Its gonna rain money, but Bernanke says...I will have it under control

A small round up of noteworthy articles. The fact that people are turning to psychic's for investment info really isnt that big of a change from the talking heads that they were listening to on TV. The ones that didnt see this coming and warn them to get out of the markets. Anything rather than crying out to God?


New investment guru: The local psychic
By Ruth La Ferla
Published: November 23, 2008

On a good day last summer, Thomas Taccetta, a stock trader, might have checked his financial charts before plotting his investments. Today, he is likely to check in with his psychic as well. "I'll play the broadest index, the S.&P. 500," Taccetta said, "and if she tells me she is getting a negative view, I will sell."

Since September, when the Dow collapsed, Taccetta, who trades for his own portfolio in Boca Raton, Florida, has talked with his psychic about once a month, roughly twice as often as a year ago. "There is no rhyme or reason to the way the market is trading," he said. "When conditions are this volatile, consulting a psychic can be as good a strategy as any other."
In an era when even Henry Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, changes his mind weekly about how to rescue the U.S. economy, Taccetta's decision to seek the advice of a psychic may not seem all that irrational. With

Washington flinging pieces of the $700 billion bailout package around, dithering about whom to rescue — homeowners? automakers? cousin Fred? — a good set of tarot cards might come in handy….
Psychics say their business is robust, as do astrologers and people who channel spirits, read palms and otherwise predict the future (albeit not the winning lottery numbers). Their clients, who include a growing number of men, are often professional advice-givers themselves, in fields like real estate and investments, and they typically hand over anywhere from $75 to $1,000 an hour for this form of insight…..

"My Web traffic is up and up and up," said Aurora Tower, a New Yorker who constructs spidery star charts for her growing clientele. "People will entertain the irrational when what they consider rational collapses."
Quackery? Whatever. But after all, the supposed experts on the economy, from pundits on the networks to billionaire investment bankers, have not been exactly reliable……

The steep prices charged by practitioners of divination do not seem to have deterred many of the financially fretful. Hartman, the Los Angeles psychic, said her Internet traffic has picked up substantially, from about 30 visitors a day to more than 200. She charges from $150 for a 30-minute telephone reading to $500 for 90 minutes of "intuitive counseling." In what is perhaps a sign of the times, the $70 moss-scented prosperity candle offered on her Web site has become her best seller, she said….

Federal Reserve Bond Sales?
by Michael S. Rozeff

Rumor has it that the Federal Reserve is considering selling bonds. The legality is in question. Leaving that aside, why would the Fed do such a thing? If it did, how would such a thing work? What would be its effects?
The Fed can issue non-interest bearing debt now. This is the Federal Reserve notes that we use as a medium of exchange. When the Fed buys things like Treasury bills, commercial paper, junk bonds, stocks, or many other securities, it pays by creating reserves for banks that can be cashed out, if desired, as Federal Reserve notes. The Fed has created a ton of potentially inflationary reserves lately. It is paying interest on these reserves in order to "sterilize" them, that is, prevent them from being cashed out and from being used to make an excessive amount of new loans. It’s trying to save the banking system without causing inflation. It appears that the proposal to issue interest-bearing debt is a variation on this scheme…..

The Fed is gonna drop a refrigerator from the top of a 10 story building. He says he will run down and catch it safely before it hits the ground.

Yah,I dont think so either.

Hat tip to Gary North fior this one...

The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff

By Chris Hedges
The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredded constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think. They focus instead, through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, advanced placement classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools and blind deference to all authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers. The collapse of the country runs in a direct line from the manicured quadrangles and halls in places like Cambridge, Princeton and New Haven to the financial and political centers of power….

…These elites, and the corporate system they serve, have ruined the country. These elite cannot solve our problems. They have been trained to find “solutions,” such as the trillion-dollar bailout of banks and financial firms, that sustain the system. They will feed the beast until it dies. Don’t expect them to save us. They don’t know how. And when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, they will be exposed as being as helpless, and as stupid, as the rest of us….