Enrico!

Mirfeysal Bagherzadeh calls for Islamic nations to cut oil exports to supporters of Israel.   I hope his call is heeded.  It is truly a great tragedy for the United States that prices of crude oil have fallen so far in the last quarter.  We need to get off imported oil.  It will be very easy for us to do so, but we need the incentive of profit to make it work explosively.  If crude oil is selling for $140 per bbl, conversion is totally a no brainer.  At $40 a bbl, the profit incentive is missing.

Cut us off, you towel head!  You will be doing us the biggest favor of all time.

The totally worthless scumbag traitor Tom Craddick is about to be evicted from the Speaker’s post.  “Good riddance” isn’t nearly strong enough.

It will probably be revealed in the ensuing investigation that Craddick is a long-term sleeper agent planted in the Texas GOP by Teddy Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson many years ago.

Under Craddick’s watch, the Texas GOP controlled ever minute shred of political power in Texas.  How did Craddick wield this power?  He failed to address the still disastrous situation with public school finance (which, by the way, is by far the most important and particular function of the lege in our state government) and he ramrodded the imposition of a disastrous tax on GROSS RECEIPTS of businesses in Texas which is a dead lock to retard economic activity and growth until this brain-dead piece of legislation is repealed.

I don’t know much about Joe Straus from San Antonio, but I do know he isn’t Tom Craddick, and that’s enough.

It’s a slow news day, so Enrico is going to scoff at word usage.

After pondering for all of 23 seconds, Enrico concludes that the headline of this article from the HouBizJrnl is an attempted pun, rooted in the writer’s excessive age and concomitantly excessive cluelessness about the fact that no one who is not a member of AARP knows the other meaning of “terminal” to which he alludes.

But Enrico COULD be wrong.

It was so predictable.  Blago has defied damn near everyone and appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s vacated US Senate seat.  Roland Burris is a black fellow.

This oh-so-obvious manuever puts the ratsocrats on the horns of an irresolvable dilemma.  The supposed champions of a race-blind society will stand up on their hind legs and say without a trace of self consciousness that it is essential to appoint a black man to replace a black man.  The Senate ratsocrat leadership (Harry Screed) has previously announced that Blago need not bother making an appointment because the Senate will not seat his appointment.

The ratsocrats won’t dare to reject Burris.  This round goes to Blago.

By the way, there is no reason to think that Burris will be any worse a senator than anyone else Blago might have appointed, and or anyone else who might have won a special election.

It has not been disclosed what the final selling price was for the Senate seat.

Here’s a good piece from the WSJ, distilling lessons for investors from 2008.   The best lesson is #7:

7. Psmith was right, too. Who? This fictional character, created by the great English comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse, frequently warned against the perils of confusing “the unusual with the impossible.” Certainly the events of the last year were unusual. Alas, too many thought they were impossible.

Here, in one line, is the key message from “The Black Swan.”

Tom Craddick has been a complete disaster as speaker of the Texas Lege.  He rejected the popularly led property tax revolt, and supported the completely brain-dead, ruinous gross receipts business tax.

Please write to him and tell him to drop dead.

He isn’t crazy.   A Russian professor has been predicting since 1998 that the United States would break up in 2010.  The WSJ does a nice piece on it, and treats the scenario with the respect it deserves.

It isn’t a crazy idea, and the specifics seem to be drawn from any number of the “future history” style of SciFi novels.

Let me just state, I do not think this will happen, but I don’t have much of a quarrel with the prof’s proposed probability of this scenario unfolding, which he pegs at about 50%.

The specific mechanism he proposes, wealthy US states refusing to back the FedGov in its insane antics and seceding, is certainly plausible, especially as one contemplates the challenges facing Barack Obama and the implications of the rhetoric he has spouted during the campaign.

If Obama appoints Wesley Mouch to the cabinet, I think you’ll hear a lot of people calling for the Russian prof’s scenario to be immediately enacted.

Obama had best bear in mind the bubba factor.  Citizens in the west are heavily armed, and won’t be robbed without putting up a fight.

Investors and pundits who have been trained by the last twenty years that every stock market decline is a sure-fire money making opportunity are chatting up the notion that we have seen the bottoms and this is a gold-plated moment in history to snap up stocks at bargain prices.

Unfortunately, 20 years of personal experience is not long enough to experience in one’s bones the true time scale of stock market patterns.

We’re in a secular bear market.  In this usage, “secular” means “long term.”  Over the past 100 years, the average secular bear market has lasted about 13 years or so.  This secular bear began in 2000, or, arguably, 2001.  The current state of devastation for the global financial system does not bode well for a shorter-than-average duration of this secular bear.  One ought to expect the long-term negative stock market conditions to persist for another 5 to 10 years.

Now, from 2003 to 2008, we experienced a CYCLICAL bull market, still within the context of the long-term bear market.  This cyclical bull market was of extraordinarily long duration.  A more typical duration for a cyclical bull move during a bear market is 1 to 2 years.

So, now we have clearly entered a cyclical bear move.  How long will it last?  Again, the historically typical duration is in the range 1 to 2 years.

Here’s one thing I’m reasonably confident of:  we won’t be entering a cyclical bull until there is at least talk of the Fed boosting short term interest rates.

I’ve said many times that Japan’s horrible experience beginning in the 90s is a good analogue for our current situation.  Japan’s central bank cut its rates to zero and kept them there until pretty recently.  Could we see a decade of economic contraction?  I really don’t think it will last that long, but I do think we’re in for several years of very tough sledding.

So, we may have seen the bottom.  But, we may stay here for several years.  This is not a buying opportunity.

The bear market move from top to recent low was about 40%.  I think there’s a very good chance the final move from top to bottom will be more than 50%.

Here’s another set of signs to watch for, to tell you when we’ve reached the bottom:

• when everyone knows that only a fool buys stocks
• when Jim Cramer is off the air
• when Business Week’s cover proclaims the death of the stock market
• when the FedGov passes legislation banning the investing of pension and retirement funds in the stock market

I like this last one particularly.  Recently, the FedGov passed legislation REQUIRING 401k administrators to invest new contributions in the stock market for participants who did not specify an investment choice and who were about 50 years old or younger.

The key right now is not so much how to make money with your savings.  The key is not to lose your savings

The outgoing VP has to be excoriated for participating in a presidential administration which gave us looting of the treasury on a scale which rivals the worst ratsocrat excesses.  However, Dick’s personal style is irresistible.

Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Dick confirmed that he told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself, and noted that he regretted nothing about this, as it was warranted, and he bitch-slapped Joe Biden Jr. for not being able to keep straight which parts of the US Constitution are which.

Rule 1:    Always completely understand what you actually own.
Rule 2:    If you don’t understand what you own, don’t invest in it.
Rule 3:   Never forget rule 1.