Last week legendary investor Jim Rogers sat down with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow to discuss commodities and whether the EU will print their way out of the debt crisis.
[Read more...]Discovering a Growing Disapproval for Greek Bailouts
October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Hey, what’s this? Greece can’t pay its bills?!
Yes, it’s true, Dear Reader, the Greek finance ministry disclosed once again yesterday that its deficit will be “higher than expected.”
“The deficit this year will likely be 8.5 percent of its gross domestic product,” the Associated Press reports, “higher than the 7.8 percent previously anticipated, and blamed a deeper-than-expected recession for the failure. The Greek economy is projected to shrink 5.5 percent this year.
[Read more...]How the EU Has Secured the Greek Default it Sought to Avoid
September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“Germany Backs Rescue Fund,” the front page of today’s Financial Times declares. “Victory for Merkel on Euro Zone Aid,” adds the front page of today’s International Herald Tribune.
Good times, apparently, are here again…if the stories that followed these headlines are to be believed.
[Read more...]Making Way for the Era of Sovereign Default
September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
American investors returned from their Labor Day holiday to face another laborious trading day on Wall Street. As your California editor pecks away at his keyboard this afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 200 points to within spitting distance of 11,000.
For the first three trading days of September 2011, the Dow has tumbled more than 600 points — or about 5% — the worst three-day start for the month of September in the history of the US stock market. (Thanks to CNBC for this utterly meaningless statistic).
[Read more...]The Euro Collapse that Wont Happen
May 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
What a strange pattern we seem to be in the past few days of trading… It used to be the overnight markets would run the currencies up versus the dollar, and the US session would knock them back down… Thats reversed these days. Yes, the overnight markets have been pushing the currencies down, and the US session has been picking them up…
[Read more...]Euro Drops 2 Cents on Bank of Spain Takeover
May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
As I was packing up to go home yesterday afternoon, the euro (EUR) had moved beyond 1.24, and I said, I wonder whats got the euro so perky this afternoon… Well, that perky feeling the euro had at that time was wiped out and more by fears that Spains problems are now going to take center stage… Greece is an afterthought at this point, now its Spain…
[Read more...]Beauty is Truth
May 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Beauty is truth; truth beauty, the poet, John Keats famously mused in his Ode on a Grecian Urn. Neither Greece nor Goldman Sachs can seem to get the hang of this concept.
Grecian finances, for example, illustrate an opposing principal: deception is ugly. For more than a decade, the Greeks have engaged in a mass deception that a revenue-starved nation could finance generous social programs. The idea was never viable, feasible or legitimate. But the Greeks wanted to believe it…and so did the rest of the European Union. They all wanted to believe that Greeces last six defaults were a fluke that the new and improved Greece would behave nothing like the old, profligate one.
[Read more...]The Economic Recovery Myth
May 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The primary trend is down…
Stocks fell again yesterday. The Dow lost 66 points.
The big shakeout was in the gold market with a fall of $21.
It is unusual for gold to fall more (proportionately) than stocks. So, whats the gold market trying to tell us? And why didnt it mention it before?
[Read more...]
A Final Stop on the Farewell Euro Tour
Today’s issue of The Daily Reckoning features the third and final installment of the “Farewell Euro Tour” — a collection of on-the-street conversations with ordinary folks in Europe about the Greek crisis, and about what this crisis portends for the euro zone. The tour began in the Netherlands, then moved south to Switzerland and then to Italy.
[Read more...]