Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
We live in the immediate…the urgent…the here and now…with the noise of the headlines and the blustery winds of current opinion…
Yesterday, the Dow lost 19 points. Gold lost $18.
But nobody cares what happened yesterday. People want to know what is happening right now. When they enter an elevator, they reach for their cellphones and Blackberries and check to see if they have messages…or if something important has happened.
[Read more...]Gold or stocks?
Gold will go up another $300 next year, says Goldman Sachs. Bloomberg reports:
Gold rose 27 percent this year, heading for a 10th consecutive annual advance. Investors are seeking hard assets as governments and central banks led by the Federal Reserve pump more than $2 trillion into the world financial system.
[Read more...]This week, the world caught a glimpse of what Henry Hazlitt might have called the “seen� – the primary, most conspicuous consequence of a preposterous economic policy. Of course, it is the “unseen,� what comes next, that we ought to be worried about.
We are referring here to the dawning of the QE2 era. In the shadow of the midterm elections, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “full steam ahead� Bernanke announced the second round of quantitative easing, or, for us non econo-scholars, “money printing.�
[Read more...]No matter how many times the Conference Board reports dismal consumer confidence, or the Institute for Supply Management reports anemic manufacturing activity or the National Association of Realtors reports abysmal home sales, some economist somewhere will track down a hopeful data point and force-feed it into his “improving economy� scenario.
[Read more...]Epithet for a doomed economy…
What will they say? How will they describe the ’00s and ’10s?
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was accused of being drunk when he gave a “croaky� radio interview two weeks ago.
He denied it.
But we’d be tempted to turn to the bottle too if we were in the fix Ireland is in. Ireland’s banks got into trouble. So the government threw them a lifeline…forgetting that the line was tied to its own neck. It guaranteed bank liabilities equal to four times Irish GDP. But isn’t that going to be the story of the whole period? Private sector banks and speculators got in trouble. Then, the public sector went down with them.
[Read more...]Unless you’ve been buried under a pile of stock market profits over the past 24 hours unable to breathe or reach your TV set, you know the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) – the nonprofit body based in Cambridge, Mass., that has been assigning dates to recessions since…1929 – declared the Great Recession over and done with in June 2009.
[Read more...]Just two business days after our post titled “The War on Small Business,� The Washington Post publishes an article headlined, “Small Businesses Feel Squeezed by Obama Policies.�
[Read more...]With his toes in the sand and the cool waters of the Atlantic Ocean lapping gently at his feet, your editor can fairly say we have reached the end of our little Daily Reckoning Coast-to-Coast Correction Tour. So where to now for your Ho-Jo-hopping correspondent? Ahh, more on that below. First, some more important considerations…
[Read more...]Today, we revisit a recurring theme: the assault on enterprise. It was the subject of our symposium in Vancouver in July. In this episode, we look at a particularly vulnerable segment of the economy: small businesses.
To help set the stage, let’s look at some important stats from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Small businesses:
[Read more...]Copyright © 2009 - Present · All Rights Reserved · Gold Stocks Today · Contact Us
Economic Outlook: 5 Things that Could Happen in 2011
Nothing comes from nothing. But what comes from something?
Did you see what happened? The Fed’s holdings topped $2 trillion for the first time ever. It took 95 years to get the Fed’s holdings to $600 billion. In the space of 3 years, it has added $1.4 trillion more. That’s something.
[Read more...]Click for detailed story