Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

Blood in the streets on this stock, folks. Plummeting on news of the Vioxx recall, further plummeted on expectations of a zillion class-action lawsuits, this stock has taken a very fast run to its long-term channel bottom (may or may not have reached it, depending on how close I can draw the line, but it's pretty darn close right now) -- dividend yield now at 5%, a good candidate for bottom-fishers. But if it goes down much further the chart becomes long-term 'broken' (like Microsoft and AT&T) implying that something fundamental has changed and all future bets are off.

>With the latest report in hand that says the same thing that all of the other reports have said, Intelligence on Iraq's WMD was wrong, what should be done about it. <

Simple. You fire the president who acted hastily on that intelligence. We rushed to war in Iraq (in great haste, I might add) acting on sloppy intelligence combined with a lot of imagination, without doing any double-checking, verification, corroboration, or in-depth study, basically without doing any due diligence whatsoever. In the private sector if you put on this sort of job performance, you get fired. If it results in a lot of deaths, you get a lot worse than fired. If this had been done by a democratic president, impeachment proceedings would have started by now.

Trying to evaluate overbought/oversold conditions of oil stocks. This is a 35-year chart of Exxon, and for all the run-up in oil stock the last year or so, while they may appear short-term overbought interestingly enough in the long term they are just now finally reverting to the mean trendline. Many of the blue-chip oil stocks are fairly similar. Exxon is just below the mean, Conoco-Phillips is just above its, and Chevron-Texaco is right about on its mean trendline.

Microsoft's long-term growth trend, among many other tech companies' has been clearly 'broken', but through it all, chip-giant Intel is holding the line. The resiliance shown in this 30-year chart in the face of the great tech crash makes it look like a good accumulator at current prices, imho. Could still dip into high teens, but not much further I'd wager.

As on others, the red lines are support/resistance of the trend channels, the purple is roughly the mean trend.

In the debate it occured to me that on the subject of national security and alliances, there is a larger philosophical argument being waged. That is, the viewing of things from a global community perspective, or from a nationalistic, or isolationistic, perspective.

Clinton and Bush Sr. were both pretty clearly globalists. Bush Jr., who pulled us out of the Kyoto accord and whose coalition-building gets about as far as "You're either with us or against us", and fans the fear that other countries could veto our right to defense (LOL!) is blatantly isolationistic. Usually Republicans are economically more globalist but GWB's quick embrace of steel tarriffs and scarce travel to meet other world leaders makes indicates to me that he tends toward isolationism in the broader sense, not just politically.

I for one see the influence this and 9/11 are having on my fellow citizens -- people are becoming more isolationistic in attitudes, looking with complete disdain at the UN, Kyoto and just about any other efforts at global cooperation. Not that these efforts are perfect -- they are embryonic in that this has been the first century of global-level communication -- but they are not without merit either. I for one hope this trend in attitudes reverses itself soon or it bodes ill for our country.

The spot price of oil is dropping off its $55+ highs, finally confirming the downward break in the energy index rally a week earlier. It should eventually drop as far as the previous resistance (now support) at $47-48/bbl before the next sustained rally. Expect XLE (the energy sector SPDR) to bottom out around $32-33.

It occurs to me that one of the most potentially damaging legacies the Iraq war will have is on the ability of future Presidents to take military action when necessary.

With all Bush's crying wolf over WMD, Al-Qaeda-9/11 links etc, future military actions will be held to a MUCH higher standard of scrutiny. The Congress, the public, etc. will want the reason to be 'real' this time, no more starting major wars just for "funsies".

Minnesota: Red, blue, red, blue, neither, etc. -- different color every 2nd day on the electoral projection maps depending on whoever did the last poll. Anyone else having this experience? How many posters here are in 'battleground' states?

To get away from the more morbid aspects of war, here's one of those "guess how many pennies in the jar" things.

Now that hsuB is expected to ask for another $75 billion in emergency funding for the war, on top of the $$ already spent and the $80+ billion lined up for ongoing operations, we're up to a minimum expenditure of some $280 billion now, and that's if everything goes just swimmingly from here one out.

So I figure we're in for an easy $300 billion at this point. If anyone had suggested this number 2 years ago everyone listening would have laughed until they wet their pants yet here we are. So how much you think we're in for before we're "done" there? $500 billion? $700? $1 trill? Any takers?