With the number of of government officials… and at least one mega-billionaire… taking potshots at Standard and Poor’s over the US debt downgrade, it’s appealing to hear a few more voices emerging and willing to recognize the ongoing debt debacle for what it is, and even at the expense of perhaps somehow not sounding patriotic.
[Read more...]Zakaria: US Policy is Sad Mixture of Political Payoffs and Ideological Positioning
August 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
2011 Halftime Report: The Cues for Copper
July 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Copper slightly disappointed investors, ending the first half of the year with a decline of 3.50 percent. Worries about global inflation and, more specifically, the potential slowing of China’s economy weighed on copper’s price. The red metal rose 5 percent quickly in the new year, but similar to zinc, lead, palladium and platinum prices, declined sharply at the beginning of May.
[Read more...]China Opens World’s Longest Cross-Sea Bridge
July 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Qingdao BridgeWhen the new Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge opened to traffic this week in China, it made the Guinness World Records for the longest cross-sea bridge in the world. The 26.4-mile long and 110-foot wide bridge stretches across the bay, linking the Huangdao district to the city of Qingdao and Hongdao Island.
[Read more...]Railway Revolution Builds China’s Consumer Culture
June 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Frequent readers of my “Frank Talk” blog and the weekly Investor Alert should be familiar with the story of China’s high speed rails. We’ve previously discussed how China is building the world’s largest network of high speed rails at an incredible speed.
US Desperately Needs $2 Trillion in Infrastructure Repairs
May 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A recent study conducted by Ernst & Young for the Urban Land Institute shows the US badly needs $2 trillion in infrastructure rehabilitation for services and facilities — ranging from roads and bridges to sewers and dams — which are quickly reaching the end of their planned useful life.
[Read more...]It’s the End of the Dollar as we Know It (Do we Feel Fine?) Part 2 of 3
May 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Continued from part one.
So what might such a ‘dollar crisis’ look like, how would the US government likely respond, and what impact should we expect this to have on financial markets? While we do not purport to have the specific answers to these questions, there are some general considerations we can discuss with some reasonable confidence.
[Read more...]It’s the End of the Dollar as we Know It (Do we Feel Fine?) Part 1 of 3
May 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The dollar has been in focus of late, primarily due to its substantial decline in value versus other currencies and most major commodities. Indeed, when measured in broad, trade-weighted terms, the dollar’s April decline is one of the largest monthly drops of the past decade and extends what has now become the largest cumulative decline since the US economy exited recession in 2009. When measured versus a broad basket of global commodities, the recent decline has been even more dramatic.
[Read more...]Welcome to Colombia!
March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“Would you invest in Brazil 15 years ago if you had the chance?” our Colombian host asked me one night, in an effort to frame the opportunity here.
“Of course, that would’ve been a home run,” I said.
“Welcome to Colombia.”
We were sitting in a comfortable restaurant in Medellin’s downtown area. Medellin is a pretty city that spills out across a river valley and creeps up the walls of the surrounding mountains. Medellin’s nickname is the City of Eternal Spring, thanks to its temperate weather. If you have an image of Medellin (and Colombia) as a violent place, a visit here would change your opinion. We could have been in any number of cities around the world. I never felt unsafe. (As with any city, there are good and bad areas.) The bars and restaurants were full at night. The skyline was lit with tall buildings. The sidewalks busy with people. It was not always so, as Medellin was once a notoriously dangerous city.
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The (Infrastructure) Bank That “Abandons the Bought Congress”
Dylan Ratigan, formerly host of CNBC’s Fast Money and now host of MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show, created quite the spectacle yesterday… freaking out in a surreal, but sublime, fashion about the failures of the president and Congress. In a tirade where he refers to “10s of billions of dollars being extracted from the USA… an integrated entire system, financial system, trading system, taxing system… created by both parties over a period of two decades at work on the entire country.”
[Read more...]