Thinking about disclosures By Fred Cederholm

Column for on/after March 23rd, 2008

I'’ve been thinking about disclosures. Actually I’ve been thinking about calendar 2007, financial statements, the auditors’ opinion letter, notes to the financial statements, contingencies, and NEWS. Calendar 2007 is now (almost) history. It was a year that was a far cry from the best of times and I fear that 2008 is shaping up to be… well, a year of challenges of even far greater dimensions. Things are moving ever so quickly and it seems that we increasingly only learn about events, not as they unfold, but when the “deeds” are done and the crises are “thus behind us.” It is often said: “that it ain’t over until the (horizontally challenged) lady sings.” We are about to be treated to a concert!

You see in very short order the independent external audits of calendar year entities and corporations will be concluded; and the reports will be issued to management, the shareholders, and the general public. Audited financial statements are really things of beauty. As a forensic accountant, auditor, and writer; I am in awe of how they “fairly present” the activities and status of the smallest of businesses to largest of MEGA corporations for an entire year in a scant 15 to 25 pages. The general public doesn’t have a clue what all goes into these annual examinations which culminate in the issuance of these reports - with their auditors’ letters, financial statements, and the notes to them. These are so critical and informative to both the public and the workings of our financial, economic, investment, and governmental systems (and society) as a whole. The reports for the events of 2007 will soon be issued and in many cases will become the fodder for the NEWS stories on page one.

The auditors’ report letter represents a formal opinion, qualification, or disclaimer as to the veracity and “material fairness” of the contents and summaries which follow. The opinion letter provides assurance and comfort that data/information included was examined in accordance with Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) and presented in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). These are “terms of arts” and have specific meaning within the vast array of the users of the reporting as well as within the accounting profession itself. Accounting is clearly an “integrity profession” where firm and staff reputations reign paramount.

With all that has happened (and is happening) within the business, financial, and investment world; the release of the 2007 reports will receive more than the usual scrutiny. Was the auditors’ opinion letter unqualified – indicating “a clean bill of health?” Was it qualified as in “subject to” or except for” - indicating specifically identified problems or issues pending further resolution? Was it qualified as to the “going concern” of the entity for another year? Or… was it “adversely written” that the financial information SHOULD NOT BE taken at face? This last option is RARELY issued.

In times of uncertainties and rapidly moving developments, the notes to the financials take on added significance. This is particularly true for pending litigation and other known contingencies. Such are generally covered in separately noted explanations where outcomes are either described as “reasonably possible, probable, or remote.” These projected outcomes are very important as they forewarn the readers/ users about possible impact. Coming media coverage should prove interesting!

Certain events and industries now find themselves under the microscope of public scrutiny. They make the NEWS and are the fodder in the reporting of it. This is as it should be in a free and open society. Timely and complete reporting is essential in these times of change and/or looming crisis. The public has the right to know and the media has the obligation to inform them. TH*NK of the NEWS as coming from all directions - North, East, West, and South… hence, the NEWS!

I’m Fred Cederholm and I’ve been thinking. You should be thinking, too.

Copyright 2008 Questions, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Fed Ropes Nothing - You All Hung Yourselves By HT

The top controls all the markets of the world...

The top sells and all the speculators (Bottom) get taken to the cleaners...

The top, you know people with wealth? Well you all (Speculators) bid up their wealth...

It's a bet speculators are making...when is the top going to sell?

They sell when they sell...and they buy when they buy...speculators are along for the ride... more

http://hypertiger.blogspot.com/

Global systemic crisis – End of 2008: Pension funds go off the rails

Public announcement GEAB N°23 (March 16, 2008)

According to LEAP/E2020, by the end of 2008, a formidable debacle will affect pension funds all over the world, endangering the entire system of capital-based pensions. This financial calamity will bear a particularly dramatic human dimension because it will come at the precise moment when the first wave of baby-boomers phase out of the labour force in the US, EU and Japan: pension fund revenues are collapsing at the very moment when they should be making their first large series of payments to pensioners. In this 23rd edition of the GEAB, our team anticipates the evolution of the upcoming pension fund crisis, details which countries are the most exposed (in particular in Europe) and provides a number of operational and strategic recommendations to face the situation.... more

http://www.leap2020.eu/

Ron Paul Third Party, 2008-2012: How to Do It By Nelson Hultber

by Nelson Hultberg
(Libertarian)

The political revolution spawned by Ron Paul will not be won in one campaign. No profound paradigmatic change in society comes so easily. Unfortunately those "sunshine patriots" who expected this to be easy sailing with no setbacks will now abandon the fight and accuse Ron Paul of selling out. Such is human nature.

This being said, however, we do have to acknowledge that the Ron Paul campaign had some serious flaws, and the most important one was this: He ran as a Republican! To anyone with a sense of history, it should be obvious that trying to change the Republicans into Jeffersonian individualists is a fool's game. They sold out the cause of freedom way back in '68 when they embraced Richard Nixon, and then furthered their capitulation by accommodating the neo-con infiltration of the 70s and 80s..... more

http://www.nolanchart.com/article3139.html

China is not a menace By Joost van Steenis

Xiamen, March 19 2008

Dear reader, this is the 97th Letter of an Autonomous Thinker

The elite needs enemies to control the own masses and to persevere its privileged position.

The Russian menace has withered away, so new menaces are created.

The Muslim menace is welcome but the few poor and weak countries of the "Axis of Evil" are not much of a threat. When the Western troops withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Muslim menace will also disappear.

A more lasting menace is needed.

The elite invented the threat of the "booming" economy of China.

India is useless as a menace because this country never leaves the economic morass because of corruption, the caste system, fights between fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims, the secondary place of women and the weak central government, the prime cause of a failing infrastructure.

CHINA has become the target!

"China is growing so fast that it will soon overtake us!"

So what, are only Westerns allowed to be on top of the world?

I cannot imagine that Chinese leaders can be worse than the war-mongering and greedy American leaders.

The Chinese menace is based on lies.

According to figures of the IMF about the per capita GDP based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) the distance between the West and the rest is increasing (all figures in dollars).

Land 1980 2000 2005 2006 growth 2002-2006

in % in dollars

China 420 3853 6193 6760 74 2907

India 643 2402 3262 3490 45 1088

Thailand 1366 6202 8542 9166 48 3027

USA 12104 34344 41517 43538 27 9194

Holland 9896 27144 30363 31643 17 4499

China overtook India but the Western economies expanded much more than the Eastern.

The elite emphasizes the growth in percentages. But in real figures the American economy grew three times more than the Chinese.

Is China overtaking the West? Rubbish!

The GDP figures do not say much about the earnings of common people as for example workers with the lowest wages.

The minimum wage of workers in the manufacturing industry (if paid out and if a worker has work) in Bangkok (Thailand) is about 200 bath a day, 100 euro a month, slightly more than the minimum wages in Guangdon, the richest Chinese province, and more than twice the highest minimum wage in India. The earnings in the country side where more than half of the population lives are much lower.

Those earnings are peanuts compared with a minimum of more than one thousand (1000) euro in my country (The Netherlands). And in my country everybody, millionaires as well as beggars, get 1000 euro a month when they are over 65 years old.

The minimum wage in California is about 8 dollar an hour, maybe 650 euro a month. Elsewhere in the USA it is lower - with a minimum in Kansas of only 2.65 dollar. It seems that some parts of China can indeed overtake some parts of the USA.

But I do not see the difference in welfare between the richer parts of the West and the East are disappearing in a short time.

Once more the elite is telling fairy-tales.

The figures tell a clear story. Though the economy of China is growing, the per capita GDP in the West is growing more. In this way China will never catch up with the developed world.

China is not a menace.

The Chinese leaders (by the way much better than the leaders of so-called democratic India) increase the purchasing power of the own masses. But just as in the West most of the growth goes to a small group of rich and privileged people at the top. There is some progress for the masses but it will take ages before the Chinese masses will have a comparable decent life as the Western masses.

The Western elite creates non-existing menaces.

At the same time it supports the coming into being of a Chinese elite that will curtail the own masses.

This globalised elite will rule forever when its basic, safe, prosperous and privileged way of life is not made impossible.

Yours truly, Joost van Steenis

http://members.chello.nl/jsteenis

Ways to increase masspower

Thinking about implosions By Fred Cederholm

Column for on/after March 16th, 2008

I’ve been thinking about implosions. Actually I’ve been thinking about warehousing, leverage, multipliers, magnified expansion/ contraction, fractional reserve banking, and the FED. When I learned last week that the FED had created yet another “accommodation” to swap newly minted US Treasury securities for $200 BILLION in par value Cleverly Rigged Accounting Ploy (CRAP) financial derivatives that were actually worth less, or even worthless, I was livid. I saw this as yet another lame attempt to bail out the banking industry for their wayward past actions. I asked myself: “Why, why, why?” Then it hit me I was looking at all this from the WRONG direction!

You see our banking, financial, and economic system(s) are highly leveraged - meaning the fractional margins used to enhance the transactions allow one to make the big bucks in an upturn, but cause one to take equally huge hits/ losses in any contraction. This newest “accommodation” by the FED was not to get the declining (in value) derivative paper off the books of the banks - much like ENRON’s tactics - to obfuscate the losses by warehousing them elsewhere until a turnaround or some other “miracle” happened. There was really a far greater clandestine agenda at work here.

A write-down/ write-off of this “CRAP” paper by those holding the items was only a few general ledger tickets and adjusting journal entries away from hitting their regulatory capital. This not only might force an “insolvency;” it would, at the very least, it impact the allowable amounts of their outstanding loans. By the FED assuming the warehousing of these, this forestalled a ballooning contraction for 28 days. Of course, the presumption is that the FED will roll them over and over and over until a time when the institutions can redeem them and write them down/ off on their own.

Under the concept of fractional reserve banking with the current multiplier of 10, banks need only hold 10% of their regulatory capital/ deposits in reserve for cash payouts to depositors. The rest can be loaned out to borrowers. While this does not directly mean that banks can immediately (or directly) loan out 10 times what they have in deposits, the recycling of the money in the system effectively yields that result. It would take the fictional math geek Charlie Epps of CBS’s hit show NUMB3RS to explain the calculus behind the ten fold magnification from deposits to loans. Please bear with me in my highly simplified explanation of how $200 BILLION becomes $2 TRILLION!

To bring the levels of outstanding loans back in compliance/ sync with a reduced regulatory capital, the banks would contract their loan portfolios. They’d start by voiding the unused lines and outstanding letters of credit. As the short term commercial (lending) paper came due in 30, 45, 60, or 90 days. These would NOT be renewed! This would (more than likely) be done against the most creditworthy - not those in financial difficulties. I mean it’s hard to get blood from a turnip. This would cause those whose loans were “called” to put the screws to those parties who owed them money, who would do the same to those who owed them - and so on and so on and so on. Do you see where this is headed? In short order, the $200 BILLION becomes a $2 TRILLION contraction.

Bernanke, Paulson, and the FED Governors literally had a gun to their head regarding this “accommodation.” Of course… they didn’t explain the rationale behind it like I just did. How could they? A $2 TRILLION contraction of outstanding loans would be devastating in the best of times. In this environment of declining employment, the questionable status of the US dollar, and record levels for the EURO, the Yen, the Pound, and a barrel of oil; I don’t even want to go there! Was this most recent $ 200 BILLION “accommodation” enough to stem a $2 TRILLION contraction? Time will tell. I’m Fred Cederholm and I’ve been thinking. You should be thinking, too.

Copyright 2008 Questions, Inc. All rights reserved.

asklet(at)rochelle.net

The Gift Economy - Receiving stimulates giving By Sepp Hasslberger

One of the alternatives to our current economic system, which is based on money created by banks as a debt and heavily laden with a cost called interest, is what has been termed the gift economy. Few would disagree that life could be much better if everything - or at least a good part of what we need for our daily survival - were freely available just for the taking. But alas - the current economic reality is just the opposite - scarcity rules. Everything has a price, and the more scarce something is, the higher the price. To obtain anything we need to pay that price - in other words exchange something of ours for what we wish to receive.

At times - actually I would argue more often than not - scarcity is brought about artificially to manipulate the price and therefore the "exchange value" of goods. Making a profit and paying the piper requires it.

more
http://blog.hasslberger.com/

Fed Official: Mistakes Were Made (No Kidding) By Michael J. Panzer

March 05, 2008

It's not often that regulators -- or any public officials, for that matter -- acknowledge their mistakes. Unfortunately, when they do, the revelations usually come well after the fact, which is not much use to anyone.

More importantly, those mea culpas often serve to make matters worse, because they end up justifying a dramatic response -- often a tightening of the screws -- that proves ill-timed, to say the least. In "Fed Admits Missteps on Banks," the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta details one such example.

more
http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2008/03/fed-official-mi.html

The debt load will destroy us By D. Schechter

The debt load will destroy us
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/

Global Elites Gone Bonkers By SB Kayser

March 10, 2007

Before addressing our global monetary infectious disease, a serious correction has to be made: in many articles 'capitalism bashing' has gone unabated especially since the subprime housing bubble has burst. This is irritating because the notion of big government and central banking (the commerce of usury included) are the two main planks of the Communist Manifesto. Capitalism goes along with limited government and hard currencies. There is no shortage of disconnects in logic. In fact it is kind of appalling to read leftist and pro-globalist editorials and essays vilifying greedy-capitalism restlessly while they merely depict the deep flaws inherent to the centralization of power - aka the Socialist Ideal.

Although Darryl Schoon shows up as a hard currency advocate, he still asserts that capitalism sets in motion its demise, the greater the expansion the greater the debt. Well... well, while we're at it, it would be useful to add: as long as the populace buys this fallacy and fail to realize that savings is impossible when living beyond one's means. This has nothing to do with capitalism but market indoctrination. The boomers thought that they would enjoy retirement and most of them are going to fall very short. Wan Lixin at the ShangaiDaily.com, like many, is fed up and for him everything is crystal clear: The Monster US supercapitalism eats the middle class and democracy. Instead of 'Supercapitalism' he should write 'Superdebtism'. Lixin cites many prominent names but never condemns the credit conditions during the events he describes in length. Again debt addiction and currency debasement are among the recurring fallacies used by the Global Elites to get richer and quicker 'is' anti-capitalist, period. Thinking that the panacea for debt is credit is a 'universal delusion'.

Lenin's famous quote: 'The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency' - ditto, congratulations, mission accomplished!

Frank Shostak explains why too much debt alone sets in motion a series of random shocks: 1) The act of debt liquidation forces individuals into distressed selling of assets - 2) as a result of the debt liquidation the money stock starts shrinking and this in turn slows down the velocity of money - 3) a fall in money leads to a decline in the price level - 4) the value of people's assets falls while the value of their liabilities remains intact, which precipitates bankruptcies...


Whatever systems is in place, none can survive lies and frauds in the long run and this can be traced back to most omnipotent governments that have ruled since the beginning of Mankind. Even the gold standard couldn't prevent the Kings and Emperors from embarking on ruinous military expeditions or reevaluating their coins when they felt in the mood to do so, which is the same as giving an arbitrary value to today banknotes. Markets must define the price or precious metals, fluctuating according to the supply and demand. Neither governments nor central banks can fix their prices by controlling the interest rates as they see fit. 'Price-fixing' lawsuits are nothing new. So why should we let some powers-that-be commit the same crime? What we are really witnessing are the damages of collectivism and debtism, such as described by A. Hayek in 'The Road To Serfdom'.

MORE/LONG
http://www.moneyfiles.org/sbk09.html

Published on: opednews.com

Thinking about checkbooks By Fred Cederholm

Column for on/after March 9th, 2008

I’ve been thinking about checkbooks. Actually I’ve been thinking about fire sales, the housing bubble, credit card balances, employment/ unemployment, the equity markets, the FED, interest rates, the dollar, and oil prices. Last week saw plenty of economic/ financial news about US/ us being covered not only abroad, but also by our domestic media. All of it was negative. In fact, the most ardent of news junkies were hard pressed to find one story in the plus column - that is, unless you referred to an ongoing string of announcements heralding record profits for oil companies.

You see America is up for sale right now. When the going gets tough (and I mean really tough), the tough don’t go shopping; they put their superfluous stuff on the market and try to unload. They don’t just sell what they no longer need, they also try to unload what they can no longer afford! It is a buyers’ market for just about anything you can imagine – houses, vehicles, furniture, equity investments... The problem is there aren’t a whole lot of buyers out there with checkbooks backed by the necessary deposits to cover the purchases.

Those with the cash are sitting tight for now. The “attractive bargains” of this week should prove bigger, even more “attractive,” by waiting. As a consequence, prices continue to drop and the “fire sales” heat up. This is not necessarily a good thing because it is not our own citizenry who are in the best positions to buy, and the foreign $ugar daddies just aren’t interested in what “main street” America has to offer and needs to unload. This applies to those US investment equities held as well.

The housing bubble (passing its gas) has put a record number of properties on the sale block, in pre-foreclosure, and in foreclosure. Real estate values are being deflated big time – not so much in the Mid-West as in the West, the East, and the South where a run up in “paper appreciation” was far greater. This is a natural, but painful swing of the pendulum. For about a decade now, the family home was used as a household ATM providing a seemingly endless source of funds for re-stocking checkbooks and funding what amounted to a profligate shopping spree run amok on steroids.

Outstanding credit card balances grew in sync with the proliferation of home equity loans. Now… maxing out the “plastic money reserves” is the sole avenue to keep many households afloat.

The January figures just out show outstanding consumer credit (plastic money borrowings) hit a record $2.52 TRILLION after rising $6.9 BILLION in January, rising $3.7 BILLION in December, and rising $4.5 BILLION in November. With no cash and a bone dry checkbook, families charge necessities! Many have chosen to stop paying the monthly mortgage to meet credit card minimums.

The most recent employment figures were equally depressing. Payrolls fell by 63,000 in February following a decline of 22,000 in January. The percentage of unemployed workers also went down, but this is only a superficial anomaly. The number of unemployed didn’t truly decline; what we are seeing is those long term without jobs are being excluded from the stats because their benefits have expired. This is no surprise as roughly 60% of jobs’ growth had been due to the housing boom.

Friday, the markets retreated back to the levels of Oct. 2006 - eliminating any gains from the prior 17 months. The employment figures, housing negatives, and burdens of debt clearly took their toll on Wall Street. Pressure is now on the FED to cut interest rates by a half to three-quarters of a point at their March 18^th meeting – IF they wait that long! This will not fix anything, but will cause an immediate drop in the relative value of the US dollar. Import costs (particularly for energy) will surge. I expect at least a 15% spike in the barrel price of crude and the pump price of fuels right out of the chute. OUCH!!! I’m Fred Cederholm and I’ve been thinking. You should be thinking, too.

Copyright 2008 Questions, Inc. All rights reserved.

Poole, Paulson, Bernanke on Bailouts and Bank Failures By Mish

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Bernanke Does Not Understand The Problem

Banks have every reason to decrease lending. There is rampant overcapacity in housing, commercial real estate, and the service sector. In addition there is over-leverage in hedge funds and over concentration of bank loans tied to real estate.

Bernanke wants banks to lend more, but all that will do is increase losses. The man clearly does not understand what the basic problem is. Yes, banks should be raising capital, but not to increase lending. Banks need to raise capital in advance of the approaching tsunamis in commercial real estate and credit card writeoffs, and the continuing tsunami in residential housing, all of which are going to further impair bank balance sheets.


MORE

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Purchasing Mexico & Other Countriesby James Jaeger

OVERVIEW:

After the U.S. regains its financial and moral position with the world it should purchase the rest of the American continent. This might be done by offering a sizable and reasonable sum of money to the PEOPLE of Mexico, Canada, Central America and South America, in roughly that order. As the U.S. purchases pieces of each country, it should admit each new territory into the U.S. as a state, thus bringing the U.S. up to 100 states -- and eventually 1,000 states. It should be kept in multiples of 100 so the word Senate has some meaning. When the U.S. has 1,000 states, we could rename it a SuperSenate or Continental Senate or something. Each one of the new states would then come in under the U.S. Constitution and the people that live in each new state would be full-fledge US citizens. Sale should be VOLITIONAL and the money should go DIRECTLY to the PEOPLE of each country purchased -- NOT the government. The US is buying their loyalty, NOT their land, and the purchase money will allow each new citizen the opportunity buy a house and/or business and/or get off drugs. The difference between this plan and the one the CFR and it's devotees have is this plan keeps the US Constitution intact. The other plan basically sets up global organizations and then stuffs you and your fellow Americans into THESE organizations. Then the US Constitution is abolished and YOU are now stuck in a one-world totalitarian government where most of your freedoms and inalienable rights have been trashed. The details of this have been worked out elsewhere, so before you pooh-pooh it, get the details.)

more

http://www.mecfilms.com/universe/articles/mexico.htm

Shayne McGuire: The Early Innings of a Gold Boom by John Rubino

2/26/2008

My new friend Shayne McGuire is director of global research at Texas’ $115 billion Teacher Retirement System, which means he oversees a vast portfolio of high-grade bonds, Blue Chip stocks, and cash. Not the kind of environment that’s usually hospitable to atavistic assets like gold. Yet he recently published a book—a very good book—titled “Buy Gold Now”, in which he explains his belief that the dollar, U.S. bonds and many stocks are headed south, while gold is going to the moon. Here he is on why this will happen and how best to play it:

DollarCollapse: You're a rarity: A mainstream money manager recommending gold, an asset that usually does well when bonds, your pension fund's mainstay, do badly. Why?

Shayne McGuire: On the surface, gold makes sense in today’s environment. Gold does well when both bonds and stocks are doing badly, when there is insufficient compensation for the risks inherent in owning either asset class. In the 1970s, gold did very well in part because the stock and bond arenas were mine fields. Investors found that pulling money out of financial assets made sense. Simple as it sounds, the concern was with staying away from things that were going down, and this collective concern pushed gold up as more investors bought it, as is occurring today.


more
http://www.dollarcollapse.com/iNP/view.asp?ID=64

The Crash That’s Coming: More Bubbles Will Burst By Danny Schechter.

The Crash That’s Coming: More Bubbles Will Burst

“The public, fortunately, doesn’t understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands.” — David Ignatius, Washington Post

Now that this year’s Oscars are history, imagine if you will, an awards ceremony honoring not the best of the best but the worst of the worst, not just spinoffs like the “Razzies” (the Golden Razberries) for movies. Who should we single out as the biggest slime balls and sleazoids who caused the most damage to our society in the year gone by?

Can you envision an Academy Award like statuette to “honor” the people we should be despising the most?

The political among us will immediately visualize potential awardees among our own devil incarnates. On the right, perhaps it would be that Dick Cheney or even Bill O’Reilly; on the liberal left that ever evil Bubbaman, Bill Clinton, or the liberal media’s NY Times might be pounced on by the “wingers,” like red meat, at least before the recalls.

Others would conjure up offending glitterati, easy targets like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan, and others among the most photographed famous for being famous non-functionals among us....

more

Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview by Dr. Michael Hudson

The Mathematical Economics of Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview by Dr. Michael Hudson, ISLET ©

part1
“Whoever enters here must know mathematics.” That was the motto of Plato’s Academy. Emphasizing such abstract ratios as the Pythagorean proportions of musical temperament and the calendrical regularities of the sun, moon and planets, its philosophy used the mathematics of nature to reveal an underlying harmony and order in the universe and hence, in an ideal society. But there was little quantitative analysis of economic relations. Although the Greek and Roman economies were increasingly wracked by debt, there was no measurement of this phenomenon, or of overall production, distribution and other macroeconomic measures....
http://www.michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/CompoundInterest1.html



part 2
The past century’s economic schoolbooks have described a universe running down from entropy. Production is assumed to be plagued by diminishing returns, so that each additional unit of input produces less and less output. Even if technology were recognized to raise the productivity of labor, capital and land over time, neoclassical models hold that each additional unit of consumption or wealth yields diminishing psychological utility. Not only will economies grow less rapidly, they will feel poorer....
http://www.michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/CompoundInterest2.html

Thinking about Sysiphus By Fred Cederholm

Column for on/after March 2^nd, 2008,

I’ve been thinking about Sysiphus. Actually I’ve been thinking about our current mess(es), Bernanke, Paulson, the equity markets, our presidential candidates, and masochism. Poor old Sysiphus was a character from Greek mythology who was condemned to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain to solve his problem(s); whence the stone would fall back of its own weight leaving him from where he had begun. Does THAT task not characterize the futile situation set before our political and fiscal/ economic personages/ leaders in calendar 2008?

You see Uncle $ugar finds himself in one @#$%^&* heck of a mess. The entire planet of Earth finds itself in one @#$%^&* heck of a mess! This one @#$$%^&* heck of a mess has been a long time coming, and the solution to the one @#$%^&* heck of a mess will not be quickly/ easily, resolved! While Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals in his day, he was faced with cumulative challenges not experienced by any personas in the entire history of mankind up to that point in time – ditto for those who aspire to deal with the one @#$%^&* of a mess facing us. Even those who give their “face time” to media cameras don’t give a true clue to the dementia of the mess.

Bernanke, as the Chairman of the FED, is jogging on quicksand with leaden shoes. Anyone familiar with my columns knows that I am NOT a fan of the Bush administration, but Ben Bernanke is one of the few Bush appointments with which I approve. Following “Maestro” Alan Greenspan is a thankless task – in TRUMP spades. The only more difficult job is following “W” Bush in the Oval Office. Mistakes were made – colossal mistakes were made – but hindsight is always 20/20! The FED has limited ammo left in a crisis this gargantuan – and we are talking about financial losses in the TRILLIONS – maybe in the MULTI-TRILLIONS. This is a crisis about solvency, not liquidity. Drawing a line “in the water” and lowering interest rates, may buy time; but it will not fix a blasted thing. “Helicopter Ben” has a reputation to live down to. His actions thus far have reinforced myth.

Treasury Secretary Paulson has “said” Uncle $ugar cannot bail out those who irrationally took on more debt than they can handle. The government should not “cover” the banks, Wall Street, nor the markets for THEIR ill-conceived actions. But… the policy/proposals thus far say the opposite! Have interest rate cuts on the cost of funds been matched by comparable drops in rates paid by borrowers? No way! Just like Japan in 1990’s, policies were designed to buy time for banks.

Pick a market, any market. The graphs show the same 100 point + declines again and again - retrenching from false bumps engineered by market “fluffing” from any alleged-conspiratorial activity of a “plunge protection team,” the market makers of Wall Street, or the cash rich sovereign wealth investment funds - dumping their dollars. Is such not truly “the invisible hand” of a market correcting to some sane pricing of equities based upon historical multiples of earning per share (or their perceived future EPS)? Market graphs of late show a futile Sysiphus at work – up and back.

In an election year, the public is geared up for hearing - not the truth - but a song and dance. We have been exposed to both “eloquence” and - “trust me - I’ve got the experience and know how to get US/ us thru this.” Who has even specifically IDed what “this” is? Just what are their solutions - to the problems which they dare NOT even speak the names? Our next President will face hurdles of Olympian proportions. Are they nuts, or merely ODed on Prozac? (Beat me, hit me, kick me – more, more, more… I’m still not satisfied.) “Hello… I’m running for President, my name is… but just call me Sysiphus.” I’m Fred Cederholm and I’ve been thinking. You should be thinking, too.

Copyright 2008 Questions, Inc. All rights reserved.