Since the 1800's the US the Southern US Border has been created by a series of nation building land grabs. The land of the free got 828,000 square miles bigger back in 1803 when Thomas Jefferson convinced the French that in return for $60Million Francs, or in that time $11M US Dollars, he would make the Louisiana Purchase, or (French: Vente de la Louisiane "Sale of Louisiana") There was also a cancellation of about $3Mil in French Debt so thanks to the Louisiana Purchase and Napolean Bonaparte the US now included all or part of 14 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.
The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans.
The annexation of the formerly French territories was easy, I mean after all, we were negotiating with France. As the border to the South extended things got considerably tougher. Around the same time the Mexican colony separated from Spain, and become its own little nation, and the early years were wrought with Political instability. While the Mexicans noted the recent acquisitions the US had made, they feared more annexation was headed their way, so the Mexican leaders encouraged their people to settle in what is now Texas, they thought this would create a buffer zone and prevent the greedy US aggressors from heisting more of their land. Umm…BAD Thought.
All these new settlers loved the new digs so much that the Texans declared their independence from Mexico in 1836, and they thought everything was peachy keen, until ohhh about 1845 when the US basically took over the territory. This hurt the Mexicans feelings.
Wait, we had our people move into that shitty border area to protect against US aggression, then our people seceded, and then the US takes the land anyhow?!? Needless to say the Mexicans were pissed. Not pissed like the Mexican guys who work for you landscaper when the sprinklers go on accidentally, pissed like War.
Yes the Mexicans didn’t take highly to losing what amounted to 55% of their total territory. Try losing more than half of your real estate portfolio, and odds are you’re going to want to throw down.
This means War
For some reason the Mexicans were pissed that we yoked more than half their country so in 1846 they declared War on the US. It was rather laughable and there was basically not much of a fight, and by 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed, and within 5 years what today’s stands as our porous US-Mexico border was formed.
Thanks to the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Mexico lost more than 960,000 square miles (about 2,500,000 km²) of land, 55% of its national territory, including what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, in addition, all disputes over Texas and the disputed territory between Rio Grande and Rio Nueces were abandoned. Five years later the Gadsden Purchase completed the creation of the current United States – Mexico border. These purchases left approximately 300,000 people living in the once disputed lands, many of whom were Mexican nationals. The 1969 mile border today enjoys world wide infamy as the most crossed border of any in the world, with 250million crossings every year, but in this metric lies the problem.Run for the Border
No not to Taco Bell, even though a series of ongoing skirmishes and the signing of some administrative purchases and treaties said that the land belonged to this new Republic the US of A, Mexicans still were not happy. I mean Texas was loaded with Black Gold, and then President James Polk pushed for Western development in Cali, where the real Gold was found. So these Amedi-gons were taking their land, their oil and now their gold? What's next? Are you going to take our pants right off our bodies?
C’mon, you got our land, our resources, and now you want to tell us we can’t even visit?? Granted the first real gusher wasn’t found in Texas until 1901 when a huge reserve was tapped at Spindletop in Beaumont Texas, but even in the 1800's the Mexicans had already found oil. The prospects of what are today’s most heavily traded commodities - Oil and Gold caused Mexicans to violate the border at will, and at a rate that the US had no capacity to contain or control
The Oil Age, and the Gold Rush, had Mexicans rushing into what was now US territory, seeking riches.
My simple Solution
The Mexican people have been conditioned over last 150 years to believe much of the minerals and resources that exist in the US are theirs. Not to mention they are pissed that we took Vegas, I mean how mad would we be if someone stole sin city from us.
But Mexicans are born into a culture that will have them believe that the Southern border of the US is a line drawn in the sand by a greedy neighboring aggressor, and they don’t need to respect our border. Hence they cross the border in huge numbers still for the same old reason, to seek wealth. The Mexican Press must have forgotten to tell the Mexicans that there are no jobs here. Still they come. Why-- Why is it that no matter what we do, fences, monitors, electric fences, etc we cant keep out illegal immigrants. Well they have a will to be here and we haven’t come up with a way to stop them.
I have a plan. We have roughly 400,000 US Combat troops out and about fighting the good fight in other countries. Many of those countries don’t even want us there, our guys are bombed daily in Iraq, and are subjected to guarding opium farms in Afghanistan so the local warlords can harvest their heroin and sell it in order to fund their fight verse Taliban militia. This is not what the greatest fighting force on the planet is supposed to be doing. The US Armed Forces main responsibility is US National security.
The greatest threat is right here in the homeland. And if we can’t protect our own borders how the hell can we be protecting someone else’s? Here’s my plan - We recall 8000 active combat troops. We deploy them to the US-Mexico border and we spread them out a mile apart. So every mile there is a combat ready sentry patrolling our border. Why 4 per mile. Ok we rotate the day 8 hours each, so each day 3 guys or women work 8 hours watching for illegal crossers.
The 4th gets a day off and they rotate the days and the shifts. We build 1000 out posts, kind of pre-fab living quarters, maybe 50k each, for a cost of a mere 50 million bucks. Coincidentally 1million less than the US contribution to the IMF Euro Bailout. So ok, we have 8000 soldiers on the border. We have 1000 new porta-homes. Now what? Well then we allow the soldiers who man these outposts to settle some land around those outposts and the border becomes a military complex. We put 2000 fighters on foot patrol at the border with shoot to kill orders, and spread that around the news I think our border problem will be over quick. The idea of spreading them a mile apart is if each soldier patrols a half mile each way there are no holes in the border. Now there are places where fences and other deterrents already exist, but no matter. We create a human line of soldiers from Tijuana to Louisiana and then give US military the right to settle the lands on the border. In my view the 50million, will be the best money we ever spent in sending immigrants and terrorists a clear signal that no countries borders are as important as our own. Monday, my plan for all the illegals still here.Where’s the stock info?
Well the history of Mexico and the ever growing issue of illegal immigration continues to be a major contributor to our geo-political landscape.
The US Stock markets rely heavily on the performance of the gold and oil markets, and with exploding unemployment #'s we can not continue allowing anymore illegals to enter and take whatever low paying jobs may exist. The stock info begins now. The Spanish Bank STD, still remains a serious consideration of Shorts with massive exposure to the EU Crisis. ING- RBS- BCS are all other banks that have significant exposure and the slightest tick of trouble can bring any and all of these into emergency bailout mode.Good old fashioned short plays
VRTX- Biotech with a Hepatitis C cure. Recent announcement boasting a 75% effective rate at curing hep C sounded great and ran the stock but real biotech players say the 75% was largely expected, and the real problem is that their big sales pitch on Telaprevir is that is cures Hep C in just 24 weeks, compared to other drugs in the works which take 48weeks. Problem is the real cure ratio of patients who are cured within 24 weeks is only 55%, not as great and some test patients were affected with dangerous and deadly skin rashes. On top of that the stock is trading now at an 8B market cap and that’s where it could or should be upon gaining FDA Approval. They haven’t even got the approval yet, so the positive outcome is baked in and any negative results from 2 studies currently in the works and due for announcement in q3 could crush the stock. Think DNDN- after gaining FDA approval the stock has done nothing but trade down. VRTX seems to be setting up the same way
BIDU-- With 75% Market share in China, and 100% gain in the stocks price in the last 5 months, it did seem odd to me when I noted BIDU in our top shorts bin.
While it seems the Chinese search monster has unbridled potential in Asia, the shorts think that this things has come too far too fast, and there may be renewed competition in the area. The 75% market share number seems too tough to protect and that # along with the lofty current price must come back to earth. After 100% gains, stocks can easily and healthily trade down 10-15%. The most key factor I see in this play is that we at LocateStock find stocks that are hard to borrow, so when a stock that is typically very liquid starts to appear on our radar as something shorts are willing to pay for that’s a bearish signal. When there’s premium interest from traders to get the short on, that is usually a bad sign for the bulls.Before the B-hole....
In case you missed it, I was on CNBC Fast Money again last night, and I continue to fight the crew to make my points. Last night while Guy Adami continues to be a cool cat, this Tim Seymour cat found it necessary to try to abuse me. Watch for yourself.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232/?video=1505940674&play=1
First off, before you go on the show they ask you to sign a disclosure. A form that says which stocks you own or are short. This is easy for me, as all our customers are hedge funds and active traders who share sensitive and proprietary information I do not trade single stocks, futures or commodities. In an effort to demonstrate to our customers that their data is safe, LS does not trade. We are a service provider, a processor and an analytics generation company. Timmy seemed to have his balls twisted that I was voicing a bearish opinion that probably doesn’t bode well for his Perma Bull portfolio.
The best part was right before attempting to bitch slap me; he was cautioning viewers to beware Santander, which was my short call last week. So he took my call and then says he doesn’t believe my data?!? He doesn’t believe it? Am I lying? Then he tries to frame me up like someone who shorts stocks and wants them to go down or something. Everyone has opinions, mine are often strong, and I am not shy about expressing them, but back here in Shao Lin, saying you don’t believe someone on National TV could be construed as a dog dirty slap. You don’t believe me? I don’t believe he was recommending people to buy EEM back in 08, now there’s something unbelievable. I thought saying that shorts weren’t significantly covering was a rather benign statement compared to others I have made, yet this got Timmy’s titties all twisted. I love Fast Money, and recognize that the short perspective is a new one to the show, so I guess there’s an adjustment process to how I give the info and the Panel receives it. Hopefully Tim starts to warm up and receive the information in a slightly more friendly way than the paddy cake attack he brought last night. If my info is wrong and I have analyzed the data incorrectly, I am ready to take my lumps, but to call me out and say he doesn’t believe me, that’s just flat wrong. But hey that’s what makes good television and I’m ready to defend my turf anytime. I’m sure the Bull-Bear debate will continue. Stay tuned.Other Scummers
AIG-- NBG-- LCC are all names that look like they are up and comers on the Bears radar.
I’m tired hung over and basically exhausted after celebrating brother Derek’s Birthday (May13) for the 5th time this month.
Happy Memorial Day,
hopefully the markets will find a good consolidation point in June, and start to trade in a more healthy value range.Talk Tuesday.
JT
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