Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Whoops!…Oh dear!…It looks like Ben fell off the wagon again!
Such a shame. He had been doing so well ever since he put that bottle of “Old Q.E.” back on the shelf last June… and got sober. But a few weeks back, he tripped up on his 12-step program and started nipping at the bottle again. Slowly at first… then to excess.
[Read more...]Yesterday’s trading revealed nothing of importance. Small moves in stocks and gold. And oil dipped below $100.
But the news has been generally “good” ever since the European Central Bank made it clear that it will print money rather than see major banks or minor nations get what is coming to them. Like its US counterpart, the ECB will not permit a major bank or sovereign debtor to go bust.
[Read more...]Hey… That rascal, Alan Greenspan, is back in the newspapers. And this time he has something sensible to say:
“The emerging fight over the future of the welfare state, a paradigm without serious political challenge in eight decades, is accentuating the center’s declining. The welfare state has run up against a brick wall of economic reality and fiscal book-keeping. Congress, having enacted increases in entitlements without visible means of funding them, is on the brink of a stalemate…”
[Read more...]What’s ahead for 2012?
We gave you a hunch yesterday. The price of gold will probably go nowhere this year.
We have a feeling that 2012 is not going to be a great year for money you get from the ground. Oddly, it will probably be a better year for the money you get from trees.
How is that possible? We all know paper money is going to be worthless. Yes…dear reader…but not necessarily in 2012. It’s just part of the curious way Mr. Market does business…and a feature of his nasty habit of ruining as many investors as possible.
[Read more...]Not much to report from yesterday. Dow up 78 points. Gold bouncing around.
All eyes are on Europe. If the Europeans can pull off a save…well, we’re all saved. At least for a few weeks. Maybe through the holiday season.
The euro has been remarkably stable. It has never collapsed — despite all the talk of Europe falling apart. Apparently, people with money don’t think it is in real danger. They think it is too important to let go. They may be right. And the more people talk about the ‘end of Europe’ the more it doesn’t end. Instead of letting it go, the authorities become more and more stubborn in trying to hold it together.
[Read more...]All central banks are desperate to stop stress from building in the global banking system. Despite what they say, job No. 1 of every central bank is to do whatever it takes to prevent a disorderly collapse of banks caused by “bank runs.” These central bankers are crazy, and nothing will stop them from supporting the status quo.
[Read more...]In a highly competitive field, the story of the past week was surely the announcement by a half dozen of the world’s largest central banks to engage in, what The Daily Reckoning’s Eric Fry described as, “institutionalized money-laundering.”
[Read more...]OK… It’s a Jobs Jamboree Friday… (Doesn’t it seem like we just did this?) The experts are looking for the economy to have created 125,000 jobs in November… Hmmm… While that would be nice to see, I doubt it has legs to stand on… IF, we really count the jobs created correctly… Remember that in October the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) told us the total jobs created for the month was 80,000? And then I told you that 102,000 jobs were added from the Birth/Death Model… Or as I like to call them…“ghost jobs”… So, that’s what I’m talking about when I say “count jobs created correctly.”
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Demand Fears in a Consumer-Based Economy
Yesterday, Europe was back in the news. Whenever Europe is in the headlines, the headlines are bad. And the ideas behind the headlines are absurd. In fact, it is amazing how many crackpot ideas the press can throw at you in a single day.
The immediate problems in Europe were two:
First, it looked like Portugal was going the way of Greece. It would soon need another bailout, said the papers.
[Read more...]