I agree with what you say here. The mainstream in general (media and society) think that things "just happen" and to ascribe some sort of pre-planning to many events is unacceptable.
However, among thinking people (like the denizens of Chris Martenson’s website no doubt) the debate arises when it comes to the vaunted grey area.
For example, most people I interact with in my normal course of events think that government manipulation of the stock market to prevent a total collapse is a "conspiracy theory." Whereas I, agreeing with JMCSWan, just take it as a given, and that the real conspiracy theory is believing that such manipulation is not happening.
When it comes to other ideas though I balk, and may use the phrase myself. For example, I don’t believe that our current global leaders are merely masquerading as mortal humans but are actually an intergalactic race of reptiles sent here millenia ago to enslave the human race. Because of how my mind operates (after all those hallucinogens) I can never rule anything out, so it comes down to probability for me. And I take the probability of the preceeding to be exceedingly low to the point of being functionably false.
I take market manipulations, war for the sole purpose of select corporate profits, and manufactured elections as a given throughout the world.
An example of the grey area for me would be something like the idea that Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney are good friends and frequently meet secretly in Dubai to plan out the next few weeks of geopolitical events and, more specifically, the next big one.
Davos,
Sure, I understand the motivation. Nothing wrong with that.
It still plays into what the videos teach though. For example, if you put a higher possibility on a banking system failure than say an automotive failure, then there are many more profit making variables. To start, that means you have to ask if profit is still going to representated in dollars. If you think so, then buying puts or selling calls on banks is a great way to profit. If you don’t think dollars are going to be what is seen as wealth or profit, then you need to think like a chess player. Assuming that we skip dollars, what are other possible stores of wealth, money, profit. Obviously gold and silver become that once deflation turns to inflation, which at some point it will. Then there’s other things like necessities, such as food and energy. I’m not sure what the US equivalent is, but Russia’s crisis about a decade ago made vodka a very valuable liquid asset - nice pun. So where you are on the continuum will give you incite into where you can make profits and what your tolerance for risk is.
Also, if you think the markets in general are going down the tubes and want to only risk the actual capital you have, then dip into RSW when you think the rally is done. It’s a 2x’s inverse of the SP500 index.
To answer your questions directly:
The industry still at most risk, IMO, is financial.
Best way to profit may be to let this rally run for a bit and then use a leveraged strategy, realizing that leverage has a lot to do with the mess we’re in. So limit your potential losses.
Good follow up, mainecooncat. I can’t agree more. There is also the added issue with the human mind making sense out of what may appear random. Our minds want order and we will create order when it is not present by filling in gaps and sometime making leap of association. Historical events can easily be linked into global conspiracies when looking back and only seeing information that fits…this becomes model/curve fitting.
I always think about the old addage of "follow the money trail, which requires asking who is benefitting from current circumstances or new circumstances when change occurs. It is then necessary to evaluate how these circumstances came about and identify power networks and relationships, which establishes relative probablities. If this information is not clear or hidden, any relative changes of wealth and power may indicate the purveyors of conspiracy…assuming illegal activities. This is a bit wishy washy, but this is not an absolute science. I also think of civil court standards of evidence (I admit I stole this from peoples court so excuse if this is over simplification)…"is it more likely than not?" Again, not absolute, but a good way to establish possible interconnections that can be verified or augmented with additional information. The key is obtaining as much information as possible and continually gathering that information.
In the end, I try to keep myself in ideoligical limbo, only choosing "sides" if I must depending upon current circumstances and routes I think should be undertaken. I have developed the perspective that adherance to any one ideology is a self set intellectual trap which can lead to an individual and/or a collective persecution complex leading to societal clevages. These cleavages allow power players to manipulate and control…thereby enabling conspiratorial networks.
I love these conversations…and I wish this was a global extraterrestrial conspiracy so that I would not be so ashamed of society for being so misinformed and duped. I, of course, assume that these aliens would utilize higher abilities and technologies to control us…without this outlandish scenario, the responsibility lies at our feet.
Until the global interest rate cut was announced, the USFed had
not created much new money, despite the numerous rate cuts on the US
side. The policy was unconventional and deliberate, with a two-fold purpose to aid Wall Street and to keep a lid on the gold price.
i.e. money are created, but they don’t pour into the economy …so the inflation is a bit subdued for a while… giving a chance to those who got the money to play their game and make some bucks.
This is a great thread. I’ve done some background work on the personal connections between members of the crisis management team. I strongly believe the current market crash has been engineered. When you dig into the groups people like Paulson and Bernake belong to there is a great deal of intermingling. These are groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, Group of Thirty, and Bilderbergs.
"For instance, Hank Paulson was Chairman/CEO of Goldman Sachs and on the board of governors of the International Monetary Fund which is closely tied to the Rockefellers who have the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth where Paulson went to school. They also owned Chase Manhattan Bank which merged with JPM after Phil Gramm paved the way.
They sit on the Senate Finance Committee and have guys like Timothy F.
Geithner of the New York Fed in their personal think tank called the Council on Foreign Relations."
There are lots of good stories on market manipulation at:
I’m finding this thread fascinating… especially the way some of you lot want to make money out of the crash! Don’t you get it? Capitalism is FINISHED, game over, a new world order is coming, and I doubt money has much of a part in it. Take these two recent stories that landed in my Running on Empty Aussie list:
The end of deflationary trade (SHOULD have been called "the end of globalization"!)
The global shipping
crash continues to get worse and this morning’s GDP data shows the US
recession is already deeper than 2001 and probably 1990-91 as well. Meanwhile
the International Monetary Fund seems determined to make the whole
thing worse by imposing the most ruinous strictures on supplicant
nations. Yesterday the Baltic Dry
freight rate index fell below 1000 for the first time in six years and
last night it fell another 40 points to 885. In June the index was
11,900, so it has fallen 93 per cent in a few months – a crash far
worse than anything ever seen in the stockmarket. The
spot daily rental for a Capesize ship is now $6365, down from $234,000
per day over the space of a few weeks. Maybe that previous price was
absurdly inflated, but at $6365 it is just $365 above the average daily
cost of crews and fuel. As a result
the world’s ports are filling with empty ships because shipowners can’t
afford to run them, as well as some full ships because the owners of
the cargo won’t unload without a bank letter of credit, which banks are
refusing to supply.
<SNIP>
Which is why global
shipping has collapsed: it is the harbinger of the end of the era of
trade, in which third-world labour costs kept first world inflation
down and allowed interest rates to fall and stay low and debt to be
increased to an historic degree. That
process of importing deflation (or, more precisely, disinflation) from
developing nations – especially China and India – relied on trade: raw
materials in; finished goods out. The fall in freight rates for both dry bulk carriers and container ships is telling us that it’s over.
It all started with
sub-prime loans in the United States. Or did it? As the IMF is called
in to bail out failing economies, the scale of European exposure to
toxic debt is becoming clear
It was Europe’s dark secret. While
American banks were lending irresponsibly to homeowners who couldn’t
pay, European banks were lending to emerging countries who couldn’t
pay. Europe’s sub-prime crisis has now come home as heavily-indebted
nations of the eastern bloc – Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, the
Baltic states – are collapsing one by one into the arms of the IMF.
“Icelandisation” is the new spectre stalking Europe.
And, as with sub-prime in urban America,
this latest crisis was shockingly predictable. I visited Latvia at the
height of the credit bubble 18 months ago, and it was clearly an
accident waiting to happen. Riga, the capital, was bristling with
upmarket shopping malls and classy bars that were all quite empty.
Stalin-era flats were being sold for $200,000 in a country where the
average wage was less than $400 a month. Latvia has hardly any
industry, no energy and few natural resources apart from trees. But
such was the irrational exuberance of foreign banks like Swedbank, it
was awash with credit.
<SNIP>
When heads of the "G20" group of nations
meet in Washington on 15 November for what is being called "Bretton
Woods II" they will not just be dealing with a banking crisis. They
will be deciding the future of civilisation.
NOW… I wonder if they will cancel all debts? To me, it looks like the only sensible way to end the pain. Start with a new blank slate, a new zero growth system to build the essential sustainable future we have to have while we srill have some oil…
Hello Damnthematrix:
Dow @ 9325. One could make a lot of money from that point to 4,000 when I would assume they step in and perhaps do what Argentina did and put it in the treasury.
We can buy gold but if history repeats itself http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/meltzer/bogsub040233.pdf and face it, how creative do you think they are today? Then we can kiss gold so long.
I’ll take all the worthless $ I can get. What else do you propose? Write Congress? Did that. Talk to your friends and family? Did that. Stock up? Did that. Buy some PM? Did that.
There are some billionaires who made a ton of money off the subprime mess. Call me dumb but if there is a new order coming I’d rather have a few things to trade…
Believe me, I don’t disagree about what you are saying…
Someone will make $ from this and it might as well be us. No one will be looking out for our families if we don’t. Keep sharing any ideas. Inflation vs. deflation; timelines; how to survive and thrive…big questions, no easy answers, IMHO.
Hello CapeSurvivor: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/ on "Mish’s" site I found a link to 3 "Implode-O-Meters". I’m going to check them out. I think we are going to use puts, as our "risk" will be fixed, and our profit will be dependant on how bad things get - these days that is all I see.
Buffett picks companies who are worth more than they are selling for and will appreciate.
My nutty idea: I want to pick companies who are selling for more than their worth and failing fast.
Take care.
Very recent insider sales I think you might need to pay for with a subscription service. I don’t short or buy puts but I suspect that www.bigcharts.com or www.yahoo.com (their finance section). might give you this info. I think Barrons carries the "Short List" every week; you can buy or look at in libe. As a last resort, Google what you want to find and some free stock site probably has most of it. Good luck; let me know what happens.