Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Crosby’
The NTSB has come out with a new rule that would make it illegal to use your cell phone in the car. This would include all hands free cell phones.
Further information on the proposed rule changes have been disclosed by a source not close to the NTSB that wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information. The source says that there are many more rules contained in the text of the recommendation that have not been disclosed to the public. Here are some examples of the new rules:
1. Eating, drinking beverages of any kind, chewing gum and smoking would be banned while driving.
2. Listening to the stereo in the vehicle would be banned as this causes unnecessary distraction especially when changing channels or discs.
3. Conversation with passengers would also be banned. All persons riding in the vehicle will have to remain silent and look straight ahead.
4. Sleeping in vehicles would also be banned as the possibility of the sleeping passenger could be a serious distraction.
5. No child under the age of 21 will be allowed in the passenger seat.
6. No child under the age of 21 will be allowed to have a state drivers license because of the high numbers of accidents by this group.
7. Children between the ages of 21 and 26 would only be allowed to be issued learners permits that would require an adult in the car at all times when that child is driving.
8. A sound proof barrier between the front seats and the back seats would be required on all new cars to prevent distraction from passengers and children riding in the rear seating area.
9. The viewing of video by passengers in the rear seating area would only be allowed between sunrise and sunset so as to prevent distraction from the light emanating from the video screen.
10. All navigation units will be banned.
11. All food and beverage drive up windows will be banned.
12. All hand held electronic games will not be allowed in a moving vehicle.
Starting in 2013 all new vehicles would be required to have the following modifications to prevent driver distraction:
1. Heating and air conditioning controls, horn actuating switch and garage door openers will be moved to the trunk or alternatively under the hood and would be disabled when the vehicle is running.
2. All instruments in the dash will be eliminated except for the speedometer.
3. All dome lights and lighted visors will be banned.
4. Glove boxes will be required to be moved to the rear seating area.
5. All Electric Seat adjustments will disabled when the vehicle is running.
6. In dash navigation units will not be allowed.
7. Cigarette lighters and power outlets will only be allowed in the rear seating area.
8. Temperature and direction information will be banned on rear view mirrors.
The NTSB has indicated that their polling indicates that the majority of the American public overwhelmingly supports these rules to combat distracted driving. When asked who was included in the poll, it was stated that so far they have Harry Reed and Nancy Pelosi.
If I make up any more information becomes available, an email will be sent.
The following was submitted by Kevin Crosby. He is a software engineer, conservative, and independent contributor to ScottFactor.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the administration of ScottFactor.com. He can be reached at crosbyk2@email.com
Sometimes I find myself hating this business of investing in gold and silver and now is one of those times. As everyone that will read this knows, being in investing is for the most part keeping up to date with what is going on in the world. For the most part, I really enjoy that aspect of the business. My day usually starts promptly at 5 am with a cup of coffee and digging in to the latest news headlines, checking the dollar index, examining what the foreign markets are up to and looking at the price of gold and silver over at Kitco. Then its off to the different subscriber research sites for inputs by the experts. Most days, its hard to fit all this in before the markets open at 8:30 am and I used to enjoy the routine. However, my enthusiasm is now starting to diminish.
I personally am finding all the news in the European banking crisis very entertaining. A new news release every hour or so that is more outrageous and ridiculous than the last. First they had a deal and , oh wait, that didn’t work so now they agree to agree on a deal that hasn’t been written yet. To top all that off, the funniest thing that happened is that the British told everybody to go stick it. Couple that with what the current batch of fools that are running our government into the ground are up to, and the comedy keeps on rolling in. One of many character flaws is that I enjoy laughing and pointing at stupid people doing stupid things and making outlandish public statements. What a rich time we live in! Now, I’m planning to seek the guidance of a medical professional for this flaw as well as a couple others………….. or maybe not. Probably just end up pointing and laughing, but I digress.
Over the last couple of weeks some of the news I’m reading has given me great pause. My urge to point and laugh has come to a screeching halt. It all started with the M F Global debacle. I immediately realized that this news was much different than the normal crap I read. For those of us that trade in the markets, things changed dramatically. It’s now obvious that the system is broken and broken in a different way than we have ever seen. I don’t think there has ever been a problem in the past with the clearing houses that facilitates our trading. That is gone. The other part of this is the SEC and the CFTC’s role in all this. I have always believed that these two groups are nothing but political puppets, but to publicly do a face plant over their failure to protect the investing public is catastrophic.
Well, I thought that all of this was pretty damn bad news and then I saw this headline, “MARKET SOURCES REPORT BIS, BOE & FEDERAL RESERVE WERE SELLING GOLD AFTER IT POPPED TO SESSION HIGH”. I’m sure most of you are aware of the illegal price manipulation of gold and silver by the major bullion banks, JP Morgan, HSBC et al. My reading of all the price manipulation leads me to believe that there are natural market forces that will end all this and the price of gold and silver will continue to rise as we expect. Now that the Fed and the Bank of International Settlements have stepped in to short gold and silver, the rules have all changed in the ball game that was already suspect. In my not so humble opinion, what is going on here is that the world banking community, European governments and the Fed cannot allow the price of gold and silver to do a moon shot, as this is direct competition for the wealth that would otherwise be used to buy government bonds. How long will it take the Fed and BIS to run out of ammunition to short the gold and silver markets? What will happen if the Fed decides that other commodity prices are too high or too low?
Ok, now we have the icing on the cake with this article. Bloomberg News confirms that the stock market was rigged. Turns out that under former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, confidential government information was regularly leaked to select people on Wall Street. Anybody think that this isn’t still ongoing? Is this now a part of the job of the plunge protection team?
The question I would like to throw out for your comment is, what does the term “market” mean in todays world? What is the right approach to investing in severely manipulated markets that may not be markets at all, just interventions?
If the investing public figures all this out, a stock market crash would not describe what would happen. Maybe, a better description would be “wholesale slaughter”. For me personally, I’m getting a little tired of playing is this sandbox. Used to be that once in a while you’d find a little surprise buried in the sand by one of the neighbors cats. I could deal with that. Now it seems that all the cats in the neighborhood, as well as a couple of elephants, are using this sandbox. It’s getting a little dangerous.
The following was submitted by Kevin Crosby. He is a software engineer, conservative, and independent contributor to ScottFactor.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the administration of ScottFactor.com. He can be reached at crosbyk2@email.com.
I have three charts here for you today. The first one depicts the value of the dollar, or the lack there of. The second is the price of gold over the last ten years, and the third being the price of silver since 1985. Go look at the charts (at the bottom) for a bit and meet me back here. I have cup of coffee and I can wait for you, so take your time.
Lets look at the math. If you had $30,000 in cash in 1970, it would be worth $5,400 today. If you had bought $30K in gold ten years ago, it would be worth approximately $153,900. If you bought $30k worth of silver ten years ago, it would be worth $237,885. Fun numbers, but I’m not writhing this for fun and I know for a fact that less than 1% of everyone who is going to read this blog owns any gold and silver, so these numbers are somewhat meaningless, right?
The most important thing that I want you to take away from this, is the trend in the value of the dollar. Ask yourself, where does this end. What happens when the value of the dollar reaches $0.0? When you look at the long term trend is there any doubt in your mind that this is what is going to happen? If there is any doubt in your mind, I would love to hear what you are thinking. Maybe, you think that the government could somehow come up with a plan to magically fix this. Not likely, as the governments magic is the cause of most of this.
Obvious to me, by looking at these charts, is the fact that owning gold and silver might be a good idea right now, as opposed to having money in the stock market or a savings account. Yes the stock market has been a pretty good tear as of late, but you don’t have to look very far to find out that the tear has been more of the governments magic than anything resembling market fundamentals. Oh, and by the way, the governments magic(QE2) ends on the 30th of June. Can’t wait to see the fireworks from that stock market explosion. As far as having money in a savings account, look closely at the first chart and tell me why you think that is a good idea. If your keeping you’re money in a savings account because you think its safe there, go look at chart 1 again.
I have heard and read a lot about the fact that gold and silver are in a bubble and it won’t be long until that bubble bursts, just like the dot com bubble and the housing bubble. Well lets examine this intellectual dung for a moment. In both the dot com bubble and the housing bubble, there was a very high percentage of private investment driving those bubbles. To state this another way, in order for there to be a bubble, there has to be a large percentage of private investment. Now, you might find this interesting but the fact is that less than 1% of the people of this country have any investments in gold or silver. What bubble? I don’t see any bubble. Do you see any bubble? Wait, I’ll run down the street and talk to guy on the corner and see if he thinks there is a bubble. I’ll be right back……………….. Nope, he doesn’t see any bubble either, but I did get a good cup of coffee out of it.
This banter is not intended to be doom and gloom, even thought it would be easy take it that way. What this is, is a possible method to prevent doom and gloom. Same thing as recommending you change the tires on the car instead of waiting to have a blow out while driving down the highway at 70 mph. See chart 1.
As always, I would love to hear your comments. Feel free to pass this on and have a good day!
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in a different format, because the editor took it upon himself to desecrate Kevin’s fine work. Editor promises never to do that again, if readers promise to forgive the clumsy editor. 
The following was submitted by Kevin Crosby. He is a software engineer, conservative, and independent contributor to ScottFactor.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the administration of ScottFactor.com. He can be reached at crosbyk2@email.com.
Representative Paulson:
I have been watching the antics of both the House and Senate on the issue of the short term budget bill and I can honestly say that I’m getting sick of it. This is not what we in the Tea Party were expecting when we spent time and money to get conservatives elected.
I see that republicans have called for $61 billion in cuts for this year. What about next year, you going to try for maybe $70 billion. Be real careful not to set the bar too high, wouldn’t want to see you fail. Except you are failing and miserably at that. This whole idea of the conservatives not being able to come up with more than $61 billion in cuts against Obama’s $1.1 trillion budget is truly absurd and shameful.
Do you and your congressional conservative colleagues really believe that you were elected to cut a percent of a percent off the budget? It truly appears that way to me. With the exception of the Tea Party representatives in this congress it looks to me like the same old, same old.
Obviously, its too late to modify whats in the mill for the current 3 week continuing resolution, but as far as the next one, its time for a major change.
What I would like to see is a $500 billion cut to the budget for this year. The elimination the Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, foreign aid and the Federal Reserve along with privatizing the Post Office and Amtrak. When this fails the Senate, shut the government down and keep it shut down until it does pass the senate.
While all this may seem draconian, it pales to what is on the horizon if this doesn’t happen. If you have ever read the history of countries that have tried to finance themselves out of debt by printing money, you understand that the outcome is allways the same. Hyperinflation! How draconian would that be for the American public? Do you really want to continue pushing your luck by not cutting spending and having the Fed print more money? Or, more accurately, pushing America’s luck ………………….
The house of cards of the good old boy politics in Washington is going to come down one way or the other. This can’t be sustained. It appears to me that in the last election which brought the conservatives to power in the House, that in fact the people were not looking for bi partisanship or a new gentler tone. They are looking for you folks to take charge and stop President Obama and his minions from further trashing of our Constitution and driving our nation into financial ruin. If a rather vociferous urinating contest breaks out, so be it.
If $61 billion is all you folks up there can find to cut, please let us all know that, so we can start the process of finding people that will be able to save the United States.
Respectfully,
Kevin Crosby
