Hilarious BBC interview with sociopathic forex trader, Mr. Rastani.

"This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out," Rastani said on an interview with BBC on Monday morning. "The governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world."

The statement came towards the end of an almost three and a half minute interview in which Rastani warned viewers to "get prepared" for the inevitable: "The savings of millions of people are going to vanish" in less than a year, he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/2 ... 81658.html

(bolding added by moi)

Then he says this:

But the crash will be good news for traders, Rastani told the stunned BBC anchors.

"For most traders we don't really care about having a fixed economy, having a fixed situation, our job is to make money from it," he said. "Personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years. I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession."

Rastani said traders aren't the only ones who can benefit from the crisis.

"When the market crashes... if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this."

I don't dispute what he's saying --- Soros made a hell of a lot of money breaking the Bank of England.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday

But while it was good for ol' Soros, i'm pretty sure it can't have been a good thing for the English government or the English people ...

... it's all good though. Let It Come Down. me an' Gay C gonna hike into the mountains with shotguns on our backs and ammo in our pockets, live off the land, catch and cook crawdads, and eventually branch out into the White Power Milk industry. (Long story.) We will give no damns about your western society.

I've already started growing a beard.

I've also started wearing a Che Gevara T-shirt.

I don't dispute what he's saying --- Soros made a hell of a lot of money breaking the Bank of England.

soros made much more money from asian financial crisis, leaving those southeastern asian countries into the "middle income trap".

haha, that's awesome

Did you know that Soros also invented Pizza?

Right after he singlehandedly crashed Malaysia's economy!

(The fact that the currency was artificially over-inflated versus the dollar had NOTHING to do with it!)

Taken out of context, his remark sounds ridiculous. But given that he's talking about what he believes will happen to the market, he's right - governments don't control it. Traders have more control, and if most believe it will go to shzt, there's a good chance it will.

Hmmmmm. It's got me thinking more seriously about going all cash for a while.

"Hmmmmm. It's got me thinking more seriously about going all cash for a while."

Exactly. Guy really put me thinking as well...cash is king. Some real cheap real estate in the market...

Currently listening to auiobook "Harry Dent's - How to prospect in a downturn". Heavily demographics influenced (which by the way is how china will get fugged, but that's a separate story), but still interesting.

I think you could make the argument that the entire stock market is driven by demographics. I thought about that in 1999, when share prices made no sense at all, and the capital asset pricing model looked as dead as a dodo. This was my thought:

• Shares are (as of ~ 1995) no longer priced rationally on the basis of discounted future cash flows. They've become more like speculative commodities.
• Baby boomers have more cash than their predecessors, by far, and are bidding prices of all shares well above their real asset value.
• Share values should be driven by overall growth in the economy, but instead they're drive by 1 and 2 above.
• The growth rate will fall as the proportion of the population in the high-spending household formation and child-raising years declines.

Anyway, that's what I thought, but it was too radical to believe, and I didn't sell everything in 1999 when I should have. Anybody who went to all cash (e.g. T-bills) in 2000 would have done better than the stock market, on average, since then.

And maybe from now on?

The only thing that looks better to me is high quality real estate - in the right cities, and in the right neighbourhoods in those cities. The rich have lots of money and are willing to pay it to live in the best places.

I dunno. I'm not convinced yet . . .

Yup, I am still on the 2nd CD out of 7 so can't really comment on it but I'd say it is hard to pin down everything to demographics. It would assume that stuff like say the Oil Shocks didnt actually influence markets, which I guess they must. To some degree it seems that his theories and timing work more because of accident than science, although demographics is still a major driver.
The impact of immigration though is pretty interesting considering that most immigrants arrive at their most productive age without having cost nothing to the estate, which ties in amazingly well with The Next Hundred Years (did you read this one Rabbit?) and his points on America having to FIGHT for the best MExicans in two decades or less time.

All very fascinating and yes am holding cash tight until further notice...

Brun0 wrote:The Next Hundred Years (did you read this one Rabbit?)

Not yet - but it's on my list.

I'm still thinking . . .