S, okay you were talking about total debt, including public & private. Then the other side of the ratio is total assets, public private. As you know, the gov’t debt:GDP is apples/oranges and is more of a thumb rule pointer, like using DJA instead of Wilshire 5000. That said, total debt of 360% of gdp is high relative to normal but does not imply a tipping point as bears are trying to sell. people, companies, governments often carry long term dept 3 or 4 or more times annual income. If you make 100K/yr and buy a 400K house, you’re in debt 400% of your GDP –but you have a 30 yr mortgage, and no problem cash-flowing the installments. That said, debt sucks unless it’s creating value in excess of costs, in which case it is the very basis of wealth creation.
re PE, truth-seekers (as oppo to something else) will throw out the outliers, such as the bottom of the Carter market as in your example, and find today’s SP500 near bottom of ”channel” (channel = between top and bottom trend lines).
Re term ”bear-raid” sorry if you misunderstood that as jingo agitprop, as well as a bit taken aback, as that is not an ordinary confusion. The ”bear” i mean is not the Rus bear, it’s the old wall street ”bull and bear” slang. The terminology has been around forever, universally used without any reference or hint whatsoever toward politics or nations. It refers to those who think mkt is going up (bulls) vs those who think it is going down (bears). A ”bear raid” is a build up of shorts on a company, coupled with any number of actions, mostly legal, to catalyze a buyer’s strike and create a free fall, where the shorts can cash out large. Bear-raiders are generally just plain old traders who sense an overvalue and try to maximize a gain on the info. As i said, nothing to do with jingo or agitprop –ask around, you’ll get a better feel.
Gold of course is all psychological component, as it can’t be eaten or sprouted or used to plow or transport goods. That said, i think the gold bugs, who are even now emailing scare reports by the bucketful claiming gold is going to 1000 and 2000, are getting nervous in here –it has fallen by 50-60% before, and stayed there for a long time. when demand falls, it starts looking like a no divvy no earning no virtue barbaric relic. However, i have some, in fact about a 15% of holdings right now, in the miners not the actual metal.
I don’t follow the Bhutto commentary –sorry –wish i had an opinion but i don’t even have any facts, i mean the newspaper facts, i just haven’t followed it, other than to feel sad over it, and to regret the hell that we are all of us everywhere visiting upon each other for the sake of our lower rather than our higher instincts.
I too find it outrageous that USA didn’t know about Rus invasion, and i wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of the financial mkt activity beforehand was a bear raid timed to set up a big crash when the invasion jumped off. Had Rus grabbed Tblisi, broken the gov’t, and grabbed the pipeline, such a crash could’ve happened, judging from the mkts in the months prior, say since mid-June. So, yes, the knowledge may have been out there. I don’t however think USA at high levels of gov’t knew (and more’s the pity), as the scenario playing out from there immediately runs into lunacy, from the cost/benefit angle. Soros is involved with the Georgian gov’t, however, and due to his track record (he’s done it twice, the second more complex & grandiose than the first –meaning any third might zoom off into James Bond Goldfinger nuttiness), and his obsessive drive on his politics and his sense of being entitled to set his own limits on his power and his advancing age and his theatrical denunciations of the Putin as well as the Bush gov’ts, and a few other things, I’d say he may well have known, IF anyone did. And if so, then yes there are questions of passive knowledge vs something else.
