drbubb

LOL. Dream on. Do you now see the predictive value inherent in these WILD forecasts ??

Sorry, but I could not resist: Haha

I see your point - thanks for making it. But prior conjuctions HAVE been associated with major quakes. I saw the prediction of a March 11th quake BEFORE one hit Japan. Then it happened. I will wait and see what happens on Monday. Another quake then would leave me worried. (confirmation of Recess): Sept.26 - Oct. 2 : Senate Recess, House Recess: http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/cong_schedule.html

Welcome, SirL

I am watching that too - the 144d MA (near GLD: $154) Meantime, I will take profits on some of my hedges if GLD : + Retests today's low at $167.48, + Tests the gap near $162.50

Yeah, Phil. I think that is a healthy response, to become as self-sufficient as possible. But in the US at least, TPTB are up to some very nasty tricks, like regulating agriculture through the "food police", making it difficult to obtain seeds, swap food, and obtain organic products. How do you cope with that?

London and New York City prices to fall as banks shrink? A plausible scenario. HK prices are already drifting lower, as government calming measures take effect. Transaction volumes are way, way down... and banks here have reacted by pushing up their spreads, in effect saying: "We need a bigger spread, if we are to be making more loans now." I wonder how long this "greed campaign" will last? HSBC has also announced they will shed 3,000 jobs here.

(Posted by OffThePeak on AsiaXpat thread): "HK Island will always be more expensive than NT. But now it's what, double as expensive? I think the difference will reduce in the future, as more people move from HK to NT, so they can live in bigger housing, have cleaner air, etc. This means that buying a flat in NT rather than HK island is a better investment." You may be missing something important here - Proximity to high-paying jobs Highly paid bankers and lawyers work long hours, and do not want to waste precious time commuting. That's why the price of a flat in the Hong Kong SAR tends to be in inverse relationship to its commuting time to Central. And that is also why West Kowloon is gaining on Mid-levels - it is less crowded and closer. === UNQUOTE === /source: http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/forums/hong-kong-property/threads/114098/hong-kong-property-prices/

Just a coincidence ? World Leaders Will Be In Recess During Elenin Alignment on September 26-27, 2011 by Gregg Prescott, M.S. In a strange coincidence of anomalies, many world leaders and politicians will be in recess during the next alignment with ‘Comet’ Elenin. The United Nations has an empty schedule from September 23rd through October 10th, 2011. The UK Parliament is in recess from September 15th through October 10th, 2011. The United States Congress is on vacation from September 25th through October 2nd, 2011. Germany’s President’s schedule is empty after September 25, 2011.

Rightmove: Act now to move before Christmas % Change in month % Change Past Year Ave house price Sep HPI 0.7% 1.5% £233,139 Aug HPI -2.1% -0.3% £231,543 Key points New sellers’ average asking prices up by 0.7% on the month, but 3.0% down over the summer period Two deadlines should focus the minds of frustrated sellers: - Christmas is 98 days away but average time on the market is 94 days, so buyers and sellers need to get serious now if they are to tie up a deal before the festive season; - first-time buyer stamp duty relief is due to finish on 25th March 2012. Market recovery appears as far away as ever three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as key metrics are little changed: - new sellers again at 23,000 per week as lack of confidence and inability to move remains; - prices up by 2.5% in three years, compared with 16.4% in the previous three year period; - unsold stock per estate agency branch still stuck in the high 70s. While new planning proposals may boost housing market activity in the longer term, initiatives supporting mortgage lending such as FirstBuy are the more immediate requirement. /see:

"That might include a situation where a house is freehold but the garage is leasehold, a property which comes with shared ownership of a parking area and path, or if a property needs major repairs, said the OFT. Famously, one office of Kent estate agents hit the headlines two years ago for failing to mention a "not to be missed" fisherman's cottage on the Dungeness nature reserve was fewer than 80 yards from the perimeter of two power stations. The agents argued that basic internet research would have alerted any would-be buyers to the property's neighbours. The OFT also warned agents against leaving details of properties they have sold on their website or posted in their office window for a long period of time, creating a false impression that they are selling more properties. The watchdog added that agents giving "misleading" information could be failing to meet the relevant consumer protection law risking fines or even prison." DOES THIS APPLY to foreign branches of UK agents? If so, there's trouble ahead in HK

Still Another, and this one talks Mortgage rates Rising Borrowing Costs in Hong Kong to Hurt Property Market: Analyst Published: Tuesday, 20 Sep 2011 Mortgage rates in Hong Kong, which have jumped nearly 200 basis points (bps) over the last six months, could rise to as much as 4.5 percent by the end of 2012, according to Barclays Capital, making it much harder for first-time homebuyers to enter the market. Already, the bank estimates that first-time buyers need to pay nearly 47 percent of their household income in mortgage payments. The rising rates are likely to stall new purchases as well as purchases from people wanting to upgrade, Andrew Lawrence, director of property research at Barclays Capital, told CNBC. “People who have got existing mortgages are on a still relatively low rate, but if they should want to move today, they're now going to have to pay much higher mortgage rates, so that's going to be a massive disincentive for buyers,” Lawrence said. Earlier this year, Barclays predicted that Hong Kong property prices could fall 25-30 percent by 2013. Lawrence said he’s sticking by that view and that rising mortgage rates will “take out much of the bubble since 2007.” Lawrence believes depositors are shifting out of the Hong Kong dollar and into the Chinese yuan, largely as a result of the Federal Reserve’s policy of competitive devaluation of the U.S. dollar. According to him, that draining of Hong Kong dollar liquidity is driving up interest rates in the territory. Lawrence said he expects a continued slow-down in transaction volume for Hong Kong’s property market. The number of sale and purchase agreements for all building units received in August decreased 56.6 percent compared with the same period last year, according to figures from the territory’s registry. Government Policy Last week, the Secretary for Development Carrie Lam announced that the government wouldn’t hold any land auctions between October and December due to falling demand from developers. While some property analysts have interpreted the move as government support for the property market, Lawrence doesn’t agree. “(The government) is still committed to the 20,000 private units that it expects to deliver, and we would not be surprised for the Chief Executive to announce that we're going to see increased land supply, but combined into a subsidized housing program,” Lawrence said. He cautioned that an increase in land supply and a government policy towards ramping up subsidized housing would be negative for the city’s property developers. The developers most vulnerable at the moment, according to Barclays, are Midland Realty [1200.HK 3.35 -0.08 (-2.33%)], Henderson Land [0012.HK 41.55 0.50 (+1.22%)] and Sino Land [0083.HK 11.65 0.12 (+1.04%)]. Barclays has an underweight rating on the first two developers and is neutral on the third. http://www.cnbc.com/id/44589431

ANOTHER 20-30% BEAR http://www.alsosprachanalyst.com/real-estate/hong-kong-property-further-warnings-on-macro-risks.html#ixzz1YUBr4zVT The Euro is crashing, and US dollar has strengthened, consistent with my bullish US dollar call made few months ago. On top of my medium term bullish call on the US dollar, I believe that in a significant crisis (which I believe we are in one), US dollar and US dollar denominated assets (like US Treasury securities) will remain to be the place to go, thanks to the liquidity and the depth of the market, increasing the demand for US dollar (at least in the short term). While the strength of the US dollar is never the whole story for Hong Kong property, this has been allegedly the key reason many property bulls cited (who all invariably believe that US dollar will become toilet paper). The reality is turning out increasingly consistent with my controversial bullish US dollar call. I also have very little confident that a significant financial crisis in Europe and slowdown in the United States will not bring down China. The Chinese economy will have trouble to extend the life of the debt-fuelled and investment-driven growth model further, thus whether the policy makers can prop up the economy in the event of hard-landing is questionable. Even if Chinese policy makers try their best not to over-tighten their own policy, there will be nothing to stop the Chinese economy from hard-landing, and it is not sure if policy makers can prop the economy up for one more time. In any event, Hong Kong economy will be extremely vulnerable, and I believe the probability of a recession is now significant. That will also means the the property market will be very vulnerable. I did point out that a few other popular bullish factors which every bull likes to cite like real interest rates and rents have been historically lagging the turning points in the physical property market. Even though real interest rates remain negative and rents are still rising, these might very well be the last move. Put it in another way, inflation will come down if recession happens, and rents will come down subsequently as well, and they probably lag behind property prices for 1-2 quarters. Given the vulnerability of the property market to liquidity shock as well as the meaningful risk of recession, I hereby reiterate my call on Hong Kong property market, which is the base case of 0-10% rise for the full-year, with the lower bound of the range more likely, implying a correction of 10% or more. I would also tentatively estimate that property prices may correct by at least 20-30% from here by the end of 2012. The risk for both year-end estimates lean towards the downside in my view, that means I believe that any correction bigger than that might be possible should the macro situation deteriorate more than currently expected.

ANOTHER 20-30% BEAR http://www.alsosprachanalyst.com/real-estate/hong-kong-property-further-warnings-on-macro-risks.html#ixzz1YUBr4zVT The Euro is crashing, and US dollar has strengthened, consistent with my bullish US dollar call made few months ago. On top of my medium term bullish call on the US dollar, I believe that in a significant crisis (which I believe we are in one), US dollar and US dollar denominated assets (like US Treasury securities) will remain to be the place to go, thanks to the liquidity and the depth of the market, increasing the demand for US dollar (at least in the short term). While the strength of the US dollar is never the whole story for Hong Kong property, this has been allegedly the key reason many property bulls cited (who all invariably believe that US dollar will become toilet paper). The reality is turning out increasingly consistent with my controversial bullish US dollar call. I also have very little confident that a significant financial crisis in Europe and slowdown in the United States will not bring down China. The Chinese economy will have trouble to extend the life of the debt-fuelled and investment-driven growth model further, thus whether the policy makers can prop up the economy in the event of hard-landing is questionable. Even if Chinese policy makers try their best not to over-tighten their own policy, there will be nothing to stop the Chinese economy from hard-landing, and it is not sure if policy makers can prop the economy up for one more time. In any event, Hong Kong economy will be extremely vulnerable, and I believe the probability of a recession is now significant. That will also means the the property market will be very vulnerable. I did point out that a few other popular bullish factors which every bull likes to cite like real interest rates and rents have been historically lagging the turning points in the physical property market. Even though real interest rates remain negative and rents are still rising, these might very well be the last move. Put it in another way, inflation will come down if recession happens, and rents will come down subsequently as well, and they probably lag behind property prices for 1-2 quarters. Given the vulnerability of the property market to liquidity shock as well as the meaningful risk of recession, I hereby reiterate my call on Hong Kong property market, which is the base case of 0-10% rise for the full-year, with the lower bound of the range more likely, implying a correction of 10% or more. I would also tentatively estimate that property prices may correct by at least 20-30% from here by the end of 2012. The risk for both year-end estimates lean towards the downside in my view, that means I believe that any correction bigger than that might be possible should the macro situation deteriorate more than currently expected.

With 30 data points, she said that is hardly enough. And she suggested that I chart the data points, and then she could say something about it.

HOW THE HIPPIES SAVED PHYSICS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APoPpalw4lU Harvard and MIT scientists are interviewed. (Actually, from my own experience, I found many Harvard people far more open-minded, than the square-heads in lessor Universities. Once you hit or approach an 800 on your board scores, there's not so much more left to prove, and the curiousity emerges.) EXCERPT from the NY Times Review In “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival,” David Kaiser, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, turns to those wild days in the waning years of the Vietnam War when anything seemed possible: communal marriage, living off the land, bringing down the military with flower power. Why not faster-than-light communication, in which a message arrives before it is sent, overthrowing the tyranny of that pig, Father Time? That was the obsession of Jack Sarfatti, another member of the group. Sarfatti was Wolf’s colleague and roommate in San Diego, and in a pivotal moment in Kaiser’s tale they find themselves in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Paris talking to Werner Erhard, the creepy human potential movement guru, who decided to invest in their quantum ventures. Sarfatti was at least as good a salesman as he was a physicist, wooing wealthy eccentrics from his den at Caffe Trieste in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Other, overlapping efforts like the Consciousness Theory Group and the Physics/Consciousness Research Group were part of the scene, and before long Sarfatti, Wolf and their cohort were conducting annual physics and consciousness workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Fritjof Capra, who made his fortune with the countercultural classic “The Tao of Physics” (1975) was part of the Fundamental Fysiks Group, as was Nick Herbert, another dropout from the establishment who dabbled in superluminal communication and wrote his own popular book, “Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics” (1985). Gary Zukav, a roommate of Sarfatti’s, cashed in with “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” (1979). I’d known about the quantum zeitgeist and read some of the books, but I was surprised to learn from Kaiser how closely all these people were entangled in the same web. /more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/books/review/book-review-how-the-hippies-saved-physics-by-david-kaiser.html?pagewanted=all#h[]

You guys are both wrong, of course. The last three years has clearly broken out of the long term range - isn't that obvious? For it to prove statistically insignificant, it would need to return to the old range. I am not a statistician, but my partner has a Phd from Oxford, and did tons of statistical work, and I can ask her to look at it. My common sense tells me that we do not have enough years of data to draw strong inferences from the data, but a new trend may well have established itself since 2009. (especially if we take 2011 at an annualised rate of 22-23 - so 2009 was the "breakout year" and 2010 and 2011 are bring strong quakes into a new higher range.)

"just a bad year" was what they said last year with 21. But now we see 2011 is less than 3/4's done, and we already see 16 quakes of R 7-7.9. Let's see what the final quake tally is for THIS year. 2009 was a bad year (worst since 2000 and longer) with 16 such quakes.

This shows: More earthquake fatalities in the last decade than in any prior decade, going way, way back Sure, part of this is due to the greater population now, but the population is not so much higher than: + 1990-1999, or + 1980-1989

The data only goes back to 1990. Here are the data points from 2000 Year : 6-6.9 : 7-7.9 : 8&up : Deaths-- 2000 : -158-: - 14 -: - 01 : 000,231 2001 : -126-: - 15 -: - 01 : 021,357 2002 : -130-: - 13 -: - 00 : 001,685 2003 : -140-: - 14 -: - 01 : 033,819 2004 : -141-: - 14 -: - 02 : 228,802 2005 : -140-: - 10 -: - 01 : 088,003 2006 : -142-: - 09 -: - 02 : 006,605 2007 : -178-: - 14 -: - 04 : 000,712 2008 : -168-: - 12 -: - 00 : 088,011 2009 :- 144-: - 16 -: - 01 : 001,790 2010 :- 151-: - 21 -: - 01 : 320,129 2011 :- 157-: - 16 -: - 01 : 020,679 More serious quakes (R-7.0 and above) show a clear increase /source: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php

And the latest Quake... just missing 7.0 A strong earthquake has shaken northeastern India and Nepal, killing at least 16 people and damaging buildings. The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9, was felt across northeast India. It triggered at least two aftershocks of magnitude 6.1 and 5.3, Indian seismology official RS Dattatreyan said. He warned that more aftershocks were possible. /see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/earthquake-india-nepal

Some writers say "NO" to this question: Are there more earthquakes in our days? Is the end of the world here? Take a look to these graphs, where the number of earthquakes, classified by number and per year, is depicted. It is clear and obvious that the frequence of quakes of magnitude over 7.0 stays pretty constant: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php But if you look at the MOST RECENT charts and data, it says something else: + The number of DEATHS from Earthquakes in 2010 (over 300,000 people lost their lives) was unusually high, the greatest since the data began in 1980, + The number of Richter 7.0 and higher quakes was higher than average in 2010, and is running higher still in 2011, and 2011 is not yet over. I think you also need to take into consideration all the other "unusual" natural disasters that are hitting us. But earthquakes are the most important, since they account for about 60% of the deaths from natural causes.

Actually, I don't "believe" any of it. But I listen carefully to all of it. And I am alert to how it may resonate with what I see in the rest of the world, and what I hear from others. Listen to the 2011 Forecasts on Frisby's Bulls and Bears. MP3 : http://www.podbean.com/podcast-download?b=2516&f=http://commoditywatch.podbean.com/mf/web/z2u3e6/drbubb20111.mp3 I believe that I was the only one talking about the possibility of important Earth changes coming in 2011. The other parts of my forecast (such as a slide in stocks, led by China and Hong Kong), were reasonably accurate too -albeit that pattern occurred a little later than expected. Why did I talk about Earth changes? Because I had been listening to many people on alternative media who could see the pace of Earth changes accelerating, and had seen evidence to back up those forecasts. So I thought this was an important message to share. I don't close my mind, and say: "Back it all up with science, and then maybe I will listen." I call it being "open minded." JD: "The world has always had earthquakes and tsunamis (the vast majority of tsunamis are caused by quakes, didn't you know?) and volcanoes and hurricanes, sometimes they cluster sometimes they don’t. There have always been extreme weather events. The climate has also always had mini ice ages and mini heat waves. Romans grew grapes in Scotland, the Thames used to freeze and they held fairs on it. Statistically there is nothing different about the present time. One big difference is that the reports of such things are more common due to modern communications and monitoring." "nothing different about the present time" ?? based on what ?? I think that is factually untrue. During the last year, we have see number of floods, tornados, and earthquake clusters that look like 100 year events, and the "statistical random" argument is getting blown away. "Tell you what, I will wager everything I own that the world does not end next year, will you take the opposite bet?" I am not betting on the End of the World either. But I do not think we are seeing "business as usual" on our planet. From the way you write and think, and probably the way you live - it certainly looks to me that you ARE BETTING on business as usual. You think that all the changes around us signal nothing. You sleep easy in that assumption.

You are obviously wrong to say I believe everything. But it does highlight your approach: "Reject everything - Do not listen. There's nothing here... Move On." Have I got your mantra right? Anyway, as I said already, I have had some further evidence of one or two of his crazy stories "corroborated" from another unrelated source that has made accurate forecasts in the past, and pre-warned me of things before I saw them show up in BF's writings. (I cannot say more.) So I continue to listen & read with interest, without any expectation that all of this bizarre-sounding "information" will prove accurate. Simon Black says: "There are two ways to sleep well at night: Be ignorant, or be prepared." In the last year or two, we have seen many strange things like: the Norwegian spiral, quakes combined with tsunamis, unusual floods and earthquakes in hitherto "safe" areas, chem trails - that make me think that something new is going on with our planet's weather. These wonders seem to be increasing and frequency, and I am not going to behave like a boiling frog. If you want to do that, it is your choice.

"A Financial Collapse may precede an Awakening / Spirituality will grow as material wealth is lost" Thread started - to collect Links: http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=15365 I will post them as I recall them, or run across more