Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

So did anyone see the poll on CNN Money on market expectations? When I voted it something like 23% were optimistic and 30% said "I pulled all my money out". Those seem to be pretty bearish extremes. As a contrarian indicator of course, that's a paradoxically positive sign. Granted the feelings are fairly justified by some pretty dicey economic circumstances, but that does indicate that a lot of investing & buying energy has gone into 'hiding' as it were.

Jim Babcock said:
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/153493.html

Does this mean the the Dem party is not for whites, and only for blacks?

It's obvious from your question that you didn't even listen to the clip and you just read the misleading title. Actually the title's not misleading, I would just call it a bald-faced lie. He was talking about the pluralistic makeup of the dem party and was jumping in and out of ethnic terminology and it was quite clearly a slip of the tongue because he was talking so fast (it was so fleeting you had to be listening very close to hear 'white' at all: it was obvious in any case he wasn't 'calling' the R party the 'white' party).

This is one of the weakest smear attempts yet. The R's smear machine seems to be limping along on battery power this year. Maybe gas is too expensive to run the generator.

To achieve progress, simply remove the obstacle: vote in a democratic president and your do-nothing problem is solved.

Wow - a lot of threads and typing in ALL CAPS -- the forum is a little shrill -- I mean, more so than usual. I'll come back when things settle down a bit. 8O

Jim Babcock said:
Then came this election. I could not believe that the Repubs would consider a candidate like McCain to represent us. Back then I believed that Hillary was sure to win the Dem top ticket.

That's true, I had forgotten what a difference a few months makes. Last winter Hillary looked absolutely inevitable and McCain's campaign was on life support, virtually bankrupt compared to all his competitors.

I changed prior to this election so this election itself hasn't changed me. Pre-Bush I was more swayed by individual characteristics. Post-Bush I'm much more partisan. GWB basically made me a dem, as under his rule it became apparent how much power the more extreme influences on the political right have gained and how dangerous they have become. So with the boat listing badly to starboard I'm leaning hard on the port side. My values haven't changed, it's more that political conditions have changed. The Dem party is broad enough and at this point watered-down enough that there's not much risk of anything too radical or 'weird' happening if I vote for them. But every 3rd candidate on the R side of the aisle just strikes be as an absolute nutcase. Too much risk over there. I vote party now, keeps things simple. If the boat starts leaning too far left that may change, but I really don't see that happening anytime soon.

I could change my tune if the R party re-moderates. McCain's nomination was kind of a queer accident of history, I think due in no small part to Romney failing to pass the religious test and driving defecting votes to Huckabee and McCain, rather than a sign of the party moderating as such.

If he did win, however, he might be able to help the party regain some footing in reason, if he can be his own man (and I'm not confident he'll be able to, I think he may be caged by powerful forces in the party -- though a clever choice of running mate could influence my impression there) -- he's not as blatantly anti-science as the current administration has been, and that does win big points with me. The censorship of science and the gag on climate research is responsible for at least 50% of my absolute disgust with the R party now. He also doesn't go around constantly trying to prove how ever-blessed religious and godly he is and so he strikes me as less phony that way than a lot of R's are (and frankly this is one of the things that bugs me most about Obama).

So I started my post about party trumping everything and now I've ended up with some conflicting impressions at the individual level... guess I'm confused too. I guess I'm still party in the interest of giving the pendulum its full swing. But I would not be devastated by a McCain win, if he's true to his campaign's remarks on science and if he doesn't totally sell out to the religions right.

The notion of such simplified tax plans is pie in the sky -- if enacted, it would last but one election cycle, if that. Tweaking the tax code is *always* a point that someone is running on in every single election. It's one of the most popular political promises there is. As soon as you 'reform' the tax system into some supposedly 'simpler' structure, you're gonna have adjustments, addendums, qualifications, special circumstances, etc. 4 years after putting all the tax accountants out of work you'd have to hire them all back.

The best you can really hope for is to set a basic philosophy. 'Flat' proposals are trendy today but I think to be morally fair it has to be a progressive structure. And even some flat-taxers agree to some extent, with proposals that involve a large standard starting deduction which basically sets a progressive scale for the lower to middle regions of the income ladder.

The difference between a 'flat' tax and a progressive one is really how 'steep' the gradient is from no taxes to max tax. Unless you set a very large standard deduction for the water line, that gradient is very steep in a flat-tax scenario. The mathematical result is to set a lower upper bound of tax rate for the high earners and put more of the share of the tax burden onto the middle class.

Also, a progressive income tax really just somewhat offsets the more regressive taxes elsewhere in the economy: property taxes, vehicle taxes, sales taxes, etc -- if you want a 'flat' tax structure you have to find a way to 'flatten' those too, or you'll end up with an overall very regressive system.

Jim Babcock said:
Please help me understand why the ice age prediction is not true based on the science.

We're only a year past the minimum. One year does not a trend make, and to predict 50 years or 10,000 years of ice age based on a single year data point is just nuts. The mini ice-age was a full 50 years without sunspots. A year or so 'dry spell' in an 11-year cycle does not sound like a huge deal. If it stays down for 5 or 6 years then you've got some big news, or a full cycle with no spots then I would say maybe there's something going on we should be concerned about.

No one can say with certainty that a full-blown ice age is, or is not, occurring in the imminent future. It is mainly because such changes are exceedingly infrequent (once in tens to hundreds of thousands of years) that the probability of it happening 'now' is low. Though I know in some corners there is concern that global warming itself could precipitate an ice age by shutting down the north Atlantic current, though this is generally not thought to be the case. Naturally, no one is sure.

I'm not getting into predicting whether we're going into a depression or not, I'm just putting the current long-term trend stuff out there -- the DJIA and the S&P500, are now the most oversold they've been since 1982 relative to the trendline since then. Below is the DJIA (equivalent chart for SP500 looks pretty much same) trend-sheared -- the degree to which we are below the trendline is roughly on par with the degree of deviation represented by the 'super-recession' of 1982.

Now, while this implies that things are indeed exceedingly bad, we are not yet 'outside the envelope' of the 26 to 35-year trends -- implying that the situation is still within the realm of salvageability. If we do get outside that envelope, then some pretty ugly scenarios are in play and the next oversold extremis is based on the 80-year trendline, which puts the downside for the DJIA somewhere around 3500-4500 level.

The worst thing you can do to your candidate is to leave him standing in a shadow, make him look weak. The cost of picking Palin is starting to become apparent: she's such a celebrity that she COMPLETELY overshadows him. He's hopelessly dependent on her just to generate crowds. Where they appear together and she speaks first, people start walking out when McCain starts talking.

Once the buzz wears off, what's going to be left here. It looks like a whole lot of nothing -- already the tide of the polls has shifted -- looks McCain has peaked. He's lost control of the dynamic of his own campaign. I actually wonder how much he had to start with: did he really pick Palin, or was he brought to her? She's a perfect pick for the oil lobby and the religious right -- certainly not a 'Maverick' pick, except for her lack of experience -- she's just GWB on steroids, none of the experience, double the ideology.

It was a high-risk gamble. I think the risk side of that equation will become more and more manifest as the weeks progress...

Well clearly the oversold states I posted about a few days ago have been relieved to some degree. So now what? More rallying, or is this a classic bear-market "sucker's rally"?

There may be a clue in the banking sector: this week many bank stocks hit ALL-time highs... just 2 months after hitting multi-year lows(!?) That measure of technical strength suggests a certain 'hardness' in the banking sector leading the market higher. The banking index (BKX) has this week clearly broken out of its bear-market downtrend channel that had been established for about the last 15 months. Bank stocks appear to now to have gone into full-blown 'bull market' mode. As they led the way down, I expect they will lead the way up.

I know given the conditions that seems hard to believe, but if a recovery of some sort is in the offing, the bottom in the market usually appears months before any of those positive signs are apparent.

That said, like many I have a lot of misgivings about the long-term ramifications of the current bailout(s) being discussed -- and as a matter of principle, I have a bit of a problem with the short-selling ban, even if I stand to profit from it short-term. That is seriously messing with the market's plumbing and the principles and purposes of trading in a free capital market.

But for the time being, the game is on. I'm still 100% long in various index funds. I expect we'll have some pullback in the next few days, particularly as details of the bailout become available and public skepticism ensues. And I would expect to start to see some sector-swinging as we get nearer to the election. But for the market overall, I think we had a genuine capitulation low last week, that will stand for a while at least.