Archive - Aug 2012 - Blog entry

Money printing isn't creating inflation because the velocity of money has declined, right?

The evidence mounts...

Scandal after scandal – but the Fed just doesn’t want to be audited. Period.

As Bad as During the 1930s Dust Bowl?

So there is literally NO option that could save Europe at this point. We can get verbal interventions and symbolic gestures (such as Draghi's "bazooka" threat), but the fact of the matter is that the capital needed to prop up Europe simply doesn't exist in the EU or anywhere else for that matter.

ECB to EU governments: “Guys, we won’t fly solo…”

Bond Market to ECB “Show me the money!”

Equity market “Someone said Money? Buy!”

From the perspective of ethics, the fiscal profligacy of the US government and related behavior in the private sector is the cause of the financial crisis

Who the heck turned off the spigot in the first place?

Only the little people are meant to suffer for their country.

Real Wages Much Lower Than They Were Four Decades Ago

Will drift.

Won’t help trading volumes…

Flattish to slightly lower US open. Drifting…

Anyone betting that the global financial system will continue to muddle along indefinitely deserves to reap the whirlwind that’s coming.  As the rest of us well know, the international banking system is being kept afloat solely by political lies, stupidity, corruption, greed and, most of all, egregiously misplaced confidence. It would seem to be only a matter of time before the rotted timbers of this belief system give way.  But what will be the catalyst?  The possibility or even likelihood that the financial system will be toppled by some event no one was expecting was an implicit theme of Nassim Taleb’s widely read 2004 book.

Presented in the usual manner of challenging the ENTIRE sell side of Wall Street to offer analysis anywhere near as cogent, honest, straightforward, accurate, complete and credible. Or put more succinctly, the Goldman and Morgan Stanley clients can tell their advisers that Reggie Middleton advised them to kiss his As

We've Gone Way Too Far ... It's Time to Decentralize

Here are my thoughts from the VALUEx Vail conference. The idea for this conference came to me when I attended VALUEx Zurich, organized by Guy Spier and John Mihaljevic in February 2011 (you can register for VALUEx Zurich 2013, here). The thought of spending three days learning and sharing ideas with smart, like-minded value investors felt instantly right. Investing on some level is a never-ending pursuit to get better. Most of us are locked up in air-conditioned offices where we learn through reading SEC filings, magazines, blogs, etc.