Dear CIGAs,
You may have to break with the crowd to protect yourself. Do it!
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
The Detroit News reports this evening that the three top men in charge of rescuing the US auto industry own and drive non-US vehicles. It seems that the Secretary of the US Treasury and top economist Summers all own Japanese cars. The background checkers for President Obama are total zeros who have let him down badly.
How is it not hard to understand with major US car manufacturers stockpiling their products, trying to hold the prices high while giving back nothing compared to their price? Maybe the US car manufacturers are so stupid that they do not deserve to exist.
I recently thought about buying a Chevy but was totally turned off by the lack of incentive. How smart do you have to be in order to be able understand that if you pay a fat price but get zero interest financing, you have gotten nothing whatsoever.
This is another one Mia would have doped out in a nanosecond.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
South Korea knows it well, and is prepared to enter the financial fight. The real question is do the South Koreans know how to combat financially. It is by no matter of means simple intervention.
Honest Abe is quoted as saying the following:
"The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes."
–Abraham Lincoln
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
It will require a miracle for the US to avoid the same.
Britain faces summer of rage – police
Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets
Paul Lewis
Monday 23 February 2009
Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.
He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.
Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly "intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder".
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
All governments are facing building political pressures. It is guaranteed that this microcosm has gotten the attention of the G-everything.
Latvia’s government collapses
By David L. Stern
Published: February 20, 2009
Latvia’s center-right coalition government collapsed Friday, a victim of the country’s growing economic and political turmoil and the second European government, after Iceland, to disintegrate because of the international financial crisis.
The government in Riga, faced with forecasts of a severe drop in the economy this year, was the first in Eastern Europe to succumb to turmoil caused by the crisis. Its collapse rounded out a week that saw worries about feeble investment, banks and output in Central and Eastern Europe coursing through international markets.
Latvia has had a history of revolving-door politics and complex coalitions since pulling free of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis, who presented his resignation to President Valdis Zatlers on Friday, had been in power only since December 2007. But the precipitous plunge of Latvia’s economy, which helped provoke the worst riot since 1991 last month, played a major part in the government’s downfall.
Godmanis said he would continue to govern until a new coalition was formed.
"I am ready to continue working, but I think that responsibility for the consequences created by this government’s resignation must be taken by those parties that overturned the government," Godmanis said, according to news reports. Two of his coalition partners, the People’s Party and the Greens and Farmers’ Union, had demanded his ouster, he added. His departure comes at a critical juncture for Latvia, a former Soviet state with 2.2 million people. After entering the European Union in 2004, Latvia and its two neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania, posted Europe’s highest growth figures, earning the moniker the "Baltic Tigers." Now Latvia shows the Continent’s biggest losses.
