MCR writes:

CITIGROUP UPDATE -- DOW CLOSES BELOW 8000

It won't be long this time. I'd write more but I've been overwhelmed by your responses to my last long entry. That made me want to be sure that everything I put up was worthwhile. I don't want to turn this into my "dumping" ground. It's been a tough week for me. Part of that is that it's still very difficult to watch all this come undone and to be able to see so much of it coming. What was it, five or six weeks ago I told you to start watching Citigroup?... Citigoup stock fell 23% today.

I'll have comments on the cabinet when it's more filled out. You can rule out Robert Rubin for Treasury. He's on the board at Citigroup and that's going to be real messy and won't look good. Today's Dow drop told everyone that we are nowhere near close to a bottom yet and I'm narrowing in on an eventual capitulation maybe in the low 5,000s. But things are so volatile that a metaphoric zero is not out of the question. It is becoming very clear that government leaders around the world are pretty much out of their pay grade, so to speak. The good news from this is that some of them -- and those who work for them --are starting to look all around for options, information and solutions in all kinds of previously ignored places. It's a good thing. We don't know how good yet. We have to let them at least take office before passing judgment and I've been a little pissed at some who have.

As a side note, I really had to laugh my ass off at two of the reactions to my brief spiritual discourse. One said that I was not a Christian if I didn't accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the only path. etc. That has no connection to what I believe. Another comment called me a crazy apocalyptic Christian and said they were "out of here". Cheez!... Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there, thank you!

I give Citigroup two and a half weeks at most. It might well fall sooner and there will be no bailout. That would start a revolution I think. The automakers are screwed and, for the first time today, the news commentators started talking about Chapter 7 rather than Chapter 11. That is liquidation as opposed to restructuring. A Chapter 11 filing is based upon restructuring and an influx of new capital... Excuse me??? "New capital"??? If the government won't invest $25 billion does anyone think the private sector is going to risk a nickle on those behemoths when the financials are trying to hold on to every dollar they have? It was always going to be Chapter 7 liquidation. That was obvious to me. They may pass through Chapter 11 on the way, but there's no way the big three would ever emerge from "Debtor in Possession" status. To make a sick joke... The wheels really are coming off.

Gee, I guess it's OK if I feel a little messed up... Don't we all?

Sending all of you a cyber hug. Thanks for those amazing responses. And yes, after about 18 years I managed to hook up with my old, long-lost pal, Nik P. It was a Kodak moment. -- I'm going to go hug my dawg now.

You go read all the grizzly details about Citigroup and think of all those people who bought all those put options last weekend. There's going to be a big feast over this carcass.

"Step right up! We have it for sale NOW! The United States of America is open for bidding!"... I guess you could say that we sold our soul a while ago, and it feels like there's just a few trying to redeem it as the lights go out. Soon we might just get to emerge from the shadows a bit and we might discover that there are more of us than we think.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4AI91420081119?sp=true

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JO writes:

The Daily Reckoning also anticipates the Dow going to 5000.

An interesting ratio to keep track of is the one between the value of the Dow and the price of an ounce of gold about which DR says:

In 1982, briefly, you could have bought every one of the stocks in the Dow index for a single ounce of gold. But by the time the stock market finished its epic rise, in January 2000, (while gold was doing an epic fall!) you would have needed 44 ounces of gold to buy the Dow. Now, that ratio has come down considerably. You only need about 13 ounces of gold to buy the Dow. And as stocks come down, the ratio is likely to fall below 5…and eventually back to 1 to 1 (at which time, remember, it will be time to sell gold and buy shares).

Obama Policies on Secrecy
Secrecy News hopes that the policies of the new administration will go further than suggested by the head of the transition team, John Podesta, in recent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Podesta, who played an influential role in the development of Clinton administration classification policies, suggested a rollback of Bush's Executive Order 13292 and a reinstatement of "the provisions of [President Clinton's] Executive Order 12958 that establish a presumption against classification in cases of significant doubt."

But, writes Secrecy News,

[R]estoring a 'presumption against classification in cases of significant doubt' will not accomplish much since executive branch classification officers do not experience significant doubt....

A better starting point would be a systematic review of all of the thousands of agency classification guides, geared towards eliminating obsolete or unnecessary classification instructions. Classification guides are the secrecy system's "software." Revising and updating them would be likely to pay immediate dividends in reduced classification....

There is an old story of a Russian soldier who saved the life of the czar and was told that as a reward he could have anything he wanted. "Please change my commanding officer!" he begged.

In the coming weeks and months, it should be possible to do a lot better than that.

Obama Letters on Federal Agencies
I Wonder If Al Franken Still Is Dismissive Of Voter Election Fraud Now
by Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform
CNN Recognizes The End of Suburbia
Rank and File Spies for Obama
Though the election is history in more ways than one, the above article gives some indication of the forces that were at work during this election. Talk about broad support.