Lord, teach us to pray. Luke 11:1
 
It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. We hear it said
that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question
it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is
nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a man is born from above,
the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve
that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is
nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New
Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for our
selves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God
Himself.

"Ask and ye shall receive." We grouse before God, we are apologetic
or apathetic, but we ask very few things. Yet what a splendid
audacity a childlike child has! Our Lord says - "Except ye become as
little children." Ask, and God will do. Give Jesus Christ a chance,
give Him elbow room, and no man will ever do this unless he is at his
wits' end. When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing
to pray, it is the only way he can get into touch with Reality. Be
yourself before God and present your problems, the things you know
you have come to your wits' end over. As long as you are
self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes
me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on
the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at
things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but
of working wonders in a man's disposition.

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Ben absolutely wants to do a massive QE2 program. The only thing holding him back is gold is near an all time high. What he wants is gold much lower and stocks much lower to give him cover... He is scared to do it here and he is right to be scared because such a reaction would be the end of the Fed right then and there. The Fed will be gone anyway within a few years in my opinion but it’s going to fight hard to survive and if you want to make money in this market you need to understand that. The most powerful institution in the world is fighting for its survival. Never forget that. So what is he going to do? I believe that the Fed and government are doing a lot more than people think to manipulate all markets behind the scenes. After all, they have publicly announced their manipulation in many other ways so does it make any sense whatsoever to assume they aren’t doing a plethora of other things behind the scenes? Of course not. I think that with the Fed in a bind they will accelerate and become ever more aggressive in behind the scenes games. This will make markets even more volatile and extraordinarily challenging. This is financial war make no mistake about it. The only way in my opinion to survive this is to buy all dips in precious metals, agriculture and oil. It is in these three areas that I expect to see the most price inflation as money eventually figures out the end game. The end game is more and more people will eventually wake up to the fact that the markets are a hologram put in front of you by the magicians at the Fed. That what constitutes real wealth in the years ahead will be owning food, energy and a means of exchange that will be accepted should a black market economy arise as it has in virtually all nations at one time or another throughout history. - Michael Krieger

From Michael Krieger of KAM LP

War is the growth hormone of the cancer that is big government. 

- Alex Jones

A government always finds itself obliged to resort to inflationary measures when it cannot negotiate loans and dare not levy taxes, because it has reason to fear that it will forfeit approval of the policy it is following if it reveals too soon the financial and general economic consequences of that policy. Thus inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any economic policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of unpopular, that is, of antidemocratic policy, since by misleading public opinion it makes possible the continued existence of a system of government that would have no hope of the consent of the people if the circumstances were clearly laid before them. That is the political function of inflation. When governments do not think it necessary to accommodate their expenditure and arrogate to themselves the right of making up the deficit by issuing notes, their ideology is merely a disguised absolutism.

- Ludwig von Mises

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In analyst Mike Mayo's view, Citigroup needs to re-do its accounting.

He thinks the profitable firm should be in the red.

Mayo argues that Citi is "cooking the books," by wrongly writing off Deferred Tax Assets that legally, should appear no where on their books.

From HuffPo:

In Mayo's view, Citigroup needs to take an immediate loss of some $10 billion on its DTAs (deferred tax assets), something that would place the marginally profitable bank, back in the red.

Banks can use DTAs to reduce the amount of tax that they’ll need to pay in a later tax period*, as FTAlphaville puts it. But there are some restrictions as to when firms can use them. Mayo thinks Citi is in violation of those restrictions.

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When Zero Hedge first admonished our readers in June of 2009 to stay away from markets in light of a general deterioration in market structure, which included a regulator-authorized form of structural frontrunning in the form Flash trading (not to be confused with the imminently following Flash crash), an unprecedented mismatch between stock valuations and economic reality, and Wall Street continued attempts to reflate the ponzi merely for the sake of proving that it can be done, we never expected that retail would take to our warning with the ensuing solemnity. Yet with 16 consecutive outflows from domestic equity mutual funds, shut downs by legendary hedge fund managers such as Druckenmiller and Pellegrini (and many more Tiger derivative blows up to be disclosed soon, once the full extent of the carnage of the flattening of the steepener bandwagon trade is fully appreciated), virtually everyone is asking themselves how did Wall Street not only get it all so wrong, but how on earth is the primary business of the post-facelift Wall Street, which is no longer investment banking, but merely trading (with or without flow-facilitated prop frontrunning) going to sustain the recent record headcount levels (hint: it won't, and many more banks will soon let go thousands of additional staffers as key revenue sources have now disappeared forever), and most importantly, why is this time different? Why did the "dumb money" for the first time ever, not bite on the Wall Street siren song lure of an economic "rebound", but instead has hunkered down, proving that not only is Wall Street nothing more than a pure-play enabler of the ponzi regime's status quo, but that all those who were warning that the economy is far more dire than Wall Street represents, were proven right. These same individuals (and bloggers), first validated in predicting the downward direction of the economy, will see their pessimistic forecasts about stocks validated next. Yet while that happens, all those who still somehow find this a surprising development, are now left proposing hypothesis as to what went wrong. Such as the following piece by the Financial Times.

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Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, not terrorists...According to Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the "single biggest threat" to American national security is the US national debt, which is either $8.85 trillion (public debt), $13.4 trillion (total national debt), $20 trillion (total debt including GSE debt), or $124 trillion (total debt including unfunded obligations), depending on one's definition of the word "debt." And as Zero Hedge has long been warning, the imminent increase in interest rates (sooner or later), will eventually put the country in an untenable funding position. "Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit." The Chairman (the real one, not his pale imitation over at Marriner Eccles) politely forgot to add that the successful rolling of nearly $600 billion in debt per month is likely an even greater threat to national security.

More from Mike Mullen, commenting on the upcoming annual interest payment forecast:

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Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who forecast the U.S. recession more than a year before it began, said the Federal Reserve is running out of effective ways to stimulate the economy.

“We cannot prevent slow economic growth for a number of years,” Roubini said an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “We are running out of policy bullets.”

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today that the U.S. central bank “will do all that it can” to ensure a continuation of the economic recovery. The Federal Open Market Committee “is prepared to provide additional monetary accommodation through unconventional measures,” Bernanke said in a speech to central bankers around the world at a symposium in Jackson Hole. READ MORE

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For OpEdNews: Stephen Lendman - Writer

America Facing Depression and Bankruptcy - by Stephen Lendman

Long-time economic, political and market analyst Bob Chapman publishes the International Forecaster, offering incisive analysis absent through mainstream sources, especially important now given America's deepening economic crisis getting harder to conceal as evidence mounts.

His August 25 issue says the following:

"Twenty countries (including America) are headed into bankruptcy and more will follow. That brings up the subject of state debt in the US. America has been in an inflationary depression for 18 months. States have been cutting back for two years," but still face huge budget gaps required to be closed....2011 will be a terrible year (with) 80% of states expect(ing) deficits of more than $200 billion. 2012 looks even worse." Most worrisome, "there is no recovery and there never has been....the US economy and financial system is comatose." The worst is yet to come and will hit hard on arrival. Read More

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In this week's update on technical chart formations, Goldman's John Noyce has nothing optimistic to tell clients. Noyce observes that while the market may have entered a short-term consolidation period with the 1,038-1,045, "looking further out the setup on the weekly charts of the S&P and the VIX, plus those for broader asset markets - fixed income in particular – make us think that a sustained bounce is unlikely and that broader risks remain on the downside." Yet the most interesting chart formation is the imminent flattening of the 2s30s... not here, but in the UK. Will the Julian Robertson "suicide" trade shift across the Atlantic?

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1 John 3:16-18 By this we know love of God, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

In Israel, they have an interesting geographical phenomenon – there are two landlocked seas. One is alive and one is dead. The sea full of life is the Kinneret, better known as the Sea of Galilee. The dead sea is.......you guessed it, the Dead Sea. Now the Kinneret is constantly emptying as it flows through the Jordan River valley.... into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not empty its water at all. Instead, the Dead Sea is continually shrinking, because the intense heat at this lowest place on Earth actually evaporates more water than is flowing in. Do you see a parable here?

The Sea that is alive is the one that gives. The more of your self, of your life, of your love, that you pour out, the more alive, filled up, and refreshed you will become. The Lord Jesus exemplified this to the greatest extent ever, by giving all He was and all He had, even to those who hated Him and were His bitter enemies. And the love that He gave was returned to Him by His Father in the resurrection, and by all the multitude of His redeemed people throughout all ages and into eternity. Could it possibly be any different for those of us who live lives of giving and loving? No. We will continue to be filled by the Lord's infinite abundance no matter how much we pour ourselves out. Of course, if we hold back, keeping all we have to ourselves, we will begin to evaporate and die...

Give and you will live. Love, and you will be filled with God’s love. Hold back, and even that which you have will vanish away. A friend of mine shares this limerick:

There once was a sea that was dead

It was, 'cause it only got fed

And never gave up

Not one single cup

Now that's something to keep in your head

Friend, let's be givers. Let's be lovers. Empty ourselves into His Kingdom, into His work, and be constantly refilled with His love, power and peace. With so much work to be done, I'm choosing the Sea of Life!

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The market seems to be struggling mightily at the 1060 area. This would be a good area to start getting aggressive and avg in up to 1067 if we can get there. Euro is starting to fail and its chart is a bear flag formation that means lower prices.

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