No one even has any money to buy guns!

Even, the threat of O'Bama...  whatever "they" say he is/was going to do, isn't enough to boost demand for weapons of personal, convenient and ultralight mass destruction. 

 

Smith & Wesson 4Q Falls 64% On Higher Expenses, Charges 

 

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.'s (SWHC) fiscal fourth-quarter profit slid 64% as higher overhead expenses and acquisition-related charges masked higher sales and margins.
Still, shares rose 5% to $4.30 in after-hours trading, as the results topped expectations.
But the gun maker also projected total revenue of $92 million to $96 million for the current quarter, with firearms contributing $75 million to $78 million and perimeter security making up the rest. That view fell short of the $101 million total Wall Street had expected, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.
For the full year, total sales are expected to be $430 million to $445 million, generally higher than analysts' view of $431 million, with firearms sales expected to total $355 million to $365 million.
Smith & Wesson's shares jumped earlier this week after the U.S. Supreme Court said the right to bear arms is a fundamental right that states are bound to protect, in a ruling that was certain to lift enthusiasm for gunmakers. Gun control legislation and election results only partially impact the company, as a third of its sales are to police and other professionals.
President and Chief Executive Michael Golden said although the period of heightened consumer demand subsided at the end of the company's fiscal year, Smith & Wesson was able to grow firearm sales, supported by a broad product portfolio that was strengthened by new products. Diversification through the company's acquisition of Universal Safety Response last year also helped results, Golden said.
For the quarter ended April 30, Smith & Wesson posted a profit of $2.7 million, or 4 cents a share, down from $7.4 million, or 14 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter included 4 cents of acquisition-related charges. Analysts expected an adjusted profit of 4 cents.
Net sales climbed 4.3% to $103.8 million, above the company's downbeat March forecast of $97 million to $101 million.

Gross margin widened to 31.3% from 31.1%.

Firearms sales were down 9.3%, falling from a stellar quarter a year ago when industry wide firearm sales peaked following the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Perimeter-security sales were up 25% at $13.6 million, although the result was under the company's expectations, primarily due to one customer's deferral of a significant order into future quarters, and generally longer sales cycles.

-By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2480; john.kell@dowjones.com

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Whoa Nellie!

Ok so maybe I jumped the gun here, I don't want a Python moment when we're bringing out the dead and the guy's still breathing.  It's a remote possibility a brief rally point could start from here on this double bottom... this is really just to keep us shorts honest, and not back up the dump trucks, just yet. 

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I Christen Thee.... The G8 Deepression!

Remember you heard and saw it hear first!  Wow, June was a bust... and it fought so valiantly, with everything it had and then in the last two days it gave up the ghost, and broke a critical level and stayed below it. 

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Jeez! Everyone's worrying about the high frequency machine trader when...

it's the drunk ass trader who puts on his trade muscles and thinks he is channeling Jesse Livermore, you have to watch out for.  

Those not familiar with Jesse Livermore, he was the John Paulson (Trader not Sec'y) of the previous until now great Depression as compared to what we have now, the Great Deepression.  He reportedly made $100,000,000 in just one day, a staggering amount for 1929.  If he had turned in that paper currency and bought gold at the set rate of $35 an ounce, his heirs would have @ $1,200 per troy ounce $3,428,571,428.57 in gold today.  Or 28 571 428.57 troy ounces = 979.591837 short tons which is more gold than the UK, Turkey and Greece combined. No wonder Paulson, bought a gold mine, at least he won't end up with a Ohio Bus Station bathroom stall with his grey matter adorning the cold mottled institutional mosaic floor.

How a broker spent $520m in a drunken stupor and moved the global oil price

PVM Oil Futures trader Steve Perkins bought 7m barrels of crude in late-night trading binge on his laptop, driving the oil price to an eight-month high. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7862246/How-a-broker-spent-520m-in-a-drunken-stupor-and-moved-the-global-oil-price.html

 

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Aha, I guess these guys read my Token Economy Article... too!

Dollar should be replaced as international standard, U.N. report says By Gabriella Casanas and Mick B. Krever, CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS U.S. "dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value," report says Dollar under increasing scrutiny since U.S. entered recession U.N. report supports proposal to create standardized international system Under proposal, countries would no long have to buy up foreign currencies RELATED TOPICS Economic Issues International Monetary Fund Asia New York (CNN) -- The dollar is an unreliable international currency and should be replaced by a more stable system, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs said in a report released Tuesday. The use of the dollar for international trade came under increasing scrutiny when the U.S. economy fell into recession. "The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency," the report said. Many countries, in Asia in particular, have been building up massive dollar reserves. As a result, those countries' currencies have become undervalued, decreasing their ability to import goods from abroad. The World Economic and Social Survey 2010 is supporting a proposal long advocated by the International Monetary Fund to create a standardized international system for liquidity transfer. Under this proposed system, countries would no longer have to buy up foreign currencies, as China has long done with the U.S. dollar. Rather, they would accumulate the right to claim foreign currencies, or special drawing rights, or SDRs, rather than the currencies themselves. The special drawing rights would be backed by a basket of currencies, which would make them less susceptible to volatility in any one currency. And because the value of a special drawing right is defined by the IMF, changes in the value of any one currency could be adjusted for. These initiatives, supported by U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, are meant to help sustain the international trade and financial systems that will allow less-developed countries to participate and integrate into the global economy. In addition to the proposed reforms regarding international currency, the survey also offered guidance on increasing social well-being. The survey said that "the number of the poor in the world living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005, but nearly all of this reduction was concentrated in China." The number of poor increased in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia over the same period. Income inequalities within countries have increased since the early 1980s with few exceptions, the report said. "There's too little aid being provided, it's too fragmented, and it's too volatile in terms of the resources that are flowing to countries," said Rob Vos, director of the development policy and analysis division of the U.N. The survey projects that by 2050 the population will be at 9 billion, with 85 percent living in developing countries, and the global economy will have to sustain a system that will allow for "decent living." By 2050, one of every four people living in a developed country and one in every seven in countries now being developed will be over age 65. The fast ageing of the population will call for proper pension and health care systems that are sustainable.

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What the...??? So now they tell us after they sold everything.

Is it different this time they ask?  This article is mainly what I have been writing about since April, 2010 and believing since 2001.  This just kind of creeps up on you until you end up like the guy in Stephen Kings novel Creep Show as a pile of vegetated matter.  The action governments need to take is devaluation of currency.  The first one to bite it will likely cause a domino effect the scale and rapidity of such will make your head spin.  Don't get lulled, by the almost making it back up in the market.  Get your 401k your money out, and buy a farm or Rhodium.

Is It Different This Time?

AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. Federal reserve building.

The evidence is accumulating that the U.S. economy is heading into a double dip, if it isn’t there already.
Sure, the various red flags could be wrong; it could be different this time. But the weight of probability is definitely on the downside.
The importance of the fiscal and monetary infusions following the credit crunch are becoming clear. The 11% deficit relative to GDP the U.S. government ran during 2009 managed to generate only around 2.5% GDP growth in the year to the end of the first quarter. This pales next to the rebounds that followed previous economic revivals.
Zero interest rates and quantitative easing worth around another two percentage points off the Fed funds rate have done all they can.
The current stimulus program is starting to wind down, so the net effect of new spending is tailing off. This has already become painfully apparent in the housing market, where the ending of buyer tax credits has seen housing sales numbers fall off a cliff to register even lower lows than anyone thought possible.
What’s more, it looks clear the inventory cycle rebuild is also beginning to run out of steam. And that’s important. Inventories generated around two-thirds of U.S. growth last year. By contrast, real final sales have been running at a mere 1.2%, the lowest for the year following the end of a recession in least 50 years, according to David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff.
Regional Federal Reserve bank surveys of business activity point to a slowdown, all during a period when employment growth seems to have stagnated.
No wonder longer-dated Treasury bond yields have tumbled, to where the curve is beginning to look uncannily like Japan’s did in the early stages of its lost decades–before, that is, the JGB curve turned completely flat.
As glum as the domestic picture looks, the international one is looking downright depressing. European austerity will not only limit U.S. exports to the region, but the euro zone will undoubtedly also look to the U.S. market to trade its way out of trouble. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy looks increasingly unhinged. Should its domestic real-estate bubble burst, you can expect China to look to ramping up its exports to the U.S. as a way of mitigating the pain.
John Hussman, of Hussman Funds, reckons the evidence suggests “the U.S. economy is most probably either in, or immediately entering, a second phase of contraction.”
Given the growing popular resistance to yet more fiscal stimulus–some policymakers are worried about triggering a sovereign-debt crisis in the U.S., while a vocal body of voters doesn’t want an even bigger government–the burden will fall on the Federal Reserve to get the U.S. economy out of trouble. Andrew Roberts, head of credit at Royal Bank of Scotland, figures  the Fed will start a flood of QE.
History shows this seldom ends well. Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart’s instant classic tome on debt crises, “This Time Is Different”, shows that banking defaults tend to be followed by sovereign defaults that tend to be followed by emergency monetary responses that result in uncontrolled inflation.
Paul Krugman warns that if governments don’t act, the global economy is heading towards its third serious depression of the past century and a half. And yet, if they act too much, they’ll destroy the very cornerstone of modern economies, government-issued currency.

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