The Empire’s Next Effort to Extract Your Wealth

Since before the tech bust, we’ve been suggesting that while Americans “think” they’re getting richer… they’re actually heading in the other direction. They’re getting poorer.

This proposition has been easier for folks to entertain since housing busted and the financial crisis reversed the “wealth effect” in 2008. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the logic of the American Empire and what you can expect in the year(s) ahead.

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Corporate Disappointment

Will investors perpetually bid up an earnings stream that has peaked and may be on the verge of shrinking? We’re about to find out…

With first-quarter earnings season under way, expectations for earnings have rarely been higher. But there are many signs that corporate profits have peaked, including a surge in negative guidance from company management.

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Super-Antifragilistic

The more you try to de-risk a system, the more accident-prone it becomes, and the more damaging the accidents are. The economist Hyman Minsky described this aspect of the financial system by saying that stability breeds instability.

But Minsky’s insight does not merely describe stock market tendencies. It goes beyond that…as we are learning from the antics of Ben Bernanke and his central banking peers.

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The Mississippi Lime Shale Play Is Heating Up!

Some people can hardly spell it. Others can’t point it out on a map. And many just simply haven’t heard of it…

But the Chinese and other foreign interests are snatching up as much oil-rich acreage as they can get, in this hotbed for shale production.

Welcome to the next round of America’s profitable shale plays! Strap on your boots, we’re headed to the Mississippi Lime formation…in Oklahoma.

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Ready for a Spring Correction?

You’re getting lazy. Complacent.

You think you have the market all figured out. The past couple of years have lulled you to sleep. That’s why you’re ready for the spring correction to pull into the station as the first quarter draws to a close.

I get where you’re coming from. For three years in a row, the market has started out hot. But it didn’t stay that way…

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In Gold, Not Cyprus, We Trust

Global investors had to muster the courage to keep calm as news of Cyprus’ proposed partial theft of all bank deposits took Wall Street by surprise, closed the country’s banks and drove the price of gold higher.

The thoughtless idea was intended to capture a portion of the $31 billion in bank assets held by Russians. According to The Financial Times, Cyprus has developed a “well-earned reputation for being a haven for dirty money from Russia.”

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What Can’t Go On, Won’t

Watching this administration pretend that refusing to raise the debt ceiling is the federal government’s real problem — rather than its spending — is simply surreal.

All the major players pushing for more debt, including the president, said exactly the opposite just a few years ago. Roughly, about the time The Daily Reckoning was filming and releasing I.O.U.S.A. Back then, the current powers-that-be were criticizing the prior administration, and rightly so, when the debt was $10 trillion.

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Cyprus and the Manic Media Bailout

Last-minute bailout…

Where have I heard this one before?

Eleventh-hour deals are quickly becoming the norm these days. Cyprus has become the latest member of the just-in-time club, notching a deal late last night in Brussels to grab its $13 billion bank bailout.

The third-smallest eurozone economy didn’t come out squeaky clean, though. There’s still the matter of shuttering its second-largest bank. And anyone with an account larger than 100,000 euro is taking it on the chin.

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Hi Ho Silver: Making the Case for This Precious Metal

Even though the newsletter I write for Casey Research is focused primarily on gold, our metals investments cover all the precious metals, and when warranted, some base-metals plays too. And with the markets in the state they are, I want to say something about silver…

My talk at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference in January was titled Is D-Day for Silver Approaching?, and highlighted the delicate balance between supply and demand. I concluded that there would be insufficient metal to meet a major spike in investment demand if it were to occur, leading to all kinds of negative consequences for those who don’t own silver (and lots of wonderful rewards for those who do).

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The Fed’s Interest Rate Madness

March Madness is now in full swing. Fed Madness continues apace.

The NCAA basketball tournament (which started earlier today) wouldn’t be very interesting without the 35-second shot clock forcing teams to shoot the ball. Forget slam dunks and three pointers, without the shot clock the game would be pass, pass, pass, while the clock would tick, tick, tick. The talents of big stars would be neutralized by opponents milking the clock. Bracketology? No one would care.

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