have not done any report yet, its a lazy saturday
last time ozak posted some weekly market commentary? izit still available to us on a weekly basis? tq
QUOTE(cloud9_lee @ Nov 13 2009, 11:13 PM)
I am hoping LVS will climb to $18. Any thought?
why la lvs topic keep coming up? hold till $19.94 but let me short again at $18.04
imo, below super long read article sums up the situation in usa
i also feel is bearish but the market shows it is not
so my opinion doesn't matter, what the market does - matters
momo have more bullets than us, to do r&d, i small ikan bilis only dog tail them
Job Losses Demystified (Obama : "No one expected this") Peter Schiff
As the unemployment rate crossed the double digit barrier for the first time since Michael Jackson learned to moonwalk, President Obama announced that he will convene a "jobs summit" to finally bring the problem under control. Using all the analytic skill that his administration can muster, the President is determined to figure out why so many people are losing their jobs and then formulate a solution. That's a relief; for a while there, I thought we were in real trouble! In fact, the absolute last thing our economy needs is more federal government interference. If Obama really wants to know what's behind entrenched joblessness, he should start by looking at the man in the mirror.
Obama is pursuing, with unprecedented vigor, the same policies that have for decades undermined our industrial base and yoked us to an unsustainable consumer/credit driven economy. This doubling down on Washington's past failures is destroying jobs at an alarming rate. Today we learned that the September trade deficit surged by 18.2%, the largest gain in ten years. Much of the deficit resulted from Americans spending Cash-for-Clunkers stimulus money on imported cars - or "American" cars loaded to the sunroof with imported parts. In exchange for more domestic debt, we have succeeded only in creating foreign jobs.
An article in this week's New York Times by veteran writer Louis Uchitelle confirmed a fact that I have been alleging for years. Uchitelle pointed out that foreign outsourcing of component manufacturing has led to consistent overstatement of U.S. GDP and productivity. The connection goes a long way to explain why we keep losing jobs even as GDP is apparently expanding.
As our economy becomes less competitive due to higher taxes, burdensome and uncertain regulations, and capital flight, more manufacturing and services will be outsourced to foreign firms. However, the flaw in GDP calculation allows the output of those foreign workers to be included in our domestic tally. Since we count the output but not the worker responsible for it, government statisticians attribute the gains to rising labor productivity. To them, it looks like companies are producing more goods with fewer workers.
The reality is that we are producing less with fewer workers. The added "productivity" comes from higher unemployment and larger trade deficits. This is a toxic formula that will have lethal economic consequences.
Don't expect the brain trust at the President's job summit to fret much about these details. That public relations stunt will likely ignore the root cause of the economic imbalances and instead stress the need for government spending on training and education, i.e. more public debt. The unemployed do not need government theatrics, they need actual jobs. But as long as the government props up failed companies, soaks up all available investment capital, discourages savings, punishes employers, and chases capital out of the country, jobs will continue to be lost.
To really fix the unemployment problem, the President must look past his peers in government and academia to understand how jobs are actually created. In the private sector, all individuals have a choice to either work for themselves or someone else. Since labor is far more productive when combined with capital (office equipment, machinery, business models, and intellectual capital), those who lack these assets themselves often choose to work for others who have sacrificed to accumulate them. This increased productivity is shared between the worker and the owner of capital, and both are better off.
However, for one person or company to choose to offer a job to another, there must be an incentive to do so, and they must have the necessary capital. In the first place, employers must commit to paying wages and benefits, comply with government mandates and regulations, and subject themselves to potential lawsuits from disgruntled employees. All of these costs must be measured against the extra profits an employer hopes to earn by hiring an additional worker.
If profit opportunities exist, jobs will be created. Otherwise, they will not. Of course, anything the government does to raise the cost of employment, such as a higher minimum wage, mandated heath care, or greater regulatory burdens, not only prevents new jobs from being created but also causes many that already exist to be destroyed. Anything that diminishes the profit potential of extra hiring will diminish the number of job opportunities that are created. Also, since it is after-tax profits against which employers measure risk, the higher the marginal rate of income tax, the less likely employers will be able to hire.
Finally, in order to hire workers, employers must have access to capital to expand operations. Anything the government does to discourage capital formation automatically diminishes job creation. By running the largest federal deficits in history, Barack Obama is diverting all available capital to the Treasury, and is in effect waging a war against private capital formation.
If the President's summit truly intends to find the root cause of unemployment, his advisers don't need Bureau of Labor statistics or complex modeling software, just the courage to drop their dogmatic belief in central planning and embrace the laws of economics.
During the past three decades the great majority of new jobs have been created by small busineses. This has been especially true at the early stages of a recovery. But small business owners pay income tax. Prospective entrepreneurs looking out to huge income tax hikes next year and particularly after the 2010 elections, find the prospects for a small business bleak.
Prospective lenders (banks) also see nothing doing out there. So, we have a situation where Banks don’t want to lend and nobody except bad credit risk consumers wants to take their money.
The only ones that are doing OK are big manufacturers who are increasing their profits by lowering costs by laying off less experienced and other low productivity workers. So the stock market has been going up while the overall economy shrinks. Hence the “jobless recovery”.
Clueless Summit
something’s wrong when the government of the most prolific
job-creating economy in history has to schedule a “summit”
to decide how to create jobs.
This isn’t rocket science. Any business owner, entrepreneur or
manager can tell you that job creation requires new businesses,
new investment in plant and equipment, and economic policies
conducive to both.
But so far, those in charge in Washington seem to be doing everything
in their power to kill jobs, whether it’s hiking the minimum
wage, snubbing trade deals, imposing new mandates with health
reforms and climate controls, or paving the way for a massive 69%
increase in capital-gains tax rates by letting the Bush cuts expire.
All told, these and other initiatives, plus the higher spending that
goes with them, will suck as much as $13 trillion out of our economy over
the next decade.
Yet Democrats are shocked — shocked! — that the unemployment rate
has surged to a 26-year high of 10.2%, nearly a third higher
than estimated in February. And that more than 4 million jobs
have been lost this year despite $700 billion in bailouts, $787 billion
in “stimulus,” record-low interest rates of 0%, and more than
$1 trillion in liquidity pumped into the banking system.
Given this record, the only real reason for a jobs summit is to appear
to be “doing something” about the labor market implosion.
After all, 2010 is a midterm election year, and the Democrats’ ability
to continue their leftist tinkering with our once-mighty economy hinges on
voters giving them another chance.
Well, they don’t need a summit. Job creation closely tracks investment in
plants and equipment.So anything the government does to
remove barriers to business investment—whether by cutting regulations,
slashing taxes or reducing government spending — will
lead to more jobs.
Of particular importance are small businesses, which—as a new
report from the Kauffman Foundation noted—created virtually all
the new jobs from 1980 to 2005.
Today,small firms suffer the most damage from congressional incompetence.
The newly passed health care bill, for example, slaps
families with more than $500,000 in income with an added 5.4%
tax. But, according to Congress’ Joint Tax Committee, a third of
this will be paid by small, family-owned businesses.
The government’s fiscal insanity hurts everyone. The Congressional
Budget Office reckons that government outlays will grow at
least 67% over the next 10 years while public debt more than doubles
to $14.3 trillion. In short, not an ideal time for entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile,as Americans in the hundreds of thousands lose their
jobs each month, the government continues to siphon off badly
needed investment capital, waste money to keep failed companies
afloat, discourage personal savings and erect barriers to hiring.
If this continues, don’t expect the “Sorry, not hiring” signs to
come down very soon—summit or no summit.
This post has been edited by sulifeisgreat: Nov 14 2009, 06:50 PM 
Nov 7 2009, 09:57 AM
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(beware, sometimes got pullback, sometimes no 
the trick is how sniff for roket fuel?
coz so far, i sighted no usa stock pick from a forever fan 
brainstorm kua 
izit for real?
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