Archive - Blog entry

The banks are no longer making home equity loans. Therefore people aren't building an addition or making big improvements. The impact on the small contractors has been big. The impact to the illegal workers has been bigger. One story.

Germany is the biggest test for Keynesian stimulation versus a hands off approach. The German election clinches their turn away from fiscal stimulus. Germany has done the least Keynesian spending gimmicks of any major economy and the new financial team headed by incoming Minister of Finance, Hermann Otto Solms will turn to free market friendly policies. You won't believe what they have to say about economics and their economy. I predict they will recover from the re/depression long before the U.S.

Zero Hedge has been accused of discussing "conspiracy theories".

Okay . . . but what does that mean?

A round-up of arguments for looking at gold as a reasonable investment, including: 1) China; 2) declining production; 3) inflation; 4) deflation; 5) global short-term interest rates; 6) uncertainty and distrust in government; and 7) flight to safety.

A year after the financial disaster of 2008, the search is on for investing’s winners and for its casualties. There are surprisingly few of either.

Why do economists keep getting it wrong? How can we ever trust what they say again after their miserable performance before the crash? They see what they want to see. Sheep. If we've learned anything it's to ignore mainstream economists. Listen to the outliers because the mainstream never gets it right. Here's today's data brought to you by an outlier. Remember to be skeptical.

Sulfuric acid is a backbone commodity for the economy. If you think the Vol. on oil is high take a look at the price action for this stuff. What's next is the big question. The current price is at a five year low. Looking at history it could be 300% higher in a year.

You stare down into the solid gold basin in the second floor executive washroom on C Street, chuckling lowly to yourself. The memory of the impertinent Congressman asking the location of the Fed’s gold—your gold—fades. You catch a glimpse of your perfectly coiffed beard and immediately sober, then smile wryly at your reflection.

The shorts are feeding again at the S&P trough, feeling confident. Let them be confident.

Let me just say that the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report is an excellent document that every serious money manager needs to read carefully. It provides an outstanding overview of global financial system. I went through it today and concluded that global financial risks have subsided but banks are by no means out of the woods. The semiannual report struck me as one of cautious optimism.

An article by The Hill dated 9/20/09 quoted President Obama as saying"...I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding..."
Since President Obama confirmed that bloggers do run the world, I’d like to dedicate this blog to respond to his comments.

I was on CNBC a few days ago discussing the Japan debt situation, here are my talking points and some additional thoughts a lot of them I did not have a chance to cover in the previous note or the interview.

Traders are positioned for a reversal of the down trend in the Dollar Index. Watch out below if it doesn't materialize.

The national sales tax is no longer idle talk. I guarantee that it is coming soon because Obama is running out of money and they're panicking about paying for the deficit. They just can't tax the rich enough to pay for it. Tomorrow starts the official vetting of the tax.

All global economic problems today are rooted in the existence of Central Banks and their commitment to an application of destructive Keynesian economic theories to our global monetary system that simply has not worked for the better part of this century. Within the realm of academics, monetary policy, politics and media, there is a persistent refusal to acknowledge the primary role Central Banks undertake in artificially creating boom-bust cycles that would not occur in such severe fashion were Central Banks simply willing to step out of the way and allow free market forces to operate.

With the exception of a few, many retail/apparel stocks are back to - or in some cases even higher - than their pre-bubble valuations. Someone remind me, unemployment is where, again?