Greenspan "may shake things up"

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050215/wall_street_24.html

SIR Greenspan goes before congress. He has one more year to go on his legacy building before he retires most beloved.

WHY WOULD any investor do anything based on his testimony or otherwise.

Either we have a sustainable economy or we don't, words are meaningless at this point, IMHO

I wonder, could the startegy of SIR G actually have worked? You know, lower rates 13 X ! to 45 yr lows, FLOOD the system with notes...liquidity.....FLOAT ALL BOATS UP!!! REFALTION here we come dodoah.

I would love to give a quick NO! maybe I should, but did homeowners SQUANDER ALL THAT CASHOUT and equity?

ISN'T/HASN'T all that money and from speculation and reflation of stock markets, hasn't that RIGHTED the almighty ship?

Or why hasn't it put is really right! THIS recovery is PALE compared to any before it, and to amount of STIMULUS applied, call it bang for the buck.

NOW companies are awash in CASH, but homeowners DID NOT take advantage in gross numbers to PAY DOWN THEIR debt, oh no they PILED IT ON!

My good thoughts go like this, had we all switched to 15 year mortgages, at lower or near current 30 yr payments.....if not NOW, down the road as these debts get paid off, we could have had a SAVINGS CASH FLOW OUT OF DEBT SOCIETY!

Free to save and invest.....HERE.....every day all day, because the BIG one was paid off....spurring the most unbelievable bull mkt in history...but we did not, alas poor homeonwer.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm CURRENT PUBLIC DEBT

http://www.contraryinvestor.com/2004archives/mofeb04.htm MUST READ.

FROM year ago PRIVATEER NEwsletter:


BEST OF BILL BUCKLER
August 12, 2004
Here comes the economic clincher. Total US credit market debt (government, corporate, and individual) is $37.1 TRILLION. Debt is over 300% of GDP and still growing. Total credit market debt had reached 260% of GDP in 1929 on the eve of the Great Depression. Today, US total credit market debt has doubled over the past five years. The US Treasury Department has reported that there are $44 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities in the "Entitlement Programs". That alone is more than the net worth in the country. Added up, funded and unfunded US liabilities come to $US 81.1 TRILLION. The US net international debt position to the rest of the world stood as of March 31 at $US 5.2 TRILLION. Clearly, the USA is tapped out. It is running on empty momentum…..
Consider the pace of Fed debt "monetisation", as published by Mr. Russ Winter and taken from figures on the Fed's website:
In the year (52 weeks) which ended on May 5, 2004, average weekly Fed "monetisation" (outright buying of Treasuries with newly-created Federal Reserve Notes - aka US Dollars) averaged $US 577 million per week. In the 12 weeks between May 12 and July 21, that average weekly figure jumped to $US 1,395 million, just under two and a half times the pre May 12 level. Over the last eight weeks of that twelve week period, the average weekly figure grew further to $US 1,532 million. Here are the clear tracks of the Fed "compensating" for the drop off in Japanese Treasury purchases. Here also is the evidence of the US Central Bank having to directly inflate its own currency through outright "purchase" of US Treasury debt instead of standing benignly by while the Japanese (and Chinese) Central Bank does the purchasing by inflating their own currency, the Yen. This is pure, unadulterated, unvarnished INFLATION by the US Fed which cannot fail, in time, to hasten the erosion of the purchasing power of the US Dollar.
But the Fed doesn't stop simply at "monetising" Treasury debt. It also has a practice which it calls "Permanent Open Market Operations". These are very low interest rate loans which it makes to "selected" financial institutions, as and when it deems them required. They are "required" whenever the Treasury markets look a little shaky, and or when there is a potential for them to look a little shaky, like just before a big Treasury auction, especially the quarterly refunding auctions. These "permanent injections of new liquidity" have been averaging well over $US 1 Billion per week since early May.
The Fed speaks of its "mission" as being one of fostering "sustainable growth" and its core task as being one of preserving "price stability". In its actions, the Fed has been creating new "money" at a pace never before equalled over the past three months while watching "growth" ebb away again. It has also advanced a long way on the path towards destroying the credibility (let alone purchasing power) of the currency of the United States. Remember that the next time you hear a speech from Alan Greenspan.
Ó 2004 – The Privateer

**Yes you have come to the end of today, I was really going here today! WE ARE NEAR, at an END of a CYCLE of credit EXPANSION, NOT the middle or beginning, or how do we reconcile the figures I show?

SURELY we have REINFLATED the game players........if money out of think air is your bag, the value of our DOLLAR does notlie and how it show anemic market recovery.

Now we are left with smart mouthing double talking politicians, telling us "we will pay down the debt in HALF in 5 years" but dear sirs......the debt over the next 5 years will STILL BE GROWING and PILING UP? how is that? the answer is the 50% reduction comes from the SIZE of the expanding debt, not the reduction of existing.

WHY hasn't the ever growing NEED for debt, borrowings rasised the interest rates?

Think about who prefers it that way.

We sell out to large corps, they pay REDUCED taxes for repatriating OVERSEAS profits, we set up tax system that expands class spreads and gives overly generous tax deductions to the ALREADY wealthiest individuals, we DESTROY our manufacturing base, we create housing bubble by compressing housing price gains of 15 years into 3-4, property taxes skyrocketing, inflation roaring even as GOV understates it! WE BURN OUT demand for auto's and housing and things. WE build up China into SUPER POWER. WE SELL OUT as 50% of our debt now FOREIGN OWNED.

NO ONE will OWN up to it, what price MUST be eventually paid by some future generation. Every damn program (like medicare) is sold to cost one price and its usually double triple that! ooopsss.

SS reform?LOL WHO needs a cost of $2 TRILLION PRIVATE ACCOUNTS when we already damnit have 401K's ,IRA's ,profit sharing, Roth IRA SEP etc etc etc ad nauseum!

LET the YOUNGER FOLKS add a tad more into those??!!!! too f'ing simple! let's spend $2 Trillion we don;t have!?? YOU KNOW who profits.......damn, everyone is blind.......and sometimes I wish I was a lemming.....

DONE!

Duratek