Why Stock Market Rallies Aren’t Worth the Hype

First, the good news: Stocks staged a mammoth rally yesterday. The Dow managed a 2.5% run, while the broader S&P 500 scooted ahead 3%.

What a wondrous achievement this must have seemed like…to anyone who spent the previous month on the golf course, far away from their computer screen.

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The Truth in Obama Oval Office Decor

Given the wide assortment of issues facing the nation — debt, deficit, war, and bloated government — it’s actually no surprise the media is aflutter over President Obama’s Oval Office makeover.

As charming and comfy as it may be, it’s still holding court to some of Washington”s biggest problems.

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Roubini: 2nd Half Looking Worse, Double Dip Over 40% Likely

Nouriel Roubini, or “Dr. Doom” as he’s also known, is a New York University professor and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics. As his nickname implies, his opinions tend to be on the gloomy side, and in this recent interview he describes “monetary policy as impotent” and estimates a GDP growth rate in this year’s second half of, well, just about zero percent.

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America is Losing Her Way

A Brief Introduction from Eric Fry

The last time I saw Daniel Loeb, I was riding in his private jet from Miami to New Jersey. Danny is a fascinating guy – a California surf rat turned New York hedge fund manager.

In other words, he’s not your run-of-the-mill financial type. He came into the business through the backdoor and succeeded on the strength of his talents, wits and determination. He manages $3.4 billion in his hedge fund named Third Point Partners L.P. (For those folks who do not surf or who have never visited the beaches of Southern California, “Third Point� is the most distant of the three main surf breaks in Malibu).

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An Addendum to the ‘Flations – Gold $5,000

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a much-anticipated speech on Friday, August 27, 2010. There was no reason to think this talk would be more or less important than his other talks except for the degree of hysteria whipped up by the media in advance.

Bernanke was addressing an audience of fellow central bankers and their camp followers at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There have been memorable comments at these late summer getaways, such as, in 2005, when past-Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Alan Blinder claimed then-current-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan might be the “greatest central banker who ever lived.”

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Bernanke to World: We’re Going to Fiddle While Rome Burns

In Jackson Hole, Wyoming today Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the risk of an “undesirable rise in inflation or of significant further disinflation seems low.” Yup, can’t argue with that.

If you are operating a bank, and you had lost your depositors’ funds by making bad real estate loans, normally you would be sweating bullets by now, or among the 14.6 million pounding the pavement looking for work. But you need not worry. You got $1.3 trillion of reserves to tide you over while your bad loans continue to deteriorate.

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Figuring out the Real Importance of Gold

Gold remains in high demand among individual investors, hedge funds, and central banks all swapping cash for the yellow metal. This past weekend, an FT reportage looked into what the latest money flows into gold can tell us about it’s real importance.

Among others, the Financial Times spoke with Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul:

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Policy Solutions, Part Four of Four

The elites who are above the grip of the gluttonous taxes on ordinary income and estates in the United States have a huge vested interest in continuance of the fiat money system operated at the hands of a central bank, for it enables profit to uniquely accrue through appreciation rather than through income.

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The All But Forgotten Self-Governing Economy

GDP growth revised downward to an “anemicâ€� 1.6%…

Jobless claims rise more than forecast…

Home sales fall off a cliff…worse than economists expected…

Faced with a slew of deteriorating economic data points, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech on Friday designed to assure investors that he has the fate of the nation’s economy under control.

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