Last week, Mr. James Bullard was being both cagey and clairvoyant. The president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank noticed what everyone else has seen for months; the US economic recovery is a flop. GDP growth was last measured pottering along at a 2.4% rate in the second quarter, less than half the speed of the last quarter of '09. At this stage in the typical post-war recovery, GDP growth should be over 5% with strong employment. Instead, the “Help Wanted� pages are largely empty. Homeowners are still underwater. And shoppers are still largely missing from the malls that once knew them. Whatever is going on, it is not the “V� shaped recovery that economists had expected. Many now worry that the recovery might have a “W� shape – a “double dip recession� form, with GDP growth dropping down below zero in this quarter or the next.
[Read more...]US Money Supply Prompts a Hard Goodbye
The way that federal taxes are going up next year by huge percentages is Very Interesting News (VIN) for gold-bugs like me, and probably the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, too, if they were still alive, as we all think that gold-as-money is the only “way to go� because it absolutely precludes rapid increases in the supply of money, which is important because increases in the money supply cause increases in prices, which is important if you think that paying $1,000 for a loaf of bread is important or if milk costs $2,000 per gallon, and pretty soon the rest of the world is going to wake up to that fact, too.
[Read more...]Economic Recovery Takes a Break
The poor recovery. It seemed to be doing so well. And now look at it. Fallen on hard times. Down on its luck. Worn out.
“Unusually uncertain,� is how Ben Bernanke explains the situation.
What he means by that is that he doesn't have any more idea of what is going on than he did three years ago or two years ago…or one year ago.
[Read more...]The Money Supply Conspiracy
Marin Katusa is Chief Energy Strategist for Casey Research, which probably made it easier for him to get his stuff into Casey's Daily Dispatch, whereas no matter what I write, they always say to me, “This is crap! Stop sending us your Stupid Mogambo Crap (SMC)! It's crap! It's always crap!�
[Read more...]Irrational Gold Selling
Last Monday I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the price of gold had dropped $44.20, which was weird enough since Kitco was showing the “Gold Price Change due to Weakening dollar� was up by $23.00, meaning gold should be going up thanks to the weakening dollar, while the “Gold Price Change due to Predominant Selling� was down a whopping $67.20! Wow! Selling!
[Read more...]Punctuating the Severity of Excess Money Creation
I know, alas, that there is nothing that can be done to prevent unimaginable suffering and the collapse of the economy, now that the Federal Reserve has created so much excess money and credit, and, to make matters infinitely worse, are still doing it, more than ever!
The exclamation point at the end of the sentence indicates that I still register surprise at the sheer stupidity and insanity of it all; the Federal Reserve has to create more money to be used to buy up the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in a for-the-rest-of-your-life tsunami of new federal government borrowing and spending.
[Read more...]Mysterious Money Supply Discrepancies
Being an inveterate conspiracy theorist who is absolutely convinced that the government is full of morons, lunatics and traitors, not to mention legions of hired goons with badges, and who have, I maintain, been hovering above my house in an invisible helicopter to shoot thought-control rays into my brain all the time (zzzt!) so that now all I can hear is voices in my head urging me to “Burn! Burn everything!”
[Read more...]Alan Greenspan and the Ruination of the US Financial System
The Financial Times had the article “Greenspan Mauled Over Role In Meltdown”, which was about that loathsome, worthless lunatic Alan Greenspan testifying at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is enough to make you laugh in itself; the morons who perpetrated constant deficit-spending are facing off with the guy who provided the money and credit with insane levels of monetary inflation to make it happen! Hahahaha!
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Turning Against the Stock Market
It still looks like the US stock market is rolling over. The Dow dropped another 39 points yesterday.
The Fed has already said it will leave its key interest rate at a very low level for a very long time. The US Treasury has already announced a budget with more than $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus in it. “Cash for clunkersâ€? …first time homebuyer tax credits…TALF – the “recoveryâ€? programs have all pretty much run their courses.
[Read more...]