And this from a conservative

[Hakki Alacakaptan]

 || -----Original Message-----
 || From:  pms
 ||
 ||

 || Since last October's self-confessed freak-out when the WSJ's
 || figures on the
 || minuscule fibre-optic lighting rate brought home to the
 || Charlies on the FOMC
 || that what we'd been hammering away at for a year - namely that
 || this was a
 || monstrous malinvestment Bubble, not a New Era

Excuse my dimness, what does fibre-optic lighting have to with the tech
bubble?

 || - there has been
 || an addition
 || to the stock of broad money greater than that undertaken in the
 || first two
 || hundred years of the Republic.
 ||
 || Still, there are a few signs that it was not all in vain, but
 || is actually
 || beginning to work in selected areas. Figures just released
 || indicate Housing
 || was just about holding up in November, keeping the Dollar spend
 || running at
 || an elevated 11.3% of GDP. Indeed, the MBA purchase index has
 || since shot to
 || new highs, suggesting we might add yet more to the sums
 || destined for this
 || typical outlet for excess liquidity.
 ||

So _that's_ what the current consumer confidence is about. Investments are
being blown on consumption.

 ||
 || There have been tantalizing hints that the Russians, for one, have been
 || trying to extricate themselves from over-dependence on the
 || currency of the
 || Chicago School gangsters lest they are robbed blind once again
 || and that the
 || Euro might be another medium to use, alongside silver Sables and golden
 || Chervonets, to effect this partial liberation.
 ||

Wait, does that mean an oil price in Euros? So Putin is finally going to
castle the US after Yeltsin got rooked for so long.

 || Whether such stirrings will survive the forcible intrusion of US
 || full-spectrum and full-wallet dominance up the posterior
 || orifice of Eurasia
 || remains also to be seen.
 ||

That's why Putin has 7000 troops in Afghanistan. But it's still iffy.


 || It shows the depths to which we have plunged, though, in that
 || it has been
 || openly voiced that part of the rationale for the Yen
 || devaluation is that any
 || subsequently repackaged bad loans, any LTCB-style takeovers,
 || makeovers and
 || mergers will now come at a lower book price to the circling, foreign,
 || Greenback-rich barracuda.

So the EU piranhas aren't biting in Japan? After the bank crash in Turkey
they are the ones who picked up the pieces for a song (after administering a
coup de grace by pulling out their short-term investments).

 || Setting macro policy not to serve one's citizens, or with a
 || care for those
 || of other nations, but just to suit the likes of the very smart, very
 || ruthless and very Praetorian-staffed Ripplewood, Carlyle group
 || or GS? What
 || an outrageous suggestion!
 ||
 || The next thing, you'll be saying the CINCdom of Central Command
 || is just the
 || armed wing of Unocal.
 ||

Utterly cool article. Where's it from?

Hakki