“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
[Read more...]How Ben Bernanke Rationalizes “Exceptionally Low” Interest Rates
Anything happen in the markets yesterday? To tell the truth, we forgot to check. Let’s have a look now, then…
Dow up by 80-something points. A barrel of the world’s currently-preferred energy sits pretty at $100, on the nose. Nothing much, in other words.
Ooh…but here’s something: “Gold extends post-Fed rally to 6-week high.” MarketWatch has the story…
[Read more...]Best Places in the World to Retire
If you had $20,000 a month to retire on — you could live lavishly pretty much anywhere on the planet. But we’re interested in the places where you can live that lifestyle on one-tenth the budget…
Places where you can have a maid clean for you…hire a gardener… wake up to a view…have great health care, eat well, enjoy the finer things in life — for less than $2,000 a month. You may be surprised how many there are…
[Read more...]Obama’s Fairness Doctrine
“The US is going to hell,” we told the group at the Watergate last night.
“You mean the economy is really going to get worse, huh?”
“No, I mean it’s going to hell.”
We had been invited to watch the State of the Union address with a group of dinosaurs…a group approaching extinction with dignity and intelligence. You might call them ‘thinking conservatives,’ ‘paleo-conservatives’ or ‘constitutionalists.’ Whatever they were, they were not like the scoundrels currently running for the Republican nomination or the yahoos who vote for them. They were more like a renegade, retrograde group…like a secret society of White Russian intellectuals after the Revolution of 1917. They cling to hope…that the nation will come to its senses…that the constitution will again be honored…and that the old republic, established by the founding fathers, will be resurrected…
[Read more...]Big Ben Discusses Another Round of Quantitative Easing
Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! I wonder what I’ll talk about today…. Hmmmm… Could it be…. The Fed meeting? Oh, you are so smart! In case you missed this yesterday, because I’m sure the major media outlets couldn’t muster up enough intestinal fortitude to do it, but the Fed threw a cat among the pigeons yesterday… There are a lot of things I’m thinking about, this morning, so, this should be entertaining… For me at least!
[Read more...]Yellow Gold Looks Strong Again…
The stock markets had a very solid session. Most charts shot higher after Apple beat estimates Tuesday night surging over 10%. This set the tone for stocks Wednesday. Also the FOMC said they would keep interest rates low until mid 2014 and projected a 2% inflation rate which took the market by surprise. Looking at the 10 minute intraday charts of gold, silver, oil, and the SP500 you would think it was the 4rth of July with everything shooting higher.
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Commodities Take Off!
The Greek talks returned to the headlines this morning. I know I said this last Friday, and I was a little too optimistic and turned out to be wrong! But… I do expect this agreement on a private-sector involvement in Greek debt to get hammered out this weekend… It seems that the opposition from eurozone policymakers is backing off, and that has me optimistic once again.
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