Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Wall Street suffered its first reversal in eight days yesterday. The Dow dropped a modest 7 points.
For its part, gold rose $1.30 and the dollar fell.
More importantly, the latest news is that inflation rates continue to fall. Producer prices went down 0.8% in the last two months – and the rate of decline is accelerating. It won’t be long before the US is in outright deflation – just like Japan.
[Read more...]A cool breeze blew in over our little island late this afternoon. The temperature is forecast to drop from a high of 90 degrees today to only 60 tomorrow. How quickly things can change…
But we’re here to talk markets… If you took Friday off, you didn’t miss much. The Dow nudged higher by a fraction of a percent. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 remained, for all intents and purposes, unchanged. Gold slipped a bit over the past few days. After a failed run at $1,120 per ounce on Friday, ol’ yella fell back to around $1,100. This morning it trades a few bucks higher. Oil holds steady at $80 and change per barrel.
[Read more...]There was a time…not so very long ago…when Americans held all the top spots. We had the most…the best…the biggest companies. And the richest people.
Those days are gone…
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim is the first man from a developing nation to become the world’s richest person – a shift that underlines the loosening of America and Europe’s stranglehold on the top spots in the billionaires’ club.
[Read more...]Perhaps because we are a young country, Americans tend not to pay much attention to the lessons of history. Well, we should start, because those lessons are brutal. Power, even great power, if not well tended, erodes over time. Nations, like corporations and people, can lose discipline and morale. Economic and political vulnerability go hand in hand. Remember, without a strong economy, a nation’s international standing, standard of living, national security, and even its domestic tranquility will suffer over time.
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Sinking Prices; Sinking Ships
Imagine the face of Lt. George Morris. On March 8, 1862, his ship, the USS Cumberland, found itself a victim of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction.’ The creativity came in the form of a revolutionary new technology, iron-clad ships. The destruction came in the form of cannonballs, which were smashing the poor Cumberland to bits. The Cumberland fired its cannons too. But its volleys merely ricocheted off its adversary, the CSS Virginia, like pebbles off a turtle’s back.
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