Samstag, 31. März 2012

A gunner's survival in Nazi territory


Alex Antanovich Jr. is shown at a World War II unit reunion decades after his incredible wartime survival story.


By Scott Beveridge


Allied air assaults over France and Germany during World War II were seeing their greatest successes in the last week of May 1944.


The daylight bombing raids were targeting strategic German-held railroads to cut off enemy supply lines, while others were pounding the French coast to drive back enemy forces.


Nearly one thousand heavy bombers were flying the missions that also were aimed at airfields and chemical and fuel stations.


The B-24 Liberator, LONI, carrying a crew of nine, however, did not fare so well. It crashed on May 30, 1944, near Rheine, Germany, after three of its four engines failed and the entire crew had bailed from the plane.


Eight crew members were captured and held by the Nazis as prisoners of war.


Meanwhile, U. S. Army Air Force Sergeant Alex Antanovich Jr. of Cokeburg, Pa., evaded capture.


He would be led by civilians to members of the antiwar movement in Holland, where he was fed, clothed, and sheltered for the next ten months.


?I was in constant fear,? said Antanovich, recalling his story that had the makings of a suspenseful war novel.


His plane had taken off that day at 6:53 a.m. from Mendlesham, England, carrying fifteen, five hundred pound bombs.


More than eighteen thousand B-24s, their wingspans spreading a 110 feet wide, had been produced in Detroit, Michigan, by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation for the war effort.


They created the largest air fleet of its kind at the time.


Antanovich, who was then 21 years old, had been trained to fire all of the plane?s ten machine guns. World War II bombing crews faced some of the worst dangers in combat.


?They were shooting at us,? he said, while discussing his military experiences when he was eighty-two years old.


?You could lose your life on takeoff. You?re loaded down to capacity. There?s no place to hide.?


He had received his training at Blythe Army Air Base in California. His crew used LONI to fly to England, following a route over Florida, South America, Africa, and Wales.


The crew called itself the League of Nations Inc. because its members all hailed from different ethnic backgrounds.


They gave the plane its identity by combining the first letters of the crew?s nickname.


Antanovich entertained himself on the flights to England by watching the lights in the cities at night.


?I was going to fight a war.?


Little else was on his mind.


He had only been in England for a month and on four previous missions to Germany when his plane crashed.


It dipped from formation with two of its engines smoking before it reached its primary target.


Other members of the 34th Bombing Group flying in nearby planes then lost sight of LONI; no one reported seeing any parachutes. The sixty-six-foot-long plane?s legacy was cut short before an artist had the time to paint its name on its side.


?When the pilot said to bail out, I was in the tail of the plane. The pilot said to throw stuff out to lighten the load. A short time later, the tail gunner who stayed on the intercom said: ?Bail out,? and away he went.?


Antanovich was afraid to jump from the plane, having never done so before during his military training.


?Why jump if you may never have to??


Being the last one left in the tail of the plane, Antanovich looked over the bomb bay to see what the pilot and copilot were doing, hoping they were gaining control of the flight.


The copilot was readying for his jump, and Antanovich knew he had no choice but to do the same thing.


?I went to the Lord.?


He believed in God, but was not an especially religious soldier.


?I asked the Lord for help. I got a warm feeling over my body. I walked right over to that escape hatch and away I went. I lost my fear.?


Over the course of the next several days, nearly everything Antanovich did  went against what he was taught to do in the event he became missing in action.


When he regained his bearings on the ground, he realized he had become separated from his crew.


He had been told to run in such a situation, and to keep on the move for twenty-four hours.


?I went deeper into the woods and covered my parachute and started running.?


He came upon a house, and went in another direction, only to spot another.  At that point, he went into the thicket and decided to attempt sleep.


?I thought, ?Where am I going to run to?' If I kept running, I could have gotten killed.?


Several hours later, he awoke to the sound of a boy pumping water and decided to start walking again.


He found himself back where he hit the ground and hid the parachute. He made the right move because he stumbled upon a friendly stranger while walking across a bicycle path. He whistled to get the man?s attention, asking him in French if he spoke that language.


The man shook his head, no.


Antanovich then asked him if he spoke English, and again, the man shook his head, no.


Antanovich pulled out a pocketbook that was part of his survival kit and designed to translate English phrases into the German language.


He used it to inform the stranger that he was hungry, and in exchange, was given a handful of sugar.


He also learned he was near Rheine, Germany, after showing the stranger one of the maps from the gear he carried. He was forty miles west of his B-24?s target and twenty miles east of Germany?s border with Holland.


?I said: ?I?m American."


The stranger, who turned out to be a Prussian, then flapped his arms in the air as a signal that he understood Antanovich was an airman.


The man then pointed Antanovich in the direction of German-held Holland.


Antanovich set his compass and walked the remainder of the day and well into the night.


Tired and weary after nightfall, he decided to make a bed of pine needles under a tall pine tree, where he slept his first night in Germany.


Antanovich was unarmed. He understood that German troops were killing American soldiers on sight because the country was quickly depleting it resources.


The Germans barely had enough supplies to care for their own soldiers. He had no idea just how much danger he was facing on his first full day in enemy territory.


That same day, one of Hitler?s shadow men, the Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, approved criminal combat methods under a German lynch law.


By doing so, Bormann gave his seal of approval to mob justice, instructing German civilians to kill any Allied soldiers they encountered.


The next morning, Antanovich came upon railroad tracks and decided to follow them straight toward Holland.


That could have been seen as a mistake, as well, because German soldiers were guarding the rail lines. He ducked for cover into the woods upon spotting a man in the distance.


That was when he stumbled upon a man and woman milking cows, a couple who helped him to reach safer quarters.


?I said I was an American and I was hungry.?


The couple gave him a sandwich; his only food in two days. They took him to to a house and introduced him to an English-speaking woman.


?She said: ?I know a man who knows a man who knows where to find the underground.??


The woman made a telephone call before escorting him by bicycle to a crossroads to meet another contact.


?She said she didn?t want to see him or him to see her.?


His survival kit also contained silk maps of Holland, France, Spain, and Belgium, as well as three cigarettes.


He had been advised to hold on to his belongings. But instead, he gave everything away to those who helped him along his way, except the maps of Holland and Belgium.


?Anything I had they asked for, I gave it to them,? he said. ?I had a full pack of Camels. They told us not to smoke American tobacco because it was sweeter smelling and (the enemy would) recognize it.?


He even shed his Army Air Force uniform for civilian clothes as a disguise after reaching the underground.


His journey eventually took him to the home of Otto and Elisabeth Montagne on the outskirts of Hengelo, Holland.


They were among many anti-Nazi couples in that area who secretly shielded Allied soldiers who became separated from their units.


Their visitors usually stayed in their home for three or four days until plans were made to return them to England, through France, Spain, and Portugal. Spain temporarily held such MIAs as illegal immigrants before sending them to Portugal and England, Antanovich was told.


That escape route, however, was closed after Allied forces stormed Normandy, beginning June 6, 1944, in what became the largest amphibious invasion in history.


Antanovich?s parents, Alex and Mary, received word on June 16, 1944, from the War Department that their son was missing in action.


His younger brother, John, was part of an Army Air Force B-17 flight crew serving in the United States.


During his time in Holland, Antanovich was hidden in 16 different houses; some for a few hours and others for a month or two.


He found himself sandwiched under trapdoors on occasions when German troops searched from house to house, looking for railroad workers to help them reopen supply routes.


The Montagnes shared their home with him and three other soldiers for seven months.


Mrs. Montagne provided them with clothing from a nearby textile factory, giving them identical dark blue shirts with vertical stripes to identify them to others involved in the antiwar movement.


The men even wore wooden shoes and distinguishing hairstyles and mustaches to appear as local residents.


Mrs. Montagne often walked with a cart great distances to gather enough food to feed her guests.


Food was being rationed, and each house was permitted to use electric lights for one hour a day. Two rabbits from the barn provided dinner for Christmas, a meal that also included cheese crackers and pudding.


Antanovich and his companions lived out their long days in boredom, either reading, holding conversations, or learning to speak Dutch.


They sometimes occupied their time by playing games of Battleship, using scraps of numbered paper as game pieces, or singing songs around a piano.


The Dutch liberation effort, meanwhile, began to intensify by March 1945.


Resistance fighters ambushed Nazi General Hans Ratter on March 6, 1945, and more than one hundred Dutchmen were killed in retribution two days later.


Antanovich spent that month hiding in a hut in the woods with an armed member of the Canadian Royal Air Force.


Hitler?s army was under attack from all fronts.


?You could hear the gunfire getting close,? Antanovich said.


By the end of the month, Allied forces were racing across collapsed German defenses. On April 1, 1945, they had German troops surrounded in the Ruhr basin, while British troops rolled into Hengelo that same day.


Antanovich was rescued by members of the Welsh Guard after walking arm-in-arm to freedom with a young Dutch woman.


He was taken to the Guard?s headquarters in Brussels before being sent to a U.S. military facility in Paris, France.


?I had no identification.?


He was later returned to England to be identified by members of his bombing group, only to find all of his possessions gone.


To his relief, he was told the other members of his air crew had survived German prison camps.


On April 24, 1945, his mother was told by the military that he was returned to active duty and being rotated back to the United States.


Following the war, Antanovich went home to rural Washington County and married the former Betty Porter. The couple had two sons, Alex and David, who died in childhood, and a daughter, Yvonne.


He worked as a coal miner in Beth-Energy Corporation?s Cokeburg Mine, from which he retired in 1985 after working in the coalfields for twenty-four years.


He said it was amazing to be part of such a great generation, one that witnessed serious hardships and major triumphs.


?The men of today will never compete with, compare with what we went through. We went through the Great Depression. We saw the TV come in. When I was a kid, farmers were working with horses ... the doctor would come in a horse and buggy.?


Antanovich also began attending church after returning home from the war.


One day while reading the Bible, he came upon a verse in Psalms that states: ?I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.?


He said those words offered him the best explanation for his surviving such a dangerous, incredible experience during the war.


(This story was written for a 2005 oral history project at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/gunners-survival-in-nazi-territory.html

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Needle Tatting Tutorial Uploaded !


Needle Tatted Earrings with Beads


It was so hard getting this project off the ground. My Windows Movie Maker maker and I were no longer married, so I had to figure out how to do it myself :-/ and I had to wait until the mood hit (which is the way I've been operating since we split). Anyway, I figured out how to import, drag and drop, add fades, titles, captions and music (which disappeared when I added narration...arrrgh !) and voila ! My second tute in two years. Now that I know how, there will be more to come :-) I prefer making photo sequences because if I screw up while in the middle of a project, I would have to start another one and work up to that point just to re-record the video. Maybe I'll use video with a quick project. However, I have a very vocal parrot who tends to dominate the airwaves whenever he senses something important is going on (aarrgh !). I hope you like the video (don't know why it looks so out of focus...the photos were crystal clear when I was working with them...maybe compression altered them...oh, well).

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2010/07/needle-tatting-tutorial-uploaded.html

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Tracking the Popularity of 'KONY 2012'

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube-trends/~3/ypOSl5lETDQ/tracking-popularity-of-kony-2012.html

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Trichet Warns of "Behavioral Contagion" and Nontraditional Steps That He Personally Started

The hypocrisy of former ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet is in the spotlight today. Who put the spotlight on Trichet? Ironically, he did himself.

Please consider Trichet warns of "behavioral contagion"
Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank, said Saturday that he is worried that controversial quantitative easing and other nontraditional steps that global central banks have taken since the financial crisis could be here to stay.

The Fed has purchased $2.3 trillion of securities since it cut interest rates to zero in December 2008 in a bid to bring down long-term interest rates and boost economic growth.

These actions have led to criticism, especially during the early days of the Republican contest for the 2012 presidential nomination, that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was undermining the dollar and creating conditions for a sharp rise in inflation.

Speaking to a conference of influential central bankers from around the world and leading academic experts on monetary policy, Trichet said it could still turn out that the bond-buying, asset purchases and liquidity injections by global central banks might go away after the financial system gets back on its feet.

That is the optimistic scenario, he said.

But Trichet said there was a ?less flattering conjecture? that the extraordinary actions will be part of a new ?permanent regime.?

Those factors may have created the permanent risk of ?behavioral contagion? or a grave and immediate threat to the systemic functioning of the financial system, similar to the market meltdown in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

?Nobody would have expected such a long time after Lehman Brothers, [central banks] would continue to have this level of expansion of our balance sheets,? he said. ?We are all still in crisis.?
Who was it that started ECB bond buying? Why it was none other than Jean-Claude Trichet, acting against the advice of Axel Weber, German central bank president who resigned in protest rather than be part of the operation.

With the default of Greece, Trichet's bond-buying spree blew up in the ECB's face and so too will the ECB's buying of Portuguese and Spanish bonds.

Ultimately we are headed for a global currency crisis. Central banks headed by Greenspan, Bernanke, Trichet, and Draghi paved the way.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/ZMi7sFygSP4/trichet-warns-of-behavioral-contagion.html

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From Sketchbook to Canvas

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HowToMakeArt/~3/09h-fcHlNj4/from-sketchbook-to-canvas.html

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201 Weekly Lost Podcast ? Young Ben Interview

Weekly Lost Podcast Season 5 Episode 9 Young Ben Interview Click Here To Download Wondering where episodes 197 and 198 are? We release a few episodes of the Weekly Lost Podcast in the free feed each month. However, our gspn.tv Plus Members get every single episode of this podcast and all our podcasts. To find [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/generallyspeaking/~3/kfFhLRRc55s/

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243 Weekly Lost Podcast ? Ab Aeterno Review

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Tatted Earrings with Beads


Tatted Earrings with Beads, originally uploaded by ambrosianbeads.

Needle tatting seems to have taken over my beading life, especially since I'm getting a clue as to how to design. Here are some earrings I made recently. I'm working on a video tutorial and learning how to use Windows Movie Maker in the process. Hope to post that soon.

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2010/07/tatted-earrings-with-beads.html

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Creative Business: Checking In

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Summer in Brighton

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2010/07/summer-in-brighton.html

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Tracking the Popularity of 'KONY 2012'

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube-trends/~3/ypOSl5lETDQ/tracking-popularity-of-kony-2012.html

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Another Weaker Than Expected Durable Goods Order Portends Weaker Than Expected GDP

Inquiring minds are investigating Trends in Durable Goods Orders.

Key Durable Goods Numbers

  1. February orders increased 2.2 percent but economists expected a 3 percent rise.
  2. January durable goods orders fell 3.6 percent.
  3. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft rose 1.2 percent. Analysts' expected of a 2.0 percent gain.
  4. Non-defense capital goods' orders fell 5.2 percent in January.
  5. Excluding transportation which had an unsustainable sharp increase in civilian plane orders, durable goods orders were only up 1.6%. 
  6. Boeing received 237 aircraft orders in February, up from 150 in January, accounting for the 3.9 percent jump in transportation orders.
  7. Motor vehicles and parts orders rose 1.6%.
  8. Inventories of manufactured durable goods rose for the twenty-six consecutive month and are now at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992

High inventories and falling demand for non-defense capital goods' orders does not portend well for future GDP growth.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/-u7VzSDeBLc/another-weaker-than-expected-durable.html

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/generallyspeaking/~3/9zagq1U77IU/

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Enjoy England?


Margate, not the best seaside town England has to offer.
Being an Aussie gal, I'm probably particularly fussy about beaches

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2007/08/enjoy-england.html

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You wonder how we ever survived.....


(Photo by Katie Roupe, Observer-Reporter)
By Scott Beveridge

One of our photographers at the Observer-Reporter last week was telling two writers, including myself, she had been criticized by a reader for taking a photo of two children riding bicycles without helmets on a residential sidewalk.

?You wonder how we ever survived,? responded a 50-something colleague, recalling how we never wore such head gear while riding bikes as children.

After thinking about it, though, we laughed and then agreed we likely have a bit of brain damage from suffering many bumps and bruises during childhood accidents.

We came from an era when many parents also smoked cigarettes around their kids without any concern about the health affects of second-hand smoke.

I took the conversation to a higher extreme by saying I grew up in the 1960s surrounded by steelworkers, most of whom could belt back boilermakers with the same ease it took them to down glasses of water.

Many of our parents never batted an eyelid while stuffing as many as 10 kids in the back of a station wagon before taking off for a two-hour drive with a stinking drunk dad behind the wheel.

Needless to say we began those road trips from the Monongahela River Valley, a southwestern Pennsylvania landscape peppered with blast furnaces spewing filthy smoke into the air.

We didn?t have smoke detectors in our houses or seat belts, let alone child safety or booster seats to protect young children in cars.


Hell. Frozen pizzas back then came on disposable asbestos cooking sheets. We kids used to stand around the stove and tear those pans apart, daring them to set aflame over the kitchen stove's gas burners.


We also went to learn in Fellsburg, Pa., at Lebanon Elementary School, whose floors were tarred with asbestos tiles and walls were layered with thick coats of pea-green World War II surplus lead paint. I swear my eyes still hurt from having spent endless hours staring at those ugly walls.


Speaking of school, my mother today might be in jail, facing Children and Youth Services for the way in which she sometimes sent us hitchhiking to school when we missed the bus during junior and senior high.


Yet she never permitted my brothers or me out the front door in the morning on school days without our repeating the phrase, "Please God watch over me." If one of us forgot, to the door she ran shouting, "Get your $@*! ass back up her and say it." As a working mom in an era when that wasn't cool, I think it was a crutch she held onto while feeling helpless to protect us at her office.

Certainly I?m not advocating the return to those dangerous carefree ways of the past, even though I still refuse to wear a helmet while riding my bicycle on the trail.

I confess to worrying at times about the affects of cell phone radiation levels and forgetting that it?s illegal now in this state to text while driving.

Like a good citizen I buckle up before putting my Ford sedan in gear and also remember to change the battery once a year in the smoke detector outside my bedroom door at home.

If there are two things that two decades of chasing spot news for this newspaper have taught me are those devices almost always save lives.

But come on. Those cute kids in the photo, above, are riding with training wheels.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/03/you-wonder-how-we-ever-survived.html

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Music | Saavn is a Spotify for Indian and South Asian music

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Source: http://www.richardbanks.com/trends/2012/03/23/music-saavn-is-a-spotify-for-indian-and-south-asian-music/

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The Dating Game: Michael Pettis Challenges The Economist to a Bet on China

The Economist says "China?s GDP, measured in nominal dollars, will be the world?s largest by 2018". Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets disagrees and says I would like to make a bet with The Economist.
I recently read in The Guardian an article by enthusiastic orientalist Martin Jacques in which he says that The Economist has just predicted that China?s GDP, measured in nominal dollars, will be the world?s largest by 2018. Earlier estimates, he says had China becoming the largest economy in the world by 2027.

I have always been a little skeptical about the 2027 claim ... given how much we would have to assume about the sustainability of Chinese growth, about the likelihood of current GDP numbers not having been vastly inflated by an over-investment boom, and about the unstable range of political outcomes. It seemed to me to be a prediction about as valuable as the world-beating predictions about the USSR in the 1960s or Japan in the 1980s.

Still, this 2018 prediction deserves I think more than a little questioning ? it requires that nominal Chinese GDP growth in dollars outpace nominal US GDP growth by 12% a year.

So I am wondering whether we could set up a friendly bet ? not for too large stakes. I would like to bet that by the end of 2018 China will not be the largest economy in the world.

If I win, perhaps The Economist could invite a very cool underground Chinese band of my choice to perform at their next big conference, whereas if I lose I could buy four-year subscriptions (student rates, please) to a group of Peking University freshmen. Everybody would end up feeling pretty pleased with themselves no matter who wins, right? So?
The Dating Game

Inquiring minds are looking at an interactive chart on The Economist in an article called The Dating Game.
AMERICA'S GDP is still roughly twice as big as China?s (using market exchange rates). To predict when the gap might be closed, The Economist has updated its interactive chart below with the latest GDP numbers. This allows you to plug in your own assumptions about real GDP growth in China and America, inflation rates and the yuan?s exchange rate against the dollar. Over the past ten years, real GDP growth averaged 10.5% a year in China and 1.6% in America; inflation (as measured by the GDP deflator) averaged 4.3% and 2.2% respectively. Since Beijing scrapped its dollar peg in 2005, the yuan has risen by an annual average of just over 4%. Our best guess for the next decade is that annual GDP growth averages 7.75% in China and 2.5% in America, inflation rates average 4% and 1.5%, and the yuan appreciates by 3% a year. Plug in these numbers and China will overtake America in 2018. Alternatively, if China?s real growth rate slows to an average of only 5%, then (leaving the other assumptions unchanged) it would not become number one until 2021. What do you think?
Snapshot of The Economist Baseline Assumptions



The interactive graph is too large for my blog, but the above screen snapshot shows The Economist baseline assumptions. To play around with the numbers, click on the above link.

I share a viewpoint with Pettis that The Economist is way too generous in their estimate of real GDP growth for China.

Pettis thinks China will average 3% growth and I already posted I found that number reasonable. As far as Yuan appreciation is concerned, I am not at all convinced the Yuan is undervalued at all, yet I plugged in a nominal 2% annual appreciation.

Assuming a "Real GDP growth" of 3% and Inflation at 4% yields a chart that looks like this.

Snapshot of Mish Baseline Assumptions



Even still, I wonder if the year 2030 is still far too optimistic from the standpoint of China.

I strongly believe peak oil and energy consumption is going to put a serious damper on Chinese growth, and that is on top a necessary and very painful shift away from an entirely unsustainable growth model based on exports, housing, and fixed investment.

I share Pettis' view regarding "inflated GDP numbers, an over-investment boom, and the unstable range of political outcomes" adding my own energy concerns and yuan valuation concerns on top of it all.

Thoughts on Chinese Growth


I find the arguments by Pettis, the ECRI, and Chanos compelling. Add to that the restraint of peak oil coupled with potential political instability and the proper conclusion is that long-term Chinese growth of 7.5% is Fantasyland material.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/qHN0gYpqzTQ/dating-game-michael-pettis-challenges.html

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Bill Gross Predicts QE3 and Operation Mortgage Twist

PIMCO founder and co-CIO Bill Gross spoke with Bloomberg Television's Margaret Brennan today, telling Bloomberg TV that the Fed will likely shift focus to mortgage securities to keep borrowing rates low when Operation Twist ends in June.



Link of video does not play: Bill Gross on Pimco ETF Ticker Change, Bonds, Fed

Partial Transcript
On Gross?s view that we may see a sign from Bernanke in April that QE3 will be rolled out:

"I think [Chairman Bernanke] is very satisfied?I think the Fed is outcomes-oriented. They want an outcome in terms of a higher stock market, in terms of housing starts and lower unemployment. What [Bernanke] said on Monday, in terms of the employment, he suggested that up until now, we've done very well in terms of reducing unemployment but it?ll be tougher going forward if only because of structural impediments that he outlined. Going forward, he's looking at jobs, at unemployment and the housing markets. You know, future QEs will the outcome-oriented type of strategy which seeks to provide jobs and provide higher housing prices and housing starts to continue on."

On the tool that Gross thinks the Fed might deploy in April:

"I have a sense that they'll continue with the Operation Twist, but not necessarily in terms of buying longer-term bonds and selling shorter dated Treasuries. I think that's basically been played out and the pension market itself in terms of liability structure has been damaged to some extent by lower 30-year yields. I think [Bernanke] will try to do is Twist in the mortgage market. Basically, buy current coupon mortgages in agency spaces and then basically Twist by repo-ing out the Treasuries that they currently own in short-term space. So, you know, a twist on another Twist I suppose, going forward."

On the ticker change for PIMCO?s new ETF (to BOND):

"It is easy to recognize. I told my wife about it last night and in the middle of the night she started saying something about James. I hope she was referring to the ETF but you get the point? It's more easily recognizable. In this business you want to go with a ticker and a sticker that people can recognize and pass on to their neighbors."

On Gross?s warnings to investors about management fees:

"We've noted that for a long time. This is simply a cautionary element that suggests that when interest rates come down close to zero and when the discounting of those interest rates and equity prices and other financial assets produce a perspective of 4-5% total return for the combined asset class is in our view, then it's incumbent upon a manager to keep expenses low and to alert investors as to the importance of expenses relative to lower returns in this new financial world that we speak to."

On investor appetite for PIMCO?s new ETF:

"We wanted to be able to give investors a choice. We recognized the tremendous importance of the retail distribution network for PIMCO and for the Total Return Fund, which is now $253 billion. Thank you very much, we don't to discourage that. But there are investors in the $10,000-$20,000 category, who find it difficult to buy PIMCO Total Return. We thought this would be a good way to do this in the actively managed ETF space. By the way, we're outperforming the market in the first month or so by a good 200 basis points."

On PIMCO's appetite for Treasuries:

"We have an average appetite in terms of duration space. And to the extent that five-year Treasuries, which are being issued today and seven-year Treasuries tomorrow - they reflect a relatively firm commitment on the part of PIMCO, which reflects a relatively firm commitment on the part of the Fed that they'll keep interest rates firm until late 2014. Bernanke mentioned yesterday that that wasn't a commitment in total but it's subject to a relatively slow economy and contained inflation, which is what we see now. A five-year security at slightly above 1%, to our way of thinking, as it rolls down the yield curve and becomes a four-year, produces close to a 2% return and is that a super, deeper attractive type of return? Well it's up to history. No, it's not?.but it's certainly better than nothing."

"We have reduced our Treasury commitment slightly. From the standpoint of duration, we have average duration of an average maturity across the board but we have been reducing Treasuries and investing in shorter duration corporates and rather heavily in the agency mortgage market. You can get, with a Fanny or a Freddie coupon that is a 4% coupon, you can realize 3% as opposed to the 2% or 1% - I mentioned in terms of five-year space. We're really focusing on spread and the lack of volatility going forward for the next two to three years which is really the domain of 30-year and 15-year mortgages."

On finding investing opportunities in developing countries:

"Where is that attractive growth? Countries like Brazil, countries in Asia, China-related of course. These countries don't come without risk. They don't come without a rather volatile situation in terms of inflation or potential currency disorder. If an equity investor is looking for growth, you want to go developing as opposed to developed. Even a bond investor, if you are looking for higher real rates such as in Brazil, you want to go to developing as opposed to developed."

On buying hedges against fat tail possibilities:

"What we're suggesting now is not an extremely negative possibility. That would be the fat left tail. But also the fat right tail, we've had a fat right tail in equity markets for the past 3-6 months?On the left-hand side, you know, the bi-model possibility in terms of a downturn are simply a reflection of the high degree of leverage, the high degree of debt and the policy coordination which may or may not be helpful in terms of producing this smooth, rather bell-shaped mode or median we're all used to."
No Real-World Point to Mortgage Twist

Note that Bill Gross' call on QE3 is not what he thinks the Fed should do, rather his take on what the Fed will do.



click on chart for sharper image

Mortgage-rate table from Bloomberg.

30-year mortgages are below 4% and 15-year fixed mortgage rates are near 3%. Other than goosing financial markets that are already back to nose-bleed level (if not outright bubble territory), there is no real-world point to an "Operation Twist" for mortgages.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/23W4wbx6jLw/bill-gross-predicts-qe3-and-operation.html

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Copper Treasury


Here is a gorgeous treasury simply titled Copper ! My Natural Beauty agate slab necklace is one of the featured selections. Thanks to fellow Etsy Beadweaver, Connie of Asterope Bead Creations for including my necklace.

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2010/09/copper-treasury.html

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Mish vs. Jo Weisenthal: Debate on Capital Account Regarding Gold

In response to a Tweet by Capital Account host Lauren Lyster regarding my post Ben Bernanke: Inflationist Jackass, Devoid of Common Sense, and Clueless About Trade, Debt, History, and Gold, Jo Weisenthal at Business Insider proposed a debate.

We had that debate yesterday and here is the video.



Link if video does not play: Mish vs. Weisenthal: Bernanke's Class Lecture on Money Leads to After-School Blog Brawl

In the course of a quick 15 minute debate broken into a series of 30 second sound bites, it is sometimes difficult to get everything said that needed to be said. One point I did not get a chance to mention again, but I did bring up in my Blog rebuttal to Weisenthal, is that central bank planning of money supply and interest rates is in and of itself ridiculous. Repeat bubbles and bailouts prove it.

Soviet Style Planned Economies Do Not Work

It makes as much sense for a group of guys in a room to attempt to set a price and amount of money as it did for inept Soviet-style central planners to run an economy, setting the price and amount of steel production and other goods - precisely none.

Certainly the Greenspan Fed ignored (cheerleaded is a better word), the housing bubble every step of the way. Bernanke defended the housing bubble and failed to see its consequences.

Stability and Flexibility

The most amazing, and galling thing, is Bernanke has the nerve to preach about "price stability" in the wake of that collapse.

Jo wants the flexibility for the Fed to step in and cleanup messes. I don't want the flexibility of fractional reserve lending and fiat currencies because that is what created these messes in the first place.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/921YgvCIGo4/mish-vs-jo-weisenthal-debate-on-capital.html

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From Sketchbook to Canvas

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HowToMakeArt/~3/09h-fcHlNj4/from-sketchbook-to-canvas.html

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Dinner a go-go

Here's how it worked tonight in the dead of winter when six friends who live in close proximity decided to hold a progressive dinner card party:


First stop was hors d'oeuvres, which included humus topped with pine nuts, pictured above, along with sliced sausage, grapes, cheese and a wonderful warm crab and artichoke dip. I dig artichokes. Some of you might have already heard about my artichoke dream. It was a great way to get the party started.


At each stop along the way we played a hand or two of this fun, complicated card game known as hand and foot. And then it was off to the next house.


The second course featured a salad, bruchetta and a different twist on Italian wedding soup, which changed up the ingredients by adding white beans. Delicious.


The main dish at the next house was a baked Rachel sandwich with a most-excellent apple sauerkraut on pumpernickel. Superb.


Then we moved to the final destination for desert starring a lemon and white chocolate cheesecake by Hollyday Cheesecakes. If you live in Pennsylvania's Mon Valley and haven't discovered her deserts it's your loss. It was served with an iced decaffeinated chamomile tea blended with a bottle of V8 V-Fusion Mango Smoothie.




And then everyone - except for me because the last house belongs to me - slid their way home in a dangerous ice storm.


"I think this would work better in the summer," one of the guests remarked.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2012/01/dinner-go-go.html

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Inspiration Pic


The Everything Bag, originally uploaded by bianca.cristina.

I love everything about this bag, the colours, the embroidery, the design choice.
Hooray!

Source: http://stitchybritches.blogspot.com/2008/08/inspiration-pic.html

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Freitag, 30. März 2012

The nearly lost art of flocking Christmas trees

Mike Joseph of Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in Monessen, Pa., explains the Christmas tree flocking process at his family-owned business. (Scott Beveridge photo)


By Scott Beveridge


MONESSEN, Pa.  Last week I was interviewing a corporate executive from the Richmond, Va., area when, while making small talk, we discovered we had both grown up in the same region on the Monongahela River Valley.


He in Brownsville, Pa., and I, in Webster, a small Westmoreland County village 19 miles north of his Fayette County hometown.


Then he surprised me by saying he would drive five hours this way the next day to purchase a live, flocked Christmas tree at Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in nearby Monessen.


"They're hard to find. You can't purchase them anywhere in Virginia," he said.


I hadn't seen or thought about such trees since I was a kid in the 1960s, when they were sort of popular and sold fluffy white or in pastel shades of pink and blue.


So yesterday I went in search of Joseph's, about four miles south of my house, a business I was familiar with only in name. I went there with my aunt to see its flocked trees and also purchase a regular fresh-cut tree for my living room.


The GPS app in my Droid inaccurately took me to 921 Rostraver Road in nearby Belle Vernon, past a Walmart and an Eat'n Park. A quick smartphone check there on Google maps directed me back to Monessen to a street entrance that had long ago been allowed to become overgrown with grass.


A little exploring on the hill there eventually put me on Rostraver Street and en route to Joseph's, a business sandwiched between houses in this decaying former steel town neighborhood.


Mike Joseph immediately greeted us and showed us his perfectly manicured trees grown on the family farm in Uniontown. It didn't take much urging for him to show us into the barn to see the flocked trees.


"People, if they've never seen it before, they think it's something new," Joseph said.


The flocking business, though, has been around since the 1930s, he said.


He went on to explain these trees are sprayed with ground cotton and rayon, mixed with water and glue, materials that swell when they dry over the course of two days.


When dry they are beautiful and sell for about $160.


What's even more beautiful about this business is the friendly customer service. Joseph and his father quickly bound my tree with cotton fishnet and tied it on the roof of my car.


It's no wonder Joseph's has survived decades in business, even in an area with devastated downtown business districts and big box stores breathing down its back.


The family defines all the reasons why it's good to shop local.


More examples of flocked pine at Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in Monessen, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/12/nearly-lost-art-of-flocking-christmas.html

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