Friday Quote of the Day

"They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage"

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Swift began writing the book not long after the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 although the book was only published 6 years later.

Quote Of The Day

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." …

H.L. Mencken

March Madness

Wow. UCLA just survived a scare from a really good Texas A&M team over at the Honda Center. College Basketball and more specifically the NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the best sporting events to watch of all time. It's a good thing no one was in my living room tonight. You would have seen a grown man yell, scream, hoot & holler like an idiot for my beloved Bruins of UCLA. Seriously though, Kevin Love & Darren Collison were money tonight. They'll play the winner of tomorrow night's University of San Diego vs Western Kentucky winner in Phoenix next week.

Get Ready For A Full Point Cut By The Fed Today

We are truly headed into uncharted territory when it comes to our economy. You might call it the "Orwellian Era". At a time when the Fed should be doing all it can to fight price inflation, they are instead throwing massive amounts of gasoline onto the inflation fire with this cut today. The silver lining of these cuts is that they are temporarily driving the stock market up. This is giving the people that heretofore haven't gotten out of the market, a chance to do so in a nice orderly fashion. This is a gift people. I hope you take it. I of course will using this great opportunity to add to my shorts on all the investment banks that are left standing. Of course as everyone has heard, Bear Stearns is no longer with us after getting unceremoniously bought up for $2 bucks a share yesterday by JP Morgan.

Picture Of The Day

Extraordinary Day In The Stock Market

JP Morgan and the NY Fed had to step in and bail out investment bank Bear Stearns this morning. I'll have much more to say about this later tonight, but suffice to say that I have warned everyone that this was coming.

President Bush Says US Dollar "Adjusting"

You just have to laugh sometimes at the people in charge of our country...or cry for that matter. Today when asked about his policy for a strong US Dollar, the President said it is currently "adjusting". Now just stop for a moment and let that last quote sink in. This has got to be the euphemism of the year so far....adjusting???? The frikkin thing is falling off the face of this Earth right now. I think our President needs to break out his Thesaurus and come up with a new adjective. I'd use words like free falling, collapsing, tanking, crashing and burning, nose diving, disintegrating, debacle, breaking down, annihilated, carnage, etc. You get the picture. His speech writer needs to do better. I leave you with a sad but true illustration of where our dollar is headed.

Quote Of The Day

"One of the objectives they had for the creation of the Federal Reserve System was to create a structure which would have a hand in the public purse, so that when the banks got into trouble they would be able to draw upon tax payers' support to bail them out, and they would do so under the banner of protecting the public. It's a very clever ploy."

G. Edward Griffin....Author of The Creature From Jekyll Island

Consider This The Last Warning

If there were any kind of warning system for the financial markets like there is for hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters...it would be blarring GET OUT right now. This is the last chance regular people have to get out of the way of an imminent stock market crash IMO. The signs are obvious everywhere. I will make my case one more time in the hopes that I may save some unsuspecting victims the pain of losing a great deal of their retirement portfolio.

This is from Lemetropolecafe today:

I woke up this morning and saw the US Dollar a little firmer, gold and silver softer, and stock futures about unchanged. With the news of this past weekend, I wonder, how is any of this possible? The Dollar should be in freefall, along with equities, and the metals should be "up limit". The Fed puts an emergency $200 billion into the banking system, JP Morgan says the banks are facing a "systemic margin call", Ambac raised a whopping $1.5 Billion, 70% of ARM munis failed last week, and Fannie and Freddie have had their credit quality questioned, resulting in billions being dumped on the market. This is not the recipe for disaster, this is disaster! We live on Planet Orwell. It is over. I don't know when the masses will realize this fact, but they will very shortly! What we have directly ahead is what I call a "garden hose" market. We will see $trillions trying to get out of all things paper, ie $s, bonds, stocks, you name it. This same money will then seek to enter the safe haven of the precious metals markets. The problem will be the "garden hose" syndrome. What is this syndrome you ask? It is the belief that with the push of a button, you can get out, or in. Trying to put Niagara falls through a "garden hose" just won't work! Mathematically impossible. In today's markets the doors out of paper and into the metals are small, and getting smaller everyday. Listening to CNBC, Bloomberg, etc., I can only shake my head. I'm hearing " buy the housing and finance stocks, they led us in, they'll lead us out". Or how about this one. An analyst this morning who touted the "goldilocks" or "soft landing" scenario until a week ago said, "this recession will be mild and over by June". Wouldn't it have been nice if he had given us a little notice ahead of time, warning of a recession? THIS IS SYSTEMIC! Don't listen to me, don't listen to Bill Murphy, listen to JP Morgan! They know. They created, along with other rocket scientists, this game. They have told us the banks face a systemic "margin call". Why shouldn't we believe them? Wall Street firms have the reputation of putting lipstick on pigs, painting pretty pictures, etc.. How bad must the banking system really be if they tell us of a systemic margin call? Are they being square with us, or is the systemic margin call a rosy scenario?

The point is, we are on the cusp of "shock and awe". The average person who listens to financial news and does not dig for the truth will truly be shocked and awed. I issued a Crash Alert to my clientele this past Saturday. I see no other avenue at this point. I pray I'm wrong.

Vatican Lists "New Sins"

For all of us Catholics out there, practicing and non practicing, fear not because the church has come up with a list of new sins that are to be avoided at all costs. It mainly has to do with the area of bio-ethics, but it also deals with issues like global warming and various other "ecological offenses". I noticed that this so called new list doesn't mention anything about their priests to not molest little boys or of dioceses obstructing justice by stonewalling investigations by proper authorities. Isn't that curious? When you can't get your own house in order, telling others how to live their lives rings very hollow to me.

A Heartfelt Email From A Fellow OC Ron Paul Activist

As we're approaching the March 7th filing deadline for all candidates running for office, I wanted to share with my readers an email I received today from Krissy Alonzo who is running for the GOP Central Committee in the 67th District. These are the kind of quality people this Presidential campaign is bringing back into the GOP. I know how you felt Krissy when you got a little choked up, raised your right hand, and swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Here's the email:

Hi Allan,

My name is Kristine Alonzo and I am running for OC Central Committee for the 67th district. I turned in my signatures today (37!!!!). I raised my right hand and swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. I have to tell you, I got choked up. What a privilege and what an awesome responsibility, even at the Central Committee level! :)

I want to somehow get a thank you out to all of the wonderful Ron Paul supporters who helped me collect signatures. With my schedule, it simply would not have been possible to collect as many as I did without all of the help. Lyle DeVore, Gabe and Claudia (also from Huntington Beach) and Justine Sneddon collected so many signatures for me! They are awesome! And then, of course, there were many people who drove to my husband's office simply to sign my sheet. With such a devoted and organized group of people, I know the Ron Paul Revolution has only just begun!

Please assist me in thanking these dear folks by forwarding my email to the meet-up groups of HB, Cypress, LB, etc... I really appreciate your help. Thanks so much!

Krissy Alonzo
Candidate for Central Committee
67th District

It's my pleasure Krissy. Thanks for all your hard work. I look forward to your help in getting the GOP backs to its root message of limited constitutional government.

Today's Market Commentary

It was an exciting weekend for the Bartlett clan. Lynn and her brother ran the LA Marathon yesterday and I chased em' all over the city lending moral support and logistical support in the form of Gatorade, Power Bars, & bananas. My favorite part of the route was around mile 20. The race wove its way through the so called "Fashion District" of downtown LA. There's nothing fashionable about it. It's a freakin' ghetto, but I digress. Lynn finished in five hours thirty nine minutes
.

As far as the markets today, the theme was Thornburg Mortgage. Last week it was AMBAC. There are so many potential triggers out there. No one can know what event, company, bankruptcy, etc. will set it off. The situation has now become obvious. We have had rate cuts, Central Bank infusions, fiscal promises, bank nationalizations and promises of more banking support. These have not worked. The economy is now accelerating to the downside. Warren Buffet today said " by any common sense definition, we are in a recession". The credit crunch is now biting the real economy with a vengeance. The catch 22 is that none of these traditional remedies will/can work.

We have gold at close to $1,000 per oz....The anti-dollar can never enter a Bankruptcy court. Gold will never require a capital infusion or "Fed loan" to remain solvent. Gold doesn't get heart palpitations while waiting for reaffirmation of a bogus AAA rating from Moodys, Standard & Poors, or Fitch. It can't have counter-party risk if you have it in hand. If you have no margin against it, you can't receive a margin call that have been ever so popular as of late. If you didn't know better, you'd think it should be a boring investment. It actually is. An oz. today, will still be the same ounce next year.

Quote of the Day

"As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out -- and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."

Warren Buffett