China's Strengths

China continues to make the news as our chief competitor and financier. One of my email newsletters had some interesting perspective.

Robert Hsu claims that China's strengths are:

• China has little exposure to the problems we have here.
• China has no restrictions on spending stimulus money.
• China’s banks are stronger, with no subprime mess holding them back.
• China has over a $2 trillion surplus to spend as it sees fit.
• China has turned its growth internal with a $586 stimulus spending program.
• China has its own 1.3 billion-man market to sell to and a workforce that’s growing richer and spending money every day!

Sinclair's Latest View of The World

''Let us not forget the reality that the US has plunged into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; nationalized healthcare has been met with fierce resistance nationwide; States are now litigating the demand for its citizens to sign up and/or be fined and imprisoned. TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace. The reality is that the financial crisis in the US now construct in the form of state failure exceeds any problems in Europe. Perspective is now in the marketplace, but reality will carry the day in terms of trend. Gold will trade at $1650 and better. The US dollar is no safe haven from anything.''
Jim Sinclair, Gold Market Analyst (www.JSMineSet.com March 25th)

Crash And Burn

The stimulus received approval. Image that! Some say that by the time Obama took office, we already had $8 trillion of obligations. I guess we now have $8.7 trillion. In my November 2008 post, I made the reference to Hogs, but I wasn't hoping that we would be approving some massive "pork" spending. We have just burdened our grandchildren.

I've recently made a few references to microcosms and fractals. Here's a comical example of the government trying to make progress:

DTV NASCAR Campaign Off To Bumpy Start
NASCAR driver David Gilliland rams into wall during first race in FCC sponsored DTV Transition Ford.
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/20/2008 4:16:00 PM MT

The road to digital TV apparently includes the wall at the Martinsville, VA, Speedway.
The FCC's sponsorship of NASCAR driver David Gilliland got off to a rocky start when a late-race accident Sunday--with only an unlucky 13 laps to go--caused him to finish 32nd out of an original 43-car field and put more than a few dents and dings into his #38 DTV Transition Ford.

The FCC has ponied up $350,000 to sponsor Gilliland in three short tract races--appropriate since there are less than four short months until analog broadcasters hit their own wall Feb. 17, 2009. At least the FCC got the spotlight that always goes on a crash, and Gilliland's Web site liberally sprinkled the race summary with references to the "Digital TV Transition Ford," rather than, say, "the car." An FCC spokesman was not available for comment at press time.

Gilliland will also be racing toward the digital transition at Phoenix International Raceway Nov. 9 and Homestead-Miami Speedway Nov. 16. For that $350,000 the FCC gets signage on the hood, sides and back of the car as well as on the driver's suit. The hood will feature a picture of a TV set and the words: "Is your TV ready for digital," as well as a yellow banner with "DTV Transition Deadline: February 17, 2009," inside. It will also say "DTV transition" on the back and sides of the car. The FCC says those races will reach an average 8 million weekly TV audience, as well as some 125,000 spectators in the stands at each race.

The "crash and burn" of our tax dollars!