Bernard in my business, farming Im becoming very concerned about the unwillingness of the banks to mark to market. This comment from another thread sums up my worries and I suspect many others.

I agree. We are in a bizarre, uneven transition with respect to pricing.

Without marking to market, leveraged stuff just sits, and wiser opportunities to employ that capital are lost. But if we fully mark to market, it will be a neutron bomb...much worse than we are experiencing now. The US is scaring the shit out of its smaller, medium business people and its citizens.

The rents are too damn high everywhere. The insurance is too damn high. Taxes are too damn high. Interest rates for savers are nothing, and the goverments are vicious, hungry, and bloodthirsty. There is no marking to true market.

This bothers me so bad, that I am looking into some undisclosed place to set up shop in Mexico. I am not taking this lightly, and I realize the BS, but it's less BS than here. I can rent a beautiful house for 70% less that what I am paying for a lower middle class frame house here, be fully covered by health care, buy local food for 70% less, hire help and pay them a VERY GOOD HUMANE WAGE for 65% less. I can get my car fixed for 50% less. i can get a small warehouse for 75% less. My car insurance 50% less. I realize a few things are more expensive, but the expensive things are are much less expensive there.

Like I have said before, as least Mexico is a established crap hole, but with a better mark to market, and a system built around being poor. We are in denial, we are poor. But we refuse to acknowledge that we are poor, so this is why the US is intolerable. The people, and the capital makers cannot ORIENT themselves for a future here. If we just realized that we are poor, then businesses could rebuild based on an accurate, easy to analyze environment. Everybody is just waiting for a bomb to go off. This is why we are still circling the sewer drain.
Regards

http://forums.wallstreetexaminer.com/index.php?showtopic=866907

The US may have some deflation at the moment but I'm still of the view that if you print money then hyperinflation will follow with soaring interest rates.I also think that when things fall apart it will be without warning and very fast.What we know in the public arena is that things don't look good, but in the private arena the people at the top who see the full picture I bet it's hundred times worse.

Yes, 'inflation' will come, colin. But I'd guess that price inflation will be after the period of debt payback. We've got massive inflation (of the money supply) now. And where are we at ( with the 100 x worse, that I agree with you on)? Are YOU borrowing and spending; is Andrewj; am I? I'm selling everything that's not essential or that I do not use, at the moment. Not because I need the money, but because I see huge asset right-downs coming before we get 'inflation' in a few years time. Then will be the time to buy. I could be wrong, in which case I'll have done an early spring clean!

Andrewj,

It would appear that the world economy may be locked in a vicious circle of loose monetary policy and spiraling oil and commodity price inflation.

Or we could have deflation, falling demand and collapsing oil and commodity prices. My money is on the latter.

Nicholas if what I think is going to happen,happens money will be worthless you will need things to trade.

PeterR
Even with gas prices up .80c a gallon this happened it the Statess

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aAl6tjO31s98

The 0.6 percent decrease in prices paid to factories, farmers and other producers was the biggest since July and followed a 1.4 percent January increase, according to figures from the Labor Department in Washington. Excluding food and fuel, so-called core prices climbed 0.1 percent.

Note the new word

“Disinflation is going to be with us for a while,” Julia Coronado, a senior U.S. economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “That’s going to allow the Fed to stay on hold for a lot longer than the market is expecting.”

who the hell swapped deflation for disinflation. My Tyre disinflated, My house didnt fall in value it disinflated.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601013&sid=aNZe4JWeV1aw

As I see it, it is the greatest bubble in history with the most massive misallocation of wealth,” Rickards said at the Asset Allocation Summit Asia 2010 organized by Terrapinn Pte in Hong Kong yesterday. China “is a bubble waiting to burst.”

Walter,
Its frightening to see the effects of foreign pests. Having witnessed the pine beetle and the pitch pine canker, Im happy to keep out of pines and into a mixed forest which is what should have been all along.
One of our major problems is that the new perennial Rye grasses are not perennial but require replanting every 3 years. Farming always changes and adapts, the opening up of Eastern Europe and the move towards exports in South America should guarantee food at least for the wealthy. We are exposed to high energy costs when we live so far from our markets,I see oil hit $83 overnight. I believe the future in NZ will be a move back to good sized family units without large amounts of debt. The time frame for this to happen is up in the air as banks wont let farms sell at market prices.
I can fix the rye grass problem as I have some very old rye grass pasture, at least 25 years old and still good,time to drag the old combine out of the shed and compete, if Im allowed and its not a licensed seed,may have to give it away.
Ive noticed huge amounts of honey production in Argentina Chile first hand mostly new over the last 10 years.
PeterR more disinflation in the States

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2099-If-The-Economy-Is-Recov...

Thank you Andrew.
Spot on: I believe the future in NZ will be a move back to good sized family units without large amounts of debt.

What are potential, long term, but sustainable export agriculture products for NZ ?

Me vegie garden is rooted , Walter . Belter of a frost yesterday ; levelled the beans / tommies / pummies / corn . And most particularly hit , me basil is faulty . When the Sam Hill is this " Global Warming " gonna kick in & stop the crop being snap-frozen in situ ?

AndrewJ - right on.

Great to see the support for the return to 'family farming' i.e. smaller farming. Big is not always good-despite what the mega store says! Low cost, low input dairy farming is (and always has been) the only sustainable, financial or otherwise way to go.

RT: think of the saving in power of vegies being frozen in situ - no blanching beforehand required. :-) Time to get the broccoli and cauli plants out.
Friends in the UK put their name down for an allotment - they live in an apartment with 2 kids. Took two years to get one, such is the demand for 'growing your own'. And it aint nothin to do with being 'green' - just a financial necessity.

Environment BoP has mooted taking over the planning roles of the Councils that fall within its area. Reason being that it would provide more consistent planning regulations etc. The nationalisation of resource planning etc should be a given - oh, that's right we have the RMA and everyman and his dog interpreting it differently. Of course it just wouldn't do - too many bureaucrats would be without jobs and it would mean working smarter not harder, and of course a good modicum of commonsense and has the potential to reduce the bureaucratic costs to the productive sector - no it would never get off the ground.

AJ you might be on to a winner with your 25year old rye grass. The new cultivars just don't last like the old ones do. Probably a deliberate ploy of the seed companies to keep us buying their products.

We all agree here for a remote and small economy country with sustainable industries, diversity and quality of products are the key for success - and not growth. I just hope we can actually produce more with our raw products before exporting.
In my opinion New Zealand should also carefully monitor the potential of food production, which is in demand but becomes more difficult in other countries/ regions, but especially under the influence of climate change.

PeterR - the start could be lead from the grassroots up. It might take a year or two but watch and see what happens when the dairy payout falls to $5kg/ms or less - and it will. When agriculture gets its next 'shock' and sneezes, NZ will contract pneumonia. By that time Chimerica will be sucked in the vortex of a downward spiral.
Hopefully we won't have signed a free-trade agreement with USA. The devil will be in the fine print if we have. USA wants to pipe water in from Canada. The Canadians don't want to let them have it - the fine print of the FTA says Canada can't refuse. What's the bet there will be some obscure wording in a USA-NZ FTA that will force us to water and feed them if they so wish - or has China already beaten them to it?

Walter : Weta Digital have proven that distance from overseas markets/customers is not necessarily a problem . If backing for Pacific Fibre-Optical cable is found , by 2013 , we will have no excuses for low production . The world , not Bluff , will be our oyster . And that great handbrake upon our growth , TELECOM , will have been out musselled . Tell Gattung & Reynolds to clam up . Sea !