[hironegro]

let me get this straight..........

US gov't bails out MBS's...........$700billion

US & UK ban short selling because of EVIL speculators manipulating the market (you are only allowed to manipulate up UNLESS it is oil, then only down)

there is now nothing to wicket keep (sorry but i am English and baseball confuses me)

stocks rally for one day

they lose all the 'gains' the next day

CDS's are about to go critcal mass and they are nearly 8 times larger than MBS's

what is keeping the markets from collapse?

what is keeping society from collapse?

please......anyone.........please..........give me an answer, I have financial qualifications and I can't figure it out.

From my POV, we are at missed meal 2 and asking the question 'what is for dinner?'

I have upped my concern level from miffed to peeved to someone is now going to get a kick in the jacobs followed by a Glasgow kiss and a brummy screwdriver to the old blackpool!

we are all daffy ducked

how do you know the cds market will go nuclear? Have the alt-a mortages gone nuclear yet?

[idomar]

how do you know the cds market will go nuclear? Have the alt-a mortages gone nuclear yet?

AFAIK CDS's are not just linked to Mortgages, whether they be Sub-prime, Alt-A or Prime, they can be written against any debt.

If hedge funds are looking shaky, MBS's are looking shaky,CDS's are looking shaky Government debt (most of the western world) is looking shaky, to reiterate my question,

what is holding the market up?

[EnergyUnlimited]

how do you know the cds market will go nuclear? Have the alt-a mortages gone nuclear yet?

AFAIK CDS's are not just linked to Mortgages, whether they be Sub-prime, Alt-A or Prime, they can be written against any debt.

If hedge funds are looking shaky, MBS's are looking shaky,CDS's are looking shaky Government debt (most of the western world) is looking shaky, to reiterate my question,

what is holding the market up?

1. Delusions.
2. Wishful thinking.
3. Government interventions (means US taxpayer).

But don't worry.
That peculiar state will not last long.

[dorlomin]

How much trouble are they in? And why is there name and the town they are from (Zug) suddenly getting bandied about all over the place?

Anyone on here got an idea.

link

Glencore credit risk soars on mining fear - Report
Bloomberg cited Mr Jonathan Pitkanen a credit analyst at Aviva Investors in London as saying that the cost of protecting against a default by the world's largest commodity trader Glencore International AG has risen 5 fold in 2 months as investors run scared from mining companies.

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Glencore is the largest shareholder in Swiss copper and nickel producer Xstrata Plc, which has plunged 74% on the London Stock Exchange in the same period. Credit default swaps for Baar, Switzerland based Glencore's 5 year bonds climbed to 1,240 basis points.

The chart of the day shows how Glencore's credit default swaps jumped while shares of Xstrata fell.

Mr Pitkanen said in an interview that “It is all fear at the moment. People are scared and they are running scared from this sector. The market's reaction has been completely overcooked.”

Standard & Poor's on October 14th cut its outlook for Glencore to stable from positive and affirmed its BBB rating. He said that “The movement in the spread doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to their credit fundamentals at the moment.”

A basis point on a credit default swap contract protecting USD 10 million of debt from default for 5 years is equivalent to USD 1,000 a year. The contracts rise as investor confidence deteriorates and fall as it improves.

[Leanan]

Matt Simmons and Robert Hirsch mentioned Glencore at the end of that FSN interview on Saturday.

[essex]

What is most interesting is what Simmons had to say about a secretive Swiss commodity trader, Glencore , which may be at the root of the current decline in the price of oil. They are in big trouble and with OPEC taking oil off the market from next week and a likely spike in price they could go under.
From a web search.

I caught a post today on the Swiss Blog Zeitenwende about Glencore, the Swiss corporate giant, which should reinforce the fact that this credit crisis is far from over. As the original post was in German, I have translated it into English below:


If Charts could speak, what would the following one tell us then? This concerns five-year Credit default Swaps of the company Glencore. In case you have never heard of this company, then now is the critical time. Glencore is the largest enterprise by turnover in Switzerland, recording record sales of 142.3 billion USD in 2007. According to its own data, Glencore directly or indirectly employs 52,000 employees. And obviously some of it has gone pear-shaped

The company, which is active in raw materials, was originally founded by notorious Marc Rich and has always been completely in private ownership.

Today Glencore ranks among the leading raw material companies world-wide and deals with, among other things, production, processing and trade of aluminum, alumina, bauxite, ferrous alloys, nickel, zinc, copper, lead, coal and oil, as well as agricultural products. Right now, things are looking bad for raw materials. Apparently, bad is how things are going at Glencore, if this Chart reflects the reality of the company. Only - one does not know the details. Concerning the rumors that Glencore could be having liquidity problems, an analyst at BNP said that the company has more than 3.5 billion USD of cash and open lines of credit as of the end of of Octobers.



The chart speaks volumes. While you may have never heard of Glencore until now, I suspect it is a company that will become very familiar to us in due course.

From Wikipedia:
Glencore International AG (management buy out of Marc Rich & Co AG) is one of the world's largest suppliers of commodities and raw materials, and is also among the world's largest privately held companies. As of 2006, it was Europe's sixth-largest company in terms of turnover.[1] According to The Sunday Times,[2] the company had USD 10.9 billion in shareholders' equity at the end of 2006 and is completely owned by its management.

With production facilities around the world, Glencore supplies metals, minerals, crude oil, oil products, coal, natural gas and agricultural products to international customers in the automotive, power generation, steel production and food processing industries.


According to an Australian Public Radio report, "Glencore's history reads like a spy novel".[3] The company was founded as Marc Rich & Co. AG in 1974 by billionaire commodity trader Marc Rich, who was charged with tax evasion and illegal business dealings with Iran in the U.S., but pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001. In 1993 and 1994, Rich sold all of his majority share in Marc Rich & Co. AG back to the company.[4] The enterprise, renamed Glencore, is now owned and run by his former associates, including former Glencore CEO Willy Strothotte and present CEO Ivan Glasenberg. In 2005, proceeds from an oil sale to Glencore were seized as fraudulent, in an investigation into corruption in the Republic of Congo[5].

[ReverseEngineer]

In shrinking economy bailout supply will dry out and bansters will go to each others throat too.

We definitely agree on this point, along with the point the Middle Class is the Barrier between the Banksters and the Guillotine. That was an AWESOME and important point EU, thanks for injecting it into the argument.

As to the Justice required here for punishing the currently indebted, we don't totally agree there, I'm all for Forgiveness of a certain amount of debt in the interest of not putting every head on the chopping block or everyone into slavery, or at least the overwhelming portion of people anyhow. Just as I put some limits on total Wealth in determining who sees the Death Penalty and who just sees some Penance scrubbing toilets, so also would I put some limits on the total debt any individual accumulated. One of the most interesting paradoxes is that it the most "Wealthy" people who actually have the most Debt. Its almost one in the same thing.

Making determinations on the level of guilt of each individual, from Bankster to McMansion Dweller to J6P is something for the Courts to decide, by Rule of Law. I am not in favor of Lynching or Mob Justice. I am however completely in favor of the Inquisition, as long as the RIGHT laws are put into place and are carried out in a just and fair trial. After the fair trial, if you are deemed Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity of sufficient gravity, I have no problem whatsoever with Hanging, a Firing Squad, Lethal Injection, the Guillotine or being Burned at the Stake. That's just a choice of the means of carrying out the Justice.

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

If humanity survives this century relatively intact it will be because of the increase of scientific awareness and control not because One of the Various God's decides to save us. The various God's will instead drag us to war. I hope and pray not.

One God or Many, insofar as the human playing field goes, you don't see much direct interjection too often. Certainly none that I saw in my lifetime, its up to anyone to wonder whether Joan of Arc was Divinely Inspired or not in a previous era. I'm personally not counting on God to come in here and Smite the Wicked. Its White against Black here on the Chessboard of the world, and I am no King or Queen, just a Bishop on the the White side. I will not be a Pawn here, but Pawns are a part of the game too and White will not triumph over Black without well positioned Pawns, who will mostly be slaughtered unfortunately on both sides. Why do you think Chess has been called a Game of the Gods?

Make no mistake, on Earth there is not Unity, there are always 2 sides, Good and Evil, Black and White. How can you know which side you REALLY fight for in this world? You can't, you'll only find out the real truth at the end of the game of life, when you walk into the Great Beyond. However, for the time you walk the earth, you have to make a CHOICE which side of the line you will fight on, there IS no Fence to sit on on the Chessboard of life. I made my choice which side I stand on, I stand with Tom Joad.

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

You will have to make a choice also, even TWilliam will when the Big Show comes to a Theatre Near You.

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

It seems that after months of discussion our positions becoming to be reconcilable to some degree.

In the words of "The Outlaw Josey Wales"

I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war.

Reverse Engineer

[mos6507]

He'll lick his wounds and come back. He's too much of an attention whore to stay away for keeps.

[cbxer55]

He'll lick his wounds and come back. He's too much of an attention whore to stay away for keeps.

Whatever!

I prefer his writings to yours any day of the week. At least his posts have some substance.

Crawl on back in the cave you slithered out of, and eat a rat or something. I hear there are plenty of them over in England at this time. LINK

[ReverseEngineer]

And maybe that's the point here.. that historically, tumultuous change is the norm, not the exception. We haven't really had a world-wide tumultuous crisis since WWII. Coinidentally, that war got going just as the Oil Age had ramped up to full steam.

The world has been in a perpetual state of crises since WWII. You forgot the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, etc etc etc? Just because you lived a nice easy life here in the land of Good & Plenty by no means is indicative of what 90% of the world's people were going through over this period of time. They got fed and that mostly kept all hell from breaking loose, but basically we have been lurching from one crisis to the next for as long as I have been alive.

The main difference now is you see a systemic crises in energy that affects the monetary system pinned to it. So the first world nations like the US and Britain which run this system are now being adversely affected. It is different in scope from what has occurred recently, but its not fundamentally different in its causes than the crash of previous civilizations. What is coming down the pipe is VERY clear, the only questions are how long the spin down takes. If you prefer to deny this and say "nobody can know what its going to be like", feel free. Its just another form of denial though.

RE

[ReverseEngineer]

Great job on the new strip, flapjax---excellent caricatures. Bernake trying to fix the currency printer is great.

Looks like you and RE are hunting down possible connections between Fiat Money and the Fiat-Chrysler-UAW automobile company? Thanks again for sharing these with us here at PeakOil.

-----------

Fiat buying up Chrysler was too good a pun to pass up, I hadda use that one. Its tangential to the main point of this series though.

Just to let everyone know, I've sent the first 6 strips off to see about getting a major magazine to publish them. I will let you guys know if we manage to break into the big time of the MSM

RE

[ReverseEngineer]

This thread is a limerick just waiting to happen.

There once was a Doomer from Nantucket
who ordered Mountain House Foods by the Bucket
He had Gold in his Vault
and quoted John Gault
But when Peak Oil hit no diesel was left to Truck It

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

They work very closely with their suppliers and in the new world of reduced production and shipping still cannot meet their goals of "always available" every item every day. JIT as practiced in globalist retail is broken I assure you. PS the entire 7 Netherlands is less then 1/2 the size of the average SMALL d c area of responsibility.

When you look at the product distribution model, you have to realize that JIT is malleable. If you look at Walmart as your model of this paradigm, they constantly get data back on which stores are still selling and which are not. You are not going to see generalized loss of product through all Walmarts, you are going to see more loss of product in failing Walmarts. In other words, Walmarts i locations that have high unemployment and low sales are going to see less product delivered to those stores. Walmarts in locations that are still functioning economically where sales remain good will for the time being continue to be resupplied. The remaining trucks will be directed towards any Walmarts that have good sales numbers, and the remaining products will be directed toward those stores.

As a result, areas with the highest unemployment numbers and the lowest sales numbers will see the shelves vacated first. Thus an area like Las Vegas where the unemployment is hitting hard is likely to be the first area where Walmart directs less trucks to, and less supplies.

My bet would be that in areas with currently low relative unemployment, the Walmart shelves remain stocked to the hilt with whatever they still have left to distribute. In areas where unemployment is high, they aren't restocking the shelves very fast. They are going to direct their fleet of trucks to whatever Walmarts are still maintaining good sales numbers.

This will IMHO exacerbate problems in underperforming areas, and eventually force people to move toward areas that are still functioning in some respect economically. For Walmart, that would mean the "good" stores will see even more business, and they will close the underperforming stores. You will see an overall shrinkage in the nodes of distribution here toward what are currently still good performing stores. My guess would be these mostly are stores that sit on the border between rural and city areas.

As a Doomer, your best bet to remain in the loop of what remains of Walmarts JIT system is to be as near as possible to a Walmart DC. The Hubs will be the last to fall in that system. In areas where unemployment is high, the indivdual Walmart stores will not be able to meet sales targets, and they will be closed over time. Might take a bit of time for this to happen depending on how quckly the monetary system breaks down. No more than 5 years though IMHO.

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

Lyrics by Reverse Engineer
Music by Bob Seger

Sing to the tune of "Fire Lake"

Who's gonna buy that last US Treasury Bill
Who's gonna make that end mistake
Who wants to drink that awful swill
All the way to Fire Lake
Who wants to break the news about Uncle Joe
You remember Uncle Joe
Left a few broken eggs in his wake
Who wants to tell poor Obama
Joe ran away from Fire Lake
Joe ran away from Fire Lake

Who wants to leave the bond market
Buying trashy stocks
With their long shots still falling
Shorting as they run
Pigmen smile so shy
And they sell so well
And they lay you down so fast
Till you look straight up and say
Oh lord
The End is really here at last

Who wants to play those eights and aces
Who wants a dislocate
Who needs a stake
Who wants to buy that last old doomstead
Far away from Fire Lake
Head out
Who wants to escape from Fire Lake
And head out
Who wants to escape from Fire Lake
Head out
Away from Fire Lake
Who's gonna do it

Reverse Engineer

[cbxer55]

Actually I prefer the Bob Seger version!

And especially good to see you back.

Hopefully it does not get deleted.

[ReverseEngineer]

Actually I prefer the Bob Seger version!

And especially good to see you back.

Hopefully it does not get deleted.

I expect the lifespan to be short

RE

[cbxer55]

Joto and I are witness.

[ReverseEngineer]

patience said:

A new IMF currency based on SDR sounds like the same old wolf in a new sheepskin.

Sounds like a plan to me! Exchange our worthless debt based fiat for their worthless debt base fiat. Let’s parse that, and see what the operable word is?

Operable word is Bull$hit.

RE