“America Has Become a Piñata…”

“America’s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system,” wrote Charles Goyette in his book The Dollar Meltdown. “A spoils system leaves the host alive so that a politician’s occasional ne’er-do-well brother-in-law can be put on the payroll.”

In contrast, Goyette suggested, “America has become a piñata: Everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the piñata party.”

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“America Has Become a Piñata…”

“America’s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system,” wrote Charles Goyette in his book The Dollar Meltdown. “A spoils system leaves the host alive so that a politician’s occasional ne’er-do-well brother-in-law can be put on the payroll.”

In contrast, Goyette suggested, “America has become a piñata: Everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the piñata party.”

[Read more...]

Serial Bubble Blowers

The shrinking dollar is a modern problem. The U.S. dollar has been shrinking since the inception of the Federal Reserve — the very crew assigned the task of maintaining its value. Of late, the decline is accelerating at an alarming rate.

For many Americans, the suggestion that the dollar is losing value is unthinkable — even unpatriotic. The problem is not simply a lack of understanding about the nature of wealth and investment used to sustain it.

[Read more...]

Serial Bubble Blowers

The shrinking dollar is a modern problem. The U.S. dollar has been shrinking since the inception of the Federal Reserve — the very crew assigned the task of maintaining its value. Of late, the decline is accelerating at an alarming rate.

For many Americans, the suggestion that the dollar is losing value is unthinkable — even unpatriotic. The problem is not simply a lack of understanding about the nature of wealth and investment used to sustain it.

[Read more...]

Shades of the ’08 Financial Crisis?

“Even I wouldn’t make a loan to me at this point,” says Annette Alejandro. Ms. Alejandro recently emerged from bankruptcy, her car was repossessed last year and she has no job.

But her mailbox is stuffed with offers for credit cards and car loans.

We begin today’s episode with “deja vu”-induced vertigo this morning. Three items flitted into our inbox in the last 24 hours. By themselves, the items might not mean much. Coagulated, they give us the same queasy feeling we had in 2007-08.

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Buy a House!

A little more than a year ago, a very successful professional investor declared, “If you don’t own a home, buy one. If you own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes, buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home.”

Since that declaration, house prices have continued drifting lower in most parts of the country. The Case-Shiller index of national home prices is down about 4% year over year. Even so, we’re betting this professional investor was merely early…not wrong. US housing isn’t just cheap; it is the cheapest it has been in more than 40 years. And when one considers the possibility that inflation may rear its head soon, housing looks even cheaper still.

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The Permanent Portfolio Revisited

Volatility tends to correlate with risk, but not always with return. Skydiving delivers more heart-stopping thrills than chess, but it also produces more heart-stopping disasters. Driving a Formula 1 race car produces a lot more million-dollar paydays than sitting in a La-Z-Boy. But no one ever crashed their La-Z-Boy into a wall and burst into flames.

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New Taxes from a Desperate Government

The state of New Jersey wants to tax the value of unused gift cards.

We’ll let that sink in for a bit.

[a bit]

“The state will soon begin requiring gift card sellers to obtain ZIP codes from buyers so it can claim the value of cards not redeemed after two years,” according to an Associated Press story.

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Warren Buffett Scorns Gold. Bad Move!

Warren Buffett doesn’t like gold. In this year’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett scorned gold as an asset that is “forever unproductive.”

And he’s right about that…

But investors don’t buy gold because they hope it will produce something. They buy gold because they know that no one can produce it. Therefore, the more that folks distrust their national currency, the more they put their trust in the ultimate currency: gold.

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