The Daily Middle

Archive for April, 2010

Well here’s one you don’t see every day. Pretty unusual. Hope you enjoyed the posts this past week and hope that you have a great weekend to come!

Best Regards,

The Daily Middle Team

“What I’d rather do is buy the agricultural products themselves, rather than the farmland, because if you buy farmland you have to buy the right farmland. You have to make sure it rains on your farmland and make sure the sun comes out so I’d rather buy the products themselves so if it doesn’t rain on your farm, that’s good for me because I own the products. I like all agriculture especially if we see cotton blow I’m going to buy a lot more of agricultural products.”

This is Part 5 of 5. If you missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4. just click them appropriately.

When I first announced my candidacy for the United States Senate I really had no idea how well my message would resonate in the Nutmeg State. Well we’re six-months in, and my campaign is really gaining momentum. I am very encouraged with the progress we have made. I am well received at the Republican Town Committee meetings with several towns having already voting to endorse me. I have more volunteers and more donors then any other candidate in the race and reporters statewide agree that I won the only televised debate, which explains why neither of my opponents will agree to another.

The bottom line is, I think I have a real chance to win this election. My opponents are already adopting many of my positions, even if they do not completely understand the reasons behind them. This is a testimony to the strength of my message and the growing support I enjoy among delegates to the Republican Convention and local Tea Party activists.

The most encouraging data has come from my internal polls, which reveal a clear path to victory. According to these polls, both my message and my background win the Republican primary. Though I am still in third place (but climbing fast) among voters who are familiar with all three candidates, I win. Also, of all the Republican candidates I have the lowest unfavorable rating, and likely have the best chance to win the general election in November once people get to know me.
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From: Money Central

On Friday, the Commerce Department will report its first-quarter gross domestic product estimate. Economists are forecasting a 3.5% increase, further confirming the end of the recession and that the recovery is moderate and disappointing.

Unemployment will hang above 8% or 9% well into 2011, and most workers will continue to face a tough job market and declining living standards.

This recovery is decidedly anti-middle class. Wages won’t keep up with rising prices, health care premiums and taxes. A good deal of the gains, so far, are going to Wall Street and the medical and intellectual property industries.

At 5.6%, fourth-quarter GDP growth was pumped up by a slower pace of inventory declines. In the arcane world of GDP accounting, a slower pace of depletion adds to growth. Although the inventory rebuild has begun, the pace is slow, reflecting tepid demand for US goods and services.
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“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.” 

- P.J. O’Rourke

Jim Rogers, “Rob, so where do we put our money? Do we put it in Australian dollars? Do we put it in Yen? I mean, where do we go?”

Robert Rennie responds, “I think there’s a number of answers to that question. Clearly, you look at Europe, to me, there are a number of tectonic plates out there. Europe is heading in one direction; Asia is heading in the opposite direction. You look at the updates that we’ve had in the last couple weeks from Mas, from the Reserve Bank of Indian, from the Bank of Korea, even the IMF. They’ve upgraded their forecasts by over 1% for emerging Asian GDP for the next year or so. So we get a very clear bill of health coming through here. That’s an important divergence for me. Look, the trades that I still like and I think that have been proven this last week; I do like dollar Yen higher. Next week we have the Fed. I think we’re getting very close to the point where the Fed really has to consider very very carefully whether they want to use the word “exceptionally” going forward…”

This is Part 4 of 5. If you missed Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 just click them appropriately. Stay tuned for Part 5 later tomorrow.

From: Chicago Tribune

When it comes to saving for retirement and building a portfolio to last a lifetime, most Americans are way behind the eight-ball — and all the other balls on the table.

More than 54 percent of Americans report that their household’s savings and investments, excluding the value of their primary home and any defined-benefit plans, total less than $25,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence survey. Worse, 27 percent have less than $1,000 in assets. Just 11 percent have more than $250,000.

So most Americans need to modify their savings and spending patterns to have any hope of enjoying a standard of living to which they’ve become accustomed.

Here are some nest egg dos and don’ts, according to Hewitt Associates and Merrill Lynch:
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From: NY Times

In a 1964 concurring opinion deciding Jacobellis v. Ohio, Associate Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote about “hard-core pornography” and his struggle to define it: “Perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”

Using Potter’s indisputable logic, it’s hard not to see something obscene in how Wall Street reaped massive profits and bonuses in 2009 — and continues to do so, as is clear from Monday’s announcement by Citigroup that it had earned $4.4 billion in the first quarter of 2010, which was even more than earned by Bank of America ($3.2 billion) and JPMorgan Chase ($3.3 billion) in the same period — merely 18 months after trillions of dollars of American taxpayers’ treasure was used to save a financial system brought to the precipice by Wall Street’s greed and irresponsible risk-taking. Goldman Sachs, which is facing a civil fraud suit filed by Washington regulators, is expected to report robust earnings Tuesday morning as well.

How did this happen at the same time Main Street continues to suffer from an unemployment rate of almost 10 percent and from the worst recession in generations? Partly, this resulted from the original strategy of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to first fix the banking system and then worry about repairing the wider economy. Hence, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program arrived in September 2008, followed by, in February 2009, the $787 billion stimulus program, or American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
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From: Moneynews

Sprott Asset Management CEO Eric Sprott is very long on gold and not very optimistic about cyclical metals like copper.

“Gold looks better today than it ever did before,” Sprott says, because of ongoing sovereign debt concerns in Greece and other “PIIGS” nations — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain — as well as easy monetary policies across the globe.

“Some of the smartest investors in the world” are bullish on gold, the Canadian hedge fund manager says.

Tuesday, Gold for June delivery jumped $8.20 to settle at $1,162.20 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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“Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.”

- Jim Rohn