Obama’s mendacity has reached cosmic proportions. The AP reports the extent of his new budget, a whopping 3 trillion dollars (cela veut dire $3,000,000,000,000 pour mes amis qui ne comprennent des chiffres en anglais! Pour ceux qui sont en Afrique francophone, cela donne 1537770000000000 CFA selon le taux actuel). This includes 1.75 trillion dollar deficit, which he repeatedly blames on the Bush administration by calling it the deficit that we’ve inherited. Excuse me. But you don’t inherit deficits but debt. Deficit spending is a result of the current administration’s decisions. But the double-speak rises to unbelievable proportions when he says,
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investment tips
Obama and "investment" (Updated)
The stimulus bill has passed the Congress and awaits signing by President Obama. The AP reports:
President Barack Obama, savoring his first major victory in Congress, said Saturday that newly passed $787 billion economic stimulus legislation marks a “major milestone on our road to recovery.”
Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said, “I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we’ll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done.”
Now I have to say that the term “stimulus” is euphemistic for “wasteful government spending”. But the term “investments” for this bill is ridiculous. If the US government doesn’t raise sufficient money to cover this deficit, it will lead to inflation. Inflation is form of robbery. Do you have a savings account? At 20% inflation like what we had during the Carter years (I was alive in those days, I remember it), your savings account will have lost 1/5 its value in one year. In five years its worth nothing.
Banks vs. Golds
If you compare the price for Royal Bank (RY), Canada’s largest bank, against the price of Barrick Gold (ABX), Canada and the world’s largest gold mining company, over the last two years, I think the result is startling.
Starting about two years ago, I have as an investor/trader bought and sold alternatively ABX and RY. I sell the one when it’s high and sooner or later the other drops and I buy that. I’ve found that buy and hold, which I do with a part of my portfolio, has been an entirely unsuccessful strategy since I started investing about four years ago (see this article which confirms what I’m saying). However, my alternate buying and selling of RY and ABX has helped me to offset the losses that I’ve incurred in the buy and hold part of the portfolio.
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