Everybody must be at the mall.

WSE Pro Market Update returns this evening. Become a member and GET IN RIGHT NOW!

I heard on the radio that the day after shopping in this area DFW was SUBDUED.

CDE

Here in Canada it's called Boxing Day.

I guess because you have to fight your way into the stores, I don't know.

jickiss is back!



jickiss is back!


and


for sure, Silent Day follows Silent Night.

here on the Right Hand Coast, X-Mass sure seemed to be Exceptionally Low Keyed and Quiet......Of course, TPTB have been too lazy to move X-Mass to a Friday....of what benefit is a Tuesday Christmas, anyway?

Retail Sales Numbers seem to show that after taking into account some realistic level of "Inflation" (6-8% at least) the holiday was a real downer, in real terms, that is.

of course, all this spells out in "On the Wall Handwriting", that Disaster is Ahead.

This means, of course, happy days for Gold and Silver and Miners and Miners Related. your jickiss had to go out to Mail Letters and to deliver certain papers to a friend, and just after selling CEF, at which point your jickiss was tempted to put the Whole Account into CDE, but opted to go for NEM instead. now your jickiss has been long CDE options as well as common shares, so go CDE, go!

(Remember ALL CREDIT for CDE always goes to Shorty!)

but the thinking on NEM is easy.....First, NEM is For Sale.....Second, why not get a Country Wealth Fund to Buy it???? (THINK EIGHTY PLEASE) Third, even if no Special Event happens quickly, NEM will get pulled up by Gold's Advance in 2008 to over the all time Gold Dollar Price High.

easy!!

this all spells Free Money to your jickiss!

Shorty, will CDE close above $6.00 on or before Options Expire in Jan 08???????

jickiss!!!!!!!

Ahhh... Christmas.

After telling my father in law that I've moved our substantial donwpayment for an eventual home into Treasuries held at treasurydirect.gov, he tells me that I should really have that money in something like his Schwab enhanced advantage liquid money market account like him, because it's yield is more attractive and it's totally liquid.

I tell him that I am effectively yield-indifferent, and instead, am very interested in return of principal when I want it. He says that the principal is "assured." I mention the institutional funds we've seen "break the buck." He sort of pooh-poohs that. So, I ask him how his Schwab fund provides him that enhanced return beond treasuries? He can't answer the question.

So, I look up his fund. And I show him the language in the prospectus where the $1 value is not assured, and I show him the names of various Caymen-island sounding outfits whose paper the thing holds. Stuff like, "Merlot LLC" and "Cancara Asset Securitization."

"What's in these things?" I ask. "What backs them?"

He obviously has no clue.

But he trusts Schwab....

congrats to CDE longs. I did not buy in, a little too busy to pay attention to stocks.

The wife &I went to a Bloomingdales in LA today that was totally dead. Didn't have to wait in line in Men's, in Women's or at some Clinique counter.

Oddly, the Macy's at the other end of the mall was utterly packed.

We compared some prices on the things we got and they were cheaper at Bloomingdale's....

Go figure.

jickiss is back!



jickiss is back!


then, for the ideas of 2008, well
what about investing in

Hawaii,

via

NUT. Some days your feel like a NUT, Some days you don't...

but for sure, BUY a Hangman Formation or whatever you want to call it.

NUT. NYSE... take a look, year end tax selling etc.

jickiss is back!



jickiss is back!


and

thought that Brisbane Bear might want to read this
story.

Tough. "Never Give In, New Zealand style."

Bloomies is a division of Macys. Weird. I wonder if most shoppers know that.

jickiss is back!



jickiss is back!


then, no wonder Brisbane Bear is not here at the mo-ment.

this is what X-Mass is like down under in Aussie land. Christmas there really rocks!

you must click on the Aussie Christmas Box, not the Java Island opening movie, to see the Aussie Christmas movie.....

Aussie Christmas Movie very cool.

But they did. Not to JPMorgan or Merrill, but to the insurers, which evidently didn't hear, didn't realise or didn't think it worth passing on to the major mortgage institutions that their insurance money was tied up in the same risky ventures these companies were trying to protect themselves from.

How is it so? Obviously relations between the bastions of Wall Street are cascading into cataracts of ill feeling and anger. J Kyle Bass, the highly respected authority on the housing industry, recently released details of a study his company has concluded on the vast "Inland Empire" region of California where millions of new homes have been built in the past decade, and said he found the situation far worse than he expected, with over 90% of housing loans containing some sort of fraud.

He said "50% of applicants overstated their incomes by more than 50%" in what is the starkest condemnation of the "liar's loans" this correspondent has seen.

The relationship between capital and insurance, and the trust between them is as old as capitalism itself. One cannot survive without the other.

http://business.theage.com.au/americans-wa...ge#contentSwap2

jickiss is back!



jickiss is back!


and

as mdporter has just pointed out, there are Big Problems in the Inland Empire, and for that matter within the American Empire.....

your jickiss was chit-chatting with da General and expressed the idea that the Real Estate Agents who want, here on the Right Hand Coast, 6% as a fee to help you sell, really have nothing to offer to the sellers at this time...

ok, jickiss, what did they have, how did so many do so well????

easy! when liar loans were able to be offered, the RE agents had 100% financing for any property for anyone willing to go along with "bending the application."

this method is not available now, so the market for RE collapsed as the financing market for 100 % financing collapse....

uh-oh.....

just buy Gold an Silver and Miners and Miners Related and look at your portfolio in mid january 2008. Then look at it on October 01, 2008.

here is another NEM chart. NEM.....is it ready to go up?

you take a good look, please.

80!

Spent the week before Xmas in New Jack City -- mostly in museums and galleries where the wealth of art on display was so rich and varied that it was almost possible for me to believe that our society is not in such desperate straights after all.

Back on the street, reality reasserted itself. The tonier sections of Manhattan have become progressively more hollowed out since I moved away some three decades ago. Apartments that use to house upper middle class families have been transformed into the third, fourth or nth trophy home of the international PigPerson set. Uniformed staff at Park and Fifth Avenue coops stand guard over richly paneled lobbies and elevators whose residents are seldom seen. The upper East Side has the air of a magnificently maintained necropolis: service workers come and go and the brass is scrupulously polished -- all for the benefit of a mysterious, ghostly clientele.

No where was their absence more obvious than on Madison Avenue in the sixties and seventies where the crème de la crème of the city's high-end retailers have opened satellite boutiques in recent years. As I trundled back and forth past the elegant window displays of Prada, Max Mara, etc. etc., immaculately attired sales staff stood lonely watches undisturbed by all but a very occasional customer.

Perhaps agents from the sovereign wealth funds will be diverted from their "bargain hunting" at the lower end of the island to pick up a few baubles before the year ends. If not, I'm guessing the all-important holiday shopping season will turn out to be a bust from top to bottom.

If these guys have your preferred candidate leading in the presidential polls, watch out....



==========

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071226/ap_on_...OhlvGx4P1xB5494

"They're the odd couple again: George Bush and Hillary Clinton, the most admired man and woman in America.

Though they stand on opposite sides of a political divide, the Republican president and the Democratic senator from New York are sharing the honor for a sixth straight year, according to a USA Today-Gallup poll."

Hate to say this, but I was at the Stanford shopping center in Palo Alto, and it was jam packed.

Guess the geek set are still rich and bubbly....

Couer's a whore. Chart looks good and it's going higher short trm, but please do some dd. Dennis will leverage ya up and dilute the sh$t out of ya(I go back to the 80's on couer the whore). Dennis is a good guy and perhaps his ship has finally come in(caveat emptor). I do love and respect this board, so I'll give you a few I'm long and maybe you can come back and give me some feedback. CGLD is a low cost Mexican gold producer, with a lot of shares , but a $250 cost of production; TBLC is a cash flow positive driller(gold), has a good exploration portfolio, and now has just bought a mine production company(eclectic portfolio of assets). In energy, look at CXPO; but please don't buy it here. However, do note who owns it and the production numbers the company is putting up. On the radar screen is one perhaps AussieBear can help us out on, AYSI; infrustructure mining play out of western Australia, can you help us out? Just becareful with Dennis and his "couer"....

Thanks for your post. For two reasons.

First, you challenged an otherwise relatively popular ticker. A little disagreement now & then among friends is a good thing. Keeps everyone honest.

Second, you offered some tickers I've not seen, and therefore suggested venues for additional DD. I'm gonna check 'em out.

2008 - THE YEAR OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS


Warren is not dumb



Thats what happens with a lower $ - the american manufacturing sector actually becomes profitable again.