Ageing Baby Boomers, the One Mega Trend NO ONE is Talking About

Reading - Ageing Baby Boomers, the One Mega Trend NO ONE is Talking About http://www.marketoracle.co....

Thus far, analysis the financial collapse has been framed almost entirely in terms of money. All the research I’ve seen has delved into lending standards, securitization, inflation, interest rates, housing and the like.

Yet underneath this veneer lies one larger, mega-trend that has driven all of these themes to a greater or lesser degree. It created one of the largest stock bull markets we’ve ever seen from 1982-2001. It helped drive the Bubbles in Tech stocks AND Housing. And now it will guide the coming collapse in stocks and consumer spending.

That trend is AGE: specifically the Boomer generation and its retirement.

For the sake of simplicity, I will define a “Boomer” as someone born in the post war boom years from 1946-64. Using this data, today’s Boomers are between 45 and 63 years old. All told there are 76 million Americans in this age category. As of late 2008, Boomers:

• Comprised 38% of the US population
• Controlled $13 trillion (50%+) in American Household investable assets
• Controlled 50% of all discretionary income
• Purchased 43% of all new cars
• Accounted for 79% of all leisure travel spending
• Ate out four to five times a week
• Outspent younger generations by 2 to 1

You can see Boomers’ imprints on every major investment trend of the last 30 years whether it’s the rise in consumer spending, the Tech Boom, the Housing Boom, etc. These folks ARE the investing crowd or tide as far as money goes.

Please understand, I am not BLAMING the Boomers for ANY of these developments. I am merely pointing out that these folks were the primary participants who drove ALL of these trends due to their ever-increasing economic clout. Between 1980 and 2007, Boomers were “the money” behind virtually every economic development in the US.

The Boomers first came of age in the ‘80s (they were 16-34 years old at the start of the decade). Boomers were the first generation to fully adopt credit cards: between 1980 and 1990, credit card spending increased more than five-fold while average household credit card balances quadrupled. They were also the first generation to see stocks as THE means of securing ones retirement: stock-based 401(k)s were introduced in 1983.

By the time the ‘90s rolled around, Boomers had completely entered the workforce (ages 26-44). Thanks to easy credit and cheap goods from China (formal trade with the US opened on 1971), the Boomers operated under the illusion they were getting richer almost every year, when in reality they were spending their and their parents’ savings.

Having seen stocks rise almost continuously from 1982-1990, Boomers were only too happy to take over own investment portfolios with the introduction of low cost online brokerage accounts. In 1950, 10% of US adults owned a stock. By the end of the ‘90s more than four in ten American adults were investing in the market. This massive influx of money helped, in part, to create the Tech Bubble.

Continue reading - http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12028.html

NASA promises 'greatly improved' Moon landing footage - One giant leap in quality imminent

Reading - NASA promises 'greatly improved' Moon landing footage http://bit.ly/wYYsz

NASA promises 'greatly improved' Moon landing footage

One giant leap in quality imminent

NASA has tantalisingly announced that it will release "greatly improved video imagery from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk" on Thursday.

The agency reports: "The release will feature 15 key moments from Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk using what is believed to be the best available broadcast-format copies of the lunar excursion, some of which had been locked away for nearly 40 years."

We assume the footage in question is gleaned from the original magnetic tapes recorded by the Parkes Observatory in Australia, and which belatedly turned up in a storage facility in Perth.

In 2006, NASA admitted it had mislaid the tapes which were supposed to be in its Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. As a result, the world has (until Thursday, we hope), had to make do with NASA's inadequate copy of the original broadcast, captured on 16mm film from a monitor screen.

Ron Paul - Fed Independence or Fed Secrecy?

Reading - Ron Paul - Fed Independence or Fed Secrecy? http://bit.ly/17hvEw

Last week I was very pleased that hearings were held on the independence of the Federal Reserve system. My bill HR 1207, known as the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, was discussed at length, as well as the general question of whether or not the Federal Reserve should continue to operate independently.

The public is demanding transparency in government like never before. A majority of the House has cosponsored HR 1207. Yet, Senator Jim DeMint’s heroic efforts to attach it to another piece of legislation elicited intense opposition by the Senate leadership.

The hearings on Capitol Hill provided us with a great deal of information about the types of arguments that will be levied against meaningful transparency and how the secretive central bankers will defend the status quo that is so beneficial to them.

Claims are made that auditing the Fed would compromise its independence. However, by independence, they really mean secrecy. The Fed clearly cherishes its vast power to create and spend trillions of dollars, diluting the value of every other dollar in circulation, making deals with other central banks, and bailing out cronies, all to the detriment of the taxpayer, and to the enrichment of themselves. I am happy to challenge this type of “independence”.

They claim the Fed is endowed with special intellectual abilities with which to control the market and that central bankers magically know what the market needs. We should just trust them. This is patently ridiculous. The market is a complex and intricate thing. No one knows what the market needs other than the market itself. It sends signals, such as prices, that should be reacted to and respected, not thwarted and controlled. Bankers are not all-knowing and cannot ignore the rules of supply and demand. They might act as if they are, but their manipulation of the market just ends up throwing it wildly off balance, which gives us the boom and bust cycles.

They claim the Fed must remain apolitical. No organization is apolitical that relies on the President to appoint the Chairman. In fact, it is subject to the worst sort of politics – power to create trillions of dollars and affect the value of every dollar in the country without the accountability of direct elections or meaningful oversight! The Fed typically enacts monetary policy that is favorable to particular administrations close to elections, to the detriment of long term considerations. They do this partly because of the political appointee process for the Chairmanship.

Continue reading - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14356