Okay, crew, let's kick some buttkowski this week.

Here's a funny little thing few think about. They talk about how the goobermint hates gold, as far as people owning it. I think they might actually not mind it so much. Say you buy gold and they 'devalue'. If they devalue say 90% (this would be an extreme one-time jump, but it is possible), they are really saying we are confiscating 90% of your wealth, thank you very much.

So, say you own gold. The dollar goes from say 100 (I'll use an arbitrary scale here for ease of understanding) and now it's valued at 10. Then gold simply requires ten times as much fiat for the same ounce of gold. Simple. If you could buy 400 gallons of gasoline for an ounce of gold (let's say gold at $1,600 and gas at $4 gallon again for ease of calculation), you'll still get 400 gallons for that ounce after the devaluation, in theory.

Gold would jump to $16,000 per ounce, and gasoline to $40 a gallon (in reality other factors would come into this with such a devaluation, but for the sake of this example, that's the assumption). So, we 'beat' the goobermint and protected our purchasing power for all the hard work we did and deserve to have without threat of it being stolen. But, alas, the goobermint is very smart.

Here's issue number one. Taxes. See, your gold went from $1,600 an ounce to $16,000 an ounce, and that's a capital gain, my friend. You made money (despite the fact that your purchasing power is identical to before). And when you make money, the goobermint deserves its share of the 'profits'. It's only fair, right? But the cap gains taxes for gold are higher, a separate category. Why is that?

So, let's say that perhaps you lose 1/3 of your buying power because of taxes on the 'profits'. But, if this devaluation happened and they didn't want to go the depression-era route of simply confiscating your gold at the going price before the devaluation, they'd simply raise the tax to 90% or so, and after taxes where would you be? With 90% of your wealth stolen, the same as if you held the fiat.

See, the goobermint sets the all the rules, and if you try to 'beat' the rules, you will run into other rules. They are going to steal 90% (or 99%, or 99.99%) of your wealth, and I am of the mind that there is nothing you can do about it. The time to do something about it was way back, back in 1913, and actually well before that. And year after year they gained more and more power, and people trusted them more and more, and now it's too late.

So, sad as it is to think about, I kind laugh at all the gold talk because I don't think it is going to matter (despite the fact that I am a huge fan of gold). Not to mention, imagine showing up at the market (black or otherwise) with a handful of gold (or silver) to make a purchase. No, no one would notice (goobermint or otherwise) and follow you back home... Nah, no worries...

Yes, it does. Some day this 'bulls#%&' will end (Oops, I meant 'bulls#%&' market), and I'm really looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to watching all the TV guests saying the bottom is in all the way down, as they always do in every last bear market.

I have a key area in AAPL around 506-7 or maybe a tad higher. There are a few smaller levels before that, but this is the key one. I suspect they'll try to get it up there. If so, the Dow will have the right amount of time to get to that new all-time high. Then maybe something happens. Then, again, this may go up most of this year, to silly highs, then it's over. It is going to take major issues in the financial crisis to start a bear, I am 99.9999% convinced. But those can come out of the blue at any time. The consensus from Davos, I have heard, is that the financial crisis is now officially over. I'm sure they are right. [/sarc]

Originally posted by rat89

someone just asked whether aapl has bottomed.....it just keeps getting better all the time

Okay, I've posted way too much (I crossed the 18,000 post mark, and was going to do a note on that, and I smoked past it without even noticing...), so unless the ES does something stoo-pid in the after market mini session in the next half hour, I'm done. See ya all Sunday, for what will probably be another dull session. Remember when Sundays rocked and were my favorite time of the entire week? Ah, those were the days...

One more point to those ES stops and 22 minutes. You can do it...

This was the first time in 42 years that the S&P started the year up for the first six weeks in a row. Wow.

C'mon ES, 4 minutes, 3 ticks...

Nope, it stayed in the range, my most probable scenario after the stop sweep on the downside. At least it closed close to the high. I suspect a gap up on Sunday. I'm done. See ya Sunday.

Good Stuff jim thanks for posting!!