Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing article earlier this week entitled “Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty.”
You can already imagine the crux of the article.
In the United States, there are hundreds of regulations which authorize dozens federal agencies to confiscate private property — homes, cars, bank accounts, gold, company shares, and even personal effects.
[Read more...]As if it were not strange enough! Microsoft bought a phone company with no phones for $8.5 billion. Then, the public bid up the price of another Internet company, LinkedIn, to the point where buyers were paying more than $20 for every dollar of revenue that came the company’s way. As for profits, they capitalized each one at more than 700 times. At this rate, an investor wouldn’t earn his money back until 2,711AD.
[Read more...]The canary in the coal mine is choking…
Greek stocks tumbled to new 14-year lows this morning, as Greek bond yields rocketed to new all-time highs.
Spending the day in transit from Laos to Cambodia, we were forced to spend our time with more alternative pursuits.
This video, courtesy of our Technology Profits Confidential editor Ray Blanco, makes more sense of the debt debate in Washington in two minutes and 33 seconds than an entire week of Hardball.
[Read more...]Sign of the Times, Part 1: Federal bailout spending now exceeds the inflation-adjusted cost of World War II, according to our friends at the Independent Institute.
Senior Fellow William Shugart says World War II cost $3.6 trillion, but the bailouts now top $4 trillion. That's actual money out of the taxpayer's pocket, as opposed to the $12.8 trillion “lent, spent or guaranteed? figure you run across from time to time, a chunk of which might eventually be repaid.
[Read more...]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.
[Read more...]Warning: serious thinking here…
Big rally yesterday. The Dow was up 274 points. Gold went up very slightly and still closed below $1,200.
What gives? A big change in direction? It's probably nothing. Markets don't go up or down all in one straight move. They play with investors like a cat with a mouse. They tempt him into bear markets and scare him away when prices are rising. They shake his courage at bottoms and addle his brains at tops.
[Read more...]In the sushi again…just like we said!
The US stock market managed a weak rally yesterday. The Dow rose 56 points. Gold fell, closing the day below $1,200.
This morning, stocks are generally going down again all over the world.
Why does everything seem to be going down? Because it's a Great Correction, what else?
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Avoiding the Danger Zones in the Year Ahead
And here we are at the end of the week…and the end of the year.
And we’re no surer of what is going on than we were at the beginning of it.
The Dow rose 135 points yesterday. But gold kept going down. It is looking more and more like gold intends to make its big correction now… It’s been down for 6 days in a row.
[Read more...]