Autos, Houses, Stocks – They’re all Getting Cheaper

The weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune was full of remarkable things. On the front page is an article explaining how the United States fleet – the most powerful, sophisticated and lethal naval force ever assembled – could fall victim to swarms of Persians in speedboats. In a supposedly “classified” war game, the little Davids sank 16 American Goliath warships.

What to make of this report? If it were true, why would the U.S. military tell its enemies about it, revealing its own vulnerability to the entire world? It must not be true...comes the answer. Perhaps it is some sort of feint...or some bait, designed to lure the foreigners to battle?

We don’t know...but Caesar never advertised how his legions could be defeated...nor did the Duke of Wellington tell Bonaparte how to get around the ridge at Waterloo.

Elsewhere in the paper, David Brooks takes up the issue of how Republicans can pander to the masses and still be different from the Democrats.

The poor Republicans are giving up on the principles of the Reagan Era. Might as well; they began giving up their principles a long time ago. Now, “Republicans are adjusting their priorities to win back the anxious middle class.”

Yeah, say whatever you have to say to win. That’s the idea of modern democracy, isn’t it?

This is the same middle class, by the way, that has been nearly ruined by seven years of the Bush administration. But at least Bush cut taxes. And now, even that saving grace is gone from the new Republican scheme. There will be no more broad-based, Reagan-like tax cuts, says Brooks, not with so many voters getting older and depending on previous government promises. Instead, the GOP should focus on targeted cuts – like credits for people who do what the pols want them to do.

Autos, houses, stocks – they’re all getting cheaper. Or, to put it another way, in terms of these items, the dollar is going up!

Not only is Tata Motors selling a 4-door sedan for $2,500; China’s Chery Automobile Co. has one for about $4,000; And Geely – also in China – offers a model at about $5,000. French automaker Citroen has a deal in China, selling a ZX model from the ’80s for about $8,000.

And now comes another French company – Renault-Nissan – with an announcement that it will make a car in India, in cooperation with the Indian firm, Bajaj that will sell for only $2,000.

A note from Energy & Scarcity Investor ’s Byron King:

“Gold is selling for over $890 per ounce this past weekend. Kevin Kerr and I expect gold to go to $900 any day now, and to break $1,000 per ounce this year – sooner, rather than later.

“Silver is selling at over $16 per ounce, with $20 not that far away. So silver and gold are moving quite a bit in tandem. Up. Up. Up. Why? Because – not to put too fine a point on it – the U.S. Federal Reserve is signaling that its long-term goal is to put the dollar into the tank. Politically, the Fed needs to satisfy a bunch of spendaholic politicians who cannot prioritize spending or say no to special interests. And the Fed wants to bail out some big banks and a few hundred thousand ‘favored’ members of a politicized class – people with economic and political clout. So the Fed is pursuing policies that will directly wreck the savings and work of hundreds of millions of people, both U.S. citizens and foreign dollar holders.

“For decades, people have put their trust in the dollar as a store of wealth. In effect, people put those dollars in trust. Remember when a local merchant would put the first dollar he ever earned in a frame above the counter? People admired the dollar. People trusted the dollar for the long run. The work you performed today – for which you were paid – would come back to you years down the line when you pulled those dollars out of savings. People were going to save those dollars and invest them later or use them to pay tuition so the kids could go to college – if not retire on those dollars.

“Not any more. Now investors everywhere are watching the Fed and bailing out of dollars into precious metals. Just the other day, the Financial Times referred to gold as the new global currency.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily reckoning Australia

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