Global economic situation for liveaboard cruising yachties

Well I don’t have the balls to tell about any of my past bad choices, I feel that your way of life is an admirable one, wish there were more people that thought that way, it use to be like that here, not much any more. The greed and animal values have swept the land like a plague, and I fear that the coming generations have no hope, because that Ideal will no longer exist, only the old timers will remember.

 

Man ... nobody reads threads anymore. Gogo was sold in 2006. I gonna be in Thailand in the spring 2010, you can see my import/export business. I can take you to better places than bar, trust me. Place where high end thai go for entertainment. And Cambodia is right there is you still want to have that fight. I am like Steven Seagal, if you need reference. He's aikido man. Aikijutsu is original samurai martial art, then some retarded people took aspects of it and made Judo, Jujutsu, Aikido. Aikijutsu = aikido + Jujutsu + Judo + Striking. Kenjutsu is japanese sword fighting. Ninjutsu is assassins/spies, a lot like special forces/agents of feudal days. I was trained by Japanese like Seagal. And they dont play. It's all for real. It wouldn't be any fun fighting with you unless you have good martial arts background, too easy. And can check legal situation. In Thailand, they may be able to set up a Muye Thai fight, but rules, gloves, rounds? You gotta be kidding me. Aikijutsu is not a sport, but combat art.

 

nylex,

why do you have to go to Asia to fight, afraid of the police....they do not know what they do not know........

 

Boston I was responsible for that reply from Nyalex. Nyalex I dont want you to challenge anyone. And no I aint fighting you either. Think what you like but I would prefer you think of your behavour as you have chosen to participate in a gentlemans forum.

Im sure you could find men your own age elsewhere for a much farer fight.

 

a few years ago (would you believe it is 12 now), my mate went off to fight the world title in JuJitsu....as his opponent met (to shake hands as such....not that that happens anyhow), he was head butted and my mate ended up with a broken nose (as you do).....this is the final...not for sub places....anyhow he was asked if he would like to continue, and of course, he did.

One world championship came his way.......you remind me Nylex of his opponent......

 

For get it then, I could handle having my *** kicked for a trip to the orient but I can't handle having my *** cut off.

 

Why do people? and lower animal life forms fight? - - Just primitive excuses for "pissing contests" if you look at it...

On the other hand, it is usually expected that civilised people should piss in a urinal or discretely... Shall we all be polite and extend a welcome to civilised behaviour in our guests?

 

....who was it that licked a Turkish urinal.......I would rather have a kebab

 

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/casey/2010/0106.html "The Biggest Financial Deception of the Decade" - - at a guess phase II of the fanie and freddy and the FED saga continues and explodes onto your TV screens as the biggest extravaganza in entertainment history - - season starts soon for the mid 2010 climax....

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/mckillop/2010/0106.html "COMMODITIES WILL ROAR IN YEAR OF THE TIGER 2010"

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/powers/2010/0106.html "The Gas Crisis of 2011 "

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/willie/2010/0106.html "2010: Giant Gathering Storm Clouds"

 

Not sure thats right,----- I had a kebab once.

 

Fits you well..........

 

Apex dont.

Friendly humour is just not your thing.

 

who's lowering himself
I got this job to finish up and then not much planned so a nice trip could be cool

I'll be giving him almost 15 years but no worries
Ill take it easy on him

its a free ticket mate
that and I get to see Thailand which Ive always wanted to do
hell
Im excited

its not a matter of proving myself
I just could use a vacation
bad

thanks for the concern though
B

Nyalex
Im good to go any time
pm me and Ill send you the address where you can mail me a ticket
we can have someone we both agree on hold the money
and yes there are rules
the jewels and teeth are off limits ( not sure about you but I have better uses for mine than in a match ) no weapons we each pay the others damage
will have to work out the schedule but I should be good to go in about a month
should give you time to arrange a ticket
two if you want to really be a sport

B

 

A copy and paste fro The Daily Reckoning email "Stocks for the lifeboat"

Baltimore, Maryland - Melbourne, Australia - - Thursday, 7th January 2010 - - # Life on the frontier... # A greasy plate of bacon... # Bill Bonner on Chinese trucks...
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--You could put gold and oil in your financial lifeboat, even if both are a bit bulky and hard to store. Oil made a 14-month high after closing up 1.4% to $82.82 in New York. Bad weather, tighter inventories, and a weaker U.S. dollar all contributed.
--Meanwhile gold jumped by almost $18 to $1,135.90 and make a three-week high of its own. Trading volume is light in the early part of the New Year. But investment demand for hedges to the falling U.S. dollar are in vogue.
--The dollar index was up 4% in December. But all that goodwill towards the greenback seems to have vanished in January. It matters for Aussie investors because of the traditional link between the USD and commodity prices. But some analysts say the old relationship between the two is over.
--"A stronger dollar won't spell the end for the commodities rally," the Wall Street Journal reports, "because the world's economies are getting back on their feet, meaning that demand is likely to trump the impact of currency moves." Actually the Journal didn't say it. A few analysts did.
--"The supposed tie between a weak dollar and stronger commodity prices has been severed and...it may become the order of the day that commodity prices rise no matter what the dollar does," says Dennis Gartman. "That is, we can see commodity prices rising when the dollar falls and we can see commodity prices rising when the dollar rises as well."
--Commodities rising no matter what the dollar does? Hmm. That sounds good to be true. But it is true that the value of the USD is only one driver of commodity prices. Others include basics like supply, demand, and commodity-intensive growth in developing economies. Gartman must believe all those factors line up squarely behind higher commodity prices this year.
--If he's right it would be bullish for Aussie resource stocks. In fact just yesterday Pilbara iron ore darling Fortescue Metals led the pack on the ASX with a 13% gain. This is entirely a play on higher contract prices for iron ore. Those weren't traditionally that volatile until about five years ago...when annual Chinese steel production began a hockey-stick like rise.
--You'd take a punt on the ore juniors now if you were convinced that a) that China was charging ahead this year and b) that global industrial growth will generate higher demand for steel (in excess of high production figures). Buying Aussie ore juniors now is a call option on a bullish global economy, as far as we can see.
--How about the other side of the trade, though? We read over a report from last year by Pivot Capital Management called "China's Investment Boom: the Great Leap into the Unknown." The report basically concludes that China already has industrial overcapacity and that it's resource-intensive phase of growth has already exceeded historical comparisons (to the US, Japan, and Korea."
--All of that argues for much lower resource demand from China. In fact Pivot says, "The coming slowdown in China has the potential to be a similar watershed event for world markets as the reversal of the U.S. subprime and housing boom. The ramifications will be far-reaching across most asset classes, and will present major opportunities to exploit."
--We won't remake Pivot's entire case here. But this conclusion is worth presenting: In our view investors have underestimated both the maturity of the Chinese growth cycle as well as the degree to which recent growth is a direct extension of the global credit bubble. This bubble had two major manifestations."
--Other investors have referred to these two manifestations as "Chimerica-China + America". "The first, which started unraveling globally in early 2007, was evident in excesses in real estate, consumption, and private equity. The second manifestation, which has yet to fully deflate, was a boom in capital expenditure, led primarily by China."
--Now it would be presumptuous to say that all Chinese capital spending was somehow derivative of American consumer demand. China has other trading partners and markets, although without America things might not be so flash. But it is without doubt true that Chinese capital spending is a direct consequence of the global credit bubble.
--The upside of a capital spending boom is you get factories, roads, bridges, and the physical infrastructure required to run a productive economy. The downside-if that spending boom is orchestrated for the sake of keeping employment up or for the sake of "busy work" to get money into the economy-is that investment decisions are not made by the market (real demand from people with money) but by bureaucrats.
--So we'll see what kind of boom China has bought itself this year. Pivot believes China's capital spending activity (and thus demand for raw commodities) has already peaked. It says, "China is already a country with ample manufacturing capacity and increasingly well-developed infrastructure, which does not support the notion of significant pent-up investment needs in China."
--Iron ore bulls beware.
--Everything happens at the margin. That is the old axiom of economics. What we've been trying to show this week is that the world's economy is at the margin. But it's the border between an older and failing economic arrangement based on cheap energy and credit...and whatever lies over the border.
--Trouble is, no one knows what lies over the border. It's easier to hunker down in the world you know that prepare for a world full of unknowns. But easier is not always better. So we're stocking up our lifeboat with one item at a time, preparing to set sail. Not that it will be an easy cruise.
--Life on the frontier is chaotic and competitive. Any time you have lots of motion, you get friction. And friction produces heat and light and sometimes destruction (socially and economically too, not just physically).
--But good things can happen in heat too. Think of bacon frying in a greasy pan. What's not to like about that? So the task for 2010 is to turn market friction into a nice big greasy plate of bacon. More on that tomorrow.
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And now over to Bill Bonner in Baltimore, Maryland:

Why have we come back to the USA? For 15 years, the children followed us. Now, we will follow them.

One of the surprises of advanced parenthood is how involved we still are in the lives of our children. We thought they would leave home and that would be the end of it. The nest would be empty. Instead, it has merely changed...from a house to a hotel. They come. They go. They need some advice. (But they don't want suggestions.) They need help with this. They could use a hand with that. They have something to pick up...something to drop off. They wonder what happened to their leather coats. They ask Dad to look over a contract. They want to tell Mom about something personal.

Not that we're complaining. Au contraire, we're delighted. We're just surprised. Then again, we are easily surprised. We are surprised that a sickly economy seems so healthy to so many people. And we are doubly surprised that the world's most indebted nation pays less than 4% interest to borrow money for ten years.

Of course, surprises, by their very nature, are fleeting. And we would imagine that the surprisingly low rates of interest the US Treasury pays to borrow money will come to an end...sometime during the next decade.

For those readers who neglected to tune in on Monday, we announced our new Trade of the Decade: Sell Treasury bonds, buy Japanese stocks.

Since we announced our trade we've gotten a number of responses. Not much argument with selling Treasury bonds. Although Richard Koo disagrees. He thinks the Treasury market will hold up, as it did in Japan. But our guess is that Treasuries are living on borrowed time (not to mention borrowed money) in BOTH the US and Japan.

Most of the response came in regard to our long side recommendation: buy Japanese stocks. Few approved. So we were feeling lonely and isolated...just the way we like to feel...until we got this from Byron Wein. One of his surprising predictions for 2010:

Japan stands out as the best performing major industrialized market in the world as its currency weakens and its exports improve. Investors focus on the attractive valuations of dozens of medium sized companies in a market selling at one quarter of its 1989 high. The Nikkei 225 rises above 12,000.

We did our part. If the US economy remains in a slump, it's not our fault. If Detroit can't make a profit, it's not because of us. We went out and bought a truck. We contributed to the economy. We added demand.

The Ford F-150 is a nice truck. Comfortable. Smooth. Quiet. It's probably a difficult export item. It's too big for most foreign markets, where people are more concerned with fuel economy and have smaller parking places.

GM reports that its sales to China are rising sharply, but it's hard to imagine much demand for the F-150 in China. Smaller, lighter, more economical and cheaper trucks are available.

But your editor is in the USA now. He has a right to use all the gas he wants - at half the price of gas in Europe. It's in the constitution somewhere. Besides, it's been so cold around here he figures the atmosphere must need a little more CO2; the greenhouse effect isn't as effective as people seem to think. But here in Baltimore it is warm compared to many other areas. The Des Moines paper says it is "30 degrees below normal." Seoul, South Korea, just got the most snow it has had in 70 years.

Enough of that... The Daily Reckoning is about money. And we're on the case...

If you read the papers you're likely to think that the recession is over...we're in full recovery mode...with rising sales, rising production, and rising prices. This year is going to be a good one for stocks...and the US economy is coming back stronger than expected.

Is it true?

Well, it's sort of true. The recession is over...the depression continues. As we keep saying, if you're going to make a royal mess of things, you need taxpayer support. And with the unwitting and unwilling support of millions of American taxpayers, the federal authorities are busily making a bad situation worse.

Don't believe us? No worries. Since everyone is so sure that the economy is hunky dory, the burden of proof is on us to show that it is not.

First, we point out that the evidence is mixed. Here's David Rosenberg, on the 'new normal:'

"...what was previously unthinkable suddenly becomes the 'new normal'. >From March 1983 (when the Reagan-led economic expansion took hold) through to September 2008 (when Lehman collapsed) we never once had a month where US vehicle sales came in as low as 11 million units at an annual rate. That is a span of 25 years.

"In yesterday's WSJ, page B1, there is a huge article titled 'Late Surge in Car Sales Raises Hopes for 2009.' This 'surge' seems to have taken sales up to 11 million units in December (data out later today), which would be up from 10.9 million in November. So here we are today, and it is apparently good news that we had virtually no growth in sales towards the end of the year even with dramatic incentives according to the article, GM gave its dealers $7,000 for some of its models and that we had 11 million units when the 'old normal' was 16 million units (not to mention that 12 million is the cutoff for replacement demand - autos are still being taken off the highways and driveways of America)."

"Personal Bankruptcy Filings Rising Fast," says The Wall Street Journal. That's the way depressions work. It takes time for people to run out of money and out of options. Then, they give up...admit defeat...and get on with their lives.

That's true for the housing market too. People hold on. They wait. They hope prices will go up. And finally, they give up. That's when prices really go down. That hasn't happened yet. The depression is still young! David Rosenberg again:

"One would think that of all the sectors that should be benefiting from all the government largesse it would be housing - but at 355k in November, new home sales were down 11% MoM and the fifth lowest level in 3 decades. It is now taking the builders a record 14 months to locate a buyer upon completion of a unit. And the unsold inventory shot back up to 7.9 months' supply from 7.2 in October. Sales of completed homes are still down 38% from what were already depressed levels of a year ago."

"Living on nothing but food stamps," says a New York Times headline. A record 39 million people are getting food stamps. For some of them, that's all they have. They've used up their unemployment compensations. They've spent all their savings. They've mooched off of relatives and friends. Now all they've got is the kindness of strangers who work for the US federal government.

[Editor's Note: Bill Bonner & Lila Rajiva's new book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, is now available in Australia from The Educated Investor. Order here for a 15% discount.]
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And more reckoning:
Carmen Reinhardt and Ken Rogoff say that "higher debt may stunt economic growth." Hey, this is getting interesting. Maybe we're not entirely alone here at The Daily Reckoning.

This is the second point we were going to make. For the most part, there is no recovery happening. And the part of the recovery that is actually happening is a fraud.

You can't cure a problem of too much debt by borrowing more...even if the borrower is the federal government. When the private sector was over-borrowing, it was absorbing resources it couldn't really afford. Plus, it was sending the wrong signal to producers, leading them to believe they had real customers on the other end of the line. What they had were people pretending to have more purchasing power than they really had. And when the credit got turned off, these customers disappeared, leaving the manufacturing sector with too much capacity and the retail sector with too much floor space to sell it.

Now, the government is doing the same thing - taking up resources it cannot really afford...and redirecting them to uses that it really can't sustain. What's more, this use creates a phony GDP... production for which there may or may not be any real demand. It looks like real GDP to the economists...after all, people are making money and spending it. But is anyone really any better off by building a piece of expensive machinery that gets shipped to Afghanistan at enormous cost and is later abandoned there? Or how about hiring another 1,000 bureaucrats to process health care paperwork? Is the world a better place as a result?

In the private economy, people are always making mistakes. People buy things they really don't need with money they really don't have. Then, they pay the price.

In the public economy, people are always making mistakes too. But since the person who makes the mistake is not the one who pays the price there is little incentive to ever recognize the mistake or to stop it. Just the opposite. In the public economy, people are rewarded for failure. The worse a situation becomes...the more money gets thrown towards it. Just look at Detroit!

Government mistakes become eternal...programs that can't be stopped because too many jobs would be lost...useless community centers that can't be closed...wars that go on forever...the bureau of this...the department of that...

More and more parasites...fewer and fewer honest workers. But parasites do not build honest prosperity. They just waste resources.

Driving home from work yesterday, we saw a billboard with a curious message:

"Birth defects? Call John McClure. Lawyer. Get what you deserve."

Yes, even in the private sector - with generous help from the government court system - the parasites are everywhere... And always with the same message: get something from someone else...without working for it.

It all goes on...until it all goes broke.

Finally, Patrick Cox, Editor of The Breakthrough Technology Alert, discusses one of the newest "gee whiz" technologies to catch his fancy...

Here's a new addition to your tech lexicon: Nanotech lithography - a technology that enables you to "print" electronics on virtually anything.

Xerox has developed a silver-based conductive ink that can be printed on everything from plastics to textiles. The ink's melting temperature of 140 degrees Celsius is low enough to allow printing on plastics. Instead of expensive fabrication facilities, specialized inkjet printers will be able to print circuits that could be used as part of flexible signage, radio frequency identifier tags and even novelty clothing.

Beyond logic circuits, energy storage devices will be printable as well. Two years ago, chemists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., were able to place a thin film of cellulose over a surface of carbon nanotubes. This breakthrough will enable paper and CNT-based batteries. Stanford researchers have been able to take a paper substrate and coat it with ink made of silver and carbon nanotubes to create working 'paper batteries.'

Paper-based batteries charge and discharge quickly, making them suitable for a wide variety of technologies. Together, these breakthroughs herald an era of ultra-cheap, easily manufactured energy storage...

New nanotech-scale manufacturing and materials technologies in the semiconductor industry are going to power a revolution in how we make electronic devices, power our homes and collect and analyze information. Right now, the vast majority of people have no idea how profound these changes are going to be.

Regards, - -Patrick Cox, - -for The Daily Reckoning Australia

 

was´nt meant friendly.

And your language is a Germanic one, Anglo Saxonian, look that up!

Ahh, you see? All around Hamburg.

And where YOU want to go to eat my dear, I went to **** 35 years ago!