ParisRant: Told You - Money For Old Rope...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

Short the SPI here... it is money for jam, and will probably end up being one that we ride all year. (Sorry to SPISpyers for leaving the good oil in a public spot, but I can't get access to my mailer from a public internet cafe).

GT - 12:55 a.m., Friday Jan 19th

Sacre bleu Batman... how easy was that SPI short? As I have mentioned to all who asked, the SPISpy has of necessity been in hiatus while we wait for the Froggish telephony companies to instal our fast internet access. As a reslt I have decided to post - in this free spot right here - some medium-term guidance for the SPI... gratis.

I made that last thing sound like it's the fault of the Froggie telephony companies that I on't have fast internet. it's not really... the place we're renting (for a lazy €2000) was supposed to have fast internet, but it doesn't. We have not yet finalised a lease on the little place in le Vesinet; you will not believe how beautiful that area is, even in winter.

over here, €29.99 a month gets you unlimited ADSL at 20Mbps, unlimited telephony (including calls to the US, Australia and the rest of Western Europe) and cable TV with 100 channels. A mobile dea lfor €32 gets you unlimited weekend and evening (after 6 p.m.) calls to fixed lines, and unlimited 3G traffic. Splendid. I especially can't wait for the cable TV - re-runs of Dallas and Love Boat are really doing my head in.

Well, the SPI at the time (12:55 a.m. Oz time, Friday) was just over 4820; as with all medium-term SPI-ing there was a requirement to ride an uncomfortable burst of enthusiasm from the nuffnuff herd... but it's all smelling of roses now (at one stage yesterday moning Oz time, the 'trade' was up 70 SPI points).

honestly, if the nufnuffs were smart enough to read this page, we could save them a lot of expenditure on antacid tablets, n'est-ce pas? instead, the nuffies of the world get their guidance from the saltimbanques who think that the market is their plaything. (Saltimbanque is a word I just learned - it has a meaning clsoe to 'charlatan' but is more perjorative... but not as bad as 'salaud', which is what brokers are as well).

You will note from the above that I envisage trading 'around' this SPI short for a good deal of the rest of the year. Note also that the high for the S&P was 1301 or thereabouts; it is early days yet, but I believe that this will be the high for the year. If I'm right (and I am pretty confidetn that I am) this year will be - as we Parisians say - un cauchemar... a nightmare. You might not know it from the slightly-crosseyed Shiny Happy Faces of the True Believers, but everything points to a great deal of agony for the Common Man.

Western economies are in disastrous financial shape - although their FLOW analytics can be disguised for a time, their STOCK analytics are woeful. By that, I mean that although GDP numbers (measures of output FLOW) can be massaged through hedonics, chain-link indexing and rent imputation (combined, these add about 1.8% to GDP growth and subtract 1.7% from the CPI), the real disaster is in the STOCK (balance sheet) numbers. Debt to income ratios - which are a measure of where consumers, producers and governments are on their intertemporal budget constraints - are at levels which historically associate with subsequent periods of economic dislocation. Forget what you hear about 'flow-flow' relationships (e.g., debt-servicing ratios) which LOOK manageable. These ratios are manageable solely because the price of credit has been aritifically suppressed for almost 6 years; when this unhinges, it will be magnificent to behold, and will probably cause a discontinuous 'change of state' in a good deal of the West - by which I mean a political wave similar to that which is now sweeping Latin America... putting anti-globalisation populists into power. think of the sweep of fascism across post-Depression Western Europe, or the creeping fascism that has permeated some of the West since 9/11... and don't think for a moment that I think political populists have all the answers... like all politicians they have NONE of the answers.

ParisRant: The Engines Are Being Primed...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

It's been a while, and Ariel Cochon still has his headache. Couldn't happen to a nicer mass-murderer (although a similar fate for Shrub and Cheney wouldn't go astray.

the Western media is full of absolute bullshit about Iran, because Iran's euro-denominated oil bourse is due to commmence trading in March. What odds will you give that the Yanks (or the Eastern-European reffos who call themselves "Israel") bomb Iran before then?

It is massively unlikely that the Yanks (and the Brits) will get the matter through the security council - after swallowing Colon 'Plantation Negro' Powell's "proof positive" of Feb 5 2003, there is no way that the UNSC will fall for a similar line of bullshit from Crawford's Third Wheel. Plus, the Russkies are smart - they (and China) are getting quite buddy-buddy with the Peacock Throne (even if its' occupied by semi-radical mullahs).

So the Yanks will drop some ordnance (or will permit Israel to drop it) on Isfahan and a couple other places, in defiance of international law... and then those human scum Bush and Blair will declare that they were in fact "doing the will of the International Community".

Anyone who has ever heard of Dresden, Hiroshim and Nagasaki knows full well that the Americans are absolute barbarians who have no consideration whatsoever for the lives of civilians; from deliberate massacres of civilians during the annexation of the Phillippines, to Eisenhower's refusal to honour requirements for the treatment of prisoners at Reimagen, through to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, history is awash in the blood of children and old folks at the hands of the Yanks... so spare me any bullshit about concern for human rights.

Of course I am not talking about American civilians in the foregoing - they, like all civilians, are victims of the butchers in their State apparatus, not 'enablers'. I reject completely the idea that any civilian is a valid target (which defies the view of the US, which bombed industrial plants in the Ruhr during WWII on the basis that the civilians who worked therein were contributors to the war effort and therefore valid targets). Using American logic, the CIA 'shop' in WTC-1 made that building a completely valid target for any enemy with the resources to attack it: any civilian victims were just - to use their own vile equivocation against them - simply 'collateral damage'.

Oh - and despite every idiot on the planet getting wet in the groinal area when the Dow went through 11k early in the New year, I would point out that every man and his dog (well, folks that I respect like Bill McLaren) had forecast a top for the Dow to occur on or about January 13th.

My own forecast from before mid-2005 was for 1300 on the S&P500, as you will recall. I was not at all happy about promulgating that number, but when the analysis leads you to a conclusion you put it out there and if it bites yo uon the arse then you take it like a man. I also forecast (you will recall) the fact that there would be the market equivalent of a lap-dance and "rub'n'tug" in the lead-up to Greenspan's retirement.

so nobody ought to have been surprised that the thing wafted up like it was 2000 all over again.

Forecast for this year: PAIN. A great deal of pain. The housing bubble is now almost global (even in debt-averse France, gross rental yields anywhere within an hour's travel of Paris are under 4% - a sensible yield is somewhere in the 8-12 range), and you can get an apartment with no money down instead of renting it. Very bad signs indeed.

I am waiting for the thing to burst - three to five years from now there will be distressed sellers.

We think we have found a place to live permanently (in le Vesinet - the only town in Fracne that is also classified as a National Park); once I find a way to get the photos from the memory card of our camera onto the Internet, I will post a photojournal of the stay thus far.

And last but not least, notice that the Dow is currently within 40 points of where it was for the last USRant... so in fact you haven't missed a goddamned thing! (Obviously the Australian indices have continued to go stupid - it's like the Charge of the Light Brigade... how many of them made it through?)

Short the SPI here... it is money for jam, and will probably end up being one that we ride all year. (Sorry to SPISpyers for leaving the good oil in a public spot, but I can't get access to my mailer from a public internet cafe).

NonRant: I Should Mention...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

The reason that the 'normal' Rants aren't yet up and running for 2006 is because for the moment I am having to do everything from an internet cafe. You would think that €2000 in rent (and a declaration that the place had fast internet) would result in a place that had, well, fast internet. Not so.

While I'm constrained to internet cafes, I can't access the machinery that generates each Rant (although they are stored on my USB-wristwatch - the best device to hit the espionage market since the advent of the microdot). The versions stored on my wristwatch will not work without a secure environment, and I can't install the security on every machine in every internet face that I go to. Simple.

Anyhow - we will have a new place within a week or so, and then everything will be back to full bottle. Subscriber-version people needn't worry - subscriptions are not elapsing (i.e., everyone still has the same length of subscription left, as they had on December 20th).

I am flabbergasted at the lack of investment analysis resources for the French market... they don't even have a Finance segment on the news. Amazing. So, FrogRant is a lay-down misere.

NonRant: Blasted Thing...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

Well, Paris is still nifty. The Lovely is having a hard time getting back into harness - 14 hour days knee-deep in a mediation which involves a Ministerial-level contigent from a country usually prefixed with "Deepest Darkest", and on top of that a RICO lawsuit to prepare for (as an attorney, not as a respondent).

So while I get to moan about the paucity of English-language television, The Lovely is working from dark to dark (starting before the sun is up, and finishing well after it sets). So much for the cushy Anglophone-cliented role where she gets to throw her weight around like a partner...

Still, there's plenty to be thankful for - Dick Cheney's heart continues to try and save the world by quitting its job, and of course Cheney's partner-in-WarCrime Ariel Cochon has had a headache for a week or so. (Get is - that's a bit of a Frog joke... a Cochon is a pig, and I apologise to the species for the comparison).

Now before everyone goes babbling about how an attack on Sharon is anti-Semitic, I would point out two things: first, he's about as much a Semite as I am. He's an Eastern-European peasant reffo (i.e., an Ashkenazi) not a Sephard or a Semite. Second, he's a baby-killing piece of shit. He doesn't disgust me because he's (nominally) Jewish; he disgusts me becase he organised the murder of innocent civilians for half of his adult life, deliberately and with malice in his heart (what passes for a heart in a pig like him).

Now I know, France has draconian laws that violate international human rights charters, regarding freedom of expression (these laws are dolled up in the makeup of 'defaming the dead' but what they really mean is 'opposing Zionizm'). But guess what? Sharon is not dead.

I was maddened by the tut-tutting that occurred when the news people got hold of footage of Palestinians celebrating Sharon's headache - there was no such tut-tutting when Arafat was on his deathbed and it was Ashkenazi reffo peasants doing the dancing.

Anyhow - Sharon has a brain clot. It adds to the number of dead or near-dead politicians on the planet, and the deader a politician is the better I like it. I prefer my politicians dead - they can do a lot less damage that way.

Of course France is currently involved in a circle-jerk over the long-dead Francois Mitterand - the guy who ordered the blowing up of the Rainbow Warrior. Nice bloke, if you listen to he hagiographic bullshit being spouted in the press here. Still, he's dead, so that's at least one mark in his favour.

Thinking about it, I mentioned in late December that Howard and Bush had, thus far, annoyed me by failing to have major strokes... who would have thought that I would get an early New Years present (albeit the wrong politician, in some sense... Israel won't exist in fifty years).

So a fat war criminal has had a brain clot... what do you expect when you are a grat fat sweaty hog?

One thing about the French - who are a marvellous people who worked out in the late 19th century that war was a lsoing proposition (which is why they on'y ever make a token effort); they smoke like bloody chinamen, so everyone (even the presenters on telly) has grey or yellow teeth. Blyecch.

thinking About War...

I've long said that war is always and everywhere the least efficient way of garnering control over resources; trade is always vastly superior.

Thinking harder about why the French snip off the two ends of their flag whenever anyone with a gun turns up (i.e., they delete the red and blue bits, leaving a nice white flag to facilitate surrender), it seems to me that they've got it about right.

Sure, anyone with five bicycles and a couple of shanghais can take Paris, but try holding the bloody thing. Paris fell four times within the space of a hundred years (twice to the Krauts in less than 20 years), but they still speak French here.

After a thousand years of bloodshed in Europe, and their own REvolution and Reign of Terror, I reckon the French thought a bit harder about the issue; they reasoned (rightly) that the Revolution of the Masses jsut resulted in a different bunch of fat pricks living in the palaces (give a politician a job and he immediately instals himself and his mates in palaces). Liekwise, they thought a bit harder about the whole 'Empire' thing.

After all, once all the low-hanging fruit (African, mostly) had been harvested, the prospects for Empire got a bit grim. So while teenage countries like Germany, Italy and America had their Imperial fantasies, the Frogs had already had a gutful and usually employed disgruntled foreigners (the Foreign Legion) to shore up Imperial satrapies.

They appear to have got the formula right - the only sensible invasion target is one which is has invented nothing more advanced than a pointy stick. You go in, massacre the locals in a display of barbarity that will resonate in the primal consciousness of subsequent generations, and then you take their shit. It's a very low cost way of doing things (still not as efficient as trade, though).

But when your target has anything more advanced than a pointy stick, the expected return from an invasion dissipate very rapidly indeed. If your enemy can get projectile weapons, they can almost certainly fight you to a standstill (like the Maori didin New Zealand). This is the lesson that the French had already learned by the time of Diem Ben Phu, which is why they were so keen to let the Yanks fight VietNam.

the Ynks still haven't learned it yet. They are learning it now in Iraq, and if they go for Iran they will learn it ten times more quickly.

Speaking of peoples who invent nothing more advanced than a pointy stick, why is it that your average darkie can't say 'Pardon'? I notice this particularly now, since the Frogs are always saying 'Pardon' to anyone within earshot. Streets are quite narrow and people often get into each other's way. The Frogs will always say 'Pardon' as well as 'Excusez-moi'. But not the schwartzers. All they had to do to prevent their blighted condition was invent the wheel before we did... but they were too busy picking the low-hanging fruit that grows so abundantly in Africa. No use waiting two hundred years and then then carrying on like you've got something to complain about.

Racist? Mayhap. I often wonder what history would have looked like if Africans or South American 'Indians' had invented the wheel before we did. Instead of the sweep of bloodshed proceeding from Europe outwards, it would have swept the other way.

Well, It's Been A While...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

"And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear", as the Cold Chisel classic goes.

Bye Bye 2005 (almost a week ago).

I hope youse all had a good time during the festive season. I did, in a way.

Moving house was a chore (and I have to move again in another couple of weeks), and although I liked Ballan a lot, I'm now just slightly too far to enable me to make visits to the area.

After all, Paris is almost exactly half a planet away from Ballan.

Yep - that's right. I'm in Paris. In the land of 370 cheeses, as de Gaulle famously quipped. (For the record, he said "How can one expect to govern a country that produces 370 different types of cheese?").

The apartment is in the 16th Arrondissement, just off Avenue Foch. The Seizieme is a bit wanky - there are loads of Embassies and so forth, which means hugemansions with large goons lurking out the from 24 hours a day. Because I'm large-ish and with a rather goon-looking haircut, these goons often think I'm one of them rather than a resident.

Wankery aside, it's a delightful area to look at. After a couple of days though, you get mansion overload and all you can see is the things that aren't magnificent, and they grate on the senses.

It's six minutes' walk from our place to the Arc de Triomphe, 2 minutes to the Bois de Boulogne, and 20 minutes' walk to The Lovely's offices in Avenue Kleber. The offices are literally a stone's throw from the Trocadero, which is basically across the river from the Eiffel Tower. So every morning when The Lovely walks to work, she takes in two of the world's great landmarks. Nice.

The food here is excellent. Exceptional quality produce (I thought Australia's produce was excellent, but the range here is staggering). Wine in absolute abundance (of course), cheese coming out the ears. Fruit and veg exceptional.

As an example, our din-dins have included Roti de Pintarde (Roast Guinea fowl - I bought it at the local mini-mart and roasted it at home), Confit de Cuisses de Canard (cooked at home - out of a tin, no less), Civet de Sanglier (a stew of wild boar) which was my New Years' Eve din-dins, and of course the mandatory escargot (both the pastry kind, and the shelled kind.

There were almost 3 million people in the Champs Elysees on New Years Eve (also known as St Sylvestre here), but The Lovely and I went to Chantier (a terrific restaurant in Montmartre) for dins and were home by 10:30.

It has snowed here on eight of the ten days I've been here; late last week you could have snowboarded from the Arc de Triomphe to the corner of our street. It's melted off now, but Paris under snow is romantic even to a hardened old mongrel like my good self.

The people have also been very nice - they appreciate any foreigner who isn't a Pom or a Yank (of course any time a Frenchman sees a German he throws up his hands in surrender - it's almost an automatic response). And of you try to use your limited French they are very forgiving and show remarkable forebearance (I never start outin English - I think it would be rude).

Anyhow - it's just after noon here, and the US market doesn't even open for another three hours. Makes a change from the thing opening at 1:30 a.m.; this place is, in my estimation, the best location in the world fomr which to trade the US markets; start 'work' at about 4, trade the first hour, watch some TV until about 9, trade the last hour. Leaves the whole day free for sightseeing (it's almost dark at 4:30 becasue it's midwinter).

Tom Friedman is an absolute idiot. He is the NYT drone who tried to be a typical glib Yank dickhead declaring that "France doesn't work; if it was a stock I would sell it". That's why he is a hack mouthpiece for a dying Empire - if he assesses stocks using the same brain as he uses for his drivelling about France, he is better off being a hack than trying to make a living guessing things about stocks. France has the same ratio of government spending to GDP as does the US - almost to the exact percentage - but without 6% of GDP being siphoned off to government cronies in the Death industry. But try telling Friedman things like that and he will just wave his silly USA pompoms. Fuckwit.