Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Senator Rand Paul conducted a 13-hour filibuster yesterday that finally ended at a little before 1:00 a.m. this morning.
Are you still awake?
Usually, the mere mention of the word “filibuster” induces narcolepsy…and why not? A filibuster is explicitly about doing nothing for as long as possible. Webster’s defines it as, “The use of extreme dilatory tactics in an attempt to delay or prevent action, especially in a legislative assembly.”
[Read more...]Let’s play a little game of “True/Not true.” We ask the question and you answer, “True” or, “Not true.”
1) Two police officers in Colorado lost their jobs and face felony charges for shooting an elk.
2) Two police in Washington State lost their jobs and face felony charges for shooting a man in his bed 16 times.
3) America spends more money on the TSA each year than the nation of Nicaragua earns.
4) Pubic “crabs” are becoming endangered by Brazilian bikini waxes.
5) The sequester that began last Friday will cut the national debt by $85 billion this year.
6) Witches read The Daily Reckoning.
A few months ago, the insightful and engaging financial market observer, James Grant, drew a comparison between “witchcraft, on the one hand, and modern central banking, on the other.”
Grant presented this novel comparison in an address to the “Investment Decisions and Behavioral Finance” meeting at the Harvard Kennedy School.
[Read more...]Broken clocks get a bad rap…at least they are right twice a day. Many are the objects, individuals and/or institutions who are lucky to be right once a day… or even once a year. Consider, for example, those poor souls who continuously predict rising interest rates. These “bond bears” have not been right once in the last 30 years.
[Read more...]As singer-songwriter, Aimee Mann, poetically observes, “The moth [will] beat his wings ’til he burns them black”
…and so will many individual investors.
The dazzling glow of a rallying stock market draws them to the flame of “easy” winnings. But just about the time the winnings become seductively easy, the scent of scorched wings fills the air. Share prices tumble and zillions of investor-moths scorch their savings.
[Read more...]Deception, like a mushroom, flourishes in darkness and manure. And the only way to end a deception is to drag it out into the light…and cut out the BS.
Two weeks ago, for the first time ever, the Federal Reserve dragged its crisis-era bailout activities out into the light of day (thank you Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ron Paul!). The resulting revelations exposed a number of shocking truths, like the truth that the big Wall Street banks did not merely receive one $10 billion loan each from the TARP facility; they also received tens of billions of undisclosed loans from other lending facilities. On top of that, many of the big banks raised hundreds of billions dollars by secretly selling mortgage-backed securities directly to the Fed.
[Read more...]“When will the gold bubble burst?� CNBC’s Larry Kudlow wondered aloud this morning.
A question to which your California editor would reply, “We know what gold is and we know what a financial bubble is, but we don’t see any gold bubbles.�
Perhaps Kudlow is referring to the fact that the gold price is rising…in response to the Central Banking Bubble. On its face, the idea is ludicrous that one man can steer an entire economy, simply by adjusting one little interest rate. The idea is a doubly ludicrous that one institution can nurture economic growth, simply by printing money. And yet, a nation of investors places its faith in the Cult of Central Banking, as folks like Larry Kudlow pay homage to Ben Bernanke every business day.
[Read more...]WikiLeaks is grabbing the headlines, but your California editor considers the “Icky-Leaks� issuing from the Federal Reserve to be much more intriguing – like the icky leak that the Fed doled out trillions of dollars in clandestine bailouts and guarantees during the crisis of 2008 and early 2009.
[Read more...]Deception in the financial markets is not always costly, but it is rarely remunerative. Investors cannot afford to ignore this tendency.
Recent disclosures from the Federal Reserve reveal that honesty was one of the earliest casualties of the 2008 financial crisis. These disclosures contain a number of juicy tidbits, like the fact that Goldman Sachs received tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect succor from the Fed.
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Record Highs Despite Epic Lows
Three cheers for the Dow Jones Industrial Average!…or four, if you like.
Since setting its first new record high in more than four years last week, the beloved Blue Chips have marched ahead to six more record-high closes. In all, the Dow has advanced ten straight days — the longest winning streak since 1996!
[Read more...]Click for detailed story