DBA versus GLD

The top chart shows the historical trend of the agricultural index exchange traded fund (ETF) Deutsche Bank Agricultural Index, DBA and the bottom chart shows GLD since late 2005.  The DBA chart had a double top two years ago just prior to the crash of '08. Double tops are a classic technical signal of an impending decline, and it worked in the case of DBA.  I googled the DBA and found a few technicians commenting on it to the effect that it has been/is a weak stock because of the double top two years ago.  Note the contrast with GLD, which has had a relatively steady upward trend, having taken a small double top and dip during the '08 roller coaster but recovering quickly and profoundly.

I have a problem with that combination of facts, though.  If gold is going up it is because of monetary demand, that is, people want to use gold to save instead of dollars, then people anticipate inflation and therefore DBA should go up.  If gold demand has a logical foundation, then inflation is impending.  If inflation is impending, then agricultural prices should be going up. This is especially true because the inflation has been caused by over-investment in real estate due to Federal Reserve and commercial banking's counterfeiting money and then investing the proceeds in politically favored industries, namely construction and real estate.  To expand investment real estate, the supply of agricultural land had to be reduced. Hence, there would seem to be upward pressure on food prices.  Last week DBA went up six percent in one day.  Since June, when DBA hit its low, it has gone up 28%, from $22.85 to $28.52.

The technicians may underestimate the effect of the underlying process of monetary inflation on long term food prices.  I bought DBA about two years ago and I'm up about 12%. The DBA has underperformed both gold and the stock market during that period. It may be subject to further downward fluctuations (the technicians have asserted this until recently) but given the recent trend it may be that the lean years are coming to an end for DBA.

Jay Townsend: Chuck Schumer Sells out New York to Become Majority Leader

GOP senatorial candidate Jay Townsend visited the Kingston/Rhinebeck Tea Party on Monday.  Due to heavy teaching responsibilities (I was grading my students' papers) I was unable to attend.  But here is an excellent video courtesy of Tom Santopietro.

Maurice Hinchey's Anti-Semitism

Ed Morrissey blogged yesterday about Ed Koch's endorsement of George Phillips in the New York 22nd congressional race.  I hope Mr. Morrissey doesn't mind if I quote him at length:

"Why is Koch opposing the Democratic incumbent? Koch is apparently unhappy with Hinchey over the nine-term Congressman’s hostility towards Israel. In his speech, Koch will hit Hinchey over his 2002 meeting with Yasser Arafat at the PLO leader’s headquarters, one of only three members of the House that met with Arafat there. Hinchey also “voted against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism act, designed to promote the development of democratic institutions in areas under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority,” and refused to sign either the Poe-Peters or Hoyer-Cantor letters which supported Israel’s right to control access to Gaza to prevent armaments to flow into the Hamas-controlled territory.


"It’s not just Israel, either. Hinchey voted against tougher sanctions on Iran as well, which Koch will mention in his announcement. Koch will also hail Phillips for his work while on the staff of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) on foreign policy, especially on legislative efforts to force UN reform by purging support for terrorism and antisemitism at Turtle Bay."

My friend, Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell, was at the Ed Koch announcement.  Ron Lauder, head of the American Jewish Congress, also announced that he will support Phillips, according to Marnell. Hinchey's distaste for Israel goes beyond the usual left-wing support for terrorism.  I have heard a rumor that there will be a demonstration to protest Hinchey's anti-Semitism in the coming weeks.

Incoherence, Hate Characterize Democrats' Response to Carl Paladino

Carl Paladino is spending a considerable sum of money to run for governor. The reason is that the government of New York is broken.  The rate of emigration from the state is greater than the rate of emigration from Russia during the years leading up to the Bolshevik revolution, when my paternal grandparents fled to come here in 1904. 

Once the world's capital of innovation, New York is now a center of failed government programs, waste and economic illiteracy, spearheaded by its now-irrelevant, less-than-mass media.  The readership of the state's flagship newspaper, the New York Times, is less than the viewership of most cable television programs.  Once the "Empire State", thanks to Rockefeller Republicanism, left-wing extremism, the Ochs Sulzbergers, Keynesian economists and Wall Street, New York has led the nation in the march toward a rigid two-tiered economy and economic desperation.  Statist Democrats have shut down factories and taxed out productive New Yorkers, leaving special interests to fight among themselves for a pie that routinely decreases in size just as it routinely increased in size during the days of laissez faire capitalism.

Paladino is the first major candidate in my lifetime to seriously address a fraction of the many failures of Progressivism and the loot-and-spend system that has benefited college professors, school teachers, government contractors and social workers by manipulating a hoi polloi indoctrinated in ideological schools and institutions of higher indoctrination.  This includes CUNY, my employer, whose faculty includes a ratio of Democrats to Republicans of about 40 to 1 and whose administrators such as the former provost of Brooklyn College have advocated politicization of education. 

The Democrats' response to Paladino, who is calling for a meager 20 percent cut in government,  combines hate with ignorance. In particular, Paladino has committed several politically incorrect faux pas including distasteful e-mails and remarks concerning homosexuals.  All of us have our prejudices, including a distasteful anti-Christian prejudice I have detected in the less-than-mass media and among academics.  Unlike Obama, who refused to criticize Reverend Farrakhan for anti-Semitic remarks, Paladino has emphasized that he does not hate gays and has apologized to gays.  At no point did Paladino suggest that government enforcement of sodomy or related laws should be exercised. Hence, the entire issue is irrelevant to the gubernatorial race. 

Since the entire issue is irrelevant to the serious problems facing New York State, it raises questions in my mind as to how seriously one may take Andrew Cuomo, the Democrats and the less-than-mass media.  My conclusion is that the Democrats have no arguments against Paladino's, which chiefly concern the state's excessive government, its declining industrial base, its taxes, its massively overpriced Medicaid plan, the exodus of productive labor from the state and its overall economic decline.  Instead, the Democrats, assuming that the hoi polloi, educated in Democratic-run schools, are idiots, emphasize filth and do not respond to Paladino's arguments. Much as the Obama campaign signaled the end of the mass media as we knew it, this election signals the end of political debate as it ought to be.  The Democrats simply lack the intellectual tools to discuss issues that confront New York.