Archive - May 4, 2012 - Blog entry

In no business schools, or economics departments, anywhere in the world, have suggested that such a thing should take place

US home prices have once again made a post-bubble low in spite of all the artificial intervention and massive bailouts to financial institutions.  The bottom line unfortunately is that US household incomes have been strained for well over a decade.  You can slice it up by nominal or inflation adjusted data but household incomes have been moving in a negative direction during the 00s and continuing into this decade.  Keep in mind there is a massive pipeline of problems still in the housing market with over 5.5 million mortgage holders in some stage of foreclosure or simply not paying on their mortgage.  This is more than a housing crisis but a crisis of quality job growth.

Arguably, more millionaire money was made during the Great Depression than at any time in history. Well, if that's true then it looks as if history may be poised to repeat itself. The question is, who will be ready?

Gold is down 1.6% on the week. The gold market has seen peculiar, lack lustre, low volume trading this week punctuated with sudden, oddly timed, very large sell orders. This leads to quick price falls followed either by slow, gradual recovery or a sharp bounce, prior to next bout of strangely timed sudden large sell orders.  

This was clearly seen by the mysterious and massive $1.24 billion ‘Goldfinger’ trade on Monday. 

But the system is gummed up.

Fraud ... What Fraud?

The April jobs report was 'worse than expected'. While some will tell you that with revisions is was 'as expected is say: Huh? Do they mean that now that March job gains are stronger at +154K it is more likely that we would have projected a slowdown to +115K jobs in April? Really? As expected net of revision? On what planet? No We think you should look at the headline numbers and revisions as separate events to some extent. When you do you learn a lot more. On balance we think there may be room for optimism in this dismal-seeming report. But it's guarded and speculative optimism.

All you need to read.