naked capitalism

a says:

How is the Red Sox *not* raising ticket prices (after astronomical increases over the course of a decade) a sign of deflation? Call me when I can afford an afternoon out at the ballpark for the family.

Anonymous says:

TARP About Face.

Hey, it is really about the TARPaulin.

Used by Paulson to coverup his bait and switch sell to Congress (remember the dire predictions of what will happen if it didn’t pass?)

Now it turns out not to be needed.

Or maybe it is a TARPalin, kind of like Sarah’s $150k wardrobe that doesn’t belong to her and have to be returned so she can wear clothes from the second hand shop.

Brought to you from Ripley’s.

Richard Kline says:

Gobekli Tepe is a fascinating artifact. Arguably, it is _not_ the world’s first temple, since the conceptual system which is represented there had been extant for multiple millennia elsewhere as I have studied it. But it is one of the most complete surviving places explicitly conceived for worship, and a more comprehensive site for its conceptual system than known older ones. There is a link formed by this site to the inception of a particular kind of macroculture in the Near East which I do not fully understand, but we may never have enough evidence to do a comprehensive reconstruction. For all those reasons, Gobeklit Tepe is one of the most meaning-filled sites in the world; a great ripple of human history started from or near its ‘pebble.’

Sarah Palin: C’mon now, she’s just a member of a party long active in American politics: the Know Nothing Party. Seriously, look up the program of that namesake and you’ll see that Sarah (who couldn’t tell you the century in which it was active) is a card carrier if ever there was. The Know Nothings know too little to regularly maintain their own party, so they usually merge with a bigger, bettern known party, which has typically been the Republicans, yes. Now, the Republicans have left the Republican party, leaving its corpus to Sarah and the Know Nothings. I dearly hope to the gods that she runs again in four years, because she is an anchor of failure who will doom any ticket she punches.

The vote of last week does have one story which has been little told, which includes Sarah, though: Republican turnout was massive, and Demo gains were more limited than the expected exactly for that reason. —And even so, they still lost, because enough non-voters who stand on the other side turned up for the Demos. Whether the Dems will maintain that kind of turnout depends much on what kind of bail out they now promulgate. We’ll see.

Richard Kline says:

Why isn’t there more ridicule for Paulson’s kiss off? We-e-ellll, a lot of Very Important People voted for the TART, er _TARP_, or shilled it on, including our esteemed President-Elect. If they made rude noise or pointed fingers they would look silly, wouldn’t they? Ergo, they look busy instead, and elsewhere.

Independent Accountant says:

YS:
Morgan believes gold is a commodity. I think the dollar is a commodity and gold is money. I think Morgan is “bullish” on the dollar, thinking it will be worth .001 ounce of gold ($1,000 an ounce to 99.99% of Americans) in a few years. Study the experience of our friends in Iceland. What’s happpened to the gold price of Krona recently?

evol says:

The Larry Summers , The Nation link seems to be pointing to some Bloomberg news article. The correct links –

Article : http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/ames

Petition : http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1555/t/510/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=494

Anonymous says:

Yves, link to Larry Summers does not go where you want it to go.

Moopheus says:

Are those guys at Morgan the same ones that said $200 oil by the end of the year?

I am always struck by the similarities of rhetoric of the goldbugs and the real estate shills. The value always goes up! It’s always a good time to buy! They’re not making any more of it! The main difference being that it’s hard to get buy without a place to live (though you don’t have to own that place), and it’s easy to live without gold. Personally, if financial armageddon really did happen, I’d rather have a good supply of rice and beans stashed away than gold.

tompain says:

JMD, no one fears a woman of substance. In case you didn’t notice, a lot of those “paleo-libs” supported Hillary. What we should all fear is a moron being put into the presidency solely as a result of one man’s choice of her (or him) as a running mate. Say what you will about Biden and Obama, but Obama won the nomination of a major party to get on a ticket. If Palin can do that, swell, I will still view her as a moron but she will have convinced the American people otherwise, and the people are entitled to mistakes of their own making. But until then America ought not to accept the possibility that a mistake of that magnitude might be foist upon them so that a complete idiot like her can end up in the Oval Office simply because McCain thought it was really mavericky to choose her.

AAI says:

So, we’ll have deflation AND inflation, according to these links. Evans-Pritchard warns against deflation, and Morgan Stanley sees $1000 gold. I doubt they can both be right. Maybe we see deflation for a year and then inflation in time for Morgan Stanley’s 3-year price target? Doubtful, if we’re in the deflation “grip.” Just maybe we’ll have something in the middle. A choppy sideways equity market while bouts of panic hit and recede, as value buyers gradually see global imbalances repairing themselves and a new multi-currency world order evolving. Sounds a bit more boring than what we have today. Sell vol on spikes.

River says:

Off Topic:

US media is not carrying all the important stories…as usual. A dislocation of the bond market is possible and we should be paying attention. A recent auction of long bonds is an example of what happens when foreign buyers become nervous about long term prospects for the dollar and ‘full faith and…’

Central Banks Shun the US Long Bond Auction – “Too Many Unknowns”

“Indirect bidders, a class of investors that includes foreign central banks, bought 18 percent of the securities offered, down from 43 percent at the last sale”

U.S. Treasuries Fall After Investors Shun 30-Year Bond Auction
By Cordell Eddings and Sandra Hernandez

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Treasuries fell, led by 30-year bonds, after investors shunned the government’s $10 billion sale of the securities amid concern that U.S. debt sales will grow…

“The 30-year is not a central bank product, and there’s no real interest from pension funds” at a yield below 4.5 percent, said Andrew Brenner, co-head of structured products in New York at MF Global Ltd., the world’s largest broker of exchange-traded futures and options contracts. “There’s just no interest in it…”…snip…

Anonymous says:

Would gold be trading in such a narrow range if all purchases were physical? I have read that there is a premium for physical gold delivery of 75 to 100 dollars an ounce and waiting times of up to four to six weeks. It would be interesting to compare the total quantity of ‘paper gold’ with physical stockpiles available for delivery and- what would happen to the price of gold if say- 20% of buyers asked for delivery at the same time.