May 24th, 2010 by Dissolving Dollars

Arch Crawford uses Astrology and Technical Analysis to forecast the stock market. And he has a track record of some good calls. So, his recent forecast is worth mentioning. Starting around August 1, 2010 there is going to be an extreme planetary alignment (Cardinal Climax) that he contends is indicative of a major bad event, and he forecasts a market crash between May 1, 2010 and November 1, 2010. Obviously, Astrology is not a science; it has little precision and is at best a system of identifying dubious relationships between cyclical celestial phenomenon and human behavior. Nonetheless, that isn’t to say that there isn’t something to it. All I know is that even if he is right, it won’t be the end of the world.

Here is a link to an interview with Crawford about the forecast and here is a YouTube video of a guy reading that interview. And here is another article and here is the radio broadcast upon which that article is based (it starts around the 79 minute mark).

Update June 20, 2010: Here is a short audio interview with Crawford.

Update July 3, 2010: Here is an interview with Arch Crawford on the Financial Sense News Hours. Arch comes in at the 40 minute mark and talks for a half an hour.

Update July 26, 2010: Click here for an Arch Crawford radio interview from July 17, 2010.

Update August 2, 2010: Here is an article titled Global Catastrophe Alert on International Business Times from July 31, 2010 about Crawford and the Cardinal Climax.

Update September 14, 2010: Here is a 22 minute radio interview with Arch.

Well, November 1, 2010 has passed and the prediction was right if the flash crash is considered the crash, but not right if something bigger was expected. If it wasn’t for quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, the Dow would probably have slipped below 9000, but it didn’t.

May 14th, 2010 by Dissolving Dollars

May 13th, 2010 by Dissolving Dollars

Goldman Sachs had a perfect first quarter of proprietary trading (trading with their own bank created money for their own profit). That means that all 63 trading days in the U.S. markets in the first quarter were winners for Goldman. Needless to say, in a fair game, that is a nearly impossible feat. But Goldman wasn’t the only perfect trader in the first quarter, so was JP Morgan. And although not perfect, Morgan Stanley managed to make money 93% of the time. It all just goes to show that when you have the resources to determine the direction of a market, you can’t lose. It becomes just like a casino, it is rigged in favor of the house. So, that just goes to show that the idea that the market is some kind of oracle of the health and future of the economy is a delusion. All the markets is is a barometer of whether the big banks are mostly buying or selling on any given day. It is a joke.

And it isn’t only the markets that the big banks rig, it is also the government. Just look at the recent giant European Union bailout orchestrated by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve. The only things that bailouts like that do is reward bad government behavior by delaying the day or reckoning and they assure no loses for the banks who finance bad government behavior. It is all a sick symbiotic relationship between governments and banks that turns them both into monsters. Plus, all that funny bailout money (debt) and risk manipulation messes up the real economy.

But no one in the mainstream ever comes out and says what the real problem is with all this stuff. The problem is that MONEY IN THE MODERN WORLD IS LITERALLY NOTHING BUT DEBT! The world doesn’t need bailouts, it doesn’t even need investigations into Goldman, it needs real debt-free money.

May 7th, 2010 by Dissolving Dollars

In light of the DOW’s 1000 point intraday plunge on May 6, 2010,  here is a little clip of Max Keiser explaining the Plunge Protection Team (The Working Group on Financial Markets formed out of the October 1987 stock market crash). The May 6, 2010 crash looked like the Plunge Protection Team pressed sell and sell again instead of buy and then a few minutes later noticed their mistake. Procter & Gamble and 3M fell below what is called the Liquidity Replenishment Point and triggered a kind of market circuit breaker. Interestingly, Procter & Gamble and 3M are two stocks that the Plunge Protection Team purportedly targets to buy to prop up the market since they are heavily weighted on the indexes. Anyway, the whole thing was very bizarre. The rapid recovery was just as bizarre as the plunge itself. It all just goes to show how prone the market is to manipulation, both on the up side and down side.