Bush Remains Adamant and Defiant on Georgia

Hello? The Republic of Georgia launched an unprovoked military assault on South Ossetian civilians under the cover of the opening of the summer Olympic games.

No matter. Bring it on! And we dare you to stop buying our increasingly worthless Treasury and Agency debt.

Is this some kind of Kafka moment? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times and I must be a faithful viewer of Fox News.



Bush: World must stand with Georgia
20 August 2008

ORLANDO, Florida (AFP) — US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that Russia must withdraw its forces from Georgia and that "the world must stand for freedom" in the former Soviet republic.

In a speech to a major US military veterans group, Bush underlined that Georgia had contributed troops to US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "to help others realize the blessings of liberty."

"Georgia stood for freedom around the world. And now the world must stand for freedom in Georgia," he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

Bush hailed Georgia's democratic shift since its 2003 "Rose Revolution" as "one of the most inspiring chapters of history" and warned that the West could not sit idle while fragile reforms came "under siege" by Moscow.

"The world has come together to condemn this assault," he said, noting NATO criticism of Russia and repeated warnings from the West that it cannot do "business as usual" with Moscow in light of the offensive.

NATO "agreed that Russia must honor its commitment to withdraw its troops from Georgia and to return to the status quo before the hostilities began on August the 6th," said Bush.

"The United States of America will continue to support Georgia's democracy. Our military will continue to provide needed humanitarian aid to the Georgian people," said the US president.

"South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia. And the United States will work with our allies to ensure Georgia's independence and territorial integrity," he said.

Jim Rogers Exclusive Interview

Jim is certainly the gloomy side these days.

Unfortunately we can not rule out anything he says.

Jim Rogers Predicts Bigger Financial Shocks Loom, Fueling a Malaise That May Last for Years
Keith Fitz-Gerald
Investment Director
19 August 2008

VANCOUVER, B.C. – The U.S. financial crisis has cut so deep – and the government has taken on so much debt in misguided attempts to bail out such companies as Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) – that even larger financial shocks are still to come, global investing guru Jim Rogers said in an exclusive interview with Money Morning.

Indeed, the U.S. financial debacle is now so ingrained – and a so-called “Super Crash” so likely – that most Americans alive today won’t be around by the time the last of this credit-market mess is finally cleared away – if it ever is, Rogers said.

The end of this crisis “is a long way away,” Rogers said. “In fact, it may not be in our lifetimes.”

During a 40-minute interview during a wealth-management conference in this West Coast Canadian city last month, Rogers also said that:

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should “resign” for the bailout deals he’s handed out as he’s tried to battle this credit crisis.

That the U.S. national debt – the roughly $5 trillion held by the public– essentially doubled in the course of a single weekend because of the Fed-led credit crisis bailout deals.

That U.S. consumers and investors can expect much-higher interest rates – noting that if the Fed doesn’t raise borrowing costs, market forces will make that happen.
And that the average American has no idea just how bad this financial crisis is going to get.

“The next shock is going to be bigger and bigger, still,” Rogers said. “The shocks keep getting bigger because we keep propping things up … [and] bailing everyone out.”

Click on this link for the interview and the rest of the story: Money Morning/The Money Map Report

A Warning from Richard Russell of the Dow Theory Letter

A dire forecast from Richard Russell indeed. Its within the bounds of our own probability as we have said.

We believe it will play out in slower motion until an event triggers the actual slide. This makes timing very difficult. What makes it even more difficult is that the dynamics are progressive with time.

The magnitude of the trigger event necessary to precipitate the collapse decreases with time until it reaches the point of near triviality. At the same time the forces built up behind the crash potential dissipate with time, resulting less force behind the decline. This is the equation that determines the different profiles of a 1929 and a grinding slide of a 1973-74.

Time to button down and get into hard assets, and let's see what happens. We see 1255on the SP 500 as an important support level but not the showstopper. We have underestimated the manipulative tricks of the Merry Pranksters at the Fed and Treasury before.

August 19, 2008
Richard Russell's Dow Theory Letter

My PTI was down 6 today to 5910. Moving average was 5931. PTI remains bearish by a large 20 points!

What do we do? Where do we go? Put your money in T-bills and await the coming next great buying opportunity with good stocks scraping the bottom. The stock market is now in full crash mode, and where it ends nobody knows.

In the meantime, the US balance-of-payments continues in negative shape. As I've written so many times, we're a global empire living on borrowed money. Our goofy president insults our biggest creditors -- Russia and China -- and seems totally oblivious of the situation. No empire can continue afloat while borrowing money to do so. At some point, nobody will lend the US money, at which point the empire starts to unravel. The dollar plunges, the US becomes a paper tiger. The all-important reserve status disappears.

I'd like subscribers to get rid of all non-bullion gold items and build cash. Sell GDX, SLV, XAU, HUI, and get flush with cash for the bargains that lie ahead as this market moves towards its inevitable final low.

The Rally is Weakening and Highly Vulnerable to Event Risk

The counter trend rallies in stocks and the dollar are nearly done. We may have to wait for market volumes to pick up from the vacation doldrums to see the results.

Quite a bit of the recent market action has been technical trade in light summer volumes, as the wiseguys bat prices around while the Bosses are at the Beach.

Until we see some confirmation, the rally is the rally and the charts are the charts.

Credit spreads point to end of equity rally, Merrill says
By Deborah Levine
MarketWatch
3:21 p.m. EDT Aug. 19, 2008

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Credit spreads, which represent the gap between corporate debt and Treasury yields, have been a pretty good predictor of how stocks perform - and they're not looking good.

When credit spreads widen, it signals investors are attaching more risk to lending money to companies. And wider spreads tend to foreshadow the stock markets' next move, according to Merrill Lynch chief North American economist David Rosenberg.

When credit spreads rise, as they are doing now, the equity market goes the other way 88% of the time, he said.

"Credits spreads, especially in the financial sphere, may remain vulnerable to upside pressure and this will only reinforce the vulnerability of this bear market rally in equities," Rosenberg wrote in a note.

For example, in mid-June, the spread between 10-year Baa-rated bonds -- the lowest investment grade rating -- and U.S. 10 Year Treasurys narrowed to 290 basis points, or 2.90 percentage points. That came exactly a month before the S&P 500 index recovered, Rosenberg said.

Now, the spread has again widened to 326 basis points, nearly as wide as in mid-March when the near-bankruptcy of Bear Stearns sent investors fleeing corporate debt and prompted a massive government intervention, including the firm's purchase by J.P. Morgan.

Although spreads have been widening over the past month, the S&P 500 has managed to rally 7% -- as of Monday -- after hitting a intermediate low in mid-July. The shares of financial firms were leading the rally, even though their corporate bonds have continued to lag behind other debt.

"So, we feel that investors should be put on notice that the divergence we have seen take place in the past month is unlikely to be sustained, in our view," Rosenberg said.