Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Yesterday’s big news wasn’t really news at all. Standard and Poor’s finally found the nerve to state openly what the rest of the world already knew: the Emperor is naked.
The esteemed ratings service announced that America risks losing its triple-A credit rating. “We believe,” said S&P, “there is at least a one-in-three likelihood that we could lower our long-term rating on the US within two years.”
[Read more...]The forces that have been tormenting the financial markets were nowhere to be seen last Friday. Maybe they decided to take a long weekend. Whatever the case, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rebounded 125 points, several European markets produced modest gains and the euro advanced for the fourth straight trading session.
[Read more...]Monday was the day the worlds capital markets turned into a giant fiat money casino. Consider yourself forewarned. You might be able to trade your way to profits in this market on the tide of easy money being printed now by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB). But the financial markets are setting up for the mother of all collapses.
[Read more...]The worlds largest shopping mall is almost entirely empty, says a headline now making its way around the Internet. The mall is not one of Americas consumer emporia. It is not in the US at all. Instead, it is in the Middle Kingdom…and twice as large as the Mall of the Americas.
The world did not end in 2009. Two things are widely reported to have saved it stimulus in the West and China in the East.
[Read more...]The markets didnt hold any real surprises yesterday as they continued to trade in a narrow range throughout the trading day. Overnight, the Asian markets sold the dollar, as good economic data from Japan and some promising data out of Australia convinced traders the global economic recovery is still underway. While Europe and the US continue to focus on the debt crisis in Greece, the Asian region continues to perk up. But Im getting ahead of myself; let me get back to what happened in the markets yesterday.
[Read more...]Wherever we look at the world economy today, we see a wall of risk…and potential financial catastrophe. We see a large number of virtually bankrupt major sovereign states (US, UK, Spain, Italy, Greece, Japan and many more) teetering atop a financial system that is bankrupt, but is temporarily kept alive with phony valuations and unlimited money printing. Increasingly, therefore, investors will want to exchange this funny money for gold.
[Read more...]Social Security is in trouble. According to the Social Security Trustees Report, the Social Security program was in a $7.7 trillion hole as of January 1, 2009. That means Washington would have needed $7.7 trillion on that date, invested at prevailing rates, to deliver for the next seventy-five-years on the promises that the federal government has made. But we actually need much more than that to keep Social Security healthy, because it will experience larger and larger deficits both in the near future and beyond the seventy-five-year accounting horizon. As of January 1, 2009, that number the amount we would need to invest to ensure the sustainability of the program for seventy-five years and beyond was $15.1 trillion. How much of this huge sum do we have invested in real liquid and transferable assets today that is, how much in actual money? Zero, zip, cero, nada, nothing!
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Mounting Debt and the Future that Won’t Forget It
What’s happening to 2011? It’s disappearing…
Yesterday was warm and sunny in this part of the world. Today, it is raining and gloomy.
This is All Saints day. After the mass, we’ll go over to the cemetery to put chrysanthemums on a family grave. Why chrysanthemums? We don’t know. But everyone does it. The graveyard will be as busy as a subway station today.
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