night at the Reagan Library. Anyone have a guess at how long it took to get from Huntington Beach to Simi Valley yesterday. We left at 4:15pm and didn't get to the hotel until 6:45pm...that's right, ouch. Luckily there were five us in the car and I lost track of time because of all the stimulating conversation we had about politics, but I digress. I don't know how Ron Paul does it. The man is like the energizer bunny. He was so pumped up last night when he came into the ballroom. I didn't even get a chance to see the debate yet because we were traveling. I heard through the grapevine that he didn't get much air time. This is typical. I didn't get home until about 11:30pm last night.

Fed Cuts The Interest Rate Again

The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate another 50 basis points a few mintes ago. We're now down to 3% on the fed funds & discount rate. All the strong dollar talk out of Secretary Paulson and the Fed is complete bulls**t. They are trying to inflate their way out of this crisis. It's not working and it won't work. You can't repeal the law of economics. Will the last person fighting inflation at the Fed please turn the light off when you leave. Thanks

Anybody Seen Our Gold?

The title of this post is the title of a full page ad coming up in Thursday's edition of the Wall Street Journal. It will be in the Money & Investing Section. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee(GATA) is the sponsor of the ad. They paid over a quarter of a million dollars to publish it. I strongly encourage anyone who has been wondering why the price of of gold has been shooting through the roof, to goto GATA's website and learn for yourselves why the price of gold has been suppressed for so many years by our government. After reading all the supporting evidence, I must warn you, you will probably have one those "a ha" moments that doesn't happen to often in life. To view an early copy of the ad, click here.

John Campbell Votes Against Stimulus Bill

I want to make sure that I praise my representative John Campbell for voting against the so called "Stimulus Bill" today in Congress. Unfortunately it passed by a huge margin of 385 to 35. Mr. Campbell is turning out to be a pretty good Congressman so far. This wealth redistribution bill was wrong on so many levels. It gave tax rebates to people who don't even pay taxes. You could say it is a feel good welfare bill. It blows another big hole in the deficit. We don't have the money to pay for this thing so that means the Fed is going to have to print the money and beg the Chinese to help us finance it. It doesn't lower tax rates or make the tax cuts permanent which would have been a hell of a lot more stimulative. This bill boils down to CYA(cover your ass) bill for the Congressmen & women to tell their constituents that they are really feeling their pain right now so we're going to try and buy you off with whatever it takes. Here's a link to a three minute speech Mr. Campbell gave in the House today opposing the bill.

Tom McClintock Now Supports Ron Paul

With former Senator Fred Thompson calling it quits, superstar principled conservative Sen. Tom McClintock needed someone else to support for President in California. So it was natural that he would come to the conclusion that the only other person he could support is Ron Paul. The others either aren't conservative at all(McCain, Huckabee, Giuliani) or they are fake ones/and or new to the cause(Mitt Romney). This should give Ron a nice bounce here in California as more people find out about this. Tom almost endorsed Ron over Fred Thompson a few months ago, but we're glad to have him on the team now.

Rogue Trader Loses $7 Billion For France's Société Générale

I swear you can't make up stories like this. A low level French trader at France's Société Générale lost over 5 billion euros($7 billion US) betting long on the European stock indicies. The company's risk management team finally uncovered the fraud a few days ago, but the damage was done. To make matters worse, they had to unwind the positions this past Monday when the Asian & European markets were tanking big time. This probably added to the decline. I can't wait for all the gritty details to come out about this fiasco. It is eerily similiar to the rogue trader Nick Leeson who lost Barings Bank over $1 billion dollars back in 1995 betting long on Nikkei Futures on the SIMEX Exchange in Singapore.

OC Central Committee Roundup

One word....wow. This is a tip for anyone who complains about having to pay $21 to go out to the movies these days only to get served up bad movies. You can go to OC GOP Central Committee meetings and get great drama for free! The storyline of the night was if Janet Nguyen should receive the party's early endorsement. She did not get it, but the way it all went down will go down in OC GOP history as one of the weirdest meetings of all time. It all started because a member of the committee, Tim Whitacre, pulled Janet's name from the early endorsement list. Any Central Committee member has this right. Marcia Gilchrist made a motion to reinstate the early endorsement. Three members spoke in favor of this motion and three spoke against it. Then they took the first vote with Parliamentarian Kermit Marsh instructing members that abstentions would count basically the same as NO votes. The count was announced as 32 to 17, not enough. Then Chairman Baugh and Mr. Marsh announced that they were voting "aye". This made the so called total 34 to 17. Just enough for approval. Not so fast said Tim Whitacre. He had a different total of 34 to 23, not enough for endorsement. I think Mary Young and Kermit Marsh need a remedial math class or something because after conferring with Tim, they did announce that Tim's total was the one to go with. Huh? Talk about needing checks and balances in this party. How hard is it to count votes? This is amazing. So Janet doesn't get the endorsement like she thought she would, but people seemed satisfied that fairness had prevailed.

After this we had CRP Chairman Ron Nehring speak about the state of the GOP Presidential race and get in a few gratuitous slams against the potential Dem nominees.

Then we had more formalities like giving awards to volunteers of the year and month and legislator of the year, which went to our Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

So we get to committee reports at the end of the meeting. Most members had left for the night thinking that all important business was finished. Then Parliamentarian Kermit Marsh dropped a bomb on everyone that he is over-ruling himself from earlier in the night that abstentions would count in the vote totals and re-rules that in fact they don't count towards the final tally and announces that Janet Nguyen hereby receives the endorsement by 34 to 12 or something. WHAT? You're over-ruling yourself? Says who? Everyone was looking incredulous and Janet supporters were grinning ear to ear like the cat that just swallowed the canary. Someone restore some order here. Enter Assemblyman DeVore. He strongly objected to the vote and had a few stern words for Mr. Marsh. He then moved for reconsideration of the vote. Now remember, a lot of members had already high tailed it out of there. I had Trung supporters come back into the room that were having drinks at the bar ask me what just happened. I said your guy just got railroaded just like last year with the whole Sheriff endorsement fiasco. Someone stop the insanity. Thankfully Chairman Baugh rose to make a motion that the endorsement vote be expunged and a re vote held at the next meeting in February. That was adopted by voice vote. Whewww. Did you get all that? You had to be there. Matt Cunningham from Red County was there and had his video camera rolling so we should have some juicy tape of how everything happened pretty soon.

Financial Meltdown In The Works

Our markets are closed today for the MLK holiday, but the futures markets aren't and right now the Dow futures are off over 500 and the S&P futures are down over 60. Overnight the Asian & European markets sold off over 5% because of worries about our economy. President Bush is pissing into the wind if he thinks his so called "stimulus plan" will help at this point. It won't. I've been telling everyone here on these pages to get the hell out of the stock market. Did anyone listen? You've had plenty of time. We had a nice rally up before Christmas to exit. We're now down 10% across the board in the new year and we're just getting started. Bear markets last a long time. We could correct another 30% down as I see it. Watch for a rate cut of 1% before the market opens tomorrow.

Here's my post from last August warning people to get out of the stock market

Ron Paul Secures 2nd Place In Nevada

Today the state of Nevada held their Presidential nominating caucus. Mitt Romney won with 51%. Congrats to him for running up the score. The surprising news though out of Nevada was Ron Paul coming in second ahead of Sen McAmnesty, The Huckster, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. That Giuliani strategy is really looking great. I wonder if he's trying to come in last place in all the early primaries. Oh well, he's out of money and his staffers are all going without pay. Memo to Rudy staffers...I hear Gov Romney's checks clear, just something to think about.

Political Quote Of The Day

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one perhaps of the Right, and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy... But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same policies". -- Carroll Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope", 1966, p. 1247-48

Does this quote sound familiar today? It does to me.

Sheriff Mike Carona Has Resigned

What a pleasant surprise it was to hear the news on KFI while driving into work this morning that Mike Carona is resigning. I knew something was brewing about this. The 60 day paid leave stunt was a farce just to collect a paycheck for a few extra months and see how much political heat developed. I guess we know the answer today by his resignation. This resignation completely vindicates Lt. Bill Hunt now. There will be an interim appointment made by the Board of Supervisors. I call on them to install Lt. Hunt immediately as the new Sheriff. I'll have more thoughts on this story later tonight when I get home.

Kudos To John Campbell

I read this morning that my Congressman, John Campbell, has called for Sheriff Mike Carona to resign. He's also recently called for embattled Congressman John Doolittle to retire instead of run for re-election. Cong. Campbell obviously understands that for Republicans to be credible, we must start policing our own members who are tarnishing the party and our message with their corruption. It's going to be hard enough trying to convince the voters that they should trust Republicans again with power without them having to read everyday a new story about how some of our GOP elected officials are abusing their offices and public trust. Accountability must begin at home.

Fox News Blowback Continues...Ron Paul On Jay Leno Again

Fresh back from being on hiatus for a few months during the writers strike, Jay Leno invited GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul back on the Tonight Show to talk about the big New Hampshire Primary tomorrow and blast Fox News for excluding Ron Paul in their candidate forum last night. Thank you Fox News for all this free publicity. Ain't blowback a bitch. You guys are a joke of a network and getting worse by the day. Ron hit this interview out of the park tonight. There were so many great one liners and quotes that its just best to watch it for yourself here on You Tube....
Part 1


Part 2

Classic Chart Of the Current Bull Market In Gold

Please click on the chart for a clearer view. As you can see, the volume and open interest have been increasing with the price of gold for the last several years. This is a very bullish technical indicator. Again I say to all those who haven't bought some gold or silver, please jump on the bandwagon. There's plenty of room. I want you to buy it though on a big correction/pullback if at all possible. I'll leave you with this quote from Richard Russell...

Richard Russell (Dow Theory Letters): A mighty interesting move coming up for gold
"Now that gold is at all-time highs, is there any way to tell where gold might be going? I’m going to repeat the words of W.D. Gann. Mr. Gann is considered by many professionals to have been one of the greatest commodity and stock traders (and thinkers) of all time. Here are Gann’s words (courtesy of my old New York friend, Ron Rosen).
"‘When a stock or a commodity advances into new territory or to prices which it has not reached for months or years, it shows that the force or driving power is working in that direction. It is the same principle as any other force which has been restrained and breaks out. Water may be held back by a dam, but if it breaks through the dam, you would know that it would continue downward until it reaches another dam, or some obstruction or resistance which would stop it.
"‘Therefore, it is very important to watch old levels of stocks and commodities. The longer the time that elapses between the breaking into new territory, the greater the move you can expect, because the accumulative energy over a long period naturally will produce larger movements than if it only accumulated during a short period of time.’
"It took 28 years for gold to break out above it’s 1980 high of 850. In view of what Gann says, this should be a mighty interesting move coming up for gold."

Rudy Who?

It was great seeing Rudy Giuliani getting interviewed last night on Fox with a certain "deer in the headlights" look to him. Ron Paul smoked the former Mayor of New York by over 6% last night in the Iowa Caucuses. This is for all that smirking and laughing Rudy did at Ron Paul during the last few debates. Scoreboard Mr. Mayor.

GOP Registration Is Up.....I Wonder Why?

According to respected pollster Scott Rasmussen, GOP registration is up over two points in the last few months from last year. My hunch is that a lot of people have been switching from Decline To State/Independent & Democrat to Republican so they can vote for Ron Paul in states with closed GOP primaries. This is why the GOP establishment should embrace the message of Ron Paul. He's bringing lots of new people to the party and getting disaffected Republicans to switch back after they got so disgusted they switched to Independent in the last few years.

They're not switching back because of what George W Bush and the Congress have been doing. If it weren't for Ron, we might be down another couple of points right now going into these primaries.

New Ron Paul Ad Just Released

It's called "we have the answer".