268 comments on DrumBeat: November 3, 2007
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268 comments on DrumBeat: November 3, 2007
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Hmmm...throw in the State of Emergency in Pakistan and Iraq getting ready to "deal" with Kurdish terrorists.
Just another day of fun and excitement around the Middle East.
And Citigroup is insolvent.
They can't afford to do a Merrill.
"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which carries out the central bank's open market operations, moved Thursday to inject $41 billion in temporary reserves into the financial system.
A New York Fed spokesman said it was the largest single day of operations since $50.35 billion was pumped into the system on Sept. 19, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He declined further comment."
That would make about $700 Billion injected by the CB's
since August.
Reuters/Elaine Supkis:
" Credit default swaps on Ambac have surged to around 620 basis points, or $620,000 per year for five years to insure $10 million in debt, from 185 basis points a month ago, according to data provided by CMA DataVision.
Its shares have tumbled nearly 60 percent since the beginning of October, 41 percent this week alone.
Ambac and MBIA both reported third-quarter losses last week caused by their writing down the market value of their respective credit derivative portfolios, which are used to insure assets including residential mortgages against default.
This is a major failure. This is deep beneath the surface of the waters, like the Titanic ripping its hull underwater, these organizations we will visit tonight are similar: they are the hull of the banking system. They are the ones who are supposed to protect the banking system from failure and they are now failing, themselves. This is serious."
http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2007/11/elaine-meine...
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
One of TOD staff noted yesterday that Citigroup's balance sheet is worth $2.3 trillion, while the FDIC's is worth only 2.3 billion. Doesn't bode well if it comes to a bailout.
I think Citi's still sending me bills, for money they'll never be able to get (I'll never have) so that's several thou still on the books that really doesn't exist...
Hey it ain't much but I'm doing my part, are you?
Arrgh. I typed that wrong. It should be Citigroup 2.3 trillion, FDIC, 50 billion. Better, but not by much.
I bailed out of Citi long ago. They plecked me off by charging me trick fees and outrageous interest rates when I was a poor student. Then I read about all the things they do to try and make your payment late, even if it was mailed on time. So they can charge you late fees, of course. I decided then and there that I would never carry another Citi credit card.
I'm sure that there a lots of good people that work for financial institutions, but one of very few good things to come out of the financial meltdown and Peak Oil is that a lot of the bloodsuckers are going to be out on the street.
I'm sure you know what the credit card industry calls people who don't carry balances on their cards: "deadbeats."
:-(
I was a gratuitous deadbeat until last month - four years I'd had the card, $2,300 limit, and I have 41,000 "points" - that would be $41,000 cycled through it over the time. Every once in a while a $500 balance would sneak through, but it wasn't often.
Now work is slow, I'm hurt, payment is late, and the $410 rebate I am due can't be applied to my balance due to my card's "status". If I have the $200 to bring it current then I can get the $410 I've "earned".
Capital One has "earned" a good snipping once I retrieve my $410 and pay off the balance ...
I still have fresh memories of 1999, $10 oil and how tough it was to pay all of the bills on time. Matter of fact, I'm still in the $10 oil office I moved into in 1999--crowded, but functional--and I'm driving the same Toyota that I was driving at that time too.
Once you have been through the wringer a couple of times, old habits die hard. Besides, as I said before I suspect that conspicuous consumption is going to become both stupid and socially unacceptable.
I understand the $10 oil office. I moved mine then as well, but fixed a pot of $8.00 beans this last week. My (new) wife doesn't understand, thinks $87.00 beans, where you just eat the steak and asparagus and leave the beans for another day, looks better. All the same, we spent yesterday building a new fence to keep a neighbors calves off our pretty good pasture so we can use it for our own horses and cow.
Now, about those durn horses. She can't accept that we may need them to get to the wells if gas gets really tight. I hope that we can get enough gas for the pumpers so I don't have to double up - don't think the horse wants that either.
Very Glad I got away from Capital One..
Scary the way their hooks got in..
Snip 'em as soon as you're able.
Bob
SCT and possibly others,
There is NOTHING like divorce to wake one up to reality.
I have been in and out of divorce court, lawyers, arguing, hassles and all the rest of it for three years..
One finally develops a very tough layer of new skin and a different outlook on the world and society and the other sex.
No more,,I promised , never again,never would I allow anyone to paint me into a corner again or put me in a box situation.Never.
I will be responsible to no one ever again except myself.
When I left the military I wished to marry and raise a family. Due to strange shifts in our American morals and society that went topsy turvy.
I finally discovered one fact..the word 'love' is naught but a codeword..designed to screw over people. Used by miscreants and bullshitters simply to use other people.
Never shake the hand of someone you don't respect.When anyone starts a big line of bullshit, turn, walk away and don't look back. Never listen to the twaddle on 'reality shows', Oprah or Dr. Phil and the like..Believe nothing unless you can prove it to yourself.
Pay your bills , sleep well and find some friends you can really trust.Never loan them money though. If you do them a favor and they never repay the favors? Lose them. If you go to church...never never never go forward. Make your promises and vows to 'yourself'. Not to others. If you say you are going to do something,,then do it. Live in the country and own your property,free and clear,and then you have real freedom and can do exactly as you like..Screw the rest.
airdale-good dogs,well trained make excellent companions
It wasn't just society-at-large's understanding of energy that was broken.
Society's understanding of how humans function socially and developmentally was also broken, and thus the system of law is broken. Society's understanding of sexual relationships and gender roles is broken.
The deep, fundamental, systemic flaws in our civilized way of life have always been masked by our exploitation of human and natural resources which fueled our growth.
"I will be responsible to no one ever again except myself."
This philosophy is part of what has brought us to where we are today, and will be increasingly unsustainable with the decline of cheap energy. No man is an island, entire unto itself. There is no community of one.
But there's nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest.
"No man is an island, entire unto itself. There is no community of one."
Some nice homilies..worthless since they are not being applied to 'self' like mine are....your speaking of community and you cannot control community...whereas I can ,and you can to, have control over and of yourself...
Community might take your life if it doesn't think you are doing as they like...
Thats why we live in a land that has plenty of freedom yet community constantly strives to limit that individual freedom.
For instance..one used to have control of one's children..a father or mother had the right to chastise and punish wrong or bad behaviour(the family is NOT a community)..and the community had no right to interfere...years ago the 'community' took more and more control of my offspring..to the point that they were no longer under me or my wife's control...
We now see the evidence of that stupidity. Dumbed down children, children who have no real future..and the list is long.....
I know you will disagree but that matters not a whit..I am in charge of myself. As long as I do not take away others rights then I have all my own personal rights.
Perhaps called libertarian but I don't consider myself aught but a normal person who desires his own right to chose his lifestyle.
Go ahead and think that when TSHTF that suddenly , very suddenly all the aberrant behaviour that we see in our society is going to change overnite and we will all love one another and just have common hugfests.
You will die as the grouphugs fail to produce a livelhood and those in charge take what you have.
Good luck with that...I think your a youngster with rose colored glasses...more and more I see this on TOD of late.
Its wishful thinking.
When the kids are not small they're no longer your children, they're her children, and if she isn't really capable prejudices are such that they become the state's children.
Mine are lucky. When my wife was incapable mommy's money and the strong Jewish community frowned at her misbehavior and the nanny held things together. I've met some other fellows caught in this trap and the poor children ... well ... someone should be beaten ... repeatedly ... and I'm not sure who. A shotgun and bow season on the so called "family law attorney" would be an excellent start at correcting the problem, and instead of criminal charges a small bounty from the county agent like they used to give for pocket gopher feet ...
airdale:
I think that Robert Frost had it just about right:
"Good fences make good neighbors"
Mending Wall
i have a balance on a citi card at 4.99% until paid in full. there have been a few times i sweated the payment being late but i have never paid a late fee. it is best to send the payment as soon as the statement is recieved, of course this requires some cashflow management (and if one is living paycheck to paycheck, forget it). besides not paying any late fees, the amount of interest you pay is reduced. not much, but the interst saving is more than the interest paid on a typical checking account.
and of course you cant "use" the card as long as you have one of these loans.
At this point, I don't pay any interest. I've been a "deadbeat" for years, and I'm trying to keep it that way. (Though I sometimes wonder if runaway inflation will make me wish I ran up some debt.)
I like the Discover card. They've always been very good to me. Like when a massive blizzard shut down the northeast, they forgave the late payment when I called to explain. The mail simply wasn't moving. (That "rain nor snow" crap is just that, crap.) Plus, they give you cash back. Sometimes as much as 5% for special items like gasoline.
And they've got some really nice designs. So nice I actually ordered some extra cards, just for the pretty artwork. (I'm currently carrying the baseball one.)
Anyways, now I almost always pay online. You have more control over when the payment is credited, and I figure it's probably better for the environment, too.
I was always really good about not carrying a balance on a CC, always good about paying stuff down, paid off my student loans, etc., but when I got a small biz it all changed.
Imagine someone falling into a gambling addiction, or the kind of mentality that takes normal Americans and turns them into home-ATM junkies. It always seemed more money was coming in, it seemed if I needed money all I had to do was work a bit more or (and this may be crucial) find a "big deal", which in my case meant finding a few to several grand's worth of equipment or parts and cashing in big on those.
Completely idiotic behavior. I saw it in a lot of ebay addicts actually. One guy I know has to use up the equity in his house and hit rock bottom and then and only then will he attain some sanity again. At least he has more of a safety net than I do (I think).
This kind of addictive behavior is puzzling. It explains why lottery winners often end up much worse off after a few years, and why normally frugal medical students go wild and get into financial trouble once they're full-fledged doctors. An author was fascinated with this and ended up writing the book "Affluenza" about this.
On a somewhat related note...
A few weeks ago I rented a U-haul to move some of my stuff to a new location where I am currently working. When I went to fill the truck with gas the pump automatically shut off at $75.00 even though the tank was not quite full.
After the third time this happened I asked the attendant on duty why this was. She replied that the credit card companies started doing this some time ago. Another customer at the counter told me that I could call the CC company and have my "limit" changed.
I found this a bit amusing since I travel a lot with work and it is not uncommon for me to have 2 or sometimes 3 thousand dollars a month in business expenses on the same card which are promptly paid at he end of the month when I get my expense check.
Since credit card companies get a fee from the business for conducting the transaction one would think that they would want the CC holder to use the card as much as possible unless there is some other reason they don't want just anyone buying lots of gas....
I am not buying the credit card fraud angle because if any purchases are outside of normal spending patterns they will deny the transaction until the purchaser's ID has been verified.
I can say that this policy was not in effect a year and a half ago (using the same CC) when I moved across country using a much larger truck with a much larger gas tank!
I posted this article last June.
It is a fraud protection measure, by the credit card companies. However, not all gas stations comply with it. And there's no limit if you go inside to pay. It only applies to pay at the pump.
They claim it's been in place for a long time, but people only started to notice it when the prices went so high. They're bumping up against the limit, when they never would before, no matter how empty their tanks.
I reckon most folks are aware of it, but with a bit of discipline you can freeload off the 'perks' of a number of cards without paying them anything.
Some give you 3-5% back on gas and groceries, many will give you 1% rebate on everything; getting an airline affiliate card generally will get you 20k bonus miles for charging less than 1k on the card, and most of them will give you the first year at no fee. So take the perks, take the bonuses, take the flier miles, use their money to 'float' your bills until the payment is due; and they also supply an extra level of protection if a transaction goes bad.
The same adaptive mechanisms they use to screw people over work both ways. And by changing airline affiliate cards every 6 months you can get a free RT each year just from the 'starter bonuses'.... in case you need such.
There are various lists online which compile the current deals. You'd think nobody would offer me a card anymore, since I haven't paid a penny in fees on one in two decades, but they all seem to think they'll be the ones to break me; they're compulsive gamblers.
This is probably a highly temporary situation, but you never know.
Surviving on a pittance is great fun even if you have a bit more than a pittance, and probably good practice.
I'm asking this both for my sake and my mother's sake. We both have IRA and brokerage accounts at Smith Barney in Dallas, where our broker is a vice president. Smith Barney is owned by Citi. We have a variety of stock and bond funds, a few common and preferred stocks, and a couple of limited partnerships. Is there any possibility of Wall Street-Bush legal chicanery that would prevent me from cashing out those accounts?
I've been saving about $1000 a month lately because of my concerns about the crumbling American system, but I kept it in my local bank, which is now owned by Capital One, because I was too nervous about whether far-away Citi could turn into a black hole in a crash. Is anyplace really safe these days?
My guess would be "no." :-(
The Catastrophist View
You might want to post your question to Stoneleigh in one of the finance roundups.
Thanks for the suggestion.
If what I've seen the last week indicates I'm going back to work, such as life is for a consultant, I'm going to do a sort of formal inventory of food, fuel, & whatnot, then I am going to keep paper money, silver, and some cash in Paypal.
There are Paypal haters here, but take it for what it is - a funny financial instrument that lets you whip up temporary credit cards that expire after one use and easily purchase trifles from Ebay. Do not hook it up to your main bank account, in fact its probably best to hook it to an account at an entirely different bank.
I would say you need to look closely at the Ferfal fellow's writings about TSHTF in Argentina. The Bush administration does not respect the rule of the law and that is the only thing that makes those accounts "your money", right?
There are days I wish things had been better for me post divorce, but on the other hand I'm grateful ... the fall others will experience came for me in 2002 and I'm all past mourning and/or thinking that "stuff" is terribly important.
Ferfal's articles a few years ago were great. The site that had archived them has disappeared, but he's begun posting at survivalblog.com. But stuff like his is what makes me afraid to keep gold bars at home.
Now I'm remember a story I wrote where a corrupt CIA guy had hidden his wealth buying weird antiques that weren't obviously hyper-expensive: Purdey shotguns, early Sinatra records, a Federal-period chair and a collection of duck decoys, one of which is actually painted-over solid gold. I'd been watching a lot of Antiques Roadshow back then.
What antiques do you think will hold their value if this entire collapse is being rigged to keep the extremely wealthy extremely wealthy? I mean, what appeals to people in mercenary-defended palaces aspiring to be barons?
$50,000 cap & ball Dragoon Colt - two kinds of security in one.
I am not so sure I am the one to answer this. My one brush with wealth was making the mistake of marrying the baby from a wealthy Jewish family some years back and those years were more about conspicuous consumption than gathering and accumulating. My own personal experiences are those of the child of depression babies where the major earner was disabled just as I became old enough to work.
This being said, if I had $50k I wanted to turn into post apocalypse mad money I would ...
Buy a $3,000 beater minivan, a baseball hat, and some tinted sunglasses. I'd leave the in transit tags in place, strategically place some paperwork to cover the VIN, and I'd be carefully converting my holdings into ammunition, weapons purchased at a premium without any paper trail, spare magazines, spare parts, and so forth.
I wouldn't do the whole $50k up this way. Those who are gun crazy believe the world will continue as it is, except for Bad Guys(tm) who will come to get them. This is like the people who put all of their excess money into life insurance and ignore having a $20 tucked into the visor of the car in case they run out of gas.
What other things have the magic three characteristics for a post apocalyptic world, with those being utility, portability, and rarity?
Silver seems a good bet, better than gold to me, as it is in smaller denominations, less valuable, and less likely to raise eyebrows.
Some here have advised the purchase and storage of alcohol. I took a look around the liquor department a few weeks back and decided against it, but some years ago I made a half hearted attempt to drown myself in the stuff. I also think that those who are thirsty will be off and brewing just like they did during the prohibition - it might not taste as good, but even guys in jail figure out how to cook up a batch of tomato jack with just a little indulgence from the guards.
I think if you had a doctor who was just a tad bit crooked you could do well stocking up on various supplies. The controlled stuff is obviously watched but there are lots of things that have shelf life and value - antibiotics and such.
I personally plan on laying in a good bit of heirloom seeds as cash begins to flow, but that is something that fits well here in the thinly populated wild lands. Your mileage may vary ...
I suspect solar panels and wind turbines are going to be desirable based on location. They're small, cheap, transportable, etc, etc. Don't skip on the control widgets, manuals, and whatnot ...
So I hope I've given you some ideas ... there are things one needs the day after TSHTF, the month after, and the year after. Just be mindful of what those will be in your area, diversify, and don't put all your eggs in one basket, as what we're talking about here is a new style of saving rather than one monolithic "investment".
You can buy antibiotics in pet stores (think fin rot in goldfish) for old types, and in Mexico for new types. Gold and silver work, actual modern day change works if they decide to pull a few zeros off the dollar, just keeping an extra bottle of dish detergent, extra rolls of paper towels, extra container of salt, extra light bulbs, etc.
If it's imported, real cost could go up about ten times. Our dollar is seriously overvalued.
Printer cartridges dry out, canned goods go stale, gasoline in your garage is dangerous, etc.
I've been through this before. Back in '98 I worried about Y2K enough to take steps. Yeah, call me paranoid - paranoia saved my ass on more than one occasion. And it did me no harm on this occasion. Well, made me look a little ridiculous - but who isn't a little ridiculous anyway?
I began by rejecting the "head for the hills" and "stock up on bullets" memes as just bloody stupid. Repeat after me: You are not Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston is not Charlton Heston. Law and order - even martial law and military order - make it far easier to survive post apocalypse than pretending you can be ready for anything. Dispense with the camper van and the ammo. They won't keep you alive. Focus on the basics: shelter, water, food, medicine.
Shelter. My first step in protecting my family and myself was to purchase a home near a military base. Being reasonably in the chips at the time I picked Coronado island in San Diego. Half the island is navy installations and the other half is retired military folks. No chaos there even under the most extreme circumstances.
Water. I picked a home with a swimming pool. Cover the pool and there's a handy reservoir of non-potable water. But 2 blocks away is the pacific ocean anyway. Anyone can build a solar still from a sheet of glass and some black plastic bin liners - it's trivially easy to do even ad hoc. So much for water.
I lashed out and bought a solar cooker. Beautiful thing about 3 feet in diameter, all flat mirrors so there was no way to burn yourself with a parabolic focus. Y2K never came, of course, but I used this beauty for 3 straight thanksgivings and it roasted the tastiest turkeys I ever et in no more time than a regular cooker. If you have to ad hoc one of these go google Steve Jones's design for a "solar funnel". It's a lot easier than you'd think.
Food. I bought pinto beans and rice in easy installments and stored them in airtight plastic buckets in the underfloor space. Got some airtight buckets of powdered soy and spices as well. For about $500 I stashed enough food to keep my little family's bodies and souls together for 2 years. Not much food will keep without refrigeration beyond 2 years though, so that brings us to our next point ...
Community! You need people. You need people who will care about you in a pinch, who will help when you're sick or injured. You need doctors, plumbers, electricians, handymen and most of all good honest friends. I spent some time reaching out, getting to know neighbours and tradespeople by first names. Coronadans are about as close to eachother as Americans get. There's still that intransigent spirit of independence ... Americans don't seem able to bond the same way Canadians, Irish or Australians do. The ex-military folks are trained to rely on each other, however, and if you're stand up then they'll stand up for you too.
Y2K never came. In 2003 I sold the joint for twice what I paid for it. I guess if I were living in America for peak oil I'd be trying to buy it again, but there's more than a little water under the bridge ...
My peak oil strategy is much simpler than my Y2K strategy. I just moved back to Australia. 200 years of LPG in the ground, plenty of room for people to spread out still, and so long as you're along the coast there's no shortage of water. Even if there were there's the solar still again. And lots of fish in the water - no one will every go hungry here so I can forget about the pinto beans ...
---
We Are Waves On The River Of Mind
I think your Y2K plan is among the most reasonable I've ever seen for peak oil preparation. If you have the money for it, anyway.
However, I'm not sure about your Australia plan. Do you really think there's enough fish to support everyone for years? I seriously doubt it. Look at how depleted Hawaii's fish stocks are, just from recreational fishing.
My Y2K plan was done on credit ;-)
The south pacific is fish-depleted too but nowhere near as bad as the north pacific or the atlantic. People fish quite happily even from the wharfs in Sydney harbour. I watch them while I wait for the ferry. I've seen handlines pull in some more than dinner-plate size flathead, bream, sole ...
You might not want to eat what comes out of the harbour - there were some pretty dirty manufacturing facilities here a generation or two back - but the rest of the coast is damned clean. I mean walk up the beach and collect crabs and clams clean. And there's a lot of coast for just 20 million people here. We don't need a giant industrial apparatus to survive.
Australia's far enough away from the Powers that, so long as we just keep on efficiently sending primary resources north, it won't be in anyone's interests to permit a disruptive invasion. Our people have a culture of mutualism, enviornmentalism, and courtesy. Australia is not without its warts - but that's all they are at present, not open suppurating wounds infected with staphilococcus like the northern countries.
And then, if climate change becomes really severe, there's this big empty continent to the south. I'm not saying I expect my son to become King of Antarctica ... but he's a fine boy and the Antarcticans could do worse!
---
We Are Waves On The River Of Mind
Aged cheddar cheese?
Yeah, if things really get that bad, you don't want people to even think you might have any gold.
I don't think collectibles will hold their value, aside from their utility. Who's going to want to buy your Hank Aaron baseball card or your Queen Anne desk if they don't have money for food or fuel? During the Great Depression, rich people bought up jewelry, land, antiques, and other heirlooms at pennies on the dollar.
There are going to be a lot of sellers and not many buyers, so I don't see antiques as being a particularly good investment.
Be Aware---if you're foolish enough to set up your PayPal account with a CC (I was) and you run into a real 'deadbeat', PayPal will only reimburse you for $200 of your loss. So now, I don't get my pump, I don't pass GO, and I only get a lousy $200. :(
That's another reason I like Discover. They will reimburse you for PayPal deadbeats. Visa and MC won't. (At least, that's how it was when I signed up. And I have had Discover reimburse me for PayPal deadbeats, and it was no problem.)
super390 - Look into "junk silver" coins, spendable and should go up in value if slowly - much better than a crumbling USbuck.
$1000 a month is problematical. For me, I'd put it into said "junk" silver, good books that I know are worth more than I can get 'em for (used to trade in books so YMMV) and basically hide the money in some way/place that's not a bank which has to report everything to homeland suckurity after all.
Isn't this how bank runs get started?
Not that I'm complaining mind you, I'm just observing ...
Bank runs start about five years after all the money has disappeared, when the bank can no longer paper over the losses. Panic first.
We've already had bank runs. Northern Rock and Countrywide.
Northern Rock had a run with people around the block - did Countrywide have this also? I've not seen anything in Drum Beat about it.
There was some discussion in the DrumBeat. Might have been more in Stoneleigh's roundups.
I usually don't post stories about bank failures. Interesting as they are, they aren't really energy stories. Though they'll certain complicate our attempts to deal with peak oil.