In my humble opinion, the Fair Tax is one of the best ideas to ever come out of the beltway.

As such, I urge everyone to take a minute to learn about it. And, if you feel so inclined, let your congressperson know that you support it.

With all due respect to my CPA (who is fantastic) and the IRS (tee-hee), I would love to be able to fire them.
LIV

In my humble opinion, the Fair Tax is one of the best ideas to ever come out of the beltway.

As such, I urge everyone to take a minute to learn about it. And, if you feel so inclined, let your congressperson know that you support it.

With all due respect to my CPA (who is fantastic) and the IRS (tee-hee), I would love to be able to fire them.
LIV

I’ve been following the progress of Bank of the Cascades (CACB) with earnest over the course of the past year or so, mainly because I think it is one of the best gauges of the health of the local real estate market and hence the local economy.

Although the company hasn’t reported 3rd quarter financials yet, the weekly chart of the stock price is so intriguing I can’t resist updating my chronicles of CACB. The chart pattern below is about as textbook a head and shoulders pattern as you’ll ever see.

This classic topping pattern usually predicts a fall roughly equal to the height of the head from the neckline, roughly 10 bucks in this case. If the stock follows this script that would put it back to the support/resistance line right around 11/12. Fundamentally, my guess is this would require the bank putting up some ugly numbers.

Like I said before, the company hasn’t yet reported its numbers but the stock price is suggesting that Patty Moss’ baby ain’t looking too good.
LIV

I’ve been following the progress of Bank of the Cascades (CACB) with earnest over the course of the past year or so, mainly because I think it is one of the best gauges of the health of the local real estate market and hence the local economy.

Although the company hasn’t reported 3rd quarter financials yet, the weekly chart of the stock price is so intriguing I can’t resist updating my chronicles of CACB. The chart pattern below is about as textbook a head and shoulders pattern as you’ll ever see.

This classic topping pattern usually predicts a fall roughly equal to the height of the head from the neckline, roughly 10 bucks in this case. If the stock follows this script that would put it back to the support/resistance line right around 11/12. Fundamentally, my guess is this would require the bank putting up some ugly numbers.

Like I said before, the company hasn’t yet reported its numbers but the stock price is suggesting that Patty Moss’ baby ain’t looking too good.
LIV

Today is Blog Action Day, a day for bloggers around the world to unite for the benefit of the environment.

Now I have been an environmentalist for about 20 years. I began studying ecology in the early 90’s and have supported Heal the Bay, The Surfrider Foundation and others for most of that time. I strongly believe in taking care of our local communities, especially the natural beauty we Bendites are lucky enough to be surrounded by, and also preserving and bettering the environment on a larger scale.

Having said that, I find it highly ironic that Al Gore won the Nobel Prize (or a share of it) on the same weekend a British judge ruled his iconic, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to be inappropriate for school children as a, “science film,” (he labeled it a “political film”) due to a preponderance of, “inconvenient untruths,” many of which were exposed in an equally enthralling documentary.

I’m also greatly frustrated by the massive response to the THEORY that the earth is warming and that it is man-made while the FACT that our country is heading for financial ruin receives relatively little attention. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that the environment is obviously more important to us as human beings than the country’s eroding currency and twin deficits. We can live without dollars. We can’t live underwater.

But isn’t a certain generational storm over the next few decades at least as important as a, “likely,” environmental calamity a millennia away? Isn’t an Incontrovertible Truth at least as dire as an Inconvenient Hypothesis?

To me it feels like watching a car crash in slow motion and being more worried that the cars are not hybrids than for the lives of the passengers.

So I ask, “where’s Pete Peterson’s Nobel Prize?”
LIV

Today is Blog Action Day, a day for bloggers around the world to unite for the benefit of the environment.

Now I have been an environmentalist for about 20 years. I began studying ecology in the early 90’s and have supported Heal the Bay, The Surfrider Foundation and others for most of that time. I strongly believe in taking care of our local communities, especially the natural beauty we Bendites are lucky enough to be surrounded by, and also preserving and bettering the environment on a larger scale.

Having said that, I find it highly ironic that Al Gore won the Nobel Prize (or a share of it) on the same weekend a British judge ruled his iconic, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to be inappropriate for school children as a, “science film,” (he labeled it a “political film”) due to a preponderance of, “inconvenient untruths,” many of which were exposed in an equally enthralling documentary.

I’m also greatly frustrated by the massive response to the THEORY that the earth is warming and that it is man-made while the FACT that our country is heading for financial ruin receives relatively little attention. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that the environment is obviously more important to us as human beings than the country’s eroding currency and twin deficits. We can live without dollars. We can’t live underwater.

But isn’t a certain generational storm over the next few decades at least as important as a, “likely,” environmental calamity a millennia away? Isn’t an Incontrovertible Truth at least as dire as an Inconvenient Hypothesis?

To me it feels like watching a car crash in slow motion and being more worried that the cars are not hybrids than for the lives of the passengers.

So I ask, “where’s Pete Peterson’s Nobel Prize?”
LIV

After driving around town the other day, my 6-year-old daughter asked me, “why are so many stores going out of business?” No kidding…

She was referring to the recent closures of Gold’s Gym, All-American Deli and Boomtown. All three were on our route that day.

I told her to first go ask Norma DuBois; then go talk to Duncan. That way she can learn about the local economy and do some soul searching at the same time. I’m still waiting to find out what kind of monkey I’m raising: a blind optimist or a passionate skeptic.
LIV

After driving around town the other day, my 6-year-old daughter asked me, “why are so many stores going out of business?” No kidding…

She was referring to the recent closures of Gold’s Gym, All-American Deli and Boomtown. All three were on our route that day.

I told her to first go ask Norma DuBois; then go talk to Duncan. That way she can learn about the local economy and do some soul searching at the same time. I’m still waiting to find out what kind of monkey I’m raising: a blind optimist or a passionate skeptic.
LIV

Being a die-hard contrarian, I regularly like to ask myself, “what is the most contrarian trade out there right now?” In other words, “what trade do the most people feel the most confident about?” Because, “all the people can’t be all right all of the time,” this is usually a good way for me to find good trades.

Currently, I keep coming back to the U.S. Dollar. There has been so much negative press lately – everyone and their Mom knows that even the Loonie is now more valuable than our beloved Greenback (so many that most would probably dispute the term, “beloved”) – that I find it irresistable.

Fundamentally, there are good reasons for the dollar to be down: our massive twin deficits and a Federal Reserve that shows a greater regard for protecting speculators than containing inflation, to name a couple.

Technically, too, the dollar, on a weekly time frame, has recently broken down in classic bearish fashion:

The monthly chart shows that this breakdown has taken the dollar to lows it has never seen before:

However, RSI and MACD are diverging positively suggesting that this breakdown may prove to be a headfake.

Fundamentally, I believe we are beginning to see early signs of deflation. We are certainly seeing deflation in the real estate market right now. If it spreads to other asset classes the dollar may well see a bull market to rival some of the bubbles we’ve witnessed over the past decade. Regardless, the dollar is probably oversold and needs at least a bounce.

With so many in the dollar-bear camp, I think the current move to new, all-time lows has a very good chance of becoming false breakdown. In fact, I feel very comfortable being the lone bull in the dollar stable right now.
LIV

Being a die-hard contrarian, I regularly like to ask myself, “what is the most contrarian trade out there right now?” In other words, “what trade do the most people feel the most confident about?” Because, “all the people can’t be all right all of the time,” this is usually a good way for me to find good trades.

Currently, I keep coming back to the U.S. Dollar. There has been so much negative press lately – everyone and their Mom knows that even the Loonie is now more valuable than our beloved Greenback (so many that most would probably dispute the term, “beloved”) – that I find it irresistable.

Fundamentally, there are good reasons for the dollar to be down: our massive twin deficits and a Federal Reserve that shows a greater regard for protecting speculators than containing inflation, to name a couple.

Technically, too, the dollar, on a weekly time frame, has recently broken down in classic bearish fashion:

The monthly chart shows that this breakdown has taken the dollar to lows it has never seen before:

However, RSI and MACD are diverging positively suggesting that this breakdown may prove to be a headfake.

Fundamentally, I believe we are beginning to see early signs of deflation. We are certainly seeing deflation in the real estate market right now. If it spreads to other asset classes the dollar may well see a bull market to rival some of the bubbles we’ve witnessed over the past decade. Regardless, the dollar is probably oversold and needs at least a bounce.

With so many in the dollar-bear camp, I think the current move to new, all-time lows has a very good chance of becoming false breakdown. In fact, I feel very comfortable being the lone bull in the dollar stable right now.
LIV