Hate to bum out the permabears this morning but Sornette (Why Stock Markets Crash) says the antibubble regime has ended. We are no longer in the bubble popping process. No Dow 500. Gates and Buffett are not going to need their "10,000 Years of Doom" bunker. From the Sornette website: http://www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/sornette/prediction/index.asp#prediction "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: WE FIND FOR THE FIRST TIME A STRONG PROBABILITY THAT THE ANTIBUBBLE DOCUMENTED HERE MAY HAVE ENDED. THUS, ALL THE PREDICTIONS GIVEN BELOW ARE CONDITIONED ON THE CONTINUATION OF THE ANTIBUBBLE. THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM UNCONDITIONAL PREDICTIONS. AT THE END OF THIS UPDATE, WE PRESENT THE EVIDENCE FOR THE POSSIBLE END OF THE BUBBLE." __________________
300000 people have bought parcels of the moon sold by a con artist, so it is not astonishing that with some more serious marketing disguise stock papers with intrinsec value that is far lower that their facial value can attract the majority of people who lack economic understanding because they do hope for their retirement and can't conceive that their whole life of work will be concealed by market's thiefs. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/moon_sale_000915.html Legal Loopholes Help Man Sell the Moon By Andrew Bridges Pasadena Bureau Chief posted: 07:58 am ET 15 September 2000 LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Moon prices may soon grow unworldly. Dennis Hope, a California entrepreneur who first laid claim to the entire moon in 1980, is gearing up to jack the prices of land on Earthâs lone natural satellite. Exploiting what he calls a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty -- which forbids nations, but not individuals, from appropriating the moon and other celestial bodies -- Hope has quietly sold parcels on the moon to some 300,000 people through his Rio Vista, California company, Lunar Embassy. Broken down into 1,777.58-acre "ranches," the plots sell for $27.15, including shipping and handling. That works out to little more than a penny an acre. But Hope now wants to grow his business internationally, and has begun signing up exclusive agents -- at more than $50,000 a pop -- to peddle lunar lots overseas. The prices will remain roughly the same, but what it will buy shrinks to but a single acre. The first international agent, a Canadian, hung out her shingle in February. And just last week, a couple living in a Cornish fishing village began selling off the 90,000 acres they bought from Hope to moon-eyed buyers in the United Kingdom. Hope seeks to have 25 exclusive agents the world around by next year. "Dennis has just made a huge change in his strategy. Itâs really since the advent of the internet that heâs realized how much this is worth worldwide," said Sue Williams, who, with her husband Francis, is now selling acre-sized plots of the moon to buyers in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Hope said he would cease selling the larger lots by December 26, and hawk only the 1-acre parcels through his "lunar ambassadors." "It creates a tremendous amount of frustration to sell ranch-sized pieces of property, when ambassadors are selling 1 acre for the same price," Hope said. Of course, to call the legality of selling off the moon -- and the planets, since Hope claims to own those, too -- a legally gray area is an understatement. To his credit, Hope said he has pursued every avenue to ensure the legality of his business. ~ "Weâre doing everything in our power to make this as legitimate as can be," said Hope, who admits the operation began as a tongue-in-cheek lark. It has since grown into a lucrative business, bringing in $1.6 million over the last 20 years. The 1979 Moon Treaty forbade ownership of the moon -- including by any individual -- but was not signed by any spacefaring nations. "The notion that some guy in California has printed up deeds to the moonand sold them to citizens will have no legal standing whatsoever." Even so, experts said Hope might as well being selling pieces of Antarctica. "Itâs basically the same law," said John Pike, a space policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. "The bottom line is, he canât own property on the moon unless heâs got a government to back him up. No one is claiming sovereignty rights on the moon. And if any government did, Iâd be very skeptical that any other government would recognize that claim." But commercial interest in the moon, long the private domain of government-sponsored exploratory missions, is heating up fast. And with it, pressure could grow for some sort of international clarification on extraterrestrial property rights, said Pat Dasch, executive director of the National Space Society. In the United States alone, at least a dozen private ventures are looking at ways to reach the moon commercially, including efforts by SpaceDev, Idealab, TransOrbital and LunaCorp. Add to the mix the 6 million people worldwide Hope dreams will become lunar land owners by yearend, and the potential enormity of the lunar legal question grows. "This has to be clarified. Itâs a bit like space tourism: Weâre past the giggle factor," said Dasch, who advocates the formation of some international statute that would permit some sort of land registry. "Weâre beginning to see the lack of definition creating problems for space development." Pike said that clarification would come only when corporations -- say, someone like Russian energy giant OAO Gazprom -- were actually ready to begin exploiting the moon. Only at that point -- still decades off, Pike said -- would nations be pushed to formalize any lunar law, pushing aside claims like Hopeâs. "The notion that some guy in California has printed up deeds to the moon and sold them to citizens will have no legal standing whatsoever," Pike said. In the absence of any such challenge, Hope said he would continue selling the moon, as well as parcels on Mars, Venus and Io. "We let people know if governments donât want us to do this, stop us," Hope said.
Malleability, Misrepresentation, Manipulation: the rhetoric of images in economic forecasting http://pwr.stanford.edu/publications/Boothe_0203/PWR Boothe-Adamson.pdf
The complacency of some people are extraordinary: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=28908 It is as if they have a short life like an insect and don't need to look years ahead. Why criticize the politicians who don't care also about the future if the people are so irresponsible about their own future ?
Hi All, I hope you won't mind me cross-posting this space related thingie. I spotted this new trade in which Harry talks about the Moon, so I thought that it should be better placed overhere. Not wanting to stay behind Harry's efforts to enlighten us about 2008 catastrophies, maybe there are other things that apparently "are not seen". Ever heard about Nibiru, Planet-X and so on? Some even write that the Hubble Telescope already spotted them and that NASA (goodness gracious) is working like mad to protect us against it! This kind of stuff definitely needs to be addressed in this thread for the sake of completeness in assessing what will be in 2008. See you in 2008, nononsense