Yet Another Depression Sign...

After Bernanke's illustrious (sarcasm included here) comments during a recent speech demonstrate that we're in no way, shape or form in a depression (nope, not at all, sheeple. Funny how Bush also came out and said yesterday that Bernanke told him that without the bailout, we'd be in a depression worse than the '29 one), you'd think we'd all be happily jumping around, buying stock and returning to that punch bowl.

Unfortunately, there's yet another ominous sign that the geniuses in our midst are really just dunces in disguise.

A Barclay's report issued today says that the deflation of metal prices in today's market has surpassed that of what was saw in the Great Depression.

Translate: No one needs copper or steel because no one -- absolutely no one -- expects to build anything for a very long time. So when demand drops, so does price.

Catastrophically so.

Perhaps even more frightening is this little tidbit:

Barclays Capital said the broader equity markets are already discounting the sorts of "savage declines" in corporate profits that were last seen in the Slump. It said (trailing) price to earnings ratios are actually lower now than they were the early 1930s, with moves in credit spreads that suggest investors are anticipating depression-era levels of economic contraction.

So, in short, while the geniuses in our midst continue to assure us that the Good Times are just 'round the corner again, the free market - usually the best prognosticator - says quite the extreme opposite. In fact, buyers are bracing for a Depression instead.



[edit on 12/2/2008 by behindthescenes]

good post

start/flag

Here's the link:

www.telegraph.co.uk...

reply to post by behindthescenes


good post. s&f.

the genuises assure us all is fine = panic prevention.

a necessary plight ( in their minds) in order to keep the sleeping sheep lulled. God, what would happen if everyone woke up at once to realize what the elite organized- global meltdown with little upheaval, at least until the timing is right.

besides, you don't need a sewer inspector to tell you crap is crap.

Not just copper and steel - commodities during the past 12 months..

Commodity Futures

As an interesting side note, I read an article in the Seattle Times on Monday that was warning us in King County to prepare for significantly higher recycling charges thanks to the precipitous drop in demand for recyclable materials being exported to Asia where they're turned into usable items again. The final paragraph of the article was a quote from one of the managers at the collections warehouse who said that the region has virtually seen a complete end to meth heads bringing in stolen metals for recycling because it is no longer worth the trouble of stealing the metal from construction site or abandoned houses. As recently as spring of 2008 it was still a real hot button issue up here because the meth freaks were literally robbing people blind for copper wiring, copper pipes, and there was even one case where someone sawed down the goal posts at a local high school and attempted to turn them in for the recycling money.

When the value of metals has dropped so low that society's dregs no longer bother to collect it for money, you know some very bad times are upon us.

It's funny that no one takes this seriously until some financial institution says so. We've been seeing these numbers for quite some time, and most of us have been saying this for months, some even years. The writing on the wall has been there for some time. Some are in such a bubble that they will still try to contradict the writing on the wall. We are in a depression, we don't need some agency to officially tell us so because by then it will be too late anyway. Remember, they denied there was a recession at all and now they admitted we're in one, only it started last year...So who do you trust? What you see or what you're told?

Heres the thing though and this is how the banks control economies. The banks will one day snap their fingers and insert all sorts of money in the system and voila we are booming again. Banks control the economies through controlling the money supply. People dont understand this. There is no free market anymore. If this was a free market I would totally agree. The fiat empire that we live in however will have to come crashing down. Inflating and deflating bubbles through the money supply can only go on so long before hyperinflation occurs or a collapse of the system. The reason why the FED in the 20s and 30s didnt do what the government is doing now is they understood that hyperinflation weirmar germany style would occur. They knew some major production like from lets say a WW2 would have to happen to get the money in the system legitimately.

Here in Arizona they are still taking the copper. See it the crime report daily.

reply to post by mybigunit


Excellent analysis.....The central banks ( a laughable designation) have the ability to promote, suppress, or otherwise manipulate money supply (i.e. printing currency with no value). The hedge funds are large holders of the actual metals, their dumping of the metals on the commodity markets has kept prices low......Just as institutional and computer trading by the funds (including pension funds) has continued to manipulate the NYSE.

THE NYSE IS NOT, REPEAT, NOT THE ECONOMY!!!!!!!

Originally posted by habu71
reply to post by mybigunit

 

Excellent analysis.....The central banks ( a laughable designation) have the ability to promote, suppress, or otherwise manipulate money supply (i.e. printing currency with no value). The hedge funds are large holders of the actual metals, their dumping of the metals on the commodity markets has kept prices low......Just as institutional and computer trading by the funds (including pension funds) has continued to manipulate the NYSE.

THE NYSE IS NOT, REPEAT, NOT THE ECONOMY!!!!!!!

Correct and you dont think for a minute that the banks collude so they get in at the very bottom of ALL the booms and busts. They get to buy low and sell high because they KNOW when the market is going to go back up because they are told. This is why the market is a sham and yes this is why the market does not judge the actual economy.

Originally posted by mybigunit
The reason why the FED in the 20s and 30s didnt do what the government is doing now is they understood that hyperinflation weirmar germany style would occur. They knew some major production like from lets say a WW2 would have to happen to get the money in the system legitimately.

Actually, this isn't exactly true.

If anything, central banks -- still tied to gold standards -- were more facing deflation due to the drop in gold prices then. This phenomenom already sank the Brit Pound and was to do the same to the dollar.

In the end, the Fed refused to drop rates (raise money supply) due to pressure from British Banks to keep dollar values higher.

Bernanke illustrated this a few years ago in this speech.

Ben Bernanke is a macro economist and not a wall street investor or banker, which explains his odd ideas on how to repair the US economy.

He doesn't have a clue how mortgages are bundled or underwritten.
money.cnn.com...


[edit on 11/03/2008 by Skydancer]

These yahoo's are either flat out lying or incompitent. Wasn't it Bernanke and paulson that said the economy was doing fine in july or august, in front of congress that is? Yet we now know we've been in a recession for a year now?

Yes it was! I'm willing to bet it was an executive order to boost the public confidence.

The DuPont layoffs announced today are scarey as hell. The manufacturing sector is a very strong indicator of not just the strength (or weakness) of the economy today, but also the behind the scenes forcasts and expectations for the coming year. When an industrial or tech giant starts laying off skilled workers, it's a real bad sign.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


have a link to dupont layoffs?

thanks

reply to post by warrenb


www.forbes.com...

The company is taking drastic cost-cutting measures and shuffling 7.0% of its workforce.

Gotta love Forbes sugar coating the article by calling a 2,500 employee layoff, 400 employee "redeployment" (ie: forced leave?), and 4,000 contractor position elimination a "shuffling" simply because the company says it plans to assign whatever work the 4,000 contractors may have done to 1,300 still employed employees. It hasn't been a good year for them, with them getting shellacked by high oil prices over the summer and now, with oil prices so low the company could make an amazing turn around, demand is non-existant.

Originally posted by warrenb
reply to post by burdman30ott6

 

have a link to dupont layoffs?

thanks

AT&T, DuPont, Viacom Slash Jobs as U.S. Slump Worsens

By Crayton Harrison

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc., DuPont Co. and three other U.S. companies announced plans to fire more than 16,000 people, buckling under the strain of a recession that may already have pushed the U.S. jobless rate to the highest level in 15 years.

LINK

I live in Western New York. In town, there is a DuPont plant, which has speculated it will see no layoffs- I tried to find the article on the local papers website which stated this in this morning's paper, but the article is not available online.

One of the area's larger employers- Seneca Niagara Casino- has recently laid off 210 employees out of their 4,000. Discretionary spending is down, therefore more hard working people lose their job.

We have been relatively un-hit with recessionary bad news up until now. But with the auto industry in the tubes- and a GM plant and 2 supplier plants in the area- things are looking more and more grim for our area.

To touch on the copper/precious metals issue, the crack heads here (meth isn't too popular up here yet ) still frequently loot abandoned houses and construction sites for copper pipes, wiring, and basically any other scrap metal not anchored to the ground. What a shock when 20 pounds of copper didn't buy them a hit anymore.

I'm glad I sold my broken gold when it was around $950 an ounce.

I think we are definitely heading straight into a depression.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by Bobbo]