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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 11:46 AM (GMT)
"bear's eye"
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/lundeen030106.html /// Dear Duncan Robertson There have been no sales through your bookshop for the period 01/02/06 to 28/02/06 For ideas on increasing sales, please visit http://books.global-investor.com/pages/assocs/Increasing_sales.htm?Assoc=21546 If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us. Kind regards Jennifer Luff //// http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_05/ci030106.html /// Best Quotes of February 2006 John Rubino Texas Congressman Ron Paul "Since printing paper money is nothing short of counterfeiting, the issuer of the international currency must always be the country with the military might to guarantee control over the system. This magnificent scheme seems the perfect system for obtaining perpetual wealth for the country that issues the de facto world currency. The one problem, however, is that such a system destroys the character of the counterfeiting nation's people--just as was the case when gold was the currency and it was obtained by conquering other nations. And this destroys the incentive to save and produce, while encouraging debt and runaway welfare. The artificial demand for our dollar, along with our military might, places us in the unique position to 'rule' the world without productive work or savings, and without limits on consumer spending or deficits. The problem is, it can't last. Price inflation is raising its ugly head, and the NASDAQ bubble-- generated by easy money-- has burst. The housing bubble likewise created is deflating. Gold prices have doubled, and federal spending is out of sight with zero political will to rein it in. The trade deficit last year was over $728 billion. A $2 trillion war is raging, and plans are being laid to expand the war into Iran and possibly Syria. The only restraining force will be the world's rejection of the dollar. It's bound to come and create conditions worse than 1979-1980, which required 21% interest rates to correct." Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley "Suffering from the greatest domestic saving shortfall in modern history, the US is increasingly dependent on surplus foreign saving to fill the void. The net national saving rate -- the combined saving of individuals, businesses, and the government sector after adjusting for depreciation -- fell into negative territory to the tune of -1.3% of national income in late 2005. That means America doesn't save enough even to cover the replacement of its worn-out capital stock. This is a first for the US in the modern post-World War II era -- and I believe a first for any hegemonic power over a much longer sweep of world history." Richard Daughty, the Mogambo Guru But, for some perverse reason that future historians will make whole careers arguing about, the moronic people of America think all of these price inflations are good! Hahaha! A nation of morons! I sort of remember a quote by Benjamin Franklin, who was asked, when they finished work on the Constitution, 'And what kind of government do we have?' and he replied 'A democracy, if you can keep it.' What he surely meant by that enigmatic phrase was if you let people decide tax policy, the numerous have-not people will always vote to give themselves somebody else's money. A democratic, majority-rule government always elects to provide a 'free lunch' for everybody! Whee! Thus, democracy will ultimately destroy the economy. That is why the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution that money shall only be of silver and gold, which is the only thing that would possibly prevent it." Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Board Chairman "In the past, when the inverted yield curve presaged a slowdown in the economy, it was usually in a situation where both long-term and short-term interest rates were actually quite high in real terms, suggesting a good bit of drag on the economy. With the real interest rate not creating a drag on economic activity, I don't anticipate that the term structure signals an oncoming slowing of the economy." Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital "The only way for housing prices to stay high is for the Fed to keep inflating. Conveniently, the captain currently at the helm of the monetary ship of state just happens to be Ben Bernanke, who as a Fed governor spoke about the Fed's ability to fend of deflation by using the handy invention of the printing press. Though his words may have may have spoken in reference to consumer prices, his actions will certainly be concentrated on asset prices, especially housing. Like a lounge club magician, the Feb distracts the audience with short-term rate hikes, while behind its back it monetizes long-term government bonds. It creates the illusion of its being an inflation fighter, while in reality it is an inflation creator. No wonder it wants to further cover its tracks by no longer reporting M3!" James Turk, GoldMoney "We moving closer to that moment in time when silver breaks down from its current pennant formation, which is the first step needed for the precious metals to resume their uptrend in this ongoing bull market. If this first step happens, then I expect everything to fall into place. A breakout from the rising trend channel will not be far behind, and by then, the precious metals will be near or at new high prices - with silver leading the way." Bill Fleckenstein, Fleckenstein Capital "But let me just ask you this: If you feared for the value of this piece of paper called the dollar and you put it into a hard asset, does that de facto constitute a bubble? Of course not. That constitutes a bull market. To be a bubble, in my opinion, behavior in and around the asset class under discussion has to spin so out of control as to distort the underlying economy. I don't believe the commodity markets are anywhere near that point. Maybe they'll reach it somewhere down the road, though I kind of doubt that. In the meantime, I anticipate a bullish chain of events for the metals: When the 'right' data emerge to support the fact that the economy is weaker than it appears, I believe the Fed will make clear that it's closer to pausing than people think. (Bernanke himself told Congress last Wednesday that whatever the Fed does will be 'dependent on the data.') If that turns out to be the case, I think there will an explosion in the precious metals and currencies, an outcome that I intend to capture." Ted Butler, Investment Rarities "This proposed silver ETF, as well as any ETF on any commodity, is as dumb as a bag of rocks. Sure, it will make the price explode, and precisely for that aspect virtually all silver investors, including me, look upon it favorably. Suddenly take away a big chunk of any commodity's supply and there will be a big impact on price. That's elementary. But there is more to the story than that. My main objection with commodity ETFs is that, in addition to artificially altering supply and demand, they turn legitimate commodity law and regulation on its head. The main thrust of commodity law is to prevent concentrated speculative buying and selling from artificially influencing prices. This primary premise and intent of commodity law is obliterated by the concentrated buying (and selling someday) that a commodity ETF insures. It's as if someone sat down and devised an idea that would upend all the safeguards and regulations against manipulation that have taken many decades to develop. Over twenty-five years ago, the weight of commodity law came to bear on the Hunt Brothers in the most famous manipulation of them all, the great silver manipulation. The basis of the manipulation was the related and concentrated buying and resultant price pressure brought on the price of silver. The proposed Barclays silver ETF promises to legitimize the very acts which the US Government succeeded in prosecuting. Talk about irony." Doug Noland, PrudentBear "A solid case can be made that 14 rate increases have failed to tighten monetary conditions. Despite the inverted yield curve, Credit conditions are generally as loose as ever and, as one would expect, imbalances balloon only larger. Of course, the bond bulls will contend that we are merely waiting patiently for the traditional monetary policy lag to run its course. I suggest there's much more to it than that. It is worth noting that broad money supply has rapidly approached $10.3 Trillion. It is also worth pondering that M3 has inflated almost 40% since Fed funds were last at 4.50% (May 2001). At a 5% rate, M3 savers will receive more than $500 billion of interest-income, a huge increase from only a couple years back when rates were 1% and M3 was significantly smaller. There is scant attention paid to this source of augmented income, with analysts instead focusing on the restraining effect of adjustable-rate mortgage resets. But with the ongoing proliferation and easy-availability of mortgage products with low initial payments (teaser-rate ARMs, negative amortization and option-ARMs, and balloon structures), I would be surprised if the household sector in aggregate experiences a significant increase in monthly mortgage payments this year." Steven Saville, Speculative Investor "We would be extremely surprised if the uninterrupted inflation of the past 70 years were followed by a period of genuine deflation (a prolonged decline in the total supply of money and credit). One of the reasons this would surprise us is that there IS so much debt in the system. The high debt levels actually make deflation LESS likely, not more likely, because the current monetary system -- the world's greatest-ever Ponzi scheme -- could not survive a bout of genuine deflation. That is, deflation will never be a viable policy option regardless of how bad things get. Instead, the central banks of the world will likely risk destroying their currencies and obliterating the values of their bonds before they will permit deflation to occur." Tom Au, TheStreet.com "Another commentator opined that the U.S. government is probably underestimating inflation because it is focusing on the wrong type of inflation. I would agree with that, having identified no less than five different types of inflation: commodity inflation, wage inflation, monetary inflation, fiscal inflation, and foreign exchange inflation. Before discussing 'inflation,' it helps to identify which form of inflation is being talked about." March 1, 2006 John Rubino DollarCollapse.com ///// http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_05/russell030106.html the Dow in terms of real money (gold) has lost over half its value since its bull market high of 11722 back in January 2000. the primary trend of the Dow and the stock market is down. That's a vital piece of information //// March 02, 2006 The Investor's Mind: Anticipating Trends through the Lens of History by Doug Wakefield The Iran Oil Bourse by Doug Wakefield with Ben Hill Introduction The February and March newsletters will talk about a topic that is so painful to address, that we will want to quickly dismiss this information and shove it off of our computer screen and out of our minds. Some will say that I have gone too far. Others may question my sanity or my business savvy. I could lose readers, or business, or your respect. As investment advisors, we are told to always be optimistic. But, I figure, if you didn't believe that the huge imbalances our world is currently experiencing pose a threat, you probably wouldn't be reading this newsletter. By necessity, we all talk every day with family, friends, and associates who feel that optimism is the only constant need in life. Plainly, based solely on the fact that it doesn't leave them with "warm fuzzies," many of them will dismiss the material in this newsletter. As investment advisors, we are taught to always conclude with profits. Our conversations should go something like, "Bird flu could kill millions, so here are the five companies you need to invest in to get rich." To me that's always seemed barbaric, or at least extremely calloused. Richard Russell says, "Everybody loses in a bear market. The winner is the one who loses the least." I like that. It's much closer to reality. We will all read this and other sources, and make our best calculations and judgments and invest accordingly. Yet, the distinct probability remains that we may invest and make money, and perhaps a lot, but we will likely feel less secure than we do today. That's the part that's guaranteed. That's why I like what Russell has to say. I am an American. My father and mother were depression era people who struggled greatly through that period of our nations history. At the age of 17 my father entered the Army Air Core to fight in World War II. He was a tail-gunner on a B-24. At the age of 19, he was shot down over Austria, and survived as a prisoner of war from November of 1944 until he was set free in April of 1945. Over the past 60 years, my father's story is one of the many American Dream stories that has inspired me. My point is this: in speaking about America's shortcomings, it is never my intention to be disrespectful to those who have sacrificed far more than I have for our freedom. Indeed, it is by their sacrifice that I am able to write freely about our nation's past. Financial Warfare "Now, you may think that I have become insane. That is partially true because I am convinced that the US Fed's monetary policies will lead to exponentially widening wealth inequity and impoverish the majority of US households, which will then lead to social strife, protectionism, war, and the breakdown of the capitalistic system"1 - Mark Faber Dr. Faber called the Crash of 1987, the Japanese stock market crash of 1990, and the Asia - Pacific financial crisis of 1998. As such, I tend to respect his opinions. A few months earlier, while speaking at a Dallas luncheon, Dr. Faber touched on the same topic. Because his comment was so different from what we normally hear in the world of investment advice, it was quite memorable. He said: "Today the brokerage industry does not have analysts whose specific job is to evaluate geopolitical risk. I think, over the next several years, this will change to where we will see analysts who specialize in areas such as this." I am certainly not a geopolitical analyst. Yet, I have begun to monitor circumstances with which some of you are already familiar. With the gravity and scope of the potential effects of this situation, I feel compelled to present an orderly and balanced account. Depending on how far back one wants to look, these events have been unfolding for decades, if not longer. All of this has led us to a point where Iran has taken center stage. Dr. Krassimir Petrov, a Ph.D. from Ohio State who is currently a professor at the American University in Bulgaria, has recently completed a very informative article titled, "The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse."2 This article opened my eyes to the immediacy of the tensions that have been building in the Middle East. These developments carry with them such a massive potential for detrimental change to the U.S., that "financial warfare" could be considered a fitting term. Financial warfare is not a term of my own creation. Rather, the term comes from a book, Unrestricted Warfare, which claims to be a direct translation of an original Chinese document, written by Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui of the People's Liberation Army and published in China in February of 1999. The publisher notes: "Pan American Publisher's Edition: The original translation of Unrestricted Warfare contains inconsistencies in style and spelling. Adhering to the translation as closely as possible, the editor has made changes only where necessary to clarify or to correct egregious misspellings. Numbers and text in brackets are translators' notes."3 The book also notes that the original document is well known by the CIA and America's national security establishment. In addressing various types of "unrestricted warfare" where "there are no rules," the authors introduce "Financial War." "Financial warfare has now officially come to war's center stage - a stage that for thousands of years has been occupied only by soldiers and weapons, with blood and death everywhere. We believe that before long, "financial warfare" will undoubtedly be an entry in the various types of dictionaries of official military jargon."4 But China is neither the focus of this newsletter nor of the upcoming event in March of 2006. On March 20, 2006, a historic occurrence will take place, which does not bode well for the reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar. On that date, Iran is scheduled to open an Oil Bourse (Exchange) that will trade in Euros.5 As always, it is only in understanding the past that we can perceive the magnitude of this exchange. In August of 1971, Nixon took the United States off of the gold exchange standard and the last bastion of gold-based currencies, ceased. Prior to this point, foreign central banks had the ability to exchange any U.S. dollars they accumulated for gold. Because we were expanding our money supply rapidly, many central banks around the world had done just that. As such, from 1958 to 1971, our gold stock had fallen from $19 billion to $10 billion, and over the same time, U.S. liquid liabilities to foreign central banks had risen to over $60 billion.6 Though, this is, comparatively, a pittance to the trillions we owe today, the demand, especially from France and Britain, became so strong that the United States reneged on this agreement, and the world embarked on the current free floating currency system we know today. But, the world needed something to take the place of gold as the "anchor" for currencies. Oil became this benchmark. According to David Spiro's book, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony, OPEC had discussed pricing oil with a basket of currencies. An unpublished proposal involved currencies from the G-10 (Group of Ten) nations. The members were to include the Bank of International Settlement, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France, the UK, Japan, Canada, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, and the United States.7 Even though a basket of currencies was discussed, something happened which caused oil to trade solely in dollars. In his book, Petrodollar Warfare, William Clark offers an explanation: "In order to prevent this monetary transition to a basket of currencies, the Nixon administration began high-level talks with Saudi Arabia to unilaterally price international sales in dollars only - despite U.S. assurances to its European and Japanese allies that such a unique monetary/geopolitical arrangement would not transpire. In 1974, an agreement was reached with New York and London banking interests that established what became known as 'petrodollar recycling.' That year the Saudi government secretly purchased $2.5 billion in U.S. Treasury bills with their oil surplus funds, and a few years later Treasury Secretary Blumenthal cut a secret deal with the Saudis to ensure that OPEC would continue to price oil in dollars only."8 To this day, when oil trades on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) or the London International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), all of the transactions are made exclusively in dollars. This means that every country in the world has to exchange their currency for U.S. dollars in order to buy or sell oil.9 Again, if Russia, Argentina, or Iran wants to sell oil to China, India, or France, they must do so in U.S. dollars. Because of this, each country keeps an ample supply of dollars on hand, hence the term "reserve currency." Needless to say, this gives the U.S. certain economic advantages. Yet, all of this is about to change. On March 20, 2006, Iran is scheduled to begin trading oil contracts on its own exchange and, you guessed it, none of the contracts will trade in U.S. dollars. Instead, they will trade in Euros. This threatens the reserve currency status of our dollar, and as such, has huge implications for our heavily indebted and fiscally unbalanced nation. To read the entire February Newsletter, you can sign up, at no cost, through our website. If you would like a copy of our research paper, Riders on the Storm: Short Selling in Contrary Winds, visit our website. This will also give you access to our new monthly newsletter, which is at no cost, titled The Investors Mind: Anticipating Trends through the Lens of History. Sources: 1. http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=4273 2. http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/petrov011909pv.html 3. Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America (1999) Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui, Translated by Pan American Publishers (2002), pg xviii 4. Ibid, pg 39 5. http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/petrov011909pv.html 6. The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (2004) Peter Bernstein, pg 269 7. The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (1999) David E. Spiro, pg 121-123 8. Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq, and the Future of the Dollar (2005) William R. Clark, pg 20 9. http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/petrov011909pv.html Talk Back Doug Wakefield, President Best Minds Inc., A Registered Investment Advisor Best Minds, Inc is a registered investment advisor that looks to the best minds in the world of finance and economics to seek a direction for our clients. To be a true advocate to our clients, we have found it necessary to go well beyond the norms in financial planning today. We are avid readers. In our study of the markets, we research general history, financial and economic history, fundamental and technical analysis, and mass and individual psychology. Copyright © 2005 Best Minds Inc. ////// http://news.goldseek.com/RickAckerman/1141315200.php ///// d people tell me, i look an age, that is 15 years under my actual no kid Belfast Telegraph Home > News > Features Do you look your age? Are you married or single, contented or depressed, a parent or childless? All these factors can take years off your face - or add them on. But there are changes you can make to roll back time, says Annalisa Barbieri 28 February 2006 It's such a dirty word, is ageing. Very few of us embrace the process, many deny it and most - save for Brigitte Bardot - try to cheat it in some way. For years I looked much younger than I was, but up until my early twenties I'd led a fairly cosseted life: no mortgage, no cigarettes, no late nights. I had time to massage creams into my face and sleep was mine, whenever I wanted it. How smug I felt. "Everyone can look young if they really, really try," I thought. Then the responsibilities of real life smacked me hard in the face, the marks started to show, and there were no more half fares for me. Yet it can be hard to guess someone's exact age. A range of factors may leave marks on our appearance: how happy we feel, how much sleep we've had - even the way we dress and our view of ourselves. The good news is that just as these factors can add years on to your appearance, it follows that they can also take years off. We don't always have control over some of those social factors that can make us look younger, but there are other steps we can take to try to stop the ravages of age. SOCIAL FACTORS Last month the University of Southern Denmark published a report, The Influence of Environmental Factors on Facial Ageing, which showed that how we live can affect how old we look. In it, 1,826 twins were photographed and then ten female nurses aged between 25-46 years were asked to guess how old the "models" were. The results were intriguing. They showed that belonging to a high social class can make us look up to four years younger and many other lifestyle factors were shown to affect the way we look. Having children was found to make men look a full year younger, though it had no effect on women, and having four or more children cancelled out the benefit. Depression and sun exposure were the biggest factors in making you look old before your time. Depression added up to three and a half years to a woman's perceived age (and 2.4 years for men). Sun exposure piled on at least an extra year. Smoking put on six months for a woman and a year for a man. Meanwhile, having a high BMI (body mass index) was found to take a whole year off for both men and women. "If you are not depressed, not a smoker and not too skinny, you are basically doing well," says Professor Kaare Christensen (married, three children, non-smoker), one of the report's authors. Professor Christensen's report concluded that it was more dangerous for our health to look a year older, than to actually be a year older. NUTRITION This is possibly the biggest change we can make fairly easily. Vicki Edgson, nutrition consultant and co-author of The Diet Doctors Inside and Out says there are four main factors that prematurely age us: smoking, too much alcohol, lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and insufficient protein intake. "I can immediately tell a smoker," says Edgson. "It's not just the lines around the mouth and eyes, but smoking is dehydrating to the body. Every time you inhale on a cigarette you're taking toxins into the body which have to be diffused and detoxified by the liver and kidneys and they're dependent on plenty of fresh water to carry toxins away. Most smokers don't drink anywhere near enough water." Alcohol can make us all think we look great, while we're drunk, but if you want to look younger, it's best to avoid it. Even moderate but regular drinking can make you look older than you are. One ageing effect that drinking has is to dull the whites of your eyes. This is because alcohol can raise the blood pressure and burst tiny capillaries in the eyes, making them appear bloodshot. The same goes for the complexion, although this is more of a long-term effect. The really big, quick-fix, though, is eating more fresh fruit and vegetables. "You can see if someone doesn't eat enough, or any, fresh fruit and veg in a minute," warns Edgson. "The skin lacks a freshness and translucency. This is because the skin is the last organ to benefit from the nutrients you eat - the likes of the brain, heart and lungs all get first share. If someone's diet is lacking in fruit and veg, the skin will become dehydrated. This is a sign that sufficient nutrients aren't being delivered, so from an anti-ageing point of view, it's important to have live, fresh food and raw food is vital. If you have to cook, steaming will retain at least some of the vitamins and minerals." Sufficient protein is vital to stay looking younger because protein provides the building blocks, in the form of amino acids, that are essential for our body to repair and heal itself; a process it undertakes when we're asleep. Without adequate protein intake you lose muscle tone. "It's important to have a well-balanced, medium - not high - protein diet including all lean animal protein and a variety of vegetarian proteins," says Edgson. "What is important for vegetarians is that they have a good variety of different protein sources because, apart from soya, no vegetarian sources of protein contain all eight essential amino acids." The other really important thing and one we tend to miss out on in our diet-obsessed culture, is adequate intake of essential fatty acids, from oily fish, nuts and seeds. EFAs are vital for prolonging life expectancy because every cell in body has a phospholipid bilayer that protects it, but they also give the skin a dewy, "bouncy", youthful feel. One of the worst things you can do in terms of looking old is to go on a low-fat diet. Stress is another big one for adding years. We can help support the adrenal and thyroid glands, which take a hammering when we're stressed, by eating plenty of fresh vitamin C and magnesium for the adrenal glands; and iodine, selenium zinc and B vitamins to support the thyroid. EXERCISE We've come to think of exercise as a pure slimming pursuit and women tend to be rather scared of lifting weights, but building lean tissue through weight-bearing exercise is key to keeping the years at bay. Personal trainer Donovan Blake explains: "Exercise can help reduce the effects of ageing by slowing down the decline of type II muscle fibres. Generally type I muscle fibres deal with aerobic activities and type II with anaerobic ones. The type IIs respond to resistance work to improve muscle tone. With ageing there's a reduction in frequency, duration and intensity of habitual activity: we generally move less. So these type II fibres deteriorate because they simply don't get enough stimuli." SKINCARE Almost every skin cream promises to make you look younger. It's a promise many are seduced by, but many end up disappointed. The problem is not that products don't work, according to independent skincare and makeup advisor John Gustafson, but starting too late, and then not spending enough money. "A lot of people skip good skincare until they think they need it, and by then it's actually too late," he says. "In women the skin around the eyes is the first to go, in men it's the hands." Gustafson - who independently tests every range on the market himself - advises a good routine should start early because maintenance is much easier than repair. Your skin also becomes more transparent as you get older, so you need to adapt your make-up and hair colour accordingly. Foundation should be lighter than you'd imagine, and sheerer, and if you want to cover grey, don't be tempted to go for a too-dark hair colour or block colour - highlights are kind. Gustafson recommends applying moisturiser to the neck, down to the bust, but also around the back of the neck: "It's the only bit of skin attached to a bone so it's important you look after it to avoid sagging." Finally, whatever you do, don't worry too much about any of this. Remember: being depressed can add up to four years to your perceived age. ///// http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ Supply Up, New Homes Sales Down in Real Estate Hey! Its the most basic law of economics: Supply & Demand: > First, lets look at Supply: New 1-Family Houses For Sale: Months Supply > Uh-oh: More supply coming on line: New Houses (for sale) Under Construction > The rounded top of units sold: New 1-Family Houses Sold: 3-month MovingAverage > Source: Sales of New Homes Cooling Down Asha Bangalore Northern Trust, February 27, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/l2yqu Wednesday, March 01, 2006 | 06:00 PM | ///// d gorby and cutie grand daughter http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/03/02/010.html Thursday, March 2, 2006. Issue 3363. Page 2. Aa Aa Aa Friends to Gather for Gorbachev's 75th By Anatoly Medetsky Staff Writer Emil Matveyev / Itar-Tass Gorbachev at a reception with his granddaughter Ksenia on Tuesday evening Mikhail Gorbachev will celebrate his 75th birthday Thursday by throwing a party for his old Politburo colleagues, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, relatives and schoolmates. The former Soviet president invited 200 to 250 guests to dinner at a Moscow restaurant, "the ones that he would really be pleased to see," said his spokesman, Vladimir Polyakov. He declined to name the restaurant. Kohl's former deputy and foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, will also attend, Polyakov said. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was invited but didn't feel well enough for the trip, while former U.S. President George H.W. Bush couldn't come but sent videotaped congratulations, Polyakov said. The guests will include former Politburo member Vadim Medvedev and Gorbachev's former aide on foreign affairs, Anatoly Chernyayev. Gorbachev also invited his relatives, schoolmates and university friends from the Stavropol area, where he was born and grew up. The architect of the policy of perestroika, which brought an end to the Cold War and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev now heads the Gorbachev Foundation, a Moscow think tank, and Green Cross International, a Geneva-based environmental organization. In honor of Gorbachev's birthday, Bolshoi Theater ballet dancers and the country's leading classical singers and pianists on Tuesday gave a charity concert at the Moscow International House of Music to raise money for a children's medical center that the Gorbachev Foundation constructed in St. Petersburg but has yet to equip. Gorbachev named the hematology and transplant center there after his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, who died of leukemia in 1999. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952, one year before Stalin's death. In an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta published Wednesday, Gorbachev said he was shocked when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev condemned Stalin's cult of personality. "I believed in communism, believed in Stalin, wrote a essay: 'Stalin is our combat glory. Stalin is the inspiration of our youth,'" Gorbachev said. According to a poll released Monday by the state-controlled polling agency VTsIOM, 53 percent of Russians still blame Gorbachev for the breakup of the Soviet Union. Only 19 percent of respondents said they respected or liked Gorbachev, while 36 percent said they were indifferent. Gorbachev regularly speaks on current domestic and international issues. During a conference at his foundation Wednesday, he called on the West to respect Islamic nations and their interests. The United States and European Union have recently been alarmed by Iran's nuclear ambitions and the victory of Islamic militant group Hamas in Palestinian elections. ///// Fifty lessons: Find out what's really going on (Filed: 02/03/2006) Senior international business figures have agreed to share their experience. This week: Lord Sharman, Chairman Aegis Group and Aviva A change process is like any other process; it has a beginning, middle and an end. When we embarked upon a programme of change at KPMG it seemed to me that we needed to find out what was really happening in the organisation. Lord Sharman We found that there was almost a covert set of values and behaviours, and we uncovered them by asking people to tell us what advice they would give their best friend joining the organisation. What do they absolutely have to do? What must they never do? What can they get away without doing? We compiled this and we called it The Hustler's Guide to Progress in KPMG. When we published it, the initial reaction from the top management was: "Oh, this is ridiculous; of course people don't do that." Then, as we dug into it more and more, it became manifestly apparent that what we had said we wanted, and what we said we were doing, were not actually what was happening in the organisation. In these sorts of situations, the most powerful resistors of all are not the people who get up and say: "I disagree with you," because you can argue with them - that's easy. The most powerful opponents are the ones who sit there and do nothing, because you don't know where they are and all they're doing is sitting in the meeting saying: "Yes, OK, fine, good." Then they go back to their operating base and do nothing - that is the most difficult thing of all. The way you confront behaviour that is at odds with what you're looking to achieve is by embedding the behaviours you want into the way you do things day to day. You make it part of daily life. The most important thing in a change programme is that it must be visibly owned by top management. If it is not, then it is not even worth starting. The only reason for changing an organisation is to improve the bottom line. I don't believe in altruism in business; I think that's just a myth. Improving the bottom line is the only reason you would want to change an organisation - and the prime drivers in KPMG were that we wanted a more intelligent, more responsive and more flexible organisation, which would in turn enable us to perform much better in the market place. I think it took us longer than we would have liked to acknowledge that people didn't really believe in the initiatives that were coming down from the top. We probably went overboard in signalling change. I think we could have done it more subtly, but we tended to ram it into people's faces because I didn't think we had a lot of time. The great success is that we did turn the organisation around; it is much more flexible than it was in the past and it has continued to prosper. Biography 1943 Born 1966 Joined Peat Marwick Mitchell (later KPMG) as a manager 1981 Became a partner in the London office 1987 Made responsible for group's national marketing 1991-94 Chairman of KPMG Management Consulting worldwide 1994 Made senior partner 1997 Chairman of KPMG International 1999 Retired from KPMG. Became a member of the House of Lords 2000 Aegis Group chairman 2006 Aviva chairman /////// e scary d to e Supply Up, New Homes Sales Down in Real Estate Hey! Its the most basic law of economics: Supply & Demand: > First, lets look at Supply: New 1-Family Houses For Sale: Months Supply //// Billions 'lost to tax avoidance' A special unit has been set up to tackle the problem About £10bn is being lost by the government each year to tax avoidance schemes, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). The figure is equal to almost 3p on the basic rate of income tax. In a bid to tackle the issue, the HMRC has set up a special unit that will investigate such schemes. But those accused of tax avoidance say they are doing nothing illegal and argue they are merely better at using the tax system than the HMRC is. BBC Two's The Money Programme reports that the owner of BHS, Philip Green, and his family saved themselves nearly £300m last year by living partly in Monaco, where residents do not have to pay income tax. Offshore trusts The programme also reports that some City firms had cut their National Insurance bill by paying staff bonuses in gold, gems and antiques rather than cash. For HM Revenue and Customs, the latest wave of tax avoidance schemes was the last straw BBC's The Money Programme explores tax avoidance schemes And once the HMRC clamped down on such payments, accountants set up trust funds to cut firms' tax bills. Under this type of arrangement salaries and bonuses are paid into an offshore trust. The trust then lends the cash, often interest-free, to the employee. There is no tax to pay on a loan. In addition, accountancy firms are selling losses to clients, which are then used to offset against income. When the employee's tax return is filed the losses, which are artificial, are used to wipe out real income earned, thereby cutting the amount of tax owed. The Money Programme reported that these schemes cost the government up to £2.5bn in tax revenue. "If people are behaving dishonestly here, then an issue can easily slip across from being a matter of legal avoidance, into one of dishonesty and evasion and could become a criminal case for us," said Dave Hartnett, director-general of the HMRC. The focus of this programme on exotic tax avoidance schemes is blowing things out of all proportion Chas Roy-Chowdhury, ACCA New powers In 2004 HMRC was granted new tax avoidance powers by Chancellor Gordon Brown. The new powers mean that accountancy firms have to report new tax avoidance schemes to HMRC before recommending them to clients. According to an accountancy industry body, HMRC watchfulness - combined with improved self regulation - is drawing the curtain on many tax avoidance schemes. "The focus of this programme on exotic tax avoidance schemes is blowing things out of all proportion," Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA), told BBC News. "The types of schemes described have now largely disappeared and mainstream accountancy firms follow strict regimes and ethical guidelines." The Money Programme is on Thursday, 2 March, at 2200 GMT on BBC2 ///// http://atimes.com/ //// http://www.latimes.com/ ///// http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/ /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 01:22 PM (GMT)
1. "in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
In a message dated 02/03/2006 02:32:12 GMT Standard Time, g writes: Duncun how much money have you made since you started trading Bubu? Not sure why you dont want to answer my question above d but i know why you are asking the question i would refer you to the bubu update posted last night your question has no unique objective and given the bubu update; your question does not have relevant merit and further; you told us a while back you would not be posting here any more so evidently what is clear is this you say you will do something subsequently you dont follow through on what you say only you can sort this g i bent backwards to help you; but it did not prove applicable at your end you are creating irritation asking the same question twice in the space of a few hours unless you have posting what can be deemed constructive; just dont bother posting if you are trying to copy that obnoxious screwball a; then stop now farting around trying to upset people in a game of one up manship, can only hurt you you said you would send me a mac lap; you havnt the moral of the story yet again is; you never follow thru on what you say you will deliver you dont execute what you say you will do the best advice i have for you is quit trying to play one upmanship games try and explain your case in the larger pic never say you will do anything you are not 100% committed to executing clearly you have fallen into the age old trap; you are irritated by others; when of course you should be irritated by your own behaviour cordially //// On 2 Mar 2006, at 12:10, Mk wrote: Duncan Been to the website, but cannot see a weblog. d well.... you could try to click the url in the mail shortorlong.com 60,000 pages over 6 years if you are serious, in any way shape or form phone me mk By the way I was following your program instructions regarding the licence request. d indeed you were however much water has flown under the bridge mk Regards MK d to mk best if you have a look at weblog a bit then ring me and i see what may be in your best interests cordially On 1 Mar 2006, at 11:58, Mk wrote: Hoots Can I have a licence code. Product Code = HOOTS rgds MK http://www.shortorlong.com/ From: Duncan Robertson //// http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ The "Merely rich" versus the "Super-rich" in Economy | Federal Reserve | Psychology/Sentiment | Taxes and Policy Interesting article by David Wessel in the free section of the WSJ today: Rich Get Richer, But Not as Fast As You Think. Its a follow up to the Federal Reserve's recent triannual study we discussed last week, Stagnant Net Worth for Typical US Family. When looking at who has what share of America's Net Worth, a few data points leap out: The Richest 10% owns 69.5% of the assets, up from 67.4% in 1989. Note that the Fed survey explicitly excludes folks on the Forbes 400 list of the very wealthiest Americans. I believe the Fed eventually breaks down the latest numbers on the richest one million families, the top 1%. That group of Super Rich 1% holds about one-third of the total wealth in the nation; The next 9% also holds about a third. The group below the top 10% --the 75% - 89.9% slice -- owns 17.6% -- slightly more than their population percentage might suggest numerically. This group contains the heart of the middle class (and upper middle class), and as we have seen, they have been shrinking. Wessel writes: "The Federal Reserve does a lot of things. It sets interest rates. It issues dollar bills. It regulates banks. And once every three years it tells us how well America's rich are doing and if they're getting richer. The word from the Fed's new Survey of Consumer Finances: The rich are doing extremely well. But their slice of the pie doesn't seem to be growing as fast as one might expect in light of the persistent widening of the gap between annual incomes of rich and poor. American families had net worth -- the value of houses, cars, 401(k) plans, stock portfolios and saving accounts minus mortgages and other debts -- of $50 trillion in 2004, according to the Fed. Its estimate is based on surveys of 4,522 families, with special efforts to include the rich. As New York University economist Edward Wolff observes, the Fed doesn't count defined-benefit pension plans, money that, in a sense, belongs to the workers to whom pensions have been promised. Recent atrophying of these pension promises hurts the middle and upper-middle class more than the very top; ignoring that may understate the increasing concentration of wealth at the top." Interesting stuff, to say the least. Here's the breakdown of wealth (net worth, not income), by quartile, over the past 4 surveys: Share of the Wealth Percentile Wealth in Millions of Dollars Share of Wealth in Percentage Terms 2004 Bottom 25% n/a 0 24 to 49.9% 1,319,977.5 2.6 50 to 74.9% 5,195,835 10.3 75 to 89.9% 8,856,460.5 17.6 90 to 100% 34,910,182 69.5 2001 Bottom 25% n/a 0 25-49.9% 1,251,375 2.8 50-74.9% 4,701,975 10.5 75-89.9% 7,645,635 17 90-100% 31,269,465 69.7 1998 Bottom 25% n/a 0 25-49.9% 1,067,040 3.2 50-74.9% 3,824,415 11.4 75-89.9% 5,734,314 17.1 90-100% 23,025,492 68.5 1995 Bottom 25% n/a 0 25-49.9% 930,600 3.6 50-74.9% 3,034,350 11.8 75-89.9% 4,359,960 16.9 90-100% 17,490,330 67.8 Courtesty of WSJ, Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances > Source: Rich Get Richer, But Not as Fast As You Think Capital column by David Wessel WSJ, March 2, 2006; Page A2 http://tinyurl.com/k5fnh (no sub required) Thursday, March 02, 2006 | 06:29 AM | /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 02:17 PM (GMT)
2. "dont sell a quiet market"
Mosques, Civil War, Oil & Gold By: Jim Willie CB, GoldenJackass.com home: Golden Jackass website subscribe: Hat Trick Letter Jim Willie CB is the editor of the “HAT TRICK LETTER” For specific detailed analysis of the Gold, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and Fed monetary policy, see instructions for subscription to my newsletter research reports, which include stock recommendations positioned to rise in the commodity bull market. IRANIAN PILFERAGE As a preface, the Iranian Oil Exchange will not set up shop in March 2006. The exchange for Central Asian energy product sale, will not go into operation, will not come to pass, at least not anytime soon, and certainly not this month. My reliable sources traceable to London tell me that Iranian mullahs and clergy entrenched in high office have decided they do not wish to relinquish their corrupt siphon from vast energy sales into their personal accounts. Some old leaders have stolen and wish to continue to steal from their people, from their national energy deposit treasure. The launch of the Iranian Oil Exchange (IOX) will not succumb to Western pressure, will not back off from a challenge to the Petro-Dollar. The IOX will not happen because certain influential Moslem Iranian leaders wish to continue their pilferage, still brisk as each day passes. A formal exchange would force their ruling class to abide by rules of law, official transparency requirements, and that aint gonna happen. Some cock & bull story will be forthcoming as to feasibility or prepared facilities or whatever, so as to save face. To be sure, Iran will continue to sell energy products, and will likely not store the proceeds from those sales in USDollar denominated securities. The diversion away from US$-based assets will continue. The fact of the matter is that TopDog Ahmadinejad is at odds with the old-line leaders, who continue to push forward a sequence of energy ministers beholden to the old guard. Ahmadinejad wants more honesty and openness in their national leadership, and more acceptance internationally among the community of nations. This initiative has led to several rejected candidates in charge of public administration for the national energy business. Ironically, the new guard in Iran is more dogmatic, reactionary, and impractical, replete with impolitic calls for the destruction of Israel, unwise removal of astute previous foreign ministers in service who had constructive relationships abroad. However, at the same time the new guard is at serious odds with the old guard, who want continued unfettered access to billion$ in oil money. Former leader Rafsanjani has embarked on a speaking tour across the nation, spreading the message “the new regime has gone too far” interestingly. Too many among former Shiite clergy leaders are corrupt, have established a lucrative lifestyle of Moslem bourgeois, and have decided they want to keep their hands in the energy till. In defiance of their own people and Koran, they care to keep their personal accounts in Switzerland and Tokyo and Hong Kong untouched and intact. In this respect, they differ little from the Saudi royals or other Persian Gulf sheikdoms. For those quick to judge, a story of financial corruption has dogged almost every single US President or his Cabinet after Eisenhower. Our path is littered with presidents who were corrupt or asleep on the job, if not prone to some pathetic economic mythology used by power brokers to pilfer the USGovt coffers or fatten personal investments from the military complex. Both political parties are easily accused. No details will be catalogued. Graft, corruption, and duplicity might be the shared trait across most government elite gangs and henchmen, the common human thread. KRYSTAL NACHT The term “Krystal Nacht” refers to the event in Nazi Germany in Nov1938. Windows from countless shops and libraries were broken, as the “Night of Broken Glass” was etched into history. Jewish books were burned in bonfires, as broad persecution began and was widely encouraged by authorities. It also marked the beginning of the wider European campaign which resulted in World War II on that continent. Neighboring nations were overtaken and occupied, with initial maneuvers to secure energy supplies, like coal mines in Poland and oil fields in Romania. The Reichstag (German Parliament) fire in Feb1933 was used as an excuse by the Nazis to demand that members of parliament pass immediately a law giving Hitler emergency powers. Many historians believe the Nazis set fire deliberately to their own state building. This enabling act gave Hitler dictatorial powers. In effect, the law was suspended and afterwards, the law became whatever the Nazis said it was. The Nazis built concentration camps hastily to house perceived traitors, communists, unionists, and other undesirables. Hitler made many grand mistakes, like invading Russia on the road and politicizing his intelligence apparatus at home. In the United States in Sept2001 our nation suffered the attack on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. The hastily hatched Patriot Act was passed as legislation by the US Congress in the months following the attack on US soil. Over two thousand Americans died in the combined attacks just four years ago. At least the United States has no internment camps, detention camps, or concentration camps, or do we? The stated justification for Nazi aggression, both domestically and internationally, was to quell the supposed Jewish conspiracy. The terrorist threat to the United States is based far more based in reality. More accurately, naked Nazi aggression was to manifest expansion like any totalitarian state would. In the course of World War II, up to two thirds of the entire world oil supply was exhausted, destroyed, or depleted. Wow! What a toll in addition to millions of human lives and some beautiful cities! At least my parents met in a London bomb shelter. War always pushes commodities into a bull market. War is beneficial for the price of both crude oil and gold. Anyone who expects an inflationary depression alongside war needs to examine the history books for a precedent. There are none. Of more immediate concern is the crystallizing event in Iraq last week. The destruction of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra (a Sunni city 60 miles north of Baghdad) in my view serves as the Krystal Nacht in the Iraqi Civil War. Sectarian violence has spread throughout the nation. Reports have caused a certain mild trembling within me. A strange parallel strikes me with the Spanish Civil War in the 1930 decade. Iraq is on the brink of civil war, which might more accurately be depicted as a broadening of the civil war already in progress, an upward ratchet in its intensity. QUESTIONS & FORECASTS My purpose is not political. My dislike and disrespect is evenly balanced across political parties in the United States, as little competence has been detected, and images of reckless cowboys appear justified. So many extremely abnormal and questionable positions, analyses, and events have been scattered in the last nearly three years of war prosecution in Iraq. Major questions are begged by past and present chaotic events. Was a deal cut with Pakistan not to capture Osama Ben Laden? Given the strong fervent devotion to Osama inside Pakistan, and their military dictatorship with Mushareef, and their possession of the nuclear bomb & technology, what exactly was the deal cut with Pakistan? Perhaps no capture in exchange for no nuke shared with Al Qaeda? A perverse deal might explain why the final capture of Osama was farmed out to Pakistani forces when he was surrounded in Tora Bora. Would the war on terrorism in the USA be a hard sell if Osama were captured or killed? Would one billion Moslems erupt worldwide in violence if Osama were captured or killed? Tenet and Bremer were given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award. Do the criteria these days to earn the highest civilian medal center on deception or valor, or perhaps securing oil? A burning question remains. As the US Intelligence nucleus shifted under the executive branch from its longstanding independent status, has its independence been comprised politically? Disinformation can be found in numerous corners. Truth is said to be the first casualty in war, how true! The United States has embarked on a grand challenge to install democracy in Iraq, to render toothless the Baath party of evil despots, and to turn that economy back on track in a healthy constructive fashion. Oil fields have been repaired and remediated. Pipelines have on occasion been targets for explosive attacks. Port facilities have to date largely been spared from attack or destruction. Contrary to plan or promise, crude oil has more than doubled in price since spring 2003. Nevermind the claims that Iraq owned weapons of mass destruction, which never passed my smell test, not from the start. If you want some WMD, check cruise missiles, painted smart bombs, stealth bombers, not to mention the Council of Economic Advisors and the US Treasury Bond which together victimize the USEconomy and its citizens. Let’s not overlook the comedy from the wartime public relations initiative on the financial and economic aspects, which would make Johnny Carson’s old “Tonight Show” envious of the material.. We were given some truly absurd promises, like how increased Iraqi oil production would pay for the war itself, which made me howl in laughter (Congress bought it)… like how the crude oil price would decline toward $20 per barrel, which brought more laughter amidst doubled investments in energy stocks (Wall Street bought it)... like how only minimal Congressional financial safeguards would be necessary, which ensured in my mind vast fraud like the missing $15 billion from the war funding (major oil service firms love it). Then there were the incorrect forecasts, whose cost is in a human toll… like how US soldiers would be universally welcomed, which brought images of body bags to my doubtful mind… like how the war would be very quick, which conjured images of years of occupation, insurgency, bombings. My reactions were based upon history books from the failed Roman Empire occupation of Iraq, the failed English subjugation of Iraq in the 1920 decade, and more recently the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Resistance is innate and inherent to Moslem people and culture, especially from the Mesopotamian and Afghan regions. Besides, Moslems do not cotton to foreigners, especially Christians. A college roommate of mine was once on an Ethiopian mission to build water supply systems, until he awakened to see a knife in his dead friend’s chest one morning, with an inscription “infidel” on it. DATELINE IRAQ, FEB 2006 This past week on February 22, 2006, the Shiite shrine of Askariya was bombed and destroyed. What the fabulous St Peter Square is to Roman Catholics (tomb of Simon Peter), this shrine is to Shiites, the tomb for two leading imams in the Mohammed line dating back to the ninth century. Violence has erupted throughout Baghdad and three neighboring provinces. In the last two weeks, violence has extended to the southern Basra port and its mosques, over 300 miles south of Baghdad. No group has claimed credit for the attack to Askariya. Sectarian opposition is the default blame, but more sinister motives are highly likely, such as the Baathist seculars or Al Qaeda attempting to stir up civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. A guess of Israel might contain a strong motive, since an Iraqi Civil War would deny Iran a satellite Shiite Fundamentalist Republic in Iraq. If not glass, then certainly many relics were shattered and broken in those shrines. Two days of extreme violence ensued. The toll to date is at least 10 clerics murdered, over 200 cited attacks, and over 370 people killed in total. This is by far the most serious shrine bombing, but not the first such incident. Countless scattered bombings, explosions, murders, and general mayhem have occurred in the last week alone. In the months immediately after March 2003, scattered destruction was witnessed on certain key lesser shrines. Furthermore, scattered assassinations were committed against key clerical leaders in 2003. With the latest destructive ruin of Askariya, the much anticipated civil war might have begun. Calls by USGovt leaders to rebuild the sacred mosque seem empty and off the mark. See the photos before and after. In Iraq, four major groups can be identified as factions. The secular Baath party (not religious in nature) include the former ruling members, from which Hussein and his henchmen came, plied their trade, plundered the nation, and exacted torture. The Sunnis are the more moderate conservative Moslems, whose central shrines lie in Mecca and Medina inside Saudi Arabia. The Shiites are the more radical Moslems, whose ties are more linked to Iran. The final group is the splinter non-Arab group of Kurds in the north, resident to Iraq as a result of boundaries made long ago by outsiders. The Kurds have more a mix of Central Asian and Turkish blood. Say whatever you would like about Saddam. He was evil personified, a human pig, a Hitler replica who preferred to stay home. However, he might have served as glue to hold Iraq together. Remove Saddam and Iraq might have reverted to an unstable tinder box or powder keg as we currently witness. Similarities to Vietnam are valid in my view, but the Iraqi Civil War contains two additional lethal dimensions, those being religion and oil. Religion and politics aside, conflict is explosively favorable for commodity prices for supply reasons. Concurrently, conflict is explosively favorable to the gold price for geopolitical reasons. Exit plans seem nowhere in sight, which attests to either ineptitude or desired permanent war. How is the democracy experiment working out? DATELINE SAUDI ARABIA, FEB 2006 In the same week as the destruction of the main Iraqi Shiite mosque, a foiled attack occurred at the largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia. The Abqaiq Oil Facility survived two truck bombs at entry checkpoints, resulting in the deaths of two valiant Saudi security officers. Al Qaeda has claimed credit for the attack, but not for the Iraqi Shiite shrine attack. No functional damage was rendered to the Abqaiq site. However, more importantly, notice has been served, and the leviathan target has been publicly identified. The greatest Saudi oil facilities have been targeted. Worse, the timing is suspicious, as though the Iraqi attack and the Saudi attack might possibly be coordinated in some way. Perhaps these two events are unconnected. Perhaps they are the work of an unidentified sinister force hellbent on destabilizing the region. If attacks should succeed on oil fields, oil processing centers, oil pipelines, oil ports, oil tankers, gasoline refineries, or passageways through the Straits of Hormuz, the world will suffer. The effect on the price of crude oil and gold will be magnificent, profound, and enormous. WE ARE ON NOTICE – MAYHEM IS NEAR. THE CRUDE OIL PRICE (AND GOLD) WILL SURELY RESPOND FAVORABLY. The recent attacks on Saudi soil serve as only the latest in a string of violent episodes. In May2003, three grand explosive attacks marred the Saudi landscape. Foreign workers employed in their vast petrochemical industry were the intended target, as a deterrent for ongoing Western cooperation. Foreign engineers were abducted and beheaded. Al Qaeda violence doled out on Saudi soil is a thought pulled from a fairy tale few could imagine back then. The Saudi government received a wake-up call almost three years ago. They have reacted responsibly and effectively. They have made headway in offering amnesty to rebels, in giving counsel to young men on reckless paths of suicidal madness, in beefing up their security. Improved security might not be possible, not really, too little too late, much like stopping the ocean tide or a sand storm. The CIA calls it “blow back,” a natural consequence by human societies to expel outsiders who attempt to control a nation as with puppet strings. SHIITE VS SUNNI SECTS For those curious about the two competing sects of Islam, be sure to know the schism is far deeper than simple Catholic versus Protestant. It is not only racial, but at the heart of gentility, forgiveness, meekness, hostility, attitude, and demeanor. Sunnis are almost uniformly Arab. Shiites are predominantly Persian, whose ancestral ties are to Western Asia, not Arabia. Historically, Shiites believe in a line of succession like a monarchy, from imam to his son as with kings. Shiites have mullahs, imams, and when suitable an ayatollah. Shiites in my opinion revere like a sacrament the practice of revenge and bloodletting, and revere warriors as much as prophets. Sunnis believe in election of religious leaders through consensus agreement, like with the Vatican pope. Sunnis in my opinion thrive more on compromise and forgiveness, but they do have a history replete with treachery and violence. To be sure, the Wahabbi movement among Islam is so radical fundamentalist in its interpretation that the Sunni versus Shiite alignment might not be relevant. Their root teachings trace back to before the two-part split. Wars between Shiite and Sunni date back to the fourteenth century, plenty of bad blood still. In the 1990 decade a foiled attempt by Shiites to destroy portions of the fabulous giant Mecca or Medina shrines resulted in their capture, and swift execution by sword, via beheading. Call them old-fashioned. Inside Iraq, clerical leaders called mullahs (like priests and ministers) have in recent years been shot dead in numerous assassinations, only to ignite sectarian conflict. Iraq claims between 60% and 65% of its population to be Shiite. A parliamentary Iraqi Republic is considered likely to evolve into a Shiite Islamic Republic. USGovt influence might be trivial to prevent it. Such warnings were dismissed from the start. CHRISTIANITY FOIBLES The world of Christiandom is not immune from controversy, corruption, stupidity, legal wrangling, and warring. Heck, we are human too. Young men who died in the Crusades to liberate Jerusalem centuries ago were promised instant salvation, not too far from the lunatic promises given to Islamic suicide bombers for both salvation and multiple virgins. The Islamic promise seems a better deal. The similar schism occurred in the sixteenth century, led by Martin Luther (a huge hero in my book) with his posted 95 charges on the Wittenburg church door, known as the Protestant Reformation. He objected to influence peddling with deity, money for salvation and indulgences (blessings). The Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century was horrendous and shameful, ostensibly to purify the national faith, but more likely an attack on diverse faiths such as Moslems and Jews. English King Henry VIII battled with the Roman Catholic pope over divorce, resulting in numerous wife beheadings, the murder of Thomas Moore, and the creation of the Anglican Church. A full century of wars involve the English versus Irish to pit Protestant versus Catholic. Terrorist violence was doled out by the Irish Republican Army, which included the murder of Mountbatten, numerous London subway bombings, and fund raising in Boston. The IRA has been at peace in recent years. For a cast of crazy characters, see Oral Roberts (who claimed God would strike him dead if certain funds were not raised), Jim & Tammy Faye Baker (basic fraud and adultery), Pat Robertson (calls for Chavez assassination in Venezuela). We have constant battles over “separation of church & state,” an uncertain stretch of heavily debated Constitutional tenets, revisited annually over holiday nativity scenes on public squares. Hotly debated issues pertaining to women and homosexuals in the clergy, abortion, stem cell research, divorce, marriage by Catholic priests, at times resulting in violence, deaths, and imprisonments. See the parade of costly lawsuits against the Catholic Church for molestation by priests across the Western world. Thorny matters involve the clergy on political participation, yet untaxed religious status. We are not immune to contentious controversy or violence or lunatic fringe types in the religious community. North America might boast its own Wahhabi lunatic fringe types, based in certain unnamed heretical groups as well as White Supremacist and Ku Klux Klan enclaves. Their scale, however, does not compare to the Madrassas schools in Islam. By the way, my background is half Irish, the rest English and German, raised Catholic, now non-denomination (apolitical) Christian. The Catholics were brutal to me in school (thus the attitude) but they taught me very effectively. Their women enjoyed slapping my face when talked back to. Their men were hardly good role models for adaptation in society. Some were fine scholastic teachers, others were good sport coaches, while some were basic perverts. IRAQI CIVIL WAR The Countdown to Energy War is no longer a countdown. THE ENERGY WAR HAS BEGUN AND NOW ENCOMPASSES AN IRAQI CIVIL WAR. In my view, Moslems finally have their Krystal Nacht in the destruction of Iraq’s most important Shiite shrine at Askariya. Whether you care about Islam or not, this is a revered shrine deserving respect. How would Roman Catholics react if the St Peter Basilica were destroyed, sacked, and razed? Watch the Medina and Mecca shrines inside Saudi Arabia for retaliation. My purpose is to heighten attention of a civil war in Iraq, its trigger, its possible proliferation (not global, not yet), and to examine the effect on the price of gold and crude oil. Civil war in Iraq is not considered to be even remotely on the list of benefits to any group except those who might wish for a “perma-war” condition. It is curious how democracy is sought in Moslem lands, yet any history of constructive consensus rule is totally non-existent, and any precedent of a constitutional parliament is also absent. Egypt has a parliament, but no constitution, which would by nature compete with or conflict with the Koran, a point missed by USGovt leaders and the US Congress. Even in the quasi-democratic Egypt, the opponent to Mubarek was assassinated last year. Not much was reported on the incident in the intrepid, sleepy, lapdog US press & media. Perhaps they did not wish to expose how impracticable democracy was even in the most favorable environment among Arab nations. It might be useful to analyze the movement on the chessboard, to forecast the effect on the price of crude oil & gold, and to anticipate the effect on financial markets from both investor reaction and official liquidity. A broad civil war in Iraq will lead to a skyrocket in the price of crude oil and gold. Safe passage through the Hormuz Straits to the Persian Gulf is of the utmost importance. WE ARE ON NOTICE – MAYHEM IS NEAR. THE CRUDE OIL PRICE (AND GOLD) WILL SURELY RESPOND FAVORABLY. Once again, we have benefited little from recalling, let alone studying history. We used to criticize the Soviet Union for “revisionist history.” Ignoring history or putting forth arguments which fly in the face of history might be equally primitive. The British and French carved up the old Ottoman Empire following World War I in order to establish national boundaries known to Iraq today. Ten years of bloody war, and 100 thousand deaths forced England into retreat. Dictators held together the uneasy factions inside Iraq for decades, leading to Saddam Hussein, the grandson of a Grand Mufti Husseini who served as a general under the Nazi German Army. The Mufti’s assignment in WWII was to purge (as in genocide) SouthEast Europe of Jews in the predominantly Moslem region. The release of the Mufti from a Paris prison was part of a deal struck by England, France, and the USA in order to pacify regional factions opposed to the creation of Israel as a nation in the war aftermath. Backroom deals are part of politics. Some occur to this very day, not to be debated in the US Congress, like perhaps the US Ports deal with the United Arab Emirates and their govt-owned Dubai Ports World. Watch closed door sessions be the order of the day, then a railroad of approval along political partisan lines. One can argue that Iraq has never been at peace since Iraq was created after WWI. A brutal war lasting ten years ensued between Saddam and the Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980 decade. Reports of nerve gas usage were rampant, along with perhaps a million lost lives. That war was complicated by border claim disputes, as the river Shatt al-Arab through Basra shifted with each passing year. The city of Basra claims many people of Iranian ancestry. The Islamic Republic of Iran displaced the Shah of Iran (another Western created abomination) and his peacock throne after a revolution. The puppet-like Shah ensured strong Western ties, for diplomacy, oil sales, and banking deals, as he replaced the dictator Mosadec in Iran. The Shah Ministry of Security secret police was named Savak, every bit as brutal and violent as the Nazi Gestapo, whose reach stretched to Europe in practicing their craft. A tidbit factoid, the largest collection of Iranian expatriates exists in Los Angeles, many of them multi-millionaires. REGIONAL RESPONSE The lesson of Yugoslavia was lost on USGovt leaders. The benevolent beloved Marshal Tito held together uneasy factions among seven provinces. When he died, the horrendous Balkan Wars followed. A strongarm dictator, whether good or evil, might be required to apply the glue necessary to keep the tenuous union together. Saddam is likened to Tito, although malevolent in his tight regime and the object of numerous assassination plots. Deposing Saddam Hussein is undoubtedly a good thing. However, unlike Manuel Noriega of Panama, Saddam will sound off in his court trial, quite the spectacle charade. We might all hear juicy secrets, but nobody will believe him. Still, their first major display of justice seems at first blush to be a carnival. My suggestion is to have Saddam given the death sentence before a military tribunal, even if a cursory trial, then executed by ten thousand cuts, doled out by the Iraqi citizens. One cut per person would be permitted by small knives in an endless single file until his final breath and demise. At sundown each day, he would be cleaned up, bandaged, and be given access to face Mecca for prayers. The next morning, resume the parade of executioners. The nation needs the community satisfaction sense in his execution. Saddam broke ranks and instituted financial cracks of instability with the US$ superstructure in the Petro-Dollar system. He sold crude oil in euro terms. During his rule, the Persian Gulf was unstable, marred by the Kuwaiti occupation, ending with the annihilation of the Iraqi Army, and the torching of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Red Adair was kept as busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger quenching the fires, but outside that, few benefits. The US Military oust of Saddam and takeover of the Iraqi nation offered some hope of stability and responsible effective rule, but eruptions were more predictable from deep underlying tectonic shifts. Warnings of destabilized Iraqi factions, warnings of incompatible democratic reforms with Islamic law & customs, and warnings of the morph of Iraq into an Al Qaeda magnet for terrorism, insurgency, and mayhem were all ignored or minimized. The Askariya Krystal Nacht mosque bombing has changed perceptions, and altered the outlook on the Iraqi Reconstruction. EVERYTHING HAS NOW CHANGED. CIVIL WAR IS HERE. EXPLOSIONS LIE AHEAD FOR THE PRICE OF OIL AND GOLD. Once last year, a simple yet alarming graphic crossed my path, one not retained. It graphed the number of violent attacks and bombings in Iraq over the many months since March 2003. The trend is up. Look for that trend to accelerate. Worse, look for the murder of clerics to accelerate, which in my view is the heart and continued lit fuse of any sectarian civil war. No longer will simple oil pipeline bombings suffice in the eyes of those who have embarked on an escalated level of violence. By occupying Iraq, the United States Govt has implicitly invited a regional response. We have seen some evidence of regional response, mostly manifested in the energy world. See the Iran oil pipeline winning the Central Asian petrol contest. See Russia turning off natural gas spigot to Ukraine. See the numerous gigantic energy contracts and military contracts between Iran and both China and Russia. See the energy contracts won by China in Kazakhstan. The other violent response is unmistakable, a military response from growing insurgency inside Iraq. Decades of perceived resentment are in the process of being addressed, payback for the harsh rule of a dictator. The Kurds might be the only winners in a civil war, to win the independence of a Kurdistan. However, such an independent state would earn the resentment and counter-measure by Turkey. Some critics claim after all these centuries, we might have revisited the revival of the Crusades. The prize is not Jerusalem, but rather the Persian Gulf oil fields and preservation of its Petro-Dollar foundation. This marks an implied bidding process for oil fields, pushing up the crude oil price. With the messy bidding process of war comes a bidding process for gold as a refuge, as in all wars. EFFECT ON OIL & GOLD With no limits, come a new set of targets. Nothing is off limits. The implication to the crude oil price is direct, from lost supply. For over a year it has been clear that the crude oil price honors not only supply & demand concerns, but also delivery in the equation. As Russian President Putin likes to say “power lies with control of energy above ground.” The “what if” scenarios become mindboggling. We have first-hand experience with the impact of oil pipeline explosions and disruptions from terrorist attack on the oil price. The word “disruption” seems inadequate, and might yield to “decimation” someday. What will be the prevailing oil price if the Abqaiq Oil Center is shut down and under repair for four to six months? What if a single oil tanker is sunk in deep waters of the Indian Ocean? What if a single oceanic oil platform is destroyed by explosives, not weather? What if a gasoline refinery is destroyed via bomb attack? What if a critical port facility is destroyed and obliterated? The implications extend to other tankers, to other oil platforms, to other refineries, to other port facilities, and leave open far too many potentials. What if the Straits of Hormuz are closed from a sunken vessel? If a provocation and incident occurs, can we be certain what happened? One must wonder. Against a background of scattered disinformation, one can be a quantum level more certain of rising commodity prices. WE ARE ON NOTICE – MAYHEM IS NEAR. THE CRUDE OIL PRICE (AND GOLD) WILL SURELY RESPOND FAVORABLY. If any dire scenario plays out, we will see $100 oil, and a $100 lift in gold per month. Given the path we find ourselves on, the dire scenario seems less an uncertainty, and more just a matter of time unless the players (leaders) change. Terrorists have decided to interrupt the supply of oil to the West. Shortages will surely be felt throughout this decade. My conclusion has been clear. In 2005, Wall Street in their self-serving style got the crude oil forecasted price wrong, mostly for weather and depletion reasons. Wall Street in 2006 will get the crude oil forecasted price wrong, mostly for geopolitical reasons. Events are hurtling forward with a reckless acceleration except in slow motion. The Askariya bombing and the near Abqaiq bombing are timed as opening acts prior toward a deadly sequence of crescendos. The mixture of financial weapons and conventional military weapons will be revealing, shocking, and prevalent from here onward. Get out your bicycles and urban rickshaws. Install anti-virus software on your computers. BACK HOME One objective in Iraq was to take the battle to the back yard where Al Qaeda comes from. Closer to home in our Western Hemisphere, armed conflict might be a sneeze away between the United States and Venezuela. We are at odds over their disruptive influence from Bolivia to Colombia. The entire network of Citgo gasoline stations is owned by the national Venezuelan petroleum company. The nation run by strongarm Chavez also supplies diesel, heating oil, and crude oil to the United States. Unlike Saddam, but like the USGovt president, Chavez was installed as president after a popular election. Venezuela has the ability to seriously cripple the USEconomy, and he has threatened to do so. In the balance lies reliable supply of both crude oil and refined energy products, the sale of oil in euro currency transactions, even respect over Hillary’s virtue. Is this woman a modern day Helen of Troy??? NOT!!! Helen moved a thousand ships. Hillary might only move a thousand chips, whether of the potato variety or casino type. Lastly, the list of nations either planning (secretly or stated) to sell crude oil in euro denomination grows by the month. There is Russia, the quiet bear, which goes about its agenda, with or without consent or blessing. There is Syria, a minor player, but symbolically important as an Iraqi border nation, probably involved in the assassination of a popular Lebanese leader. There is Venezuela, with plenty of entertaining bluster, but more talk than action. There is Iran, a giant in the game with incredible complications in the same swipe (of pen or of sword) with nuclear and anti-Zionist calls. Now there is Norway. The USDollar is being outflanked not on one front, but on at least four fronts. The global economy offers a far more complex fabric being stretched and torn. The current situation seems far more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis under Kennedy. The entire world has been swimming like frogs in a slowly boiling kettle, desensitized. Given the cultural ignorance and disdain for Islam and its shrines, few seem sufficiently alarmed even after its Krystal Nacht event. Oy oy oy. THE HAT TRICK LETTER COMBINES MACRO ANALYSIS WITH INVESTMENTS. From subscribers and readers: “As an aside, I’ve been managing money for 15 years and have met a number of top minds from Wall Street and I can say that I consider your work exceptional. You’ve got a terrific way of knitting seemingly unrelated pieces of information into a clear, concise view of the big picture.” (Philip B in New York) “Jim's analysis has sharpened my mind. He teaches rather than preaches. His analysis strikes a fine balance between an expert and a sincere teacher, so rare. Thank you for not dumbing down your analysis. Jim respects the intelligence of his subscribers. He doesn't patronize or take his subscribers for granted." (John K in Ontario) “Most financial writings of other analysts appear to be muddy and tricky, while yours are always straight forward, easy to understand, yet with amazing accuracy in major trend. In my opinion you are quite successful in educating readers to look at economic fundamentals and how things run.” (Mic AY in Hong Kong) Jim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting. He holds a PhD in Statistics. His career has stretched over 24 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials. Visit his free website to find articles from topflight authors at www.GoldenJackass.com . For personal questions about subscriptions, contact him at “JimWillieCB@aol.com" -- Posted Thursday, 2 March 2006 ///// d no data releases of consequence today figure a quiet time /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 02:44 PM (GMT)
3. "boxes to placate the bewildered."
INDEPENDENT PAPERCHASE: Thursday 2nd March 2006. By Jerome Taylor and Akhilesh Patel QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I razed them…we specified the farmland of those who were convicted, and I signed” – Saddam Hussein, admitting he approved the razing of Shi’a farms after a 1982 attempt on his life. THOUGHT OF THE DAY: “Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse” – Adlai Stevenson II, American politician, speech (1952) BUSH VISITS ASIA: PART 1 AFGHANISTAN President George Bush made a surprise four-hour visit to the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday, before leaving for India. It was Mr Bush’s first visit to the country since US forces went to war against the Taliban in 2001. There he met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and repeated his vow to capture Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. The Independent’s leader says President Bush’s rhetoric fails to disguise the fact that Afghanistan is slipping backwards at an alarming rate. “In rural areas, health and educational facilities are still among the worst in the world. The security situation has deteriorated. “Shortly after the fall of the Taliban, Tony Blair pledged that ‘this time we will not walk away’. The world may not yet have walked away from Afghanistan. But it has allowed its attention to wander. And the Afghan people have, once more, been shamefully betrayed.” The Guardian’s Declan Walsh says the visit came as a surprise to many. Even journalists travelling with Mr Bush were told of the Afghan trip only after Air Force One left the US on Tuesday. “In Kabul many Afghans said they were also unaware of the visit. The Taliban deputy leader Mullah Abullah Akhund said his forces would have greeted Mr Bush with ‘rockets and attacks’ had they known of the visit in advance.” While the paper’s leader claims Afghanistan as a success compared with the “disaster in Iraq”, it warns of growing humanitarian problems and increasing attacks by al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents. “The world failed Afghanistan for too many years and Afghanistan then caused great damage to the world. Even the shortest presidential visit is enough, so long as it helps ensure that that vital point is not forgotten.” The Times reports on President Bush’s assurance to the people of Afghanistan. “They ask me with their words, they ask me with their stares as they look in my eyes, ‘Is the United States firmly committed to the future in Afghanistan?’ My answer is absolutely,” Mr Bush is quoted to have said. In the Daily Telegraph, Ahmed Rashid says President Bush’s visit has echoes of President Dwight Eisenhower’s one-day visit to the country in 1959. “Many Afghans think that Washington is getting ready to abandon them once again. “America has a habit of doing that. America has to look into its own history with Afghanistan and realise that it cannot afford to walk again.” BUSH VISITS ASIA: PART2 - INDIA Meanwhile, in India protests continue against the President’s visit to seal a “historic nuclear deal”. The Times reports: “Many of India’s 150 million minority Muslim population are angered by US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Cheers and fists rose from the crowd as Muslim leaders chanted slogans condemning the United States.” In the International Herald Tribune, Amelia Gentleman reports on protests by thousands of Muslims at the Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi. “Elsewhere, leftist organisations held demonstrations against the visit with banners stating ‘Killer in town’. Indian newspapers claim Washington and Delhi made history by reaching an agreement on a landmark nuclear deal. The Hindustan Times reports that negotiations on the deal “went down to the wire” and details were being “hammered out” even after Bush had arrived in India. “India has accepted opening up of civilian nuclear reactors to safeguards in perpetuity. Fourteen nuclear facilities have been designated as civilian and eight as military.” The Indian Express says Mr Bush is to hold an inter-faith meeting after lunch with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “The US President will hold a meeting with nine prominent persons representing five religions including a Shia leader, a Tibetan monk and a Dalit Scholar.” JOWELLGATE – THE PLOT THICKENS The furore over Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell’s involvement in the corruption scandal currently enveloping her husband David Mills and the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continues unabated today in what the Independent teasingly refers to as “Jowellgate”. Readers and journalists alike will be excused for feeling slightly overwhelmed by the mechanics of Jowellgate – a story with more twists and turns than an over-ambitious helter skelter. Which is why today’s Independent provides an easy-to-use, no-nonsense guide to Jowellgate on the front page with all the usual diagrams, arrows and boxes to placate the bewildered. The latest news, according to our reporters, is that Milan prosecutors do intend to bring charges against the Culture Secretary’s husband. Sources within Whitehall say that while they expect Ms Jowell to be cleared of any wrongdoing, she will be left critically wounded by the cabinet inquiry launched to assess her role in the affair. As with any potential Cabinet corruption, however, as the hacks keep digging the allegations keep coming. The Daily Mail today claims to have obtained new documents that they say “implicate” Ms Jowell in the growing scandal. The paper says it has seen documents showing Mr Mills “tried to use Cabinet position and his friendship with Tony Blair as he fought bribery and corruption allegations.” The Mail’s leader argues Tessa Jowell’s “wide-eyed declarations of ignorance” are “wearing extremely thin” while columnist Stephen Glover launches a relentless attack on the government arguing Labour’s cabinet scandals are all “further evidence that New Labour is the most corrupt government of modern times.” The Times reserves its sympathy for Sir Gus O’Donnell, the man charged by Tony Blair to investigate whether Ms Jowell has broken the ambiguous “Ministerial Code”. “Sir Gus will need the patience of his namesake, St Augustine, to do so,” the leader quips, arguing it will be “challenging to distinguish between the personal and politcal” in deciding whether the Ministerial Code has been broken. Finally, in a slightly different take on the whole affair, the Independent’s Janet Street Porter says Ms Jowell’s lack of scrutiny in her husband’s finances lets her fellow women down. “The reason why Tessa Jowell is at the centre of attention,” she writes, “is because we can’t believe that such a smart person can be so besotted by her husband that she doesn’t ask the kind of question she would have no problem firing at any one of her minions…I expect women to operate on a higher plane, to be above reproach.”
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 03:41 PM (GMT)
4. "dead ends"
m is that g getting angry, at how much bubu is making. d indeed it would appear so the real question, g should be posing, is why is g getting angry what is really going on, inside the head of g execution sounds easy deliverance whats that? well... doing what you know, is the thing to do, with size seems easy but its not it requires understanding and cultivation anyhow we are all different //// d to ts the burning of the reichstag by persons unknown (guess who) and the demolition of the twin towers by persons unknown (guess who) its really a copycat trick stage an event; then you stick (stiff) the job, on gringos you dont like that suits the agenda of those demanding powers to fight terror remarkable similarities yet we dont read much about that anyhow kind regards dunc //// ts Just in case one does not know that everything is owned by the same small circle. http://www.sundayherald.com/37224 Ghosts who own Duke's estate Who owns Scotland?: Nominee Trusts THERE was little sympathy for the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the richest men in Britain, when he had a Leonardo da Vinci painting stolen from Drumlanrig Castle last month. Buccleuch, who has a vast personal fortune and charges £6 to enter his estate at Drumlanrig Castle near Dumfries, made the mistake of demanding that the government should pay for security at estates that open their doors to the public. He conveniently forgot the £200 million tax exemption he received in 1974 for agreeing to the access deal in the first place. Buccleuch owns 288,000 acres of land and is ranked 646th on the current Sunday Times Rich List, making him worth £55m. His art collection alone is said to be worth £450m. As well as Drumlanrig, he owns the 17th-century Bowhill estate at Selkirk, and Boughton in Northamptonshire, sometimes known as the “Versailles of England”. Or does he? We looked closer. At first glance Buccleuch Estates Ltd appears to be a conventional limited company with directors and shareholders. But the Duke of Buccleuch owns only two out of the 132,000 shares in the company. The twist, which hides the true identity of the ultimate owners and helps them legitimately avoid paying excessive taxes, is a nominee company that owns almost all of Buccleuch Estates Limited. Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd, a company whose total paid-up share value is £4 and whose shareholders are four Edinburgh lawyers, has been dormant since its incorporation in May 1992. It owns 99.7% of Buccleuch Estates Limited, a company with assets and turnover of tens of millions of pounds. Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd is exactly what it says on the tin – a nominee company, a skeleton that does no trading except to do things at the behest of others. In this case, Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd, it is assumed, acts in the interests of the other shareholders of Buccleuch Estates Ltd, who include the Duke of Buccleuch and HRH Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. But that is impossible to establish conclusively. It is just as likely that the beneficiaries are other trusts offshore or onshore that protect the substantial wealth that must now be accumulated in them. Nominee companies are dead ends, making it impossible to establish the motive or true ownership of land. Somewhere there will be a declaration of trust or a deed of trust that will give instructions on how the nominee company should operate and detail the deal between the nominees and the beneficiaries. The Buccleuch estate is big business. In 2002 it paid £1.26m in corporation tax. Some £31m was invested in the business in 2002, mostly financed from a £34.5m bank loan. It paid £500,000 in dividends to the nominee directors at Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd, but it is virtually impossible to find out who the beneficiaries are beyond the nominees. On paper, Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd, receives most of the annual dividends paid to the shareholders. Anderson Strathern Nominees Ltd’s directors are real people, but, like ghosts, they cannot grasp coins. The money passes through the nominees to the beneficiaries. Where it goes then, nobody knows. Within Buccleuch Estates Ltd, it is understood that there are financial firewalls which will ensure that estate assets are sheltered and shielded from each other. Some parts of the company might be held offshore, some parts in Britain. The Buccleuch accounts show a vast number of companies that the estate has associations with. There is no transparent path through those to the true owners. Nobody doubts that the Duke of Buccleuch is one of the biggest landowners in Scotland, but on paper he owns only a tiny part of his own company. Finding out exactly who owns the Buccleuch estate is almost impossible. Finding out how much tax it would pay if the ownership were publicly declared will remain a secret to the Inland Revenue and all others who seek to pry. www.whoownsscotland.org.uk 05 October 2003 //////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 04:03 PM (GMT)
5. "a tax regular guy gets lumbered with"
d to ts i seem to recall the duke of buccluch died or mayby another similar type the inheritance tax due was on his estate i mean the estate value on death guess what it was trifling and under the level that inheritance tax is due on supposedly the deceased had next to no assets and thus no tax was payable meanwhile the real estate; the property et al was out with the estate compilation; and exempt from tax and thus lives on; tax free the real estate being worth a few hundred million the real story is the mega rich dont pay inheritance tax that a tax regular guy gets lumbered with anyhow ///// http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/schmidt/2006/0302.html ///// http://prudentinvestor.blogspot.com/2006/03/ecb-hikes-rates-as-forecasted.html Thursday, March 02, 2006 ECB Hikes Rates As Forecasted Three months after the last rise the European Central Bank (ECB) has again unanimously hiked the leading overnight rate by 25 basis points to 2.5%. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said in his introductory statement at the press conference that the step "reflects the upside risks to price stability that we have identified on the basis of both our economic and monetary analyses. The adjustment of interest rates will contribute to ensuring that medium to long-term inflation expectations in the euro area remain solidly anchored at levels consistent with price stability." With its move the ECB proves that it won't let loose in fighting inflation. The ECB has no mandate to help Europe's ailing economies back on its feet. Trichet announced that "quarter-on-quarter real GDP growth in the euro area was 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2005. This was considerably lower than the strong 0.6% recorded in the previous quarter." The ECB sees a possible improvement though - as it has all year long last year. "The March ECB staff macroeconomic projections have provided an additional input into our analysis of the prospects for economic activity. These projections foresee average annual real GDP growth in a range between 1.7% and 2.5% in 2006, and between 1.5% and 2.5% in 2007," Trichet said. Inflation To Remain Above Target Rate The inflationary outlook retains upside risks, mainly stemming from high energy prices, Trichet said. "Annual HICP inflation is projected to lie between 1.9% and 2.5% in 2006, and between 1.6% and 2.8% in 2007." Trichet added that "risks to the outlook for price developments remain on the upside and include further increases in oil prices, a stronger pass-through of oil price rises into consumer prices than currently anticipated, additional increases in administered prices and indirect taxes, and - more fundamentally - stronger wage and price developments than expected due to second-round effects of past oil price increases. ECBspeak: Money Supply Remains "Robust" Galloping money supply got downplayed by the ECB again. To quote Trichet: "Turning to the monetary analysis, the Governing Council has again discussed the assessment of monetary developments in depth. The annual growth rate of M3 remains robust, notwithstanding signs of a resumption of the unwinding of past portfolio shifts into monetary assets, which exerts a dampening effect on headline M3 growth. Looking through the short-term effects generated by such portfolio behaviour, the trend rate of monetary expansion remains strong, reflecting the stimulative impact of the low level of interest rates. Moreover, the annual growth rate of credit to the private sector has strengthened further over recent months, with borrowing by households - especially loans for house purchase - and non-financial corporations rising at a marked pace. Overall, strong monetary and credit growth in an environment of ample liquidity in the euro area points to risks to price stability over the medium to longer term." Trichet summed it all up. "To sum up, annual inflation rates are projected to remain elevated in 2006 and 2007, and the economic analysis indicates that risks to price stability over the medium term remain on the upside. Given the strength of monetary growth and the ample liquidity situation, cross-checking the outcome of the economic analysis with that of the monetary analysis confirms that upside risks to price stability prevail. An adjustment of interest rates was therefore warranted." by The Prudent Investor @ 15:32 //////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 05:36 PM (GMT)
6. "we are in the dark"
On 2 Mar 2006, at 16:02, m wrote: g should remember the phrase, if you cannt beat them, then join them. after all g discovered bubu for the dc. he should get recognition. d and g is desperate for recognition in his own mind but this game is about doing got to be in it to win and recognition seeking, is seriously dumb ///// ue Duncan do you accept that between 5 & 10% daytraders are successful ? YES or NO d no ue Try and answer with a direct YES or NO then maybe just maybe I can help you. kind regards ue d based on all i know; the sustained success with constant groupies is well under 5% negligible how can you help me what have you done so far how do i know you could help me what have you posted in terms of understanding what you do zip that is what you have contributed so far you tell us nothing about what your strategy is we are in the dark as to your routines /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 05:47 PM (GMT)
7. "attitudinal"
Dear MR ROBERTSON, If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to broadband, there’s never been a better time to do it. That’s because, not only have we doubled the speed of AOL Broadband Silver, but you can now enjoy it for just £14.99 a month1 for the first 6 months off your subscription, after that it’s only £17.99 a month. Would you be better off with broadband? The benefits listed here will help you decide. • AOL Broadband Silver now has a download speed of up to 1Mbps2, that’s up to 20 times faster than your current dial-up connection. This lets you do things faster, so you can save time shopping, banking and waiting for emails to download. • Not only do you save time but you’re able to do new things online, such as watch video clips, play games online and listen to music. Downloading a 3 minute video clip will take as little as 50 seconds, compared to 8 minutes with dial-up; and you can see who you’re chatting with online with Video Instant Messenger3. • Broadband doesn’t tie up your phone line, so you can be on the phone and use the Internet at the same time. There’s no more waiting for someone to get offline before you can make a call. • With a broadband connection there’s no waiting to dial-up for an Internet connection, it's always on, so you can be on the Internet in no time at all. And with AOL Broadband, there are no download or time limits so you use it as much as you want. • At AOL we know that safety and security online are important to you, so to help protect you against hackers, all our broadband packages come complete with McAfee® Personal Firewall Plus™ at no extra cost. You also get to keep all the security features you already know and trust like Parental Controls, spam blockers and anti-virus scanning on email attachments. ///// http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/rinehart/2006/0302.html //// http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/griess/scoreboard.html //// http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ Read it here first: NILFs, Women, and the declining Labor Force in Economy | Employment | Taxes and Policy In case you missed it, there was a front page NYT story on Women's decreasing work force participation. We have covered the issue of NILFs and decreasing labor force participation rates repeatedly over the past year. Here's a quick excerpt: "For four decades, the number of women entering the workplace grew at a blistering pace, fostering a powerful cultural and economic transformation of American society. But since the mid-1990's, the growth in the percentage of adult women working outside the home has stalled, even slipping somewhat in the last five years and leaving it at a rate well below that of men. While the change has been under way for a while, it was initially viewed by many experts as simply a pause in the longer-term movement of women into the work force. But now, social scientists are engaged in a heated debate over whether the gender revolution at work may be over. Is this shift evidence for the popular notion that many mothers are again deciding that they prefer to stay at home and take care of their children? Maybe, but many researchers are coming to a different conclusion: women are not choosing to stay out of the labor force because of a change in attitudes, they say. Rather, the broad reconfiguration of women's lives that allowed most of them to pursue jobs outside the home appears to be hitting some serious limits. I find it to be more economic than attitudinal in nature: "To be sure, mothers' overcrowded lives have not been the only factor limiting their roles in the work force. The decline in participation rates for most groups of women since the recession of 2001 at least partly reflects an overall slowdown in hiring, which affected men and women roughly equally. "The main reason for women's declining labor-force participation rates over the last four years was the weakness of the labor market," said Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research institute in Washington. "Women did not opt out of the labor force because of the kids." To be fair, the decline did begin "well before the economic slump a few year ago." > Source: Stretched to Limit, Women Stall March to Work EDUARDO PORTER NYT, March 2, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/business/02work.html Thursday, March 02, 2006 | 11:57 AM | /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 06:41 PM (GMT)
8. "try something specific and constructive ue"
d how the fuck does this shit from ue help? say something useful or fuck off On 2 Mar 2006, at 18:23, ue wrote: Ok good so you believe less than 5% daytraders are successful so what I suggest you do now is instead of constantly knocking daytrading because you are jealous of other peoples success you expand some of that energy to go & found out what it is we successful daytraders are doing that you cannot do. So in other words instead of just focusing on the negative 95% to 99% failure try focusing on the positive 1% success because it is your own psyche which is working against you & always will until you change your thinking. kind regards as always ue
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 06:52 PM (GMT)
9. "day trade fantasy"
d ue is another day trade fantasy type who claims he is winning the trouble is, he never says how bottom line discounted ue not admissible you write the poise but you have never explained anything about how to read the market as usual with constant people its no explanation just the WE are a success verbiage again and again how are you a success ue spell it out ue that is specifically what we want you to spell out for us ue your meaningfull contribution here, has been minimal i suggest you contribute something tangible regarding what you do in the market can you? //// TV IN YOUR HAND by Yiannis G. Mostrous Editor, Growth Engines March 2, 2006 For investors, especially those who are internationally oriented, one of the most important developments this week is President Bush’s visit to India. As things stand, no one knows what the US wants from India, while the world found last summer that India is mainly interested in receiving US civilian nuclear technology. To be sure, the president received public advice from the usual suspects, first among them the “serious” British weekly economic publication, which--with its usual pseudo didactic tone--made sure Mr. Bush knew what he should and should not say or "give." We don't know if the president should listen, as the empire was lost a long time ago. It's doubtful whether British intellectuals remember how to run an empire or, for that matter, remember that in today’s world you must also give not just take, as was customary back in the day. We'll be writing about the visit and much more on India, its economy, its place in the world and its relationship with the US in upcoming issues. In the meantime, good luck, Mr. President. Coming off my soapbox, let’s now take a look at some interesting tech-related investment opportunities. Researching Asia's markets offers, among other things, an excellent opportunity to learn about new developments in the technology sector. One of the newest technologies coming out of Asia is digital mobile TV. Digital mobile TV has already taken off in South Korea, and will start rolling out around the world next year. It began in 2002 when South Korea-based SK Telecom acquired a million subscribers within eight months of launching its flat-rate streaming-video service. The demand was so high that the company's third-generation (3G) network experienced severe problems and was unable to respond to demand. South Korea's response was drastic; it invested in a dedicated mobile digital TV network. This new service offers more channels of higher-quality TV than 3G ever could. To refresh your memory, when 3G networks were first unveiled in 2001, streaming video was one of the chief incentives used to lure in new subscribers. Until recently, though, these promises haven't been successfully filled. The first advanced color handset was the Sony Ericsson T68, which only offered 256-color images in slow motion. Recently, 3G TV service has improved dramatically, with subscribers being able to watch TV on their phones at up to 15 frames per second (fps)--standard TV is 30fps. Although this is an impressive improvement since 2001 when 3G networks were first unveiled, the service doesn't come close to real TV. If mobile TV continues to add subscribers at the current rate, 3G networks in the US could be overburdened as early as 2007. The main problem with 3G streaming video is that it eats up cellular spectrum--the video stream has to be duplicated for each person who tunes in. As more people watch, the same amount of bandwidth is being allocated to them. But with mobile digital-TV broadcasting, it makes no difference whether one person or 100,000 people in a given coverage area are tuning in. The main idea of mobile TV is to directly broadcast digital TV signals to mobile phones (using a totally separate network), just as signals are broadcast to TVs in the house. This way, consumers can receive more channels with better quality, while providers will be able to free cellular bandwidth for other usage. Researchers estimate that by 2010, $7.6 billion will be spent annually on mobile-TV subscriptions. As with every new application in the telecom/tech area, there are a few different operating standards competing for the new service. South Korea uses the T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting), but there are others in Japan, Europe and the US. The good part is that there's extensive overlap among the majority of the standards proposed; therefore, customers won't experience problems like the ones encountered with mobile phone operations in the past. Despite which system or systems prevail, though, this new market will prove to be promising for semiconductor and handset companies. Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) has been active, as have Broadcom (NSDQ: BRCM) and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (NYSE: PHG). On the handset front, South Korean Samsung Electronics (Korea: 005930) and LG Electronics (Korea: 066570) will benefit the most, given the emphasis they've been placing on multimedia phones and the fact that they're ready to offer second- and third-generation TV phones, while their competitors have yet to launch their first. Taking it a step further, investors should see the telecom and media industries as a continuously evolving one. Specifically, it's quite possible that during the next five years the two industries will become one, offering a suite of products that includes fixed and cellular phone service, as well as TV--in all its forms. As consumers become more comfortable creating their interconnected/gadget home and life, they'll also demand companies offer total service at good prices and dependable quality. © 2006 Yiannis G. Mostrous Editorial Archive Developed Asia, Western Europe and the US will lead this change. In the latest issue of The Silk Road Investor, we've identified a company in Asia that's at the forefront of this development. Given its growth potential, it should be one of the main winners going forward (see "The Butterfly Effect"). KCI Communications, Inc. 1750 Old Meadow Road, Suite 301 McLean, VA 22101 703-394-4931 phone 703-905-8100 fax Email ///// MIXED BAG OF CHINESE COOKIES Sean Rakhimov SilverStrategies.com March 2, 2006 We just returned from a nine day trip to China. Having spent a few days in Shanghai, a day in Guangzhou and the rest of time in places less traveled, including two silver projects, we had some ideas that we’d like to share. Normally we stick to silver in our writing, but this time we felt compelled to stray if just a little bit. Then again, as you will read below, silver is such a unique metal, such an integral part of our lives that in any type of development in modern society will have a “silver angle”. Hardly anyone will dispute that China is a development story. Even though it was before our time, we get a sense that present day China is somewhat like what the US was a hundred years ago – zooming. That is old news you’ll say and be absolutely right. However, we’d like to point to some observations that dampen our enthusiasm about China’s prospects. We are not here to bash China, downplay its achievements or question its strategy. On the other hand, everyone we’d spoken to in the last several years, who had been to China, helped to set our expectations so high that we felt the reality didn’t quite live up to them. Whether it was our expectations that were the problem or in fact the Chinese miracle has been overstated (we’re good at that), you decide. Yes, Shanghai is a metropolis. The number of high rise buildings in Shanghai is probably several times that of New York’s. From the top of the (TV/tourist) tower in downtown Shanghai you get a magnificent view of the city – skyscrapers in any direction as far as eye can see. We got pictures to prove it. The sheer size of it is absolutely staggering. Then we learn how they are built. Now, we are not claiming that this is a complete story, yet we got it from people who have no reason to tilt the truth in either direction. Apparently, a great many of those high rise buildings are empty and were built just to be built. The story goes that government (banks) provides loans to construction companies to build them. Contractors get the money up-front and have an incentive to “save” as much money as possible on construction costs. That leads to use of cheaper “sub-standard” materials. Builders have no interest in the future of these buildings and could care less how they will be used, if at all. Vacancy rates in these buildings are said to be high which earned them a local nickname of “see-through” buildings. By the way, use of “sub-standard” materials is not limited to Chinese builders. A fellow traveler from Arizona shared this story. From his words there is a cement plant in Arizona that produces high quality product which in its entirety is shipped to – where else? – China. At the same time, for domestic construction in the same area, where that plant is located, cement is imported from Mexico. Again, we are not claiming that it’s accurate, just passing on the tale. Back to China. Those who have been to Shanghai know that Kuangpu River, which cuts through the city, is a busy transport way. Very busy indeed. Ships and boats of all shapes and sizes are rushing back and forth seemingly non-stop. We saw it first hand because we asked for a river-view room at the Shangri La Hotel. We also ferried across the river a couple of times to visit the Bund and the Nanjing Road attractions and got a pretty good look at it. All the while we had a strong feeling that no fish is present in the river and in the off chance there is some, doomed would be the creature to eat it. Countless shops and restaurants on the old-town side of the river emit such a heavy stench, that it even beats the unbridled exhaust smoke coming from the river boats on one side and scores of autos crowding the freeway on the other. We would be willing to bet a couple of grand that those shops and eateries dump all they can into the river, as their counterparts on the inner streets of Shanghai and universally in other places we have visited dump right on the side-walk. This story comes from a friend who lives in China for four years now. He knows a factory that has a manufacturing unit. Apparently this unit is subject to environmental regulations and recycling/clean up process before it can discard its waste. Such a facility has been built and is present on site, but it’s only turned on when there is some sort of a check or audit comes around. The rest of time the recycling unit just sits there rusting. Population is another problem, of course. If strength is in numbers, in our view, so is weakness. One and half billion Chinese throw off mountains of garbage that is not disposed of duly. Yet the real problem with the population is the ratio of men to women. While government’s one-child policy did help slow down the population growth it also lead to a distorted ratio between young Chinese men and women. Apparently, since they were allowed to have only one child many Chinese families used every trick in the book to have a baby boy rather than a girl. That is because traditionally a son would stay with his parents and take care of them when they get old while a daughter would marry and go on to live in her husband’s family. Well, the damage is done and the trend is still in motion. We don’t know how this issue will manifest itself, but we’re fairly certain it will surface within several years. There are many more small things that we can’t even recount. For instance, this is a true story told us by an Australian investor whom we met in Shanghai. An Australian entrepreneur built a shoe manufacturing line in one of southern China cities. He hired local management to run the place. Within a few months he found out that his Chinese management built an exact replica of the shoe factory at the other end of the town: same equipment, same material, same process. Only labels were different. We believe the story because of the source it came from. But also because we saw many such knock-off brands in a big department store where we went to pick up some necessities after our luggage was lost by Air China in transit and we had to get by for four days until we got it. When all is said and done, China is a story that is happening and this opinion or any other will not change a thing. Yet, with all its great achievements and progress, China should, does and will have its share of problems. To be clear, we are not bearish on China. But as investors we have to be realistic and as such we don’t share the super-bullish sentiment on China broadcasted from every venue. The way we see it, best places to invest in China, aside from natural resources and energy are healthcare and waste management. Lastly, silver. Many of Shanghai’s high rises use their outer surface as advertising boards. They use multi-color lights to string together any brand name, logo or product you can imagine. To that end neon and increasingly other, more advanced forms of electronic ads are everywhere, especially in larger cities. While we have not done much research on the subject yet, we are willing to go out on a limb and speculate that all that booming construction requires a great deal of silver. Every so often you hear the pundits say that all-time highs in base metal prices will lead to their increased production and since the majority of silver is mined as by product of base metals (and gold) they go on to forecast an impending glut in silver supply. Well, let me just ask you this. If the world can’t get enough of copper, lead, zinc, moly, nickel, etc., what are these metals being used for? Are we casting giant 80 feet statues (the likes of which we saw carved of stone in Henan) from these metals or are we (the people) using them in construction and industry? And if so, how would it be possible for the Chinese to build 17 cities the size of Chicago every year without using a commensurate amount of silver or more? And that’s just China, what about the rest of the developing world? Did we suddenly switch to a “silver-less” society, cause if so, I must have missed the memo and until I see it I ought to assume that developing world is using silver in ever-greater quantities. They need it, and it is still very affordable. © 2006 Sean Rakhimov Editorial Archive Information contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. It is not intended to constitute individual investment advice and is not designed to meet your personal financial situation. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are subject to change without notice. The information herein may become outdated and there is no obligation to update any such information. The author, entities in which he has an interest, family and associates may from time to time have positions in the securities or commodities discussed. No part of this publication can be reproduced without the written consent of the author. CONTACT INFORMATION Sean Rakhimov Editor SilverStrategies.com Brooklyn, NY USA Email l Website /////
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Duncan	02-Mar-06, 07:36 PM (GMT)
10. "i remain unpersuaded, by the constant unexplained case"
d to ue the bottom line is, i am getting sick and tired of people saying, they win at constant trading this is like saying, a guy is guilty; but not providing back up, to support that charge you have to, explain your case we are waiting, to hear your plea your submission it is simply no use; it does not wash with me, to merely say day trading works meanwhile providing no back up, to support your claim you can say whatever you like but without credible back up, you have no case cordially On 2 Mar 2006, at 18:23, ue wrote: Ok good so you believe less than 5% daytraders are successful so what I suggest you do now is instead of constantly knocking daytrading because you are jealous of other peoples success you expand some of that energy to go & found out what it is we successful daytraders are doing that you cannot do. So in other words instead of just focusing on the negative 95% to 99% failure try focusing on the positive 1% success because it is your own psyche which is working against you & always will until you change your thinking. kind regards as always ue /// d to ue when i get nonsense i react accordingly you deserved what you were sent On 2 Mar 2006, at 19:17, ue wrote: You are such a classy guy d to ue how the fuck does this shit help? say something useful or fuck off On 2 Mar 2006, at 18:23, ue wrote: So in other words instead of just focusing on the negative 95% to 99% failure try focusing on the positive 1% success because it is your own psyche which is working against you & always will until you change your thinking. kind regards as always ue ////
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