I think it was Merck that actually took out a patent on a drug containing a statin + CoQ10. There is even a statement in the patent that it is to prevent the rhabdomyelitis.
How’s that as a basis for the future class action against the drug companies? Proof that they KNEW.
Bill H:
Let the “stupids” debate.
economics21.org/commentary/e21s-open-letter-ben-bernanke
To all; the furor today is an open letter signed by 20+ well known economists to Ben Bernanke at The Federal Reserve advising him to rescind QE 2. WOW, I could go on a nearly endless rant on this one! First off, where were these guys for the last 10 years while the Fed was blowing bubbles and putting us in a place where policy options no longer exist? Do they not understand that it is already game over? The entire financial system is hollow as assets that have little or no value whatsoever are being priced on bank balance sheets at par or more. Do these economists not understand that The Fed either buys more of this crap so that the light of day never touches them or it’s an all out panic because systemic insolvency is discovered?
Besides, who the hell do they think will be buying Treasury debt for the next 9 months? Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Sounds great huh, “we want to be fiscally responsible”, sorry but the time for this train of thought is long long gone! It is inflate or die and QE to infinity or the entire financial facade comes down immediately in a thud never heard before. What once was practical is no longer because this is not the 1960’s. What these braniacs have forgotten is that the Treasury is ALREADY insolvent and desperate for capital flows. The capital flow has dwindled and the supply will only rise, would they rather see a completely failed auction and the disastrous following events? So the Fed listens to you dopes and what? Who buys fresh Treasury debt? Ahh, you didn’t think of this did you? These signee’s may have wonderful pedigrees, MBA’s, PHD’s, Nobel prizes etc. but even a paperless “road dog” knows when to get out of harms way, NOW is that time!
Yields on Treasuries are rising anyway which is what I had expected because foreigners will and are using the Fed’s bid to unload their Treasury debt. In six months when yields are up 50 or even 100% from where they are now do any of these “scholars” really believe the U.S. will be able to pay even the debt service? We are already borrowing to pay the debt service so how much better will it be when rates rise? Do they not see that Bernanke no longer has ANY policy options left at all other than printing at a faster and faster pace?
The debate would be comical if it weren’t so tragic, these guys want to close the barn door on a stable that has already burned to the ground. It is like a movie set where the only thing there is is a front facade. It is now clearly a case of either the Treasury not being able to fund their needed debt or the Fed funding it through monetizing. SIMPLE! Very very sad but totally simple! Assuming I am correct which I am (sorry for being egotistic), there is only one way to protect yourselves from the stupidity (larceny) of our policymakers. BUY GOLD, SILVER and anything related.
Gold will explode for a variety of reasons but whether the U.S. actually has failed auctions and actually defaults OR defaults by destroying the value of the Dollar, it does not matter. Default is default and if you own REAL money, you win. Well, maybe not win because the world is going to be one crappy place to live but it will be much better to not be flat assed broke and rummaging through garbage cans for food! There is NO possible way to fix the current system and I do not profess to know how. What I do know is that the current system is failed and must be replaced. It will be and you can “bridge” to the next system with your wealth intact if you store it in “precious” assets. This was so predictable going all the way back to August 15, 1971 but no one wanted to listen to the most obvious of obvious facts, fiat money cannot survive and most certainly cannot be the foundation to a global economic and financial system.
I will be travelling for about a week so this commentary will be my last until middle of next week. I really do not like the hassles of travelling but I am surely looking forward to several doses of “full body scan radiation”! Regards, Bill H.
That’s a great enhancement.
Wonder why it wasn’t “Thunk of” way earlier.
I am told constantly by my readers that most in the U.S. do not understand what is going on. What is coming is a much lower standard of living for most Americans because of inflation. The reason is the Fed may not be able to stop printing money. Sound crazy? Jim Rickards, an expert in investment banking and risk management, says the Fed has no way to stop the runaway money train. In a recent article he did for King World News, Rickards said, “So, here’s the bottom line on money printing, or QE if you prefer. If nothing happens, the whole thing was a waste of time. If inflation takes off, the Fed will have to choose between holding bonds and letting inflation get worse or selling bonds and going bankrupt in the process. Since no entity goes down without a fight, the Fed will naturally hold the bonds and let inflation take off. Do not ask about the exit strategy from QE; there is no exit.” (Click here for the complete KWN article.)
usawatchdog.com/money-printing-quantitative-easing-qe2-insanity-or-ingenious
November 15, 2010 | 10:16 am
The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that illegal immigrants may continue to be eligible for in-state tuition rates at the state’s colleges and universities rather than pay the higher rates charged to those who live out of state.
In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, one of the panel’s more conservative members, the state high court said a California law that guarantees the lower tuition for students who attend California high schools for at least three years and graduate does not conflict with a federal prohibition on giving illegal immigrants educational benefits based on residency.
California is one of several states that permit illegal immigrants to take advantage of lower college tuition for students who attend high school and graduate in state. About 25,000 illegal immigrants are estimated to receive in-state tuition rates in California.
A group fighting illegal immigration challenged the California law on behalf of U.S. citizens who pay the higher tuition as out-of-state students. The group won in lower court, and the state appealed.
The lawsuit contended the California law usurped a federal prohibition on giving educational benefits based on residency to illegal immigrants but not all U.S. citizens.College students who are in the country illegally are barred from government financial-aid programs. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected eventually to decide whether the lower tuition rates also violate federal law.
[Updated at 10:29: The court observed that the state law also benefits U.S. citizens who reside in other states but attend and graduate from high school in California.
“It cannot be the case that states may never give a benefit to unlawful aliens without giving the same benefit to all American citizens,” Chin wrote.]
Thanks for the
“Go to bottom” button!
What a treat!
This could be big,,,,I Know everyone here at the tent had Doubts bout SLV but this may be a smokin Gun
stockology.blogspot.com/2010/11/grave-warnings-to-precious-metal.html
Yes, the ECU is exibiting its socialist character. The producing states are supposed to support the non-producing states. Just like Obama wants to spread the wealth in the US. Those that are accustomed to a non producing way of life should be taken care of by those who have a culture of producing. Why doesn’t he get it? It does not work. It has never worked and it won’t work in the future. Didn’t Putin tell him as much?
PCK is not on my watchlist. I stumbled across the article after a friend told me to look up a Hussman editorial from last week.
That is an amazing move for a muni bond fund. PCK now yields 7.8%. I guess CA bonds have finally achieved junk status.
Makes me wonder if the T-Bond market is signalling an imminent CA. bailout. Don’t know how that could possibly be gold negative or dollar positive.
Mrs L just found an interesting ad tucked away in the back of the Economist. Dick Smith, a household name downunder, is giving a $1 million award for the promotion of the idea that endless growth is impossible in a finite world. And a further $5,000 to anyone under 30 who can get a positive mention of the idea in the Murdoch press.
Go for it, Dick. And when you’ve got that underway, give gold a thought. Here’s the link:
‘crash’ has such negitive vibes moriority! [mash the movie] 
wj
What you misssed during the Tipping Point was plenty of Cold Spam and Chianti down in the cellar bunker…what I missed was a lovely Fall day..or so i am told. It seems safe now so i’m going to come out of the bunker and read up on Ned Schmidt … get updated on the coming Silver Crash.
i would refuse being ‘irradiated’ in the naked machine and as a consolation prize all male flyers should demand this..the only tsa groper i’ll allow to ‘touch my junk’ will be a young curvey blond brunett or redhead with a models body and a big smile. other than that i refuse…and i refuse to stand up out of my wheel chair too.
i want one of them ’sitting gropes’ so as not to be too breathless and weak in the knees after the ’screening’ process. 
wj
The London Telegraph
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 10:00PM GMT 14 Nov 2010
Unless the ECB takes fast and dramatic action, it risks destroying the currency it is paid to manage, and allowing a political catastrophe to unfold in Europe.
If mishandled, Ireland could all too easily become a sovereign version of Credit Anstalt - the Austrian bank that brought down the central European financial system in 1931, sent tremors through London and New York, and set off the second deeper phase of the Great Depression, the phase when politics turned ugly.
“Does the ECB understand the concept of contagion?” asked Jacques Cailloux, chief Europe economist at RBS. Three EMU countries have already been shut out of the capital markets, and footloose foreign creditors hold €2 trillion of debt securities issued by Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece.
“If that is not enough to worry about financial contagion, what is? The ECB’s lack of action begs the question as to whether it is fulfilling its financial stability mandate,” he said. That is a polite way of putting it.
The eurozone’s fiscal fund (European Financial Stability Facility) is fatally flawed. Like Alpinistas roped together, an ever-reduced core of solvent states are supposed to carry the weight on an ever-widening group of insolvent states dangling beneath them. This lacks political credibility and may be tested to destruction if – as seems likely – Ireland is forced to ask for help. At which moment the chain-reaction begins in earnest, starting with Iberia.
It was a grave error for Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to invoke the spectre of sovereign defaults and bondholder “haircuts” at this delicate juncture, ignoring warnings from ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet that such talk would set off investor flight from high-debt states.
EU leaders have since made a clumsy attempt to undo the damage, insisting that the policy shift would have “no impact whatsoever” on existing bonds. It would come into force only after mid-2013 under the new bail-out mechanism. Nobody is fooled by such a distinction.
“This is a breath-taking mixture of suicidal irresponsibility and farcical incoherence,” said Marco Annunziata from Unicredit.
“If by 2013 countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal are still in a shaky position, any new debt issued will carry exorbitant yields. The EU would then have to choose between a full-fledged, open-ended bail-out, and reneging on the promise that existing debt would not be restructured. Will German voters then accept higher taxes to save their profligate neighbours?” he said.
In May it was enough for the EU to announce a €750bn safety-net with the IMF for eurozone debtors. Bond spreads narrowed. A spike in economic output - led by Germany’s rogue growth of 9pc (annualised) in the second quarter – beguiled EU elites into believing that monetary union had survived its ordeal by fire. It had not, and this time they will have to put up real money.
Sadly for Ireland, events have snowballed out of control. Confidence has collapsed before Irish export industries – pharma, medical devices, IT, and backroom services – have had time to pull the country out of its tailspin.
Premier Brian Cowen – who presides over a budget deficit of 32pc of GDP this year - still insists that no rescue is needed. “We have adequate funding right up until July,” he said. Mr Cowan must know this is not enough. Funding for Irish banks has evaporated, and with it funding for Irish firms.
As we learn from leaks that “technical” talks are under way on the terms of any EU bail-out, it can only be a matter of weeks, or days, before Ireland has to tap EFSF – for €80bn to €85bn, says Barclays Capital.
Portugal is in worse shape than Ireland. Total debt is 330pc of GDP. The current account deficit is near 12pc of GDP (while Ireland is moving into surplus). Portuguese banks rely on foreign wholesale funding to cover 40pc of assets.
The country has been trapped in perma-slump with an over-valued currency for almost a decade. Successive waves of austerity have failed to make a lasting dent on the fiscal deficit, yet have been enough to sap the authority of the ruling socialists and revive the far-Left.
Former ministers are already talking openly of the need for an EU-IMF rescue. It is hard to see how Portugal could avoid being sucked into the vortex alongside Ireland. Europe and the IMF would then face a cumulative bail-out bill of €200bn or so. That stretches the EFSF to its credible limits.
The focus would shift instantly to Spain, where economic growth stalled to zero in the third quarter, car sales fell 38pc in October, a 5pc cut in public wages has yet to bite, and roughly 1m unsold homes are still hanging over the property market. The problem is not the Spanish state as such: the Achilles Heel is corporate debt of 137pc of GDP, and the sums owed to foreign creditors that must be rolled over each quarter.
The risks are obvious. Unless core EMU countries raise fresh funds to boost the collateral of the rescue fund, markets will not believe that the EFSF has the firepower to stand behind Spain. Will Germany’s Bundestag vote more funds? Will the Dutch? Tweede Kamer, where right-wing populist Geert Wilders now holds the political balance, adamantly opposes such help, and might well use such a crisis to launch a bid for power.
It is far from clear what would happen if Italy was forced to provide its share of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Italy’s public debt is already near danger point at 115pc of GDP. It is also the third-largest debt in the world after that of Japan and the US. French banks alone have $476bn of exposure to Italian debt (BIS data).
While Italy has kept a tight rein on spending, it is not in good health. Growth has stalled; industrial output fell 2.1pc in September; and the Berlusconi government is disintegrating. Four ministers are expected to resign on Monday.
It is clear by now that IMF-style austerity and debt-deflation is not a workable policy for the high-debt states of peripheral Europe, since it cannot be offset by the IMF cure of devaluation. The collapse of tax revenues has caused fiscal deficits to remain stubbornly high. The real debt burden has risen further.
The ECB is the last line of defence. It can halt the immediate Irish crisis whenever it wishes by buying Irish bonds. Yet instead of pulling out all the stops to save monetary union, the bank is winding down its emergency operations and draining liquidity. It is repeating the policy error it made by raising rates into the teeth of the crisis in July 2008.
Yes, the ECB is already propping up Ireland and Club Med by unlimited lending to local banks that then rotate into their own government debt in an internal “carry trade”. And yes, the ECB is understandably wary of crossing the fateful line from monetary to fiscal policy by funding treasury debt.
Bundesbank chief Axel Weber might fairly conclude that it is impossible at this stage to reconcile the needs of Germany and the big debtors. If the ECB prints money on the scale required to underpin the South, it would set off German inflation, destroy German faith in monetary union, and perhaps run afoul of Germany’s constitutional court. If EMU must split in two, it might as well be done on Teutonic terms.
All this is understandable, but is Chancellor Merkel really going to let subordinate officials at the ECB destroy Germany’s half-century investment in the post-war order of Europe, and risk Götterdämmerung?
The author is somewhat more negative on the state of the population than I am, but I think there is truth in what he’s saying. Children brought up by parents with low ethics and education are going to be those who more quickly pick up the gun or knife, and there’s a lot of them. What is the modus operandi of the ghetto? Gangs and brute force for the most part. If the trucks stop coming to the grocery store, what then?
Maybe Goldballoon will have a comment on the article.
Cheers, ipso
PAJARITO. . Anybody know anything about this stuff? Supposed to be an Inka miracle cure for all and everything mixture of herbs and minerals. Wife is all fired up about it, me? I’m more skeptical with unknowns. Any comment is welcome. Tia., Fiveks.
Billionaire Paulson Pulls Back On Bank Of America Bet
Nov. 15 2010 - 5:39 pm
By STEVE SCHAEFER
Once a quarter, the average investor gets a peek at the investing habits of some of the world’s most high-profile money managers when Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and hedge funds run by the likes of John Paulson and Carl Icahn lodge 13-F filings with the SEC to disclose their long positions for the most recently-completed quarter.
Among the details to trickle out Monday — which included Buffett adding a position in Bank of New York Mellon to his holdings and Icahn unloading the remnants of his Yahoo! stake two years after his effort to force the Internet portal back to the negotiating table with Microsoft failed – was news that John Paulson has trimmed his bullish bet on the U.S. financial sector.
Paulson (#20 on the Forbes 400) famously hit it big by betting against subprime mortgages during the bubble, then made a big move into some of the most battered U.S. banks last year.
According to TradeTheNews.com, citing Monday’s SEC filing, during the third quarter Paulson cut his stake in Bank of America to 138 million shares, lowered his position in Citigroup to 424 million shares, pared his holding in Wells Fargo to 15.5 million shares, dropped his stake in JPMorgan Chase to 5 million shares and liquidated his 1.1 million share investment in Goldman Sachs.
Paulson held onto his 31.5 million share position in the SPDR Gold Trust ETF, among other moves, like moving into shares of Potash during the July-September period and eliminating his stake in Exxon Mobil.
Just now on CNBC’s trader talk they said Paulson was selling out or trimming back on everything except gold-then they went to the tech analysis guy who had the gold chart-he said it was an orderly rise and had more to go–and then they talked about how big money traders were just looking to buy this pullback in commoditues and PMs.
Nice thought!
Went to a funeral today for Bob Barret He found and developed one of the first urainium mines in the U.S. Built and started Solitude ski resort in Utah and in the early seventies sold his tuscarora claims to a little mining company which became Amaco minerals which started the Thompson Creek moly mine. He was 98. there are alot of stories told about Bob Barretaround here.
