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Stocks up, gold down.
Once again yesterday, investors demonstrated their preference for paper over the shiny yellow metal. The Dow Jones Industrial Average notched a slight 3-point gain, while gold tumbled about $17 an ounce.
This divergence between stocks and gold is not enormous, but it is telling. Most investors believe the credit crisis is a mere memory, and that an economic recovery is underway.
(more...)People think that Addison Wiggin is just another talented, intelligent, pretty face who secretly thrills to hear people say things like, “You’re a lot better looking than The Mogambo! And younger and smarter, too!” but he is much, much more than that.
(more...)Senator Dodd has suggested that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency be housed with the Federal Reserve Board… yet, despite having all the power needed to stop the mortgage debacle, it was never able stop that train wreck. Why trust it to do more in the future?
The muttering over regulation sounds like putting the cart before the horse.
(more...)It looks like US banks are losing the opportunity to earn fees on the roughly $500 billion in planned European debt offerings this year. It probably shouldn’t come as a big surprise, given the less than savory details that emerged regarding Goldman’s relationship with Greece, and the series of black eyes the euro currency has been enduring as a result of sovereign debt-related instability.
(more...)Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn announced his retirement on March 1, 2010. In his obligatory lament, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was half right: “The Federal Reserve and the country owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Don Kohn.” What is good for the Fed is generally not good for the country. The influence of Donald Kohn supports this view.
(more...)As the Greek debt saga unfolds, you’re likely questioning how it affects you… as an American. The connections are not always obvious, but today an article helps explain how some consequences of Greece’s debt mismanagement could ultimately hit US shores.
From the Washington Post:
(more...)All the euphoria about the end of the euro (EUR) selling got deep-sixed yesterday on two counts… 1. The European Central Bank (ECB) decided to extend stimulus measures, which led the markets to believe that the ECB would remain on hold with their interest rates, and once again, the markets believed that the US would begin to raise rates before the ECB… 2. Moody’s downgraded Deutsche Bank (Germany’s largest bank).
(more...)Providing the world’s reserve currency has its privileges. Not the least of which is the continued willingness of foreigners to soak up the massive amounts of debt issued by the US despite the nation’s continued debasement of the dollar.
Yet, what if the foreign nations stopped buying? We’ve certainly heard of the calamity that should result from China cutting the US off, but perhaps we shouldn’t be so certain that’s the case.
(more...)Whoever said, “Opposites attract,” didn’t know what they were talking about…or maybe they did know and just didn’t provide all the details.
The world around us provides ample evidence that opposites do, in fact, attract…but not always toward a favorable outcome. Sometimes opposites attract like gravity attracts a crippled airliner…or like a field mouse attracts a rattlesnake…or a bare foot attracts a rusty nail…or a Rusty Nail attracts an alcoholic…or accounting chicanery attracts a gullible investor.
(more...)Happy inauguration day! Today we begin with this little known factoid: For the first 143 years of the American Republic, presidents were inaugurated on March 4, the only day of the year that is also a command.
The date was moved up to Jan. 20 in 1932 when the activist president Franklin Delano Roosevelt couldn’t wait to wring his hands around the neck of the US economy. Roosevelt set in motion 78 years of what the economist Friedrich von Hayek called the “fatal conceit” – the arrogant belief that anyone could know enough at any one time to plan an economy.
(more...)Is annualized M1 money supply growing at three times the rate the Federal Reserve is reporting? This is a critical question recently explored by Zero Hedge, which believes the actual growth rate of US dollars “is approaching hyperinflationary levels.”
According to Zero Hedge:
(more...)What a day the currencies had yesterday! The euro (EUR) gained ground all the way back to 1.3730 (but saw some profit taking at the end of the day) and all the other currencies followed in step… Now… There’s two ways to look at this… Either the euro is like a star that’s getting ready to burn out… (It always shines brightest before it burns out), or… It’s like a star that had been covered up by another planet, and is coming back into view!
(more...)