Musing #1342
“A woman is always a fickle, unstable thing.” —Virgil (Aeneid)
“The usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.” Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
I love people. I love my friends, be they female or male, liberal or conservative, married or single, gay or straight, and rich or poor. I try to respect all strangers regardless of race, color, religious or political beliefs (with the possible exception of American's only native criminal class–politicians–as so described by Will Rogers.)
However, sometimes the logic of women and/or liberals leaves me scratching my head.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that modern liberals and feminists agree on all of the following.
1. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body even if involves a potential life–as in abortion.
2. A woman can contract out her body as in becoming a surrogate mother. This is highly invasive and will result in some permanent changes, but this is OK, it is her body!
3. A woman cannot rent her body for 20 minutes, an hour, or a night or weekend, as in prostitution despite, the fact that she will not endure any hardship, damage, or permanent change.
4. A woman can lease her body as in becoming a mistress to a married man. She can receive room, board, gifts, and a stipend, so her vagina belongs to her with respect to leasing it, but not renting it. I guess it is a question of duration. I think certain Homeowner Associations have similar rules so I guess her body is like real estate.
5. A poor woman with two perfectly healthy kidneys can give one away to a stranger but can not sell it to a friend, family member, or a stranger. Her kidney, unlike her womb, does not belong to her.
6. In the politically correct world discrimination is viewed as an evil. Women want equal pay for equal work, except at Wimbledon where the women play the best 2 out of 3 sets and the men play 3 out of 5 sets but both get equal prize money. Of course that begs the question as to why we discriminate in the first place and have separate tournaments for the different sexes. Isn't that sexism?
7. In one of the greatest court cases in history (Brown vs. The Board of Education) the Supreme Court ruled that separate is not equal and ended segregated schooling. But in Title IX legislation universities (if they want to get federal funding) must create separate but equal opportunities for female athletes to participate in intercollegiate athletic programs. If separate is not equal then we should abolish the distinction between female athletes and male athletes and just have open competition in all sports taking in all athletes who are good enough, be they male or female.
8. And what I really can't understand is how liberals and feminists put up with separate restroom facilities in public places. Separate is never equal. Witness the unfairly long lines of women waiting for restrooms in airports, sporting venues, movies, etc.
Feedback is welcome!
• • •
Here is a link to an interesting article about War. Who really profits from war?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
• • •
The next link is to a rather slanted rant against Bernanke. I don't buy everything said, but for the most, especially the points at the beginning, do clearly state the problems with Gentle Ben.
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/denninger/denninger022211.html
• • •
In my most recent musing I made note of the importance of paradigms. I have the utmost respect for the advances in medicine made over the last few centuries by Western, allopathic, medicine.
However it still uses the Newtonian paradigm and treats patients as machines. I think they miss a very important point. Human beings are very complex. Just note the huge influence of the Placebo effect. Furthermore, as far as I know, western medicine has no paradigm to include the data from multiple personalities. There are well-documented cases of people with multiple personalities who have diabetes while one persona is operating and do not have the disease with another persona in control. It is certainly food for thought. It makes sense in terms of a quantum mechanical universe as opposed to a Newtonian universe. Or, as I have often quoted, the great Niels Bohr said: “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” We still have no idea of what the human mind is or what it is capable of doing.
• • •
“The better part of valor is discretion.” Shakespeare–Falstaff in Henry IV part I
There are times when it makes no sense to be bullish or bearish. All of investing, trading, and speculating is an exercise in the trade-offs of risk versus reward. Now I find neither being a bull nor being a bear to be a compelling position to take.
The stock market had a three day decline from its recent top. I was somewhat skeptical of the decline because it came on news. I noted this in my last musing. On Thursday February 24th I wrote that I wanted to see the characteristics of a predicted rally coming from an oversold level, so as to try to determine if this was just a pullback in the bull market or whether it had the potential to be a more serious decline.
Friday we had a substantial rally. While breadth was excellent, volume stunk. Furthermore many of the leading, “high relative strength” names opened strong but closed either down on the day or in the lower end of their trading range. This is a big warning sign.
Almost all of the gains in the US equity indexes over the last 14 months or so have been enjoyed on either Mondays or the first day of the month. Yesterday, Monday February 28th the market opened higher and then surged early in the morning reaching important levels of resistance in both the NASDAQ and the S&P.
The rally failed and leaders (except for Apple) performed poorly again with stocks like NFLX, CRM, AMZN, CMG and others taking it on the chin, The semiconductor stocks, which have been leading the tech rally also had a very poor day.
As noted on CNBC today (Monday 2/28/11) , going into the action on March 1, 2011 the market has been up on the first day of the month for seven months in a row. And most of the up days were not trivial.
Tuesday March 1, 2011 opened higher but then sold off and subsequent rallies failed. In the end it was a big down day.
Wednesday March 2, 2011 the market had a modest up day on poor volume.
The onus is on the bulls to prove that recent action is just a correction and not the start of something very serious on the downside. The action is not good for the bulls.
However, I would be much more bearish if this lousy action had occurred on good news or no news. The fact that we have all this conflagration going on in the Arab world muddies the water.
The former leaders, are acting worse and worse and sometimes it portends a change in major trend. On the other hand it could prove to be a rotation in leadership.
I would advise most people to be heavily in cash. One reason I prefer cash is that Bernanke and his fellow Fed members are trying to force everyone out of cash and into risk assets and I know that ultimately this is a fool’s game. (However, up to now it has been the fools who have not played this game.)
• • •
Long term I see gold and silver much much higher. For years my minimum upside target for gold in this secular bull market has been $3600. I could see it going to as high as $10,000 or more.
Gold is making new highs but the mining stocks are not. Also there are many momentum divergences in the gold run. I am guessing that we are close to the end of this leg of the bull market. Of course that is just a guess.
• • •
I feel like I have less and less value added to contribute in these musings and I may find myself writing less and less often. Perhaps this will turn out to be a passing phase.