\n<\/strong>
\nI assume that most subscribers were surprised by yesterday’s site, in which I wrote about the US unilaterally raising the price of gold. By now, everybody knows about the danger of our nation continuing on its current path. Aside from the “fiscal cliff” coming up, our whole politico-economic set-up isn’t working. Something drastic must be done — such as a new monetary system, and a new government set-up. The fact is that our Congress isn’t functioning intelligently — in fact, it just is not functioning. Congress is disgustingly corrupt and much of Congress is in the grip of lobbyists. Too many people enter Congress medium-poor and leave Congress rich. The President spends far too much time running for a second term. We should elect presidents for a single six-year term, and then the president should go home and do something else, that hopefully, is useful. The Supreme Court members should be elected, not appointed.<\/p>\n
In other words, our whole system is, today, tied up in knots; it’s just not working. We need a non-corrupt political system and a new monetary system. Personally, I’m in favor of any system that actually works on an honest and sustainable basis. Our current system doesn’t work. If it did work, we wouldn’t be in the God-awful mess we are in now. And no, I don’t enjoy bear markets. And I don’t enjoy bull markets that ultimately take stocks far above known values, followed, usually, by a crash.<\/p>\n
The old gold standard worked reasonably well. It forced monetary discipline on the nation. The Federal Reserve is an abomination. The nation ran for many years without a national bank, and it was never in the fix it is today.<\/p>\n
The Fed is a monopoly run by bankers, for bankers. It should be abolished. Well, there’s no sense in my going through the whole government piece by piece.<\/p>\n
The gruesome fact is that this country is not running in a way that is sustainable. As it is, we are leaving our children and grandchildren with a debt-choked nation that is technically bankrupt. We’ve substituted fiat, man-made paper notes for gold. Our whole nation is in hock. Cities, counties and states are now bankrupt and are unable to pay their bills. Raising the price of gold is a stop-gap measure. We’ve got to toss out what doesn’t work, and go back to the drawing board. And if that’s what a bear market will do for us — then let it rip.<\/p>\n
But it won’t be that easy. When a nation has a fundamental disease, nobody (certainly not the voters nor the politicians) wants to take the pain of a real, honest, bear market cure.<\/p>\n
Subscribers ask me how we could unilaterally raise the price of gold. Easy, one day the president (Roosevelt did it) announces, “The price of US gold is now $4,000 an ounce.” Period.<\/p>\n
Three of California’s cities — Stockton, Vallejo, and San Bernadino — have filed for bankruptcy. What about their muni bonds?<\/p>\n
Last Friday, the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, sent out paychecks to its employees, as it does every two weeks. But these checks were for amounts significantly smaller than usual because Mayor Chris Doherty reduced all city employees’ pay — including his own — to the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.<\/p>\n
I note that new highs on the NYSE are dropping off with each new day. Today there were only 107 new highs.<\/p>\n
Of the 19 sectors that Dow Jones posts each day, 16 were down today, signifying broad weakness. The VIX is still low, at below 19, and calmness and confidence is apparently the order of the day. Today, with such low volatility, it’s inexpensive to buy downside protection (puts). The thought is that if there is any danger, the Fed will immediately act. Thus traders feel safe, which is one reason the VIX is so low. This is a very professional market. Joe six-pack and his wife are not in this market. They’re still in shock (if not broke) following the 2008 crash..<\/p>\n
Is history repeating? This is the longest job recession, 53 months, since the Great Depression. <\/strong>The Midwest is suffering the worst drought since the “dust bowl” of the 1930s. The movies are showing the scariest stories since the 1930s. Then it was Dracula, now it is vampires. Then it was the birth of radio and news beamed across America, now it is the birth of the Internet and news beamed across the states and the world.<\/p>\n This was my list of shorts in\u00a0 June 5’s column:<\/p>\n Best Buy (BBY) Of those shorts, two performed spectacularly:<\/p>\n + Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy. That’s the perfect short.<\/p>\n + Supervalu (SVU) recently reported lousy earnings and make this delicious chart:<\/p>\n + My favorite shorts — RadioShack (RSH) and Research in Motion (Blackberry) are steadily losing value.<\/p>\n I don’t believe your portfolio should be a 100% short. But, just as there are obvious “longs” (good companies going places), there are also bad companies also going places (different places).<\/p>\n Here’s today’s shorter list:<\/p>\n Game Stop (GME) 450,000 accounts at Yahoo got hacked.<\/strong><\/span> If you receive an email from a Yahoo account, delete it immediately.<\/p>\n The hackers are getting creative. I got one today from my daughter, “Claire Newton [mailto:wdave93@yahoo.com<\/span><\/strong>]”. Claire doesn’t have a Yahoo account. Her email suggested I visit a web site that I’m sure would have infected my computer. Claire wonders how they got her name. I’m guessing someone with a Yahoo account had emailed her a while back and the email was still on Yahoo, nicely being preserved for the crooks.<\/p>\n Which Programming Language Should You Learn For Software Development? <\/strong>Reader Ryan Lakshmanan emails:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n At the Sun Valley conference hosted by Herb Allen this week, a child went up to Mark Zuckerberg and asked his advice on programming. Zuckerberg told the child to write programs that interest you, that you find fun….like games. He told the child that thats what he did, was to write programs that interested him and was(how he started Facebook).<\/p>\n Ryan “saw this link and thought it might help you make a decision.”<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/tag\/programming-language-learn-software-development\/<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n Harry’s new technology:<\/strong><\/span> This week I bought:<\/p>\n + A Canon S100. It’s pocketable, yet has a 5 times zoom, a decent size processor and some manual controls — including a programmable ring around the lens, which I’ve assigned to adding or substracting a stop or two to the photo (making it brighter or darker).<\/p>\n + A Kindle Touch. Smaller, lighter, newer. Perfect for reading the trilogy of “50 Shades of Grey<\/em>” and not having the riders on the subway eye me suspiciously.<\/p>\n + A SATA hard drive duplicator for $90.<\/p>\n Clone hard drives without using your computer. May be the perfect simple backup tool. Save screwing around with Acronis and Ghost and all the other half-assed software “solutions.” Cross your fingers. I just placed my order this morning. Pray it works. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
\nBHP
\nCaterpillar (CAT)
\nCisco (CSCO)
\nDeckers (DECK)
\nDell (DELL)
\nEaton Vance (EV)
\nExxon Mobil (XOM)
\nFacebook (FB)
\nFirst Solar (FSLR)
\nGold (SGOL or GLD)
\nGreen Mountain (GMCR)
\nFossil (FOSL)
\nGameStop (GME)
\nGoldman Sachs (GS)
\nIBM
\nJC Penney (JCP)
\nJoy Global (JOY)
\nJPMorgan (JPM)
\nMorgan Stanley (MS)
\nPatriot Coal (PCX)
\nRadioShack (RSH)
\nResearch In Motion (RIMM)
\nSanDisk (SNDK)
\nStarbucks (SBUX)
\nSupervalu (SVU)
\nTerex\u00a0 (TEX)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/SuperValu.jpg\" "\\"SuperValu\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFossil (FOSL)
\nIBM
\nEaton Vance (EV)
\nJCPenney (JCP)
\nJoy Global (JOY)
\nRadioShack (RSH)
\nResearch In Motion (RIMM)
\nSuperValu (SVU)
\nTerex (TEX)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n