 |
09.19.24- If The Markets Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get?
|
 |
09.18.24- Momentum Investing Gives You An Edge, Until It Doesn’t
|
 |
09.17.24- Grocery Rationing within Four Years
Immediately, of course, people will reply that she is not for price controls as such. It is only a limit on “gouging” (which she variously calls “gauging”) on grocery prices. As for rents, it’s only for larger-scale corporations with many units. Read More |
 |
09.16.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The federal government is coming for your Airline Points…
America’s infrastructure is not in great shape. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) grades America’s roads, bridges, and public transportation a C- overall. In fact 42% of US bridges are at least 50 years old, and nearly 7.5% are considered structurally deficient. 43% of public roads are rated as mediocre or poor. Read More |
 |
09.14.24- What You Don't Know
|
 |
09.13.24- "This New Engine Will End Electric Cars," says Toyota CEO About his Creation
|
 |
09.12.24- “Joy” is going to drive gold prices
After last night’s Presidential debate, the pop star publicly endorsed Kamala Harris because “she is a steady-handed, gifted leader” who fights for “LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body. . .” I really try to keep an open mind and understand other people’s opinions. But I personally have an extremely difficult time comprehending how someone thinks abortion and LGBTQ rights are the most important problems facing the country right now. Read More |
 |
09.11.24- “All I see is Red”
After just a handful of trading days, I’m here to report that this month is going much like many investors feared… Stocks are skidding lower at an alarming rate so far this month and traders are running for cover, buying up safety trades like utilities and consumer staples names as tech stocks and other popular plays continue to dive. Read More |
 |
09.10.24- DON’T Trust the Polls
But because politics can have such a large influence on markets, I can’t afford to ignore politics. So I’ll be focusing a lot on the November election in the next two months. Today we’ll be looking at the candidates’ platforms, along with polling results and methodologies. Read More |
 |
09.09.24- Preparing For A Crash? Warren Buffett Has Been Selling Off Hundreds Of Millions Of Shares In 2024
|
 |
09.07.24- Layoffs Jump To Highest Levels
|
 |
09.06.24- September
Here in Annapolis summer’s fever has broken. Deep azure vaults high overhead… and refrigerating wafts steal in from the Chesapeake Bay. All is peace. Read More |
 |
09.05.24- Inflation Leaves the Middle Class Too Poor to Shop at Dollar Stores
Dollar Tree’s latest earnings report offers a grim reflection on the state of the American economy. What we are witnessing is not just a minor fluctuation in retail performance, but a broader indictment of an economy that, under the stewardship of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, has manifestly lost its way. Read More |
 |
09.04.24- US Futures Slide, As Global Market Rout Extends For Second Day
|
 |
09.03.24- America's Real Estate Market Is on the Verge of Collapse
Today there is corporate media spin that the overall rate of inflation is “easing” for everything in the CPI basket of goods. Read More |
 |
09.02.24- Holiday Weekend Rant:
But first it’s an all-clear signal to a large class of less-than-fully brain-damaged Americans that it’s OK to quit being insane. As you know, this election is no longer a battle between the political left and right. It’s an epic struggle-session between the sane and the insane. Read More |
 |
08.31.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Could the Zionist State of Israel Disappear Within a Year?
|
 |
08.30.24- Dollar General Crashes Most On Record After Management Warns Of "Financially Constrained Core Customer"
Shares crashed to early 2018 levels. Dismal earnings sparked the record drop in DG's share price. Read More |
 |
08.29.24- Older Office Towers In Cities Face "Tsunami Of Trouble"
|
 |
08.28.24- Rickards Issues Avalanche Warning
It seems like a distant memory at this point, as the “buy the dip” theme is a deeply entrenched force in today’s market. Well, I’m afraid that this Wednesday, Aug. 28, they’re about to get a stark reminder. Only this time, it’ll be far worse. Today, I’ll show you why. First off, why are stocks going up? The simple answer is that the market’s in a bubble. There are a couple of things to consider…Read More |
 |
08.27.24- Decoding the Deep State
These were obviously not normal workplaces. To my amazement, they were mostly dark, empty and quiet, and the employees did not seem in the slightest bit busy doing anything at all. It was like a soulless blob. It was just so…mundane. It was all kind of spooky.Read More |
 |
08.26.24- The Fable of the Economic
|
 |
It’s a lesson that all investors have to learn at some point. Indeed, the only investors who actually make money from the markets are those who have learned that lesson and integrated its outcomes to their investing strategies. The lesson? Bears don’t make money. Read More |
 |
Yesterday we shouted harshly against them. We argued that price controls brought with them economic maladies far worse than their supposed cures. Specifically, that shortages are their inevitable fruit — their sour fruit. Read More |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
I remember when I first came down to Chile— the thing I found so remarkable was that it was a relatively conservative place, especially by Latin American standards. Back then the general tone was that you were pretty much left alone to do your thing. Read More |
 |
|
 |
As President Biden told a gathering of reporters on Wednesday, “I said we’re gonna have a soft landing. We’re gonna have a soft landing. My policies are working.” He then commanded them to “start writing that way”, and we have no doubt their lackeys in the media will dutifully comply. Read More |
 |
We were warned that deficit spending would crowd out private capital, choke off innovation and new company formation; it will send the costs of U.S. borrowing skyrocketing higher, making the debt impossible to manage; force the U.S. dollar to be radically devalued against all other currencies, thereby devastating the U.S. economy; cause rampant inflation, spiking prices to levels not seen before; last, act as a drag on the overall economy. That none of these things occurred makes me wonder why we still pay attention to these deficit hawks. Read More |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
The current housing bubble features three new players, all of whom are about to switch from “buy/hold” to “panic sell.” They are:
|
 |
Across industries—from luxury brands, airlines, and travel companies to fast-food chains, theme parks, and consumer goods companies—profit warnings and management teams have signaled that a consumer slowdown continues to gain momentum. Read More |
 |
– Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) Do you add glue to your pizza to keep the cheese from slipping off? Read More |
 |
Housing market update – Redfin posted data this past week that reflects the degree to which home sales activity is tanking. In June, 15% of home purchase contracts were canceled and 20% of listings nationwide had price cuts. Read More |
 |
08.07.24- Turbulence Ahead! Big Ups and Bigger Downs to Come.
One reader asked me after yesterday’s article on the historic market meltdown whether I thought the stock market would bounce back up to nearly make a full recovery. I responded as follows: There is still a lot of Fed money floating around, and plenty of people will do all they can to game markets up if they can. We'll have to see tomorrow, though, if their efforts hold. Things may get volatile and bounce around for awhile; but the interesting point is not so much whether stocks crash or not but the reason for the huge stock drops today being everyone suddenly concerned about recession and about the turn in labor, particularly bringing up the Sahm Rule. Read More |
 |
08.06.24- The Great Rotation Is Underway
As I’m sure you know, the Fed held interest rates steady at this week’s FOMC meeting. That was no surprise. But after years of tightening, the Fed is finally expected to pivot toward rate cuts, quite possibly in September. Read More |
 |
08.05.24- The Wheels Have Started To Come Off For The U.S. Economy, And The Worst
|
 |
08.03.24- Rock-Solid Gauge Says we are FULLY IN Recession, and Commercial Real Estate Has Plunged Deep into Financial Crisis
|
 |
08.02.24- Dollar Debasement Ad Infinitum
What you must understand is this. Debt – public and private – has grown to such massive extremes that it will never be repaid. But it will be settled one way or another. Through default or inflation, or a combination thereof. Moreover, the impending debt reconciliation will be legendary. Read More |
 |
08.01.24- The technocratic fallacy
|
 |
07.31.24- Revising away the Recession
In today’s news, John Rubino puts us on “recession watch,” confirming the things from his perspective that I’ve been saying about our slow slide into recession, despite how the latest “real” GDP report from the Biden administration turned out, which I think was a lot less than “real.” Read More |
 |
07.30.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Manufactured Uncertainty
The borders of some countries would change. The types of governments that ruled over them would change. In some cases, they would morph slowly into new entities; in others they would change suddenly. Read More
|
 |
07.29.24- Markets Would Be A "Smoldering Ruin" If Manipulation Ended
|
 |
07.27.24- Weekend Rant: Saving Our Democracy
However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved. Read More |
 |
07.26.24- The “Picks and Shovels” AI Investment is absurdly cheap. It won’t last.
Brannan was stunned when the shoppers pulled out solid gold nuggets. The gold, they said, had been found at Sutter’s Mill, about 35 miles northeast of Sacramento. Read More |
 |
07.25.24- Stock Market Chaos
Today was a big ugly one for the stock market. Stocks cratered, and, for once, it wasn’t because the Fed suddenly sounded like it wasn’t going to provide the high-sugar candy of lowered interest to juice up the market. This time it was due to economic fundamentals—the kind of fundamentals you see during a recession—terrible earnings that came in below expectations. Read More |
 |
07.24.24- You’re Soaking in It
|
 |
|
 |
07.22.24- Globalist “Guru” Claims Trump’s Re-Election Will Mean ‘The Death of Global Order’
|
 |
07.20.24- Biden’s Getting Dumped
It stands every chance of being… historic. One candidate has already endured a shooting. That he lingers on may be considered a miracle of God. Merely three prior presidential candidates in United States history — Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Robert Francis Kennedy in 1968 and George Wallace in 1972 — were assassins’ targets ahead of the election. Read More |
 |
07.19.24- Is Today's Market Mania a Mega Meltdown?
|
 |
07.18.24- Gold Prices Forecast: 93% Chance of September Fed Rate Cut Boosts XAU/USD
|
 |
Wentworth says there are a number of reasons for the closures, not the least of which is America's failing economy and the resultant profit losses Walgreens is seeing. There are also too many Walgreens stores located too closely together coupled with a rampant theft problem at many locations. Read More |
 |
07.16.24- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: Who is JD Vance? Trump’s VP Pick
He grew up in Middletown, Ohio with an absent father, and a mother who suffered from addiction most of her life, which is why he supports much of Donald Trump’s efforts to help the poor working class. Vance grew up seeing the real effects of globalization, and the transformation of the American economy from industrialization into an information economy. His experience drove him to do something with his life. So he entered the marines, went to Yale to study law, and then ran for Senate. Read More |
 |
07.15.24- How Corporate Bailouts
Government intervention, however, converts temporary money into permanent money through bailouts like the Troubled Asset Relief Program. They purchase loans that would have been defaulted on, preventing the evaporation of credit. Read More |
 |
07.13.24- Trump’s Return: Get Ready For Chaos To Be Unleashed And Blamed On You
|
 |
07.12.24- Why All Financial Markets Will Crash
It’s all about credit All transactions and all valuations are in credit. The key aspect of credit is that it is always matched by an obligation, or debt. Credit is extinguished when that obligation is discharged or defaulted upon. But in today’s financial systems, the repayment of debt is always in another form of credit, usually the transfer of ownership of a bank deposit, which is also credit. Read More |
 |
07.11.24- Vultures, Doomer Rumors
The venture vultures are squawking about the crash in commercial real-estate that has been accumulating with increasing speed as these hunched birds gather around the carcasses of dying corporations to pull scraps of meat off the bones, and they have a lot of time left to feed before the carnage finally ends: Read More |
 |
07.10.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Democrats: Dogmatic Geniuses
Betting markets are finally agreeing with my prediction about Biden being replaced on the ticket, but I’m now wondering if I haven’t given Democrats far too much credit in assuming that their political wargames, or even that anything more than hushed musings at cocktail parties, actually included this bombshell scenario or its potential fallout. The presidential debate and its aftermath have certainly raised questions. Read More |
 |
07.09.24- It’s All MMT: The Fraud of
|
 |
07.08.24- “Glocalization”
The era of global integration and accord has ended and the era of global disintegration and discord is heating up. In historian Peter Turchin’s terminology, when everyone finds reasons to cooperate, the result is an era of accord; when everyone finds reasons not to cooperate, the result is an era of discord. Read More
|
 |
07.06.24- Is the Global Inflationary Depression
The note mentions the “broader distress brewing in the commercial real estate market, which is hurting from the twin punches of high interest rates, which make it harder to refinance loans, and low occupancy rates for office buildings — an outcome of the pandemic.” Read More |
 |
07.05.24- 10 Signs That Global War
|
 |
07.04.24- The Key ‘Lessons in Liberty’
As Jeremy S. Adams discussed in his book, “Lessons in Liberty,” this is especially true for remarkable Americans. In the book, Adams details the inspiring lives of extraordinary Americans and what we can learn from them today.Read More |
 |
07.03.24- The Fix is In For the Economy
Over the last week, I’ve noted that Uncle Sam is the economy now. What I mean by this, is that the U.S. government is spending so much money, and hiring so many people, that the economy is refusing to fall into recession despite weakness in the private sector. Read More |
 |
07.02.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Surprise, Surprise!
Just before the weekend, a political prairie fire raced across a nation buffaloed, blind-sided, and buried deeply in bullshit, and the little critters who inhabit the landscape are still running around with their fur smoldering. What a surprise that “Joe Biden,” the mentally-disabled pretend-president, fell apart in the debate spotlight for all to see, like Captain Queeg in his fateful witness chair, or William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial (1925), or the Wizard of Oz when little Toto drew the curtain back — a brutal revelation of stark truth about how things actually are. Read More |
 |
07.01.24-Crash Alert: An Unbalanced Market In Three Charts
This series points out the trends that will — eventually — be the warnings we should have heeded: Households are overinvested in stocks Read More |
 |
06.29.24- And Now, for Somthing Entirely Different: Zombie Biden Blows It Just this morning, they overturned the so-called Chevron deference that’s been in operation since the 1980s. Chevron handed the federal bureaucracy extensive authority to interpret statutes as it sees fit. It largely removed judicial oversight of the administrative state, which was a license for rampant bureaucratic abuse. Read More |
 |
06.28.24- Another Blow To The Housing Market
If you cannot think of buying a new house right now, it’s going to be harder in the future. If you are hoping to sell, it’s a great time to do so, but then you have a problem: You need to live somewhere. That’s why so many people today are frozen in place, unable to even consider moving for a better job because it means giving up a locked-in low rate for a sky-high new rate in the midst of a price explosion. Read More |
 |
06.27.24- The Emerging Commodities Supercycle
Marquette, Michigan is the hub of America’s iron industry. It’s where I grew up. My grandpa was the loadmaster at the town’s famous ore dock. He spent his entire career working around iron — from iron rails, to ore boats, to where he retired, in Marquette. Some 500 million tons of the metal have shipped out from the dock since it was first established. An additional 10 million tons of iron still flow out every year. Read More |
 |
06.26.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: U.S. Plays Russian Roulette
On Sunday, Ukraine launched an attack on Crimea with U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles. The target was likely a military installation, quite possibly a Russian airbase. Read More |
 |
06.25.24- Dollar Takes a “Pounding”
It’s a big topic and not very well defined. It can refer to the dominance of financial activity over traditional business activity in goods and services. It can refer to market bubbles. It can refer to the use of financial instruments in non-traditional arenas such as warfare or political witch hunts. Read More |
 |
06.24.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Democracy Is Not the Same Thing
Democratic systems have been around for a long time. Ancient Greece comes to mind as the most prominent example of democracy in antiquity. While modern democracies are wildly different from the ones in ancient Athens, they are still susceptible to the pitfalls applicable to all democracies. Read More |
 |
06.22.24- Up!
|
 |
06.21.24- The Woke Movement Is Actually Corporate Enslavement – The Culture War
|
 |
06.14.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: : Hunter Biden is Guilty,
But Hunter Biden is such a dirtbag; gun charges don’t do him justice. No, this isn’t the same as getting Al Capone on tax evasion. It’s more like getting Lex Luthor on a jaywalking charge. Read More |
 |
06.13.24- Texas could become the new financial center of America with launch of the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE)
|
 |
06.12.24- If Wishes Were Fishes - This is the most significant reality of the world picture now: the wishes of the manager class are going in one direction while the actual dynamics of economy and politics go in the opposite direction. The managers wish for their management of systems to become as centralized and top-down as possible; but the very systems they manage are breaking down and seeking to reorganize at smaller scale, distributed locally. The tension entailed is explosive. Read More |
 |
06.11.24- Covid, Economy & Election: QTR On Peak Prosperity
Chris was one of the only people during the onset of Covid who was looking through the mainstream media’s narrative and was doing his own research. He has a PhD in neurotoxicology from Duke University, and an MBA from Cornell University. Read More |
 |
06.10.24- Is There A Financial Crisis Bubbling Under The Surface?
According to the latest data from the FDIC, the U.S. banking system is sitting on $517 billion in unrealized losses due to deteriorating bond portfolios. Read More |
 |
06.08.24- A Substantial Chance Of A Major Financial Collapse & The End Of Offshored Industrialization
|
 |
The over-7% mortgage rates seem to have become a fixture in the housing market. The average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate edged up to 7.07% in the latest week, and has now been above 7% since early April, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association today. During Rate-Cut-Mania, the average mortgage rate had dropped to 6.76% at the low point in early January. Read More |
 |
06.06.24- Banking Crisis, Stage Two
It began with the collapse of the little-known Silvergate Bank on March 8. This was followed the next day by the collapse of the much larger Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 9. SVB had over $120 billion in uninsured deposits. Bank deposits over $250,000 each are not covered by FDIC insurance. Those depositors stood to lose all their money over the insured amount. This would have led to the collapse of hundreds of startup tech businesses in Silicon Valley that had placed their working capital on deposit at SVB. Read More |
 |
06.05.24- Is America Losing?
The End of History and the Last Man In 1992, while I was still an undergrad with a seemingly endless optimism in life in general and the American Dream in particular, the American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, published a much-discussed book entitled, The End of History and the Last Man. Read More |
 |
06.04.24- Is Hyperinflation a “Solution”?
The temptation to issue (via “printing” or borrowing new currency into existence by selling sovereign bonds) more currency becomes irresistible to politicians and central bankers alike as the means to mollify every constituency, from elites to the military to commoners dependent on state-funded bread and circuses. Read More |
 |
06.03.24- Global Cocoa Shortage Much Worse Than Previously Forecasted As Prices Surge
First reported by Bloomberg, ICCO forecasted demand will exceed production by 439,000 tons, driven mainly by higher cocoa grinding in consuming countries. This is the second estimate for the current October-September year and is much larger than the February forecast for a deficit of 374,000 tons. Read More |
 |
06.01.24- “Stocks Can’t Ignore the Issue
|
 |
05.31.24- McDonald's Top US Exec 'McFact-Checks' Social Media Buzz Around $18 Big Macs
|
 |
05.30.24- The World Has Accumulated A $315 Trillion Mountain Of Debt, And Global Events Will Soon Bring It Crashing Down
|
 |
05.29.24- Are Stocks about to Crash?
|
 |
05.28.24- Central Banks Are Destroying Our Economies
|
 |
05.27.24- Revealed: Major Economic
|
 |
05.25.24- They Want To Scare You With Myths Of "Unhampered Capitalism"
|
 |
05.23.24- The Incoming Commercial Real Estate Crisis No One Seems Prepared For
It has been a year since a string of U.S. regional bank failures, together with the collapse of global heavyweight Credit Suisse, caused many to fear that a major financial crisis was imminent. Read More |
 |
05.23.24- The Incoming Commercial Real Estate Crisis No One Seems Prepared For
It has been a year since a string of U.S. regional bank failures, together with the collapse of global heavyweight Credit Suisse, caused many to fear that a major financial crisis was imminent. Read More |
 |
05.22.24- Recession seems almost certain with 19 states in trouble already, expert warns
"There is a very high probability of a recession," Nancy Lazar, Piper Sandler's chief global economist, told WealthTrack in a recent interview. Read More |
 |
05.21.24- The Global Warming Climate Change Mega-Trend is the Inflation Mega-Trend
|
 |
05.21.24- And Now, for Someting Entirely Differrent: U.S. Imperialism through the Lens of Mises’s Nation, State, and Economy
|
|
05.20.24- The Global Warming Climate Change Mega-Trend is the Inflation Mega-Trend
|
 |
05.18.24- Markets' futile hopes for a rise in unemployment to lift stock values
On May 3rd, I wrote the following about how a recent tiny rise in unemployment that the Fed has been looking for before it starts lowering interest rates to rescue the economy from a slump could very well just be another head fake: Read More |
 |
05.16.24- Are We Enjoying The Scam Yet?
How do we measure such things? Read More |
 |
05.15.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Christian Worship of
|
 |
05.14.24- A “Restaurant Apocalypse” Is Starting To Sweep Across America, And That Is Really Bad News For The U.S. Economy
|
 |
For Tomorrow We Die…
As history has it, 8.47% is par. Meantime, 36% of Americans carry more credit card debt upon their shoulders than emergency savings in their pockets. Mainstream economists inform us it is not a symptom of economic distress. It is rather a symptom of economic vigor. Read More |
 |
05.11.24- The Machinery of Fascism
If we go back a decade before the war, you find a completely different situation. Read any writings from polite society from 1932–1940 or so and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed. Read More |
 |
05.10.24- Man, Economy, and Financial Markets
|
 |
05.09.24- Pessimism About The U.S. Economy Is Going To Have An Absolutely Massive Impact On The Outcome Of The Election In November
|
 |
05.08.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Rational Thinking...
Over the last number of centuries intellectual inquiry has moved away from theology and revelation. Academics refer to this change in thinking as the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. We are firmly in the logical reasoning mode of thinking now. Supposedly, scientific inquiry trumps all other modes of thinking. Read More |
 |
05.07.24- Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us The End Of The Dollar System
|
 |
|
 |
05.04.24- Stock Market Cliff Dive
Such a torrent of horrible economic news hit today, particularly for the Fed, that I cannot even begin to cover it all in a weekday editorial, so a good part of it will have to wait for my weekend Deeper Dive, and even that may not be able to cover it all; but I don’t want to miss a drop. Read More |
 |
05.03.24- The Lunacy of Taxing Unrealized Gains
You may as well just set the money on fire. Read More |
 |
05.02.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Teams Are Set for World War III
Last week, Michael E. Mann spoke at the EcoHeath Alliance: Green Planet One Health Benefit 2024. Just to recap who each of these players are: Read More |
 |
Mortgage rates continue to trudge higher from the abandoned Rate-Cut-Mania low. The average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 7.13% in the latest week, the highest since early December, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association today, as the 10-year Treasury yield has re-surged amid the Fed’s vigorous backpedaling on its December rate-cut visionsafter the presumed-vanquished inflation raised its ugly head again. Read More |
 |
03.18.24- A House of Cards on Stilts
Let’s look at these factors and make a forecast of stock market index levels based on these and other inputs. Trends in stock prices over the past year have largely been a function of market expectations about Fed rate cuts and market euphoria over strong economic data, including low unemployment rates. Read More |
 |
03.16.24- David Stockman: We've Hit A Fiscal & Monetary Dead End
|
 |
03.15.24- Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise and What Happens Next
It recently exceeded its previous all-time high of around $69,000, which was set in November 2021. What are your thoughts? Doug Casey: Right now, the world runs on the dollar standard. Almost all international trade is done with the US dollar. Still, it’s increasingly apparent to everybody worldwide that the US dollar is the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government. Read More |
 |
03.14.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What Does the Presence of the National Guard Around the Country Signal?
Governor Newsom of California (never to be trusted) says he’s deploying troops along the Cali-Mex border to stop the smuggling of fentanyl into the country. Governor DeSantis has sent troops to maintain order in Miami during spring break. Read More |
 |
03.13.24- The Biggest 2024 Election
As of now, subject to change, that election is likely to feature a rematch of the Biden-Trump election of 2020. Their policies could not be more different. Biden is a rubber stamp for every progressive policy from open borders, climate alarmism and support for abortion to expanding the war in Ukraine. Read More |
 |
03.12.24- Bitcoin Sets Another All-Time High as Crypto Sees Record Inflows
The original cryptocurrency reached an all-time peak of almost $72,968 on Tuesday, before paring the increase. It was the third record in five days. A record $2.7 billion flowed into crypto assets last week, according to a report from CoinShares international Ltd., with the bulk of that going to Bitcoin. Both the token and a gauge of the largest 100 coins are up roughly 70% this year. Read More |
 |
03.11.24- Who Gets the Credit?
|
 |
03.09.24- Lessons for the Future Republic
|
 |
03.08.24- Bud Light Boycott Cost
Yeah, “constrained” by $1.4 BILLION. More: In North America, organic revenue, seen as the best measure of operating performance, plunged $1.4 billion last year as beer sales by volume tumbled in the region, primarily due to a decline in Bud Light sales in the United States. Beer makes up the lion’s share of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s revenue. Read More |
 |
03.07.24- Has The Banking Crisis Of 2024
|
 |
03.06.24- Income Needed To Afford A Home In The US Has Soared By 80% Since 2020
|
 |
03.05.24- A Macro Shift at Hand
The years mentioned above immediately preceded the onset of roaring new secular bull markets in commodities coincident with the bursting of bubbles in crowded megacap growth stocks. The analogous scenario exists today. Read More |
 |
03.04.24- Banking on the next US financial crisis
Doomsaying, as Jonah complained to God, is a game that a doomsayer cannot win. This applies in spades to predicting a financial crisis. If proven wrong, the doomsayer is discredited. If proven right, he may be blamed for helping to precipitate the crisis by undermining public confidence. Read More |
 |
03.02.24- Biden’s Debt Dilemma Uncovered: Economic Plane Crash Ahead?
You would hear endless claims of “record economic growth” and quarter after quarter of “historic GDP.” Read More |
 |
03.01.24- When Complex Systems Collide
Their behavior cannot be reduced to their component parts. It’s as if they take on a life of their own. Complexity theory has four main pillars. The first is the diversity of actors. You’ve got to account for all of the actors in the marketplace. When you consider the size of global markets, that number is obviously vast. Read More |
 |
02.29.24- Has Bidenomics Set the Stage for Permanently Higher Inflation?
In fact, three years into President Biden’s first term Americans are still spending a greater percentage of their income on food than at any point in the last 30 years: Read More |
 |
02.28.24- Traders Wanted. Losers Welcome.
But if this adage is accurate, shouldn’t most investors buy a one-way ticket to their local looney bin? Perhaps this is an insensitive comment. Let me clarify: I don’t really believe allinvestors are nuts. Even if they were, I’m pretty sure most of the country’s mental asylums shuttered decades ago. Since no more padded rooms are available, retail investors will just have to retreat back to their basement offices to read 10-Qs, download analyst reports, or whatever else they might be doing to pass the time while their stocks sink deeper into the abyss. Read More |
 |
02.27.24- Threat Of Strike Looms Large Over East, Gulf Coast Ports
The labor contract between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) is set to expire at the end of September. The ILA represents some 70,000 dockworkers, while the USMX represents employers at 36 coastal ports — including three of the U.S.’s five busiest ports: the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Savannah, Georgia, and the Port of Houston. Read More |
 |
02.26.24- Nvidia, the WTF Chart of the Year. Tesla also Had WTF Charts of the Year
Nvidia is special because the dollars are suddenly so huge – a hair over $2 trillion at the open on Friday, and just a little below $2 trillion at the close. Over the past 12 months, market cap has spiked by $1.46 trillion, including the biggest-ever-for-any-stock one-day spike of $277 billion on Thursday, on exceeding revenue expectations by $2 billion. Read More |
 |
02.24.24- Weekend Rant:
|
 |
02.23.24- Why Banks Want the System to Crash, Dollar to Plummet and For You to be Desperate
|
 |
02.22.24- Worms in the Woodwork
Here’s a summary of recent critical developments: On the economy as a whole, headline numbers continue to look good. The Q42023 GDP was 3.3% (annualized). That put full-year 2023 GDP at 2.5% over 2022, a substantial increase in a year when many forecasters predicted a recession. Read More |
 |
02.21.24- It's All Falling apart So Quickly I Can't Keep up!
|
 |
02.20.24- This Is A Tale Of Two Americas, And Those At The Bottom Of The Economic Food Chain Are Being Hit Extremely Hard
|
 |
02.19.24- All Of The Elements Are In Place For An Economic Crisis Of Staggering Proportions
|
 |
02.17.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The American Dream Is Dead,
In addition, GDP can’t keep up with the pace that debt keeps piling up. Expressed officially as the ratio of Public Debt to GDP, that sits at a record 120% – and it’s still rising. Read More |
 |
02.16.24- GDP is a Poor Measure
|
 |
What’s your take on this? Doug Casey: To sum it up in one word, it’s insane. In two words, it’s criminally insane. Read More |
 |
02.14.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 2024 - The Year America Ceases to Exist
|
 |
02.13.24- Commercial Real Estate Implodes Across the News
In my weekend Deeper Dive (“Banks Breaking Bad”) I wrote about how the US commercial real-estate (CRE) crisis is spreading like cancer to banks around the world. I woke up from that today to find Monday’s news is flooded with stories about the global spread of the CRE crisis. Consider some of the following: Fitch Ratings, one of the major credit-rating agencies, noted the following problems in Asia-Pacific banks: Read More |
 |
02.12.24- Will Commercial Real Estate Trigger The Next Crisis?
Persistent inflationary pressures that threaten to undermine the rate-cut narrative that financial markets have adopted are present below the surface. Investors expect the Federal Reserve to pump the monetary laughing gas machine, anticipating further rate cuts and monetary easing to support multiple expansions. However, in this wave of fervent optimism, there are dark clouds looming on the horizon: another wave of regional bank troubles added to the burgeoning crisis in the commercial real estate market. Read More |
 |
02.10.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Geopolitics Of World War III
On January 2, 2024, Foreign Minister Israel Katz proclaimed “We’re in the middle of World War III against Iran [led] radical Islam, whose tentacles are already in Europe.” He claimed that Israel, in engaging in a war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, was defending “everyone.” Although his rhetoric may seem overblown to many in the United States and Europe, it should not be dismissed out of hand. Sometimes, regional conflicts, such as the Japanese conquest of Manchuria of 1931-32 or the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, foreshadow dangers that are more geographically extensive and militarily intense. Read More |
 |
02.09.24- Does the Economy Need Migrants?
This is a standard argument of the left, one they use to import millions of unskilled migrants into the US and Europe. With immigration becoming a top voter concern in both America and Europe -- to the point it's driving millions of voters to populist candidates -0- the left-wing media is laying out the gaslight, trying to convince people that we need millions of unvetted quasi-educated foreigners to avert a demographic crisis. Read More |
 |
02.08.24- The Commercial Real Estate Crisis Of 2024 Is Going To Be A Doozy…
|
 |
02.07.24- 50% Stock Correction;
|
 |
02.06.24- Global Currency Shift as the Dollar
The U.S. dollar is losing ground to gold Read More |
 |
02.05.24- Easy Money Creates Hard Times
The damage was incremental at first, but the perverse incentives and distortions of easy money — zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), credit available without limits to those who are more equal than others — accelerated the institutionalization of these toxic dynamics throughout the economy and society. Read More |
 |
02.03.24- The Great Growth Hoax
It’s exasperating because these claims do not fit with human experience. Last we heard from the Census Bureau, real income is down, and no one doubts it. Everyone, or at least most average people, has felt strong downgrades in living standards over these last four years. Read More |
 |
02.02.24- Wall Street’s Narrative vs. Reality
So runs an ancient Wall Street wheeze. January 2024 has ended. How did January 2024 go? The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened January at 38,033. It closed January at 38,355. Read More |
 |
02.01.24- “Tax Relief Act” Exposed: Something Ominous Lurks Inside…
No matter how the corporate media spins it, he just can’t seem to lead the country out of this persistent economic trend. The rate of price inflation is easing, but core inflation remains at a pace not seen since the early 1990s. Read More |
 |
01.31.24- "Theory Of Reflexivity"
“I am not a fan of Soros, but this market has the look and feel of the dot com bust of 2000. In a few short words, the AI investment phenomenon is feeding on itself just as the internet and fiber did in 1999.” Read More |
 |
01.30.24- Could Texas Survive
|
 |
01.29.24- Emergency PSA to All Texas Citizens
We are NOT Voting or Protesting Our Way Out of This Mess. The Only Way Forward is SECESSION, plain and simple. If you are going to show your hand to the Federals, I Suggest you Show it in a meaningful way. Read More |
 |
01.27.24- Gold Forecast & U.S. Stocks Next 'Kill Zone'
First, a look at the position of the Gold cycles. As per my last article from mid-December of last year, Gold was in a correction phase, one which was expected to last into early this year. This was due to the configuration of our 72-day time cycle, which is currently the most dominant cycle in the Gold market, and which is shown on the chart below: Read More |
 |
01.26.24- “Blistering!”
“The U.S. economy grew at [a] blistering 3.3% pace in Q4 while inflation pulled back.” CNBC cites the latest economic data, issuing this morning from the Department of Commerce. Read More
|
 |
01.25.24- Financial Collapse Imminent,
|
 |
01.24.24- It Is A Bloodbath
|
 |
01.23.24- The Dark Ages For US Housing And Manufacturing
Peter explains in his recent podcast:
|
 |
01.22.24- Capitalism—A New Idea
Classical economics recognises capitalism as the most effective means by which an economy can thrive. Certainly, in 1776, Adam Smith made one of the best cases for capitalism in his book, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (known more commonly as The Wealth of Nations). But the term “capitalism” actually was first used to deride the ideology, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in The Communist Manifesto, in 1848. Read More |
 |
01.20.24- December home sales slump to close out worst year since 1995
Full-year sales for 2023 came in at 4.09 million units, the lowest tally since 1995. Read More |
 |
01.19.24- Weekly jobless claims post lowest reading since September 2022
Initial filings for unemployment insurance totaled 187,000 for the week ended Jan. 13, the lowest level since Sept. 24, 2022, the Labor Department reportedThursday. The total marked a 16,000 decline from the previous week and came in below the Dow Jones estimate of 208,000. Read More |
 |
01.18.24- What To Do As "US Empire" Crumbles And Global Shipping Goes Back To A 19th Century World Of Piracy
Markets started 2024 as wildly optimistic --and wildly wrong-- about rates as they did 2023: is there something structurally wrong with economics, or just them? After all, yesterday’s US retail sales were much stronger than expected, industrial production better than consensus, and while the Fed’s Beige Book said the labor market was cooling, with increased consumer “price sensitivity”, businesses expectations were positive and/or improved. In other words, doing nothing is a realistic option for the Fed. Read More |
 |
01.17.24- "Markets Are Overlooking How Much Worse This Can Get, How Inflationary
Points of order today. First, we need to underline the major disconnect between market pricing for aggressive 2024 Fed rate cuts -- including new hedges that the Fed cuts by 50bp in March-- and how the actual economy is still performing. Second, we have to ponder what drove the Fed to make the dovish statements in late 2023 that drove, and still drive, that kind of wild pricing. Third, we have to deal with the Fed, and others, walking it all back just weeks later. Read More |
 |
01.16.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: DEI, Airplane Crashes,
Flipping the page, medical schools will graduate bevvies of DEI doctors as the decade unwinds. What if you need open-heart surgery? Cancer treatment? Won’t you need a sound diagnosis for starters? Will the most capable physicians attend you? Or will you have to settle for the right color, right gender, right sexual orientation, pick-your-pronouns person in a white lab coat? Read More |
 |
01.15.24- So... About Bitcoin
Everyone on Earth wishes they’d loaded up on Bitcoin back when it was, like, $10. The fact that most investors have chosen not to ride that particular rollercoaster can be attributed to two things. First, cryptocurrencies were complicated to buy and store safely, which put them beyond the reach of most non-techies (myself included). Second, the use case for cryptos wasn’t yet clear. In other words, most people didn’t - and still don’t - know what they are and why they exist. Read More |
 |
01.13.24- Weekend Rant: Banks Tank, Cooling Inflation Heats up, and Global Warming
Every major bank reporting for Q4 2023 tripped over the threshold for one reason or another today—profits down, penalties up, etc.—helping stock investors find the exit. Recession risks got noted as higher than thought as the yield curve begins to un-invert. While normally that is a sign of impending recession, there are, of course, those in the news today claiming, “Not this time” in order to punch the pivot narrative again today. This time is special! Read More |
 |
01.12.24- 4 in 10 Companies Anticipate
To find out how many companies believe layoffs are likely next year, in December, ResumeBuilder.com surveyed 906 business leaders at organizations with over 10 employees. Read More |
 |
01.11.24- This Stock’s Grounded!
Simply put, Boeing isn’t the company it used to be. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Jan. 6 near crash of a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines, after the fuselage door blew off the plane. That caused decompression and the use of emergency oxygen. Read More |
 |
01.10.24- What's the Source of the Astounding 50% Boost in Corporate Profits?
One of the most extraordinary economic marvels of the past decade is the astounding 50% leap in corporate profits, from $2.4 trillion (pre-tax) pre-pandemic lockdown to $3.6 trillion (pre-tax) in the years since the lockdown ended. Read More |
 |
01.09.24- The “Disbelief Phase”
Yes, we’re just five trading days into 2024. But it appears Mr. Market’s New Year’s resolution was to pulverize the bulls into a fine powder and leave just about everyone wondering how everything changed so quickly. December trading finished with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite posting their ninth winning week in a row as stocks rode a wave of frantic buying off the October lows. But from the opening bell of the first trading day of 2024 (which frankly feels like a lifetime ago), the market started to get a bit tricky. Read More |
 |
01.08.24- The Great Taking Exposes The Financial End Game
What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it, the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history. Read More |
 |
01.06.24- Has The Global Food Inflation Crisis
|
 |
01.05.24- The Year of the 493?
The 493? Here we refer to the 493 stocks of the S&P 500 — the 493 stocks not named Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon or Meta. These are the seven wagon-pullers that have hauled the stock market to present extremes. The S&P 500 galloped 24% last year under their behemoth influence. The remaining 493 lagged far behind them. Read More |
 |
01.04.24- The Houthi Butterfly Flaps Its Wings
One such happiness is eating simple pasta and tomato sauce. Sure, my mother’s lasagna is second to none, but that’s more of a holiday dish. (Indeed, I rolled home after Christmas dinner. It’s too bad Pam and Micah had to push me uphill!) Read More |
 |
01.03.24- 2024: Here’s What Happens
All I can say is strap in, because 2024 is setting up to be even more chaotic than 2023. That’s right, 2024 will be more tumultuous and shocking than 2023. Let’s first address the election. Read More |
 |
01.02.24- World's Largest Lithium Reserve Discovered Beneath California's Salton Sea
|
 |
01.01.24- This Widely Followed Metric Is Flirting With Danger. Does It Mean a Stock Market Crash Is Imminent in 2024?
Over long periods, the stock market is an unquestioned moneymaker. When compared to other asset classes, such as bonds, oil, gold, and housing, the stock market has delivered a considerably higher annualized rate of return over the long term. Read More |
 |
12.30.23- The Takedown of America
Expect civil unrest to break out in 2024 as globalist elites go for the final takedown of America as we know it in preparation for their satanic digital reset of the world order The year 2023 will go down in history as the point at which the globalists completed the assembly of a massive secret army inside the U.S. in preparation for the final takedown of America, transforming it into Amerika. Read More |
 |
12.29.23- Banks are Closing Thousands of Branches and Retailers are Shutting Down Thousands of Stores
|
 |
12.28.23- Chaos is Coming along Just Fine
I see others are now using the word “chaos” to describe the upcoming 2024 just as I did in one “Deeper Dives” that contained my first prediction for 2024. It’s easy to see it that way when you look at the losses we’ve stacked up and see how euphoric some major entities are about how this manure pile turns out next year. Read More |
 |
12.27.23- Has the U.S. Dollar Already Struck |
 |
12.26.23- How to Beat Wall Street Insiders
The timing on my swing was always off. And when I grew up and became an investor, I ran into the same issue… my timing was always off. Either I’d buy too early or sell too late — missing out on more profits than I’d care to even think about. Read More |
 |
12.25.23- A Rigged System From Top to Bottom
Just the other day, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a remarkable statement. “Before this trial even began, the judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump did engage in years of significant financial fraud,” James boasted publicly. This is associated with just one of Donald Trump’s absurd legal cases. Read More |
 |
12.23.23- Stock Bubble Mania
The stock market, led by the Dow, is going parabolic as it inflates on helium forced into the financial system by the Fed. The bubble has become more manic and all-encompassing than the late 1990’s dot.com/tech bubble, which was led by the Nasdaq. This time around the Dow is leading the pack and has become irrationally exuberant. Read More |
 |
12.22.23- Has A “Silent Depression” Already Started In The United States?
Housing, vehicles, food and just about everything else that we spend money on is far more unaffordable today than it was during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A realtor in Florida named Freddie Smith posted a video on TikTok with some absolutely startling numbers about the cost of living in the United States today, and that is what started the “silent depression” trend… Read More |
 |
12.21.23- "This Is Off The Charts": Economist Claims 2024 Will Bring 'Biggest Crash
"Since 2009, this has been 100 percent artificial, unprecedented money printing and deficits: $27 trillion over 15 years, to be exact," economist Harry Dent told Fox Business on Dec. 19. "This is off the charts, 100 percent artificial, which means we're in a dangerous state. Read More |
 |
12.20.23- Bidenomics Is Putting Lipstick on a Pig
The administration and its mainstream support network insist the economy is strong. They often point to the “resilient” American consumer as proof that the economy is plugging along. After all, how can the economy be bad if people keep spending money? Read More |
 |
12.19.23- Markets Wanna Party Like It’s 1999
Today, I’ll explain what happened in terms of policy moves, what Fed Chair Jay Powell believes will happen next and what will actually happen. The difference between Powell’s expectations and market expectations creates opportunities for investors to profit from those competing forecasts. Read More |
 |
12.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: When Did Governments Become So Ridiculous?
Two hundred people who claim to speak for billions of others, because they happen to have a title associated with a government post and are involved with the United Nations, say that the planet needs to transition away from fossil fuels, meaning oil, gas, and coal. Read More |
 |
12.16.23- How Bidenomics is Ruining the American Economy
Unfortunately, the failures of Biden’s economic policies are starting to pile up. They’re almost impossible to ignore already. The media won’t be able to put a positive spin on it for much longer… Read More |
 |
12.15.23- Ron Paul: Monetary Debasement
One of the things that’s less well-understood, though, is the link between monetary debasement and Here’s a recent example that caught my eye…Read More |
 |
12.14.23- Inflation Just Keeps Rising!
How they love to spin it. Drudge wrote the headline for today’s CPI report as follows: “Inflation coolsslightly.” Lie. It heated up. Plain and simple. Read More |
 |
12.13.23- Rickards’ Five 2024 Forecasts
My overall forecast is that 2024 will be more tumultuous and shocking than 2023. That may seem hard to credit. With two major wars going on, an indicted former president and a demented current president, how can 2024 be more challenging than 2023? Read More |
 |
12.12.23- Grinding Down Into Deflation: The National Debt Disaster No One Is Talking About
|
 |
12.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Where Are the Good Men?
“We are at an inflection point, a threshold, where weak, brittle, effete personality structures are a threat to human civilization.” He’s right. But let’s face it, those are the very structures that are running the country these days. “Toxic masculinity” is certainly not one of their character traits. Read More |
 |
12.09.23- This Hasn’t Happened Since 1933
Is it a frightful omen of lean times… a straw swaying in the wind… a looming menace? We do not know. Yet we hazard it rates an inquiry. An inquiry, incidentally, the mainstream financial press will not afford it. What is it? Answer anon. Let us first direct our gaze briefly to Wall Street… Read More |
 |
12.08.23- The Financial Disaster
|
 |
12.07.23- Gold and Flying Money
|
 |
12.06.23- Rumblings in Reserves
“No bears left,” is the worrying refrain that one headline uses to cover the stock market, which slid for a second day in a row. That mean’s everyone is on the same side of the boat, and we all know how severely the market can tip when the insanity has risen to such an extent that everyone is on the same side of the boat and then bad news hits the market and sends bets in a mad rush the other way. Read More |
 |
12.05.23- Bidenomics in Action
|
 |
12.04.23- Only a 50% Fall From Here
|
 |
12.02.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: My Memories of Henry...
Kissinger and President Nixon were men of peace. They inherited a disastrous war–Vietnam–that they had no hand in making. President John F. Kennedy intended to stop the war before it could get started, which was one of the reasons he was assassinated by the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service. The Soviet Threat had to be resisted even at the cost of President Kennedy’s life and the trauma inflicted on what was still in those days a free nation. Read More |
 |
12.01.23- We Are Witnessing An Avalanche Of Branch Closings As U.S. Banks
|
 |
11.30.23- As the US Treasury Runs Out of Creditors, Its Options Dwindle
The problem is multifaceted, but the origin is profligate government spending. While it typically spikes during crises, spending is increasing at an alarming rate even outside of crisis periods. And tax revenues are not keeping up, which means ever-deepening deficits. Government expenditures spiked during the 2020 crisis, but even ignoring those spikes, annual spending has increased by about $1.6 trillion since 2019, while tax receipts have only increased by about $600 billion. Read More |
 |
11.29.23- The Entire Banking System is Shaking
|
 |
11.28.23- The Financial System
Again, remember von Mises words: “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.” History tells us that we have now reached the point of no return. Read More |
 |
11.27.23- At 94, Home Depot Co-Founder Explains Why He’s ‘Never Been More Frightened
“If you look at what’s going on around you, you know that we’re falling apart. Our economy is falling apart,”he told an audience in Palm Beach, Florida during an event for Job Creators Network, which he founded 10 years ago. Read More |
 |
11.25.23- The Crash Will Be Spectacular
The government collects $2.6 trillion of individual taxes at the point of a gun and threat of prison. Meanwhile they still operate at an annual deficit of $2 trillion. And this is before interest on the national debt starts to really skyrocket. Our Troll Secretary of the Treasury Yellen had the opportunity to lock in trillions of our national debt for 30 years at 2% rates, but purposely kept rolling it on a short-term basis. Read More |
 |
11.24.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How the Democratic Party Faked an American Insurrection
Last week, more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 Capitol Police security footage was released in the public domain that once and for all blew a hole in the pro-Trump ‘violent insurrection’ narrative so dear to the Democrats. Read More |
 |
11.23.23- Biden’s Economic Dance Macabre: Mortgage Purchase Demand Down -1% From Previous Week And Down -20% From Previous Year (Worst Home Sales Data Since The 1970s!)
Mortgage applications increased 3.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending November 17, 2023. Read More |
 |
11.22.23- Brutal Banking Crisis To Launch Gold And Silver
|
 |
11.21.23- Thankgiving Message:
In normal times we anticipate the splendid gluttony of the American Thanksgiving, the fellowship of family and friends, with gratitude and remembrance of overcoming ordeals past. This year, though, we are a bit preoccupied with ordeals to come, and that nip in the November air conjures rumors of approaching hardship and cruelties we have no idea how we might overcome. These are not normal times. Read More |
 |
11.20.23- Yes, Americans Are Struggling Financially, Just Ask These Folks
Oscar Taylor is scrambling to cover household expenses for the first time in his adult life. "It has gotten so dismal that my wife is planning on looking for work after the new year," said Mr. Taylor, owner of Barrett Rifles in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Read More |
 |
11.18.23- Weekend Rant: Washington’s Fiscal Doomsday Machine
That’s right. During the last 1,461 days (FY 2020 thru FY 2023), Uncle Sam has generated $6.2 billion of red ink each and every day including weekends, holidays and snow-days. For anyone keeping score at home, that’s $4.2 million of red ink per minute. Read More |
 |
11.17.23- Entire Financial System On Knife's Edge
|
 |
11.16.23- The Interest Rate Shock Will Blow Up the Government’s Ponzi Game
|
 |
11.15.23- Wall Street’s Dishonest Accounting
But it’s important to understand some basic banking rules in order to realize why the current banking crisis, which began in March, isn’t over. Let’s start with what’s called mark-to-market accounting. It’s critical when it comes to determining asset prices and stock prices in particular. Read More |
 |
11.14.23- Another U.S. Credit Downgrade
|
 |
11.13.23- If The Economy Is So Great, Why Are Tax Revenues So Weak?
It's long been known that there's a pretty strong correlation between falling tax revenues and worsening economic conditions. Yet, even as tax revenues are falling, we're being repeatedly told that the American economy is in great shape and there's no recession in sight. Read More |
 |
11.11.23- Why the United States Could Be Heading Straight into Another Great Depression
Then it was Biden’s disastrous mishandling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Almost immediately following that disaster, the Biden administration went on a multi-trillion-dollar deficit spending spree that dramatically worsened inflation. Read More |
 |
11.10.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Washington Hawks Helped Create the New “Axis of Evil”
The result was the $8 trillion global war on terror that continues to this day. Read More |
 |
11.09.23- The fuse on America's debt bomb
If you thought it was scary when the Treasury Department recently dropped a financial bomb, announcing the deficit for fiscal year 2023 was $1.7 trillion, please sit down before you read on. The Treasury just released new numbers projecting borrowing of $1.6 trillion in just the first half of fiscal year 2024. Read More |
 |
11.08.23- Another Bank Bites the Dust!
Citizens Bank was a small bank in Iowa with about $66 million in assets. Its loan portfolio consisted largely of commercial and industrial loans. Well, this past Friday the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that Citizens Bank had failed due to significant hidden loan losses totaling about $15 million. Read More |
 |
11.07.23- A "Sucker Breakdown" Fools Investors… Again!
You’ve heard of a sucker rally… But what about a sucker breakdown? We might have just witnessed one asinvestors jettisoned their stocks last week just before a huge snapback move that began with frantic short-covering rallies — and could end with an epic melt-up into the holidays. Here’s how it all started… Read More |
 |
|
 |
JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania — Two months ago, 30,000 truckers at Yellow lost their jobs when one of the nation’s oldest and largest trucking companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Last week, Convoy, the digital freight broker that was supposed to reinvent the wheel and disrupt the truckingindustry in a positive way, also abruptly shuttered its doors. Read More |
 |
11.03.23- The Future for Fiat
Malinvestments of the last fifty years are being exposed by the rise in interest rates, increases which are driven by a combination of declining faith in the value of major currencies and contracting bank credit. The rise in interest rates is becoming unstoppable. Read More |
 |
11.02.23- This Would Mean Catastrophe For Financial System
|
 |
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), under Dr Anthony Fauci’s leadership, infected 12 Egyptian fruit bats with a ‘SARS-like’ virus called WIV1 at a lab in Montana in 2018, just 15 minutes away from the Maryland presidential retreat Camp David. Read More |
 |
10.31.23- 9 Reasons Why Gold Will Soon Replace Treasuries As The Ultimate Store-Of-Value Asset
Investing is allocating capital to a productive business to create more wealth. Investing has more risk—and potential reward—than saving. Today, however, what most people think of as saving is actually investing. Read More |
 |
10.30.23- Catastrophe bonds clobber government paper with 16.5% returns –
Bond markets everywhere have been rattled by a trifecta of high interest rates, angst over government deficits, and hawkish central bankers, who refuse to back down from their fight with inflation. Yields on 30-year Treasuries earlier this month climbed above 5% for the first time since 2007. With prices moving in the opposite direction as bond yields, investors are rattled. Read More |
 |
10.28.23- One Mistake Before Armageddon
The development of nuclear weapons was a human stupidity. They cannot be used, but their existence threatens the life of the planet. So why have them? Accident, emotional response, loss of reason are all human faults that can come into play at any time. During the 20th century Cold War these dangers were underlined by the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Nixon led the way to sanity with arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and his opening to China. Presidents Carter and Reagan kept the momentum going for reduced tensions and peaceful coexistence. Read More |
 |
10.27.23- The Deeper Dive: As Bonds Go Critical,
|
 |
10.26.23-And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: Who Is Mike Johnson
|
 |
10.25.23- We Haven’t Seen a Subprime Borrower Meltdown of This Magnitude Since
|
 |
10.24.23- The Vigilantes are Back!
The Vigilantes are Back! With the vigilantes having raised bond yields above 5%, the Big Bond Bust went BANG! today and blew a lot of money out of other markets in one big shot. I wrote the following over the weekend in my “Deeper Dive,” and this morning we already got to see it play out in spectacular style: (I’ll put in boldface the parts that happened in a blow-your-face-off way today.) Read More |
 |
10.23.23- Debt, Currency Debasement & War—
Debt Destroys Nations Debt, once it passes the Rubicon from extreme to just plain madness, destroys nations. Read More |
 |
10.21.23- Gold Forecast: Expert Predicts $10,000 Gold and $300 Silver
At the turn of the century, when gold was below $300, he correctly predicted the 10-year bull run in precious metals, expecting gold to reach new all-time highs above $1000. In hindsight, he admits his call was conservative as gold nearly achieved $2000. The lesson to investors is simple: when Jim speaks, you'd be wise to listen. Read More |
 |
10.20.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different:Something Wicked This Way Comes…
|
 |
30-Year Treasury Yield Spikes past 5%, 30-year mortgage rates hit 8%, Mortgage Applications Plunge
|
 |
10.18.23- Bonds Bust!
|
 |
10.17.23- Is This The End Of Naked Short Selling?
While what is now an all-out war on naked short sellers intensifies, there is a new flashpoint on the front line–a potentially devastating ruling targeting those who are alleged to make illegal naked short selling possible: The Facilitators: bankers and brokers. Read More |
 |
"We Could Be Looking At A War Economy That Nobody Today Has Ever Experienced Before"
Brent crude futures closed up more than 5% on Friday, peeking back above U$90/bbl for the first time in almost a fortnight. US 10y yields were down more than 8bps at 4.61% and the long bond was down more than 10bps to 4.75%. That equates to a loss of 19bp for the 10y, and 21bps for 30y treasuries in just one week. Even equities appear to have gotten the risk-off message late in the week. The S&P500 closed down 22 points with losses being led by the high beta information technology sector and consumer discretionary, while defensives and energy performed well. Read More |
 |
10.14.23- Geopolitics Stagflation and Gold
The horrifying attacks on Israel by the Hamas terrorist organization are less than a week old but already we see an uptick in the price of gold compared to a lackluster 2023 performance. Read More |
 |
10.13.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Friday The 13th
Turning to markets first, the inauspicious event was epic bond volatility following the release of the September CPI inflation report for the USA. Headline inflation was 0.4% MoM versus estimates of 0.3%, and the year-on-year figure was 3.7% versus expectations of 3.6%. Core inflation was in-line with expectations at 0.3% in the month. Read More |
 |
10.12.23- Bond Valuations Are Cheap.
Psychology in markets is always fascinating. In February 2009, I wrote “8 Reasons For A Bull Market.” While in hindsight, it is easy to see that was the right call, overall, psychology was highly negative at the time. The arguments for lower stock prices and a continued economic recession were rampant. Most importantly, investor psychology was extremely bearish, and stock valuations were dramatically cheaper. It is the opposite today, with investors shunning cheap bond valuations in favor of overvalued equities. Read More |
 |
10.11.23- Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Puzzling
|
 |
10.10.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What's Really Going on in Palestine
1. It is stunning to me how little most people know about the treatment of the Palestinian people. Over 2 million people packed into 140 square miles in Gaza. Robbed of their land and housing over and over. We're talking real David VS Goliath here. David has been taking sh*t for years. They are very desperate. Read More |
 |
10.09.23- Market Insanity
The bursting of the bond bubble that I’ve been writing about has now reached a level that Bloomberg says is one of the biggest bond busts in history:
|
 |
10.07.23- Reaping What You Sow:
|
 |
10.06.23- We Are Witnessing One Of The Greatest Financial Market Crashes In History Right Now
|
 |
10.05.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Largest EV Charging Station In World Powered By Diesel-Powered Generators
In 2017, Tesla CEO said that all Superchargers in the automaker’s network were being converted to solar. “Over time, almost all will disconnect from the electricity grid,” Musk posted on X, formally known as Twitter. Read More |
 |
10.04.23- "Why So Much Sudden Uncertainty,
|
 |
10.03.23- If This Were a Stock… You’d Think “GAME OVER.”
Well, everyone except the bond market, that is. The bond market, specifically, the market in U.S. sovereign bonds or Treasuries is the single most important market in the world. Everyone focuses on stocks, because stocks are “exciting” and the best investment for obtaining wealth. Read More |
 |
10.02.23- The Silent Depression and Current Economic Realities
In the 1930s, the average car cost about 46% of a year’s earnings. Today, they eat up 85% of the annual average wage. Rent, which previously claimed just 16% of yearly income, now demands a staggering 42%. Read More |
 |
09.30.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Is the Money in Your Checking Account Yours or the Bank's?
This practice leaves the bank open to a run, in which panicky depositors attempt to withdraw their funds from the bank en masse but the bank doesn’t have the cash on hand. The following graph gives an idea of the extent of the mismatch between deposits and reserves. Read More |
 |
09.29.23- Billionaire issues dire warning
A US debt crisis is looming as the American economy is facing a “risky” fiscal situation, according to the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio. Dalio’s warning comes as the country’s national debt topped $33 trillion this month. US lawmakers are currently negotiating a spending bill before the October 1 deadline. Read More |
 |
09.28.23- Here’s How Much the Imminent Government Shutdown Will Cost You
Yet that’s exactly how Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett recently described the situation. He made this statement because the U.S. government can’t reach a resolution that would keep its own operations funded. Read More |
 |
09.27.23- Toward the Brink
It’s too soon to answer that question definitively, but it’s not too soon for investors to take some defensive action. If it does happen, it’ll be different from those that have gone before. Let’s break it all down… Read More |
 |
Addressing the risk of a hard- or soft-landing, Dimon highlights the fact that "no one knows. There is a range of outcomes..." Read More |
 |
09.25.23- Robots From China Don't Strike
The UAW's demands would roughly double labor costs and, according to management, make the companies unviable. Where will the workers go when the automakers go bankrupt, further mechanize their assembly lines, or move yet more production to China? Read More |
 |
09.23.23- Where are we in the debt cycle?
|
 |
09.22.23- 10 Red Flags Warn of
|
 |
09.21.23- Six Reasons Why Corporate Profits Will Fall 50%
|
 |
09.20.23- Will The Fed 'Cause' A Mini-Crash?
Let’s start with the Wednesday announcement of the higher-than-expected inflation numbers. Of course, most everyone assumed the market would drop on such news. Well, as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.” Read More |
 |
09.19.23- U.S. stocks are lower as investors await outcome of Fed's meeting
At 11:12 ET (15:12 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 248 points or 0.7%, while the S&P 500 was down 0.7% and the NASDAQ Composite was down 0.8%. Fed’s two-day meeting starts The U.S. Federal Reserve is set to start its latest meeting today, and it is widely expected to keep interest rates steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.50% when it concludes its meeting on Wednesday. Read More |
 |
09.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Tucker Carlson Ep. 23
|
 |
09.16.23- The Permanent Crisis Economy
Fifteen years after the 2008 global financial and economic meltdown, many say that America has recovered well. Gross domestic product, through the first quarter of 2023, was 28 percent higher than just before the crisis, buoyed by personal consumption, which has soared 35 percent. As of May, the economy boasted 17.6 million more private-sector jobs than prior to its 2007 precrisis peak, a 15 percent gain. After accounting for inflation, average weekly earnings are up 9 percent, helping to break the stagnation in pay that lasted for decades before 2008. Read More |
 |
09.15.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Planet Earth Just One ‘False Flag’ Or ‘Accident’ Away From A Nightmare
|
 |
09.14.23- The World Financial System is Collapsing Faster, and Its Taking the
|
 |
09.13.23- The crashing office market will deepen the economic 'doom loop' for America's cities, economist says
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a real estate and finance professor at the Columbia School of Business, has sounded the alarm for months on large to mid-sized US cities. That's thanks to work-for-home trends, which have battered the commercial real estate market in hubs like Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver. Read More |
 |
09.12.23- Mountains and Mountains of Debt
Defaults on loans with banks that are not in the top-100 for size have already risen to the highest record ever! Even if the Fed stops hiking interest rates (which is unlikely with recent hints that inflation may be back on the rise), the Fed still plans to continue quantitative tightening (QT) for a long time, just as it believed it could do in 2019 … and failed at spectacularly. Read More |
 |
09.11.23- Who Will Buy Baby Boomers’ McMansions?
|
 |
09.09.23- Welcome To The Real Estate Industry Apocalypse
|
 |
09.08.23- Say’s Law Says It All
|
 |
09.07.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 77% of US youth unqualified for military service
|
 |
09.06.23- Where’s the Recession?
What did Powell say, and what are the implications for investors and global markets? Let’s review… Read More |
 |
09.05.23- Rising GDP + Rising Yields = A Major Sign Of "Uh-Oh"
The Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimates a 5.9% growth in real GDP for Q3 2023. In nominal terms, we can even boast of an 8.9% surge. What fantastic news! Growth! Productivity! This must mean we can all breath a collective sigh of relief as Powell continues his valiant war against inflation as GDP rises, right? Read More |
 |
09.04.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Ron Paul for President!
|
 |
09.02.23- Bitcoin And The Coming Energy Conundrum
|
 |
09.01.23- Bidenomics Has Failed
Who is better off? (Lest we forget, “the economy” isn’t a citizen.) Are you better off than you were thirty months, two and a half years ago? Read More |
 |
08.31.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Ten OBVIOUS Lessons Every Intelligent Person Should Have Learned From COVID 1.0
|
 |
08.30.23- 8 Signs That We Are Right On The Verge Of A Major Credit Card Debt Crisis
|
 |
08.29.23- Nvidia’s Dog-Day Disaster
Luckily, NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) earnings gave investors something to talk about late last week. The semiconductor superstar was one of the only interesting mega-cap earnings announcements left on the Q2 docket. And since most of the chip stocks lost their first-half momentum weeks ago, the buy-and-hold crowd was hoping strong results would help encourage a decent bounce heading into fall trading. Read More |
 |
08.28.23- The AI 'Investment' SCAM
Yes, they have nice chips. I have one of their graphics cards in my desktop. Nice board. So was its predecessor, also theirs. That's not the point. Read More |
 |
08.28.23- The AI 'Investment' SCAM
Yes, they have nice chips. I have one of their graphics cards in my desktop. Nice board. So was its predecessor, also theirs. That's not the point. Read More |
 |
08.26.23- America’s Propped-Up Economy Is on Its Last Legs
The consumer spending spree that powered the economy since the pandemic panic is coming to an end. At the beginning of the pandemic panic, American households hunkered down, slashed spending and deposited their stimmie checks. Read More |
 |
08.25.23- The U.S. Tech-Dollar... Is Silicon Valley A Destructive Option or A Good Dollar Crutch?
The strength of the dollar comes from its users and holders, but their choice to use and hold it comes from their faith in its value. That faith has traditionally been driven by the warm feelings people get around the pillars of the dollar, such as: US politics, the US economy, the US people, the might of the US military to keep peace, its world reserve currency status with the international banking system and its petro-dollar status. Read More |
 |
08.24.23- How the US Economy Will Crack, and More on the BRICS Big Bust
|
 |
08.23.23- BRIC by BRIC
Today, Aug. 22, is a date I’ve been warning readers about for months. It’s the date when a great monetary shock is set to hit the global financial system. That’s because the BRICS nations are now meeting in South Africa, where they’ll take steps to create a new gold-backed currency as a dollar alternative. Read More |
 |
08.22.23- The Earthquake Starts Tomorrow
As I’ve been warning, this meeting is the most significant development in international finance in the last 50 years. It has the potential to displace the U.S. dollar as the leading payment currency and reserve currency from a standing start in just a few years. Read More |
 |
08.21.23- "I Have A Very Bad Feeling
What an interesting juncture we've reached. We're constantly assured all is well with what matters--the economy--as the all-powerful Federal Reserve has managed not just the hoped-for "soft landing" but a resurgence of growth: yowza, no recession. Read More |
 |
08.19.23- A Bumpy Ride
Draw back from the scene and understand that the sheer heaping-up of procedural legal bullshit in the various sham court cases against candidate Donald Trump is largely an attempt to confound, mystify, and preoccupy the public while the great scaffold of our national life collapses. The news — both legacy and alt — will be dominated day after day by analyses of every move and counter-move through endless thickets of courtroom minutiae while the US economy crashes and burns, residual wealth is confiscated, and the American social order turns into something like fiery goo. Read More |
 |
08.18.23- Brace Yourselves, Because What They Have Planned Is Going To Absolutely Devastate The U.S. Economy
|
 |
08.17.23- Watch Out – Argentina’s Leading Presidential Candidate Vows To Shut Down “Thieving” Central Bank
|
 |
08.16.23- BRICS vs the U.S. Dollar: An Inevitable Showdown?
|
 |
08.15.23- Fitch Warns Big Banks
|
 |
08.14.23- Why Rome Collapsed:
Identifying why the western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD has been a parlor game for at least two centuries, since Edward Gibbon published his monumental The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon concluded Christianity had a major role in weakening the Empire, a view few today share. Read More |
 |
08.12.23- Why the United States Lost Its AAA Credit Rating
Fitch Ratings said the downgrade of the U.S., which is now rated AA+, “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and AAA-rated peers over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.” Read More |
 |
08.11.23- Beware the Great Unwind
|
 |
08.10.23- The Wile E. Coyote Economy
The Road Runner character would deceive his murderous pursuer — Wile E. Coyote — over a cliff edge. Yet this Coyote figure would continue his chase for incredible seconds… disobeying gravity’s iron laws… unaware of his precarious peril. At this point he’d glance groundward — and receive an updated intelligence report. Read More |
 |
08.09.23- The Greater Financial Crisis of 2024
That’s nothing to cheer about, though it’s not likely to have much impact on the markets in the short run. It’s more of a long-term problem. But it’s certainly another straw in the wind showing that the U.S. is on a non-sustainable fiscal course that can only end in default, hyperinflation or protracted depression-level growth. Read More |
 |
08.08.23- Normies Awake!
So-called Normies might be musing, this month of approved mental languor, whether the mighty efforts to suppress news of all kinds, about everything, have concealed the true tendings of our wayward country — leading them to wonder whether it is even possible to be a Normie in such an abnormal time and place. Read More |
 |
08.07.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The truth about Ukraine is beginning to leak out and Americans ought to be furious about the lies they’ve been told and are still being told
|
 |
08.05.23- UAW demands 46% pay hike in talks with Detroit Three automakers
The proposal would be the largest pay increase in recent memory. The proposal from the Detroit-based union that represents approximately 150,000 workers making Chevrolets, Fords, Jeeps and more calls for a 20% general wage increase upon ratification of a new contract "to offset severe impact of inflation" over the past few years, according to the write-up obtained by The Detroit News. Read More |
 |
08.04.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Stop It Already!
Thus moans reader Bill C. Bill’s lament arises in response to a recent reckoning. In that reckoning Mr. Rickards claimed Russia is winning the Ukrainian war. Read More |
 |
08.03.23- This Is Why U.S. Economic Activity Seems So “Slow” This Summer
|
 |
08.02.23- How Far Will Commercial Real Estate Values Have to Drop to Start Making Sense?
Stick real estate in the time-out corner, and 2023 is looking far better than the experts prophesied six months ago*. The S&P 500 is up 16 percent, layoffs are dropping, and economic growth has been so strong—and inflation so stubborn—that Fed watchers are predicting two more rounds of rate hikes. Now, the ballyhooed recession may slowly wash out like a false trail. Read More |
 |
08.01.23- Investors Think They’re Bulletproof
Remember when we discussed the possibility that the red-hot tech leaders were finally running out of gas? Well, we just witnessed a dramatic mid-air refueling on the heels of last week’s tame Fed meeting, positive earnings reactions, and strong economic data. Just when it looked as if the highest-flying names would finally take a break, frantic buyers stepped in to blast these stocks back into the stratosphere. Read More |
 |
07.31.23- Trucking Giant Yellow
Separate internal documents showed the procedures for closing the facilities as well as “talking points” to be used when informing union employees not to show up for their shifts. The documents indicated the company plans to issue a public statement Monday updating “the state of the company and the operation.” Read More |
 |
Interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
|
 |
07.28.23- Stocks: Undervalued or Overvalued?
Rather, a relative handful of technology stocks have been up and away this year. The major indexes are hitched to these wagon-pullers… and that is largely why these indexes have excelled this year. Read More |
 |
07.27.23- Bud Light To Lay Off Hundreds Of Employees In Wake Of Disastrous Pro-Trans Marketing
|
 |
07.26.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: RFK Jr. Maintains Highest Favorability Rating Among Presidential Candidates
Mr. Kennedy has a net favorable rating of 47 percent and a net unfavorable mark of 26 percent according to the survey, which was released on July 23 and conducted from July 19 to July 20 among 2,068 registered voters. Read More |
 |
07.25.23- 3 Big Questions for a Roaring Market
We packed the van for an extended weekend to visit family before summer slips away for good. In just a few short weeks, the kids will be back in school, while the financial pundits will start shouting about end-of-year S&P targets. We should enjoy the quiet calm while we still can. Read More |
 |
07.24.23- Yellow loses attempt to stop strike
|
 |
07.22.23- It's Mourning In America
The birth of financialization in the early 1980s was morning in America because finance-- the collateralization of previously low-risk assets and the resulting explosion of credit and leverage--gooses demand and asset valuations.Read More |
 |
07.21.23- ESG Is Dying Its Inevitable Death
ESG refers to the Environmental, Social, and Governance risk theoretically embedded in a business. However, while ESG investing is about taking these risks into account in investment decisions, these are all the things NOT on a company’s balance sheet or earnings statements. Such is the inherent problem. Read More |
 |
07.20.23- Is the Gold Standard Coming Back?
The Russian government recently stated: “The BRICS countries are planning to introduce a new trading currency, which will be backed by gold.” Read More |
 |
07.19.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Mexico files complaint over Texas’ floating barriers on the Rio Grande
Foreign Relations Secretary Alicia Bárcena said Mexico will send an inspection team to the Rio Grande to see whether any of the barrier extends into Mexico’s side of the border river. Read More |
 |
07.18.23- Globalists Suggest ‘Finance Shock’ And Climate Controls To Launch Their Great Reset
|
 |
07.17.23- Code Red
|
 |
07.15.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: These Are The World's Biggest
Last year, Statista's Anna Fleck reports, Qatar's imports of weapons accounted for 10.4 percent of all global imports, even outpacing India (8.9 percent) and Ukraine (8.3 percent), which has been regularly supported with arms deliveries by an international alliance since the start of the Russian invasion last year. Read More |
 |
07.14.23- Why Is the Stock Market So Strong?
Across that same frame it has been chewing into its balance sheet. Meantime, the bond market is putting out the loudest recession warnings since 1982. Read More |
 |
07.13.23- The Mainstream Media Is Not Telling You The Truth About Inflation
|
 |
07.12.23- Without Inflation, the Status Quo Collapses; With Hot Inflation, It Also Collapses
Many others have explained why inflation is part-and-parcel of the status quo.In the simplest terms, where's why inflation is essential:
|
 |
07.11.23- I Wasn’t Wrong About Oil
The Technology Sector SPDR (XLK) and Communication Services Sector SPDR (XLC) have gained more than 36% year-to-date. Individual 2023 performances are even more impressive. NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) has rocketed 190%. Meta Platforms Inc. (META) has risen 140%. Tesla Inc. (TSLA) — a consumer discretionary name that acts like a tech stock — is up more than 120%. Read More |
 |
07.08.23- All Dreams End: The Collapse of Keynesian Economics
Unbeknownst to economists, the Keynesian bedrock of modern economics--using financial repression and government spending funded by debt to manage the business cycle of growth and recession--is an artifact of a century of expansive cheap energy and virtuous demographics. Read More |
 |
07.07.23- Who Wins and Who Loses in a Deep Global Recession?
Does anyone benefit from a deep, prolonged global recession? Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in relative terms we can say some will suffer less than others. We can also say that some will strengthen their relative positions vis a vis competitors and others will lose ground / weaken, with potentially fatal consequences if the recession leads to systemic instability, i.e. phase change or tipping point. Read More |
 |
07.06.23- Office Mortgage Delinquency Rate Has Biggest Six-Month Spike Ever.
|
 |
07.05.23- Beware a Chinese ‘dollar avalanche’
Brad Setser’s paper(opens a new window) on how China has stashed away almost $3tn worth of unofficial currency reserves in local commercial banks and other parastatal entities has naturally generated a lot of attention. After all, these “shadow reserves(opens a new window)” are larger than the formal reserves of Japan, the world’s second-largest reserve holder according to IMF data. It’s almost three times larger than the assets of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. Read More |
 |
07.04.23- Happy Insurrection Day!
No. I don’t mean the fake Jan. 6, 2021, “insurrection.” I’m talking about the bonafide insurrection staged by American colonists against the British government. We call July 4 “Independence Day.” But the British called it an act of rebellion. Read More |
 |
07.03.23- 'Big Short' investor Michael Burry predicts a consumer recession — and warns companies face more earnings pain
|
 |
07.01.23- A Steady Controlled Demolition
|
 |
06.30.23- The Only Man Worth a Darn
Yet we focus — indirectly — upon them all. That is because today we distinguish between individual man… and collective man. For they are not the same thing. Read More |
 |
06.29.23- The Coming Crisis
|
 |
Ford Motor F 1.01%increase; green up pointing triangle plans to lay off at least 1,000 salaried employees and contract workers in North America, people familiar with the matter said, the automaker’s latest effort to defray the heavy cost of investing in electric cars. Read More |
 |
06.27.23- US Slips Into a Recession Based on Biden Criteria
Last year, the US economy slipped into a technical recession. But the White House was quick to alter the long-standing definition – back-to-back quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth – garnering support from members of the mainstream press, charged with telling the public, “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” With the latest economic data coming in, it turns out that the current administration’s strategy might backfire on President Joe Biden and lend credence to those who think the US is already in a recession. Read More |
 |
06.26.23- The Familiar Death-Dance: Investors Are 'Out To Lunch' As Macro Cracks Widen
|
 |
06.24.23- Fortress America—The Only Alternative To Fiscal Ruin
For that matter, by this date in 2033 the public debt is guaranteed to be above $55 trillion. The $1.5 trillion of alleged “cuts” in the McCarthy-Biden debt bill were phony as a $2 bill and won’t make a damn bit of difference to the $25 trillion of new public debt that is baked into the budgetary cake over the next decade. Read More |
 |
06.23.23- Distressed Commercial Real Estate Properties Top $64 Billion As "Full-Blown Trouble" Ahead
The report, which Bloomberg first reported, shows the number of distressed assets increased by 10% in the first quarter to nearly $64 billion. The report notes distressed CRE assets could balloon to as much as $155 billion. Read More |
 |
06.22.23- Push for Global Taxation…
What’s your take on this push for global taxation? Read More |
 |
06.21.23- The Biggest Monetary Shock in 52 Years
This will be the biggest upheaval in international finance since 1971. It’s taking direct aim at the dollar. Quite simply, the world is unprepared for this geopolitical shock wave. Read More |
 |
|
 |
06.19.23- Bank Losses To Spook Depositors
|
 |
06.17.23- Voters Hate CBDCs. Why Do Governments Keep Pushing Them?
A CBDC is a government-run crypto-token that replaces the national currency with a tracking ledger—a list of who owns what—that lets government surveil, control, and mandate every dollar you spend. Read More |
 |
06.16.23- What Exactly Happened Today?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a 428-point jubilation. The S&P 500 posted a 53-point thrill. The Nasdaq Composite, meantime, leapt 156 points today. This, one day following the Federal Reserve’s sledgehammered hints that two additional rate increases are in prospect this year. Read More |
 |
06.15.23- US Economy – Surprisingly Resilient or Potemkin Village?
|
 |
06.14.23- The Commercial Real Estate Tsunami Just Shifted Into Another Gear
|
 |
06.13.23- Looking Forward
|
 |
06.12.23- We’re Not Finished
If you’re wondering why our country is lost in lunatic raptures of lawless Lawfare and futile MAGAry, it’s because our economy has already collapsed, and our culture and politics with it downstream have also collapsed into spectacular degeneracy. It has already happened. Maybe you don’t know it. Read More |
 |
06.10.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Capitalism, Socialism and ESG
BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, is pushing ESG as part of a marketing pitch to millennials, who put “improving society” ahead of “generating profits.”1 Much of the buy-side pressure for ESG comes from state and municipal pension funds playing politics with taxpayers’ and pensioners’ money, many of which are in poor financial shape. Read More |
 |
06.09.23- The Great Reset Is Almost Here –
Furthermore, government overtly suppresses and micromanages all forms of production. Small businesses are a thing of the past, and only a select group of major corporations working directly with government are allowed to operate. Read More |
 |
06.08.23- The End of Easy Money: Bankruptcy Filings Pile Up at Fastest Rate since 2010
It’s turning into a banner year for corporate bankruptcy filings, after years of Easy Money that caused all kinds of excesses, fueled by yield-chasing investors, in an environment where the Fed had repressed yields with all its might. Those yield-chasing investors kept even the most over-indebted zombies supplied with ever-more fresh money. But that era has ended. Interest rates are much higher, and investors are getting a little more prudent, and Easy Money is gone. Read More |
 |
06.07.23- The Coming Shock to the Global Monetary System
It involves the rollout of a major new currency that could weaken the role of the dollar in global payments and ultimately displace the U.S. dollar as the leading payment currency and reserve currency. It could happen in just a few years. Read More |
 |
06.06.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What Happens When
What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It's a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn't require much in the way of income or stress. Read More |
 |
06.05.23- The Treasury Storm of the Century
|
 |
06.03.23- Weekend Rant: America Speeds Headlong Into an Unimaginable Fiscal Disaster
What everyone should find troubling is the spending that has grown so large it accounts for much more than the receipts the U.S. takes in each year. And if it grows too much larger, it will eventually make it near impossible to even service the interest on the debt. Read More |
 |
06.02.23- Deposits at Capitol One bank frozen by NYC’s banking commission
We needn’t worry anymore, Democrats said, because brand-new unaccountable agencies like the Consumer Finance Protection Board were going to make sure that depositors were safe, their assets protected, and the bad guys who run shoddy banks dealt with. Read More |
 |
06.01.23- With 75% of Americans Reporting This, Recession Is Undeniable
Unfortunately, things haven’t improved much since then. We just discussed the state of consumer debt, and it isn’t very good at all, reaching a record $17 trillion. Read More |
 |
05.31.23- The Great Student Loan Nonpayment Boondoggle Is Over And Household Spending Is About To Collapse
|
 |
05.30.23- New Data: Huge Plunge in Manufacturing, Recession Is Here!
|
 |
05.29.23- State Farm Halts Home Insurance Sales In California
State Farm attributed the decision to three factors: "historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market." Reinsurance is a method of transferring some of an insurer's risk to other insurers. Read More |
 |
05.27.23- Today’s Housing Market Looks Even Worse than 2008
Why housing? Well, here’s what The Economist has to sayabout it: The importance of American housing resides not so much in its absolute size, big though it is at about $45 [trillion] in total value. Rather, it serves as a bellwether of the economy’s performance amid rising interest rates. Has the Federal Reserve lifted rates by enough to calm inflation without crushing growth? Has it gone too far? Or, perhaps, not far enough? As one of the earliest and largest sectors to react to changes, the property market offers some answers. Read More |
 |
05.26.23- Wages Going Up for Good: Catch-Up and Blowback
One of the most durable expectations in the financial sphere is that inflation will drop sharply in a recession and the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates back to near-zero. There is a good reason to doubt this: rising wages. Yes, we all hear about the millions of human workers who will shortly be replaced by AI–wonderful for corporate profits!–but few pundits bother looking at long cycles in interest rates and inflation, and even fewer pay any attention to the absurdly extreme asymmetry of labor and capital. Read More |
 |
Debt Ceiling Deal or No Deal:
|
 |
05.24.23- ‘Real Assets’ are cheaper than they’ve ever been in modern history
We chose Panama for a specific reason: the first conference I ever held back in 2011 was in Panama. Read More |
 |
05.23.23- Red Alert!
Likewise, wildfires are a threat, but they’re usually confined to periods when dry conditions and high winds combine to make forests predictably combustible. Read More |
 |
05.22.23- What Should Be Done About the Debt Ceiling Argument Between the Democrats and Republicans?
I think that what’s most likely to happen is that the two sides won’t allow a default (or if they do, it won’t be for long) and they won’t deal with the big issues in a substantive way. Rather they will tweak things in ways that won’t matter much and that will look better than they really are (e.g., they will say that they will cut the deficit in future years, which they won’t when the time comes). I wouldn’t do that. Read More |
 |
05.20.23- New Debt Report Proves We’re in Uncharted Territory
When the pandemic started, that spending slowed, thanks in part to the panicked response by government officials who shut down businesses for weeks or months in 2020. (Remember “Two weeks to stop the spread”?) Read More |
 |
05.19.23- Debt Ceiling Standoff Threatens More Than Social Security
The cost of Social Security programs have exceeded its income since 2021. So they’re underfunded (and falling behind). Without changes, the trust fund reserve will be depleted in the future. According to the Trustees, that future draws nearer every day: Read More |
 |
05.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Government Wrecked the Gas Can
The gas gauge broke. There was no smartphone app to tell me how much was left, so I ran out. I had to call the local gas station to give me enough to get on my way. The gruff but lovable attendant arrived in his truck and started to pour gas in my car’s tank. And pour. And pour. “Hmmm, I just hate how slow these gas cans are these days,” he grumbled. “There’s no vent on them.” Read More |
 |
05.17.23- Florida Is First U.S. State To Ban Central Bank Digital Currency
Gov. DeSantis said in a press release that the bill is meant to prevent “government overreach” from controlling one’s personal finances and “to protect consumers against globalist efforts to adopt a worldwide digital currency.” SB 7054, which passed in the legislature with strong bipartisan support, revised the definition of money in Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code, the state’s governing laws for commercial transactions, to exclude any CBDC. Read More |
 |
05.16.23- JPMorgan Opens War Room
Right now, the Treasury is at the debt ceiling. That means it has no legal authority to issue net new debt. It can issue new debt if old debt is maturing. That keeps the total debt unchanged; you’re just rolling over maturing debt into new debt without increasing the total debt. Read More |
 |
05.15.23- Babson’s Warning
The above words could easily have been stated by me or another of the (very) few others who currently predict the coming of crashes in the markets. Read More |
 |
05.13.23- 5 reasons food will get scarcer and more expensive
In April, the United Nations food agency’s world price index rose for the first time in a year, reflecting higher prices for sugar, meat and rice. Although the UN gauge is still 20% lower than the record set in March 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted grain exports, concerns over inflation never left. Read More |
 |
05.12.23- Why Future Returns
|
 |
05.11.23- The Economy Is Beginning To Shudder -
|
 |
05.10.23- The Epic Failure Of Modern Experts
There’s a debate in the comments section here about whether Americans have gotten suddenly dumber, leading them to elect populist presidents and refuse vaccines. I started to weigh in but quickly realized that the story is broader and deeper than just vaccines and Donald Trump. So here’s some context: Read More |
 |
05.09.23- "It's Spooky": Stanford Professor Warns
In a New York Times opinion piece titled"Yes, You Should Be Worried About a Potential Bank Crisis. Here's Why,"Professor Amit Seru wrote, "the fragility and collapse of several high-profile banks are most likely not an isolated phenomenon." Read More |
 |
05.08.23- It's Time To Panic...
|
 |
Consumer Credit Shocker: Credit Card Debt Explodes At 2nd Fastest Pace On Record Just As Rates Hit All-Time High
One month ago, not long after we warned that consumer credit was about to get much tighter in the aftermath of one of the most depressing Senior Loan Officer Opinion Surveys, which saw near record tightening in lending standards coupled with a historic plunge in credit demand, we observed that - as one would generally expect - growth in US credit card debt had ground to a crawl, as revolving credit rose by just $5 billion, down sharply from the $12.8 billion in January, down from the $13.7 billion LTM average, and the lowest single increase since April 2021. Read More |
 |
05.05.23- On The Verge Of A Banking Industry Apocalypse?
|
 |
05.04.23- Establishment Economists Are Finally Realizing It’s Time To Pay The Piper
|
 |
Is America’s banking system safe? The data shows that the three American banks that have failed so far this year represent more deposits than the 25 banks that collapsed in 2008. Read More |
 |
05.02.23- This Is The Sharpest Tightening of Credit in History
A credit crunch will now reduce inflation, but in a very painful manner. A lack of credit means an avalanche of bankruptcies. They should hit record highs. Read More |
 |
05.01.23- The S.E.C. and BlackRock Blink on SLV
|
 |
04.29.23- Warning: the Financial System is About to Lose Its Last Major Prop
This is a big deal. Why? First and foremost, it’s significantly higher than expectations: 3.5% vs 3.2%. Secondly, it shows that inflation is turning back upwards in Japan. Last month’s inflation data was 3.2% which was down from the prior month’s 3.3% which was down from the prior month’s 4.3%. Read More |
 |
04.28.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: On War and Wars
|
 |
04.27.23- It's a Good Thing for Ordinary Americans If the US Loses
Kudlow's remarks came a day after Donald Trump declared that China is trying to displace the U.S. Dollar [sic] as the NUMBER ONE CURRENCY" and that if this occurs, it would be the biggest defeat for our Country [sic] in its history." Read More |
 |
04.26.23- Hard data that confidence in the dollar
For nearly eight decades, the US economy and US government have enjoyed the unparalleled benefits of the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. Read More |
 |
04.25.23- We’re Our Own Worst Enemy
It’s unfortunate that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has turned out to be the slow kid in the class when it comes to economic sanctions and financial warfare. Read More |
 |
04.24.23- Are We Heading Towards
Just look at your average history class. Professors boldly declare that the New Deal was a net positive for society. If it wasn’t for then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bravery, the US would have been thoroughly gobbled up by the predatory capitalist system. However, real history had something else to say. Read More |
 |
04.22.23- Will We Ever Get Accountability?
Goldman Sachs' Crypto desk wrote the following post-mortem on the last week: Read More |
 |
04.21.23- "The Other Canaries In The Coal Mine Just Haven't Shown Up Yet"
Everyone’s on the lookout for how last month’s bank turmoil may be rippling through the economy. Roughly a week into earnings season, investors are starting to get some clues. Take Fastenal, a supplier of construction materials like nuts and bolts that’s seen as an industrial bellwether. Read More |
 |
04.20.23- Over the Falls: Credit, Collateral, Risk, Asset Valuations
|
 |
04.19.23- My Ignored Warnings of American De-industrialization
That same week Business Week published an article, “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It,” by Charles Kenny. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-23/manufacturing-jobs-may-not-be-cure-for-unemployment-inequality Kenny expresses the view of establishment economists, such as Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers who wants to know “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are factories really so awesome?” Read More |
 |
04.18.23- Explainer: U.S. yield curve reaches deepest inversion since 1981: What is it telling us?
The U.S. central bank has hiked interest rates aggressively over the last year to fight inflation that hovered around 40-year highs and bring it down to its 2% target rate. Read More |
 |
|
 |
04.15.23- Weekend Rant: Project Icebreaker: The Beginning Of A One World Digital Currency System?
|
 |
|
 |
04.13.23- Danger Ahead. Banking Sector Crisis
|
 |
This Time Really Could Be Different
|
 |
04.11.23- Goodbye, King Dollar
At the same time, I’ve said that such processes don’t happen overnight; instead, they happen slowly and incrementally over decades. While that’s true, the process is accelerating in ways no one could have anticipated just over a year ago. Read More |
 |
04.10.23- Bondage Is Cruel
Currently, less than 3,000 daily riders take the Central Subway. This represents about 0.37 percent of the city’s total population. Perhaps for these riders it’s a good deal. For everyone else it’s a complete rip off. Read More |
 |
04.08.23- Here’s What the Smart Money’s Thinking
The bond market is where you will find them. That is: The bond market will let you know where the economy is heading, say the veterans. Read More |
 |
04.07.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America, the Tyranny of the Stupid
Then, when time and time again, no such plan materializes, and it is demonstrated that America has blundered into a diplomatic, economic or military morass, for some unknown reason, a “reset” occurs, and the wrong assumptions are again made. Read More |
 |
04.06.23- Why the Regime Needs the Dollar to Be the Global Reserve Currency
Much of the analysis was framed to stoke the public’s fears of Chinese geopolitical power, and the Fox segment was especially hyperbolic in its predictions of near-total economic devastation resulting from any movement away from the dollar in international trade. Read More |
 |
04.05.23- Why The Panic Is Just Beginning
As a preliminary matter, let’s distinguish between a recession (even a bad one) and a financial crisis. They’re different. Read More |
 |
04.04.23- Global Bankruptcy Already Baked In
It’s really that simple. In eras of easy credit, both creditworthy and marginal borrowers are suddenly able to borrow more. This flood of new cash seeking a return fuels red-hot demand for conventional assets considered “safe investments” (real estate, blue chip stocks and bonds), demand of which given the limited supply of “safe” assets pushes valuations of these assets to the moon. Read More |
 |
04.03.23- Warning: Inflation is About to Explode Higher Again...
This is a big deal for inflation. Why? Because as I have noted previously, the ONLY inflation data that had come down in the last 12 months was in energy prices. And that was due to the Biden administration dumping 250 million barrels of oil in the open market .Read More |
 |
04.01.23- Deflating the Credit Bubble
The major central banks have increasingly resorted to interest rate management as their principal means of demand management. Yet history shows little correlation between managed interest rates and the growth of credit, which is represented by broad money statistics. Read More |
 |
03.31.23- "Change is Coming That Hasn't Happened In 100 Years" - World Dumps US Dollar
|
 |
03.30.23- I love how everyone pretends
This was so predictable; every time there’s a major crisis, Congressmen book a committee meeting to express their shock and outrage. They pass new laws to prevent a future crisis. Then their new laws fail to work properly, so they hold another public hearing to express more outrage. Read More |
 |
03.29.23- World Bank Warns Of 'Lost Economic Decade' As Turmoil Spreads
|
 |
03.28.23- Guess Who Is Now Warning That “Commercial Real Estate Is In Trouble”?
|
 |
03.27.23- The Everything Bubble and Global Bankruptcy
Scrape away the complexity and every economic crisis and crash boils down to the precarious asymmetry between collateral and the debt secured by that collateral collapsing. It's really that simple. Read More |
 |
03.25.23- Yellen Convenes Emergency Financial Stability Meeting On Friday As Banking Crisis Explodes
Here comes the panic. Bloomberg just reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen - who was singlehandedly responsible for stoking and restarting the bank crisis on Wednesday which until that day was easing back, with her comments that nobody in charge was even talking about a uniform deposit insurance, let alone working on one - will convene the heads of top US financial regulators Friday morning for a unscheduled meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Read More |
 |
03.24.23- Wall Street’s ‘Dr. Doom’ sees ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of risks for economy
Roubini, who predicted the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and earned the moniker “Dr. Doom” on Wall Street, laid out his thinking in a new interview with the McKinsey Global Institute's Forward Thinking podcast. Read More |
 |
03.23.23- The Math Behind Deposit Insurance, And Why It's The Beginning Of The End
|
 |
03.22.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Circus Politics Are Intended to Distract Us. Don’t Be Distracted
Don’t be fooled, not even a little. We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. Read More |
 |
03.21.23- The Banking Crisis —
Veterans of such crises (and I include myself in that category) know that once the dominoes start falling, they keep falling until some government intervention of a particularly draconian kind is imposed. Read More |
 |
03.20.23- "This Is It! The Financial System Is Terminally Broken"
Anyone who doesn’t see what it happening will soon lose a major part of their assets either through bank failure, currency debasement or the collapse of all bubble assets like stocks, property and bonds by 75-100%. Many bonds will become worthless. Wealth preservation in physical gold is now absolutely critical. Obviously it must be stored outside a broken financial system. More later in this article. Read More |
 |
03.18.23- Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Will Deal A Deathblow To The Dollar
|
 |
03.17.23- The Crisis is Here... What to do NOW
|
 |
03.16.23- Is The US Banking System Safe? ...
“I have full confidence in banking regulators to take appropriate actions in response and noted that the banking system remains resilient and regulators have effective tools to address this type of event. Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out . . . and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again.” – Janet Yellen – 3/12/23 Read More |
 |
03.15.23- Looming Bank Failures Point to More Price Inflation as Real Wages Fall Again
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in eighteen months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 6.0 percent year over year in February before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from January’s year-over-year increase of 6.4 percent, and February is the twenty-fourth month in a row with inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Price inflation has now been above 6 percent for seventeen months in a row. Read More |
 |
03.14.23- What Comes After the Great Liquidation
The primary assumption was that inflation would relent. After that, everything else would neatly fall in line. Specifically, interest rates would decline, and the next great stock market boom would bubble up just in time to bailout the meager retirement savings of aging baby boomers. Read More |
 |
|
 |
03.11.23- Silicon Valley Bank collapse
The fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank — the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history — spread on Friday as tech companies scrambled to make payroll, investors worried about contagion, and other businesses discovered surprising connections to the lender. Regulators shut down SVB, the country’s 15th-largest bank, after depositors pulled their cash and mounting losses on bond investments made it functionally insolvent. The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation transferred insured deposits at SVB to a newly created entity and will now look to sell or wind down the bank. Read More |
 |
03.10.23- Fiscal Illusion and Entitlements
One example is President Biden’s bragging that “In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion—the largest deficit reduction in American history,” which implied that we should only look at a short run effect which had little, if anything, to do with the policies he adopted, in evaluating his fiscal policy. Read More |
 |
03.09.23- Dead Cat Bounce In Housing Followed By More Downside
Affordability is, generically, the ratio of monthly income vs the median price of a home. Essentially the degree to which a potential home buyer can afford the basic monthly payments on a home. Here’s another way to look at affordability in terms of the monthly cost (mortgage, taxes, insurance) to buy a house: Read More |
 |
03.08.23- Is MMT Now Official Policy?
At the time, MMT was all the rage among monetary and fiscal policy wonks. It seemed to offer the best of all possible worlds. You can spend as much as you want without any downside. Read More |
 |
03.07.23- What If There Are No Solutions?
Realists who question received wisdom and conclude the status quo is untenable are quickly labeled pessimists because the zeitgeist expects a solution is always at hand--preferably a technocratic one that requires zero sacrifice and doesn't upset the status quo apple cart. Read More |
 |
03.06.23- The War for the Dollar is Already Over Part I
For nearly the past two years I’ve been a nearly lone voice in the wilderness questioning the financial orthodoxy over the behavior of the Federal Reserve. It started with an innocent, if not openly naïve question back in June of 2021, “Could the Fed actually be getting off the globalist train?” Read More |
 |
03.04.23- Why Is Every Walmart In The Entire City Of Portland Being Permanently Shut Down?
|
 |
03.03.23- China's Turn
Ukraine is the first flashpoint in a great power struggle between the United States and China. After years of shifting its industries to low-wage locations around the world, the US finds itself steadliy losing market-share to a faster-growing and more resourceful China. By most estimates, China’s economy will overtake the United States by 2035 at which point, Beijing will be in a much better position to shape international trade relations that promotes its own interests. Read More |
 |
03.02.23- Biden’s “Great Economic Recovery” Narrative Is Built On Deception
|
 |
03.01.23- Brace Yourself For Extreme Economic Turbulence
|
 |
02.27.23- What Will Happen When Banks Go Bust? Bank Runs, Bail-Ins and Systemic Risk
|
 |
02.25.23- Fear And Greed With A Roll Of The Dice
Major U.S. stock market indexes hit what is likely an interim bottom in the fall of 2022. Since then, they’ve bounced with incredible vitality. The bounce has brought new confidence to investors at what may end up being the worst possible time. Read More |
 |
02.24.23- The Geoeconomics of Modern Conflict
What is “geoeconomics”? Obviously, it’s a portmanteau from the words geopolitics and economics. There’s nothing new about considering those disciplines in the same context. Read More |
 |
02.23.23- This "Strong" Economy Is A Facade Built Out Of Debt
But a lot of people are ignoring a key question: how are people paying for this shopping spree? Read More |
 |
02.22.23- The Market Faces A Second
Yesterday saw stocks swoon (S&P -2.0%, Dow -2.1% to negative year-to-date) and bonds slump (US 2-year yields +10bp, 10-year yields +12bp to test closer to 4%), with expectations of the Fed Funds terminal rate rising to 5.35% - still 15bps short of reality, but a partial market catch-up to it. Read More |
 |
02.21.23- America is About to Go Supernova
Most people thought it was a new star– the brightest, by far, that anyone had ever observed. Some thought it was an omen or a sign from the gods. Read More |
 |
02.20.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Moment of Greatest Danger
More true now than it was before With the incomprehensibly costly Ukrainian “counter-offensive” having bogged down against reinforced Russian defensive lines, the decisive military operations of the Ukraine War have taken a giant step towards their long-foregone conclusion. Russia will fully achieve the three objectives of its “special military operation” as explicitly stated by Vladimir Putin in his address to the world delivered on the opening day of the war: liberating the Donbass; excising the Nazi influence from the region, and demilitarizing Ukraine. Read More |
 |
02.18.23- Stocks Seek New Religion in Effort to Rise from their Decline, but Where’s the Beef?
After the latest CPI inflation report, the Wall Street prophets of profits have moved to a higher level of highs as the opiate smoke circles their brains. They have shifted their dialectic from the US economy making a “soft landing” to a new “no-landing” prediction. Read More |
 |
02.17.23- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: Fraud!!!
GAO is out to specify the amount of taxpayer monies lost to fraud at the federal level:
|
 |
02.16.23- Dr. Jim Willie: Everything Is Breaking
|
 |
02.15.23- A World Without Finance
|
 |
02.14.23- Don't Let Balloons Distract You From The Global Economic Collapse
To anyone still involved with the Chinese balloon drama, let me remind you that the U.S. (and the entire world, in fact) was invaded by China long ago. Products and dopamine-inducing apps, farmland acquisition, shady investments, and government collusion in some places and continents, and so on are all evidence of this. Read More |
 |
02.13.23- What Crappy Beer Demand Tells Us About The Economy
It’s not as clear as saying that people simply don’t want beer, or that consumers are becoming more budget-conscious. There are a few factors afoot here. Read More |
 |
02.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: One Flew Over the Greenie's Nest
|
 |
02.10.23- Money and recession
Monetarists are warning now that money supply has stopped growing and even turned negative, so we are heading for a recession. This article examines the position for US dollar M2 money supply and the prospects for the US economy. But monetary growth, or the lack of it, doesn’t only affect GDP, but a large element of economic activity which is not included in it, principally financial activities, and the acquisition of assets such as property. Read More |
 |
02.09.23- Crash Alert
Ignore that low unemployment rate. Most forward-looking stats are screaming recession, and the epicenter of the coming quake is plastic. From CNBC:
|
 |
02.08.23- Harry Dent Doubles Down: Major Crash for Equities in Third Phase,
|
 |
02.07.23- Where’s Oil Going?
A bull case can be made on the basis of persistent inflation, shortages due in part to the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration’s war on oil and natural gas and the reopening of China after the worst of the pandemic. Read More |
 |
02.06.23- Lose-Lose
The New York Times — indicted this week as a chronic purveyer of untruths by no less than their supposed ally, The Columbia Journalism Review — is lying to you again this morning. Read More |
 |
02.04.23- Don’t Be Stupid – The U.S. Economy Actually LOST 2.5 Million Jobs Last Month
|
 |
02.03.23- You Think the Global Economy Is Brightening? Beware: The Big Hit Is Yet to Come
|
 |
“Sell,” he wrote in a one-word, since-deleted tweet on Tuesday. The missive came just hours ahead of the Federal Reserve’s announcement of its latest interest rate decision, and Chair Jerome Powell’s highly anticipated press conference. Read More |
 |
02.01.23- Cardboard box demand plunging at rates unseen since the Great Recession
It’s the latest indicator that consumer demand is eroding following the pandemic. Dwindling savings, inflation, rising interest rates and fears of a recession may all be swaying consumers to spend less. Read More |
 |
01.31.23- Markets Haven't Accounted for
Despite these things, investors in the U.S. don't seem to be paying much attention to rising geopolitical risks at present. That may soon change. Read More |
 |
01.30.23- People We Should Know:
Nouriel Roubini has one of those resumes that inspire skepticism -- because no one should be able to pack that much high-level work into one lifetime. He has, at various times, been associated with Harvard, the IMF, the Fed, the World Bank, the Council of Economic Advisors, the US Treasury, New York University, and (apparently his day job) Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy.Read More
|
 |
01.28.23- We're Close To A Death Spiral In The Financial System
|
 |
01.27.23- Collapsing Real Estate Market
I’ll begin by mentioning something published in Investment Watchblog that I found linked over at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: US Median Home Price Drops 12% in Six Months – Largest Drop Since 2009. Please take the time to read that article. Read More |
 |
01.26.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: In Ukraine, it appears America will soon be arming both side’s combatants
|
 |
01.25.23- Ted Oakley; Expect A Mass Die-Off Of Public Companies Later This Year
|
 |
01.24.23- 2023: Year of the New Gold Bull
Now that we’ve shaken off the cobwebs, it’s time to look ahead and focus on the stocks and sectors with the best potential to take the lead in 2023’s first quarter – and beyond. Unfortunately, many investors are going to miss these opportunities. Read More |
 |
01.23.23- So What’s Replacing the Dollar?
The U.S. weaponization of the dollar against nations it deems hostile, like Russia, has only intensified the calls for change. What exactly will replace the dollar standard is a matter of debate, but many agree that it’s just a matter of time. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen. Read More |
 |
I have said this for a long time. The global elite hate you, they want to destroy your standard of living, and reduce you to a serf, a powerless and dispensable carbon emitter. I dare entitled, no doubt wealthy (she’s in government, after all) Chrystia Freeland to walk the streets of Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities destroyed by the global elite, and try to sell this recipe for poverty and misery. Freeland would not make it out alive in many neighborhoods. Read More |
 |
01.20.23- Say’s Law and Macroeconomic Ignorance
While there are variations in production outputs of individual goods, in free markets there can never be a general glut. It was this that Keynes had to disprove in order to create a role for the state, intervening to make up for the supposed deficiencies of free markets. While reasoned analysis shows that Keynes failed to disprove Say’s law, he managed to convince the mainstream establishment that he had actually succeeded. Read More |
 |
01.19.23- The Global Outlook For 2023
Michael Howell writes:
|
 |
01.18.23- All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front
The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Davos Freak Show is back in business on Monday. The mainstream media of the collective West, in unison, will be spinning non-stop, for a week, all the “news” that are fit to print to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, but actually framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”. These are the main planks of the shady platform of a shady NGO registered in Cologny, a tony Geneva suburb. Read More |
 |
01.17.23- The easiest 833x return
“Jessica,” he wrote to the precisely zero people who paid attention to his LiveJournal blog, “is a bitch. I need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.” Read More |
 |
01.16.23- A Long Way to Fall: Stock Market’s Bottom is Hardly Even Within Sight
|
 |
01.14.23- Real Wages Fall for the Twenty-First Month as Rent and Food Prices Keep Rising
|
 |
01.13.23- We Won’t Be Fooled Again – Inflation Is Most Definitely Not “Under Control”
|
 |
01.12.23- Dip in Mortgage Rates Not Slowing Housing Bust 2: Mortgage Lenders Sing the Blues
Mortgage applications to purchase a home are a forward-looking indicator of where home sales volume will be. Existing home sales that closed in November already plunged by 35% year-over-year, the 16th month in a row of year-over-year declines, making for a historic plunge. And mortgage applications went into the wrong direction from there, despite the dip in mortgage rates. Read More |
 |
01.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Lemmings Will be Lemmings:
|
 |
01.10.23- Scammed!
Too often, government itself is part of that scam. That certainly seems true in the above two cases. And perhaps this is why Sam Bankman-Fried is being treated with kid gloves, with his $250 million bail not involving one bit of cash. Read More |
 |
01.09.23- It’s Worse Than it Looks: Beneath the Surface the Bottom is Falling Out, and People are Jumping out of Windows
This weekend, for example, I’m going to be working on a deep dive in one of my special posts for patrons into the confusing swirl of conflicting employment news that sent stocks soaring skyward today. It was really far shakier than the market wants to believe it heard. Read More |
 |
01.07.23- Is There an
But then you have Jeffrey A. Tucker saying that the end of negative interest rates ain’t gonna be a walk in the park. Sez he:
|
 |
01.06.23- Here’s What Happens in 2023
As a financial newsletter, we are duty-bound to hazard our annual market forecast — such as it is. So today we fetch our crystal ball from storage, blow away the dust… and gaze for images of the year ahead. How will the economy fare in 2023? Where will the stock market end the year? Gold? Oil? Bitcoin? Read More |
 |
01.05.23- Recession Or Inflation...
What is the Fed really thinking? They will probably er on the side of lower rates to avoid recession, running the risk of entrenched wage growth. Soft landings are the stuff of myth! How it effects the global economy is critical. Read More |
 |
01.04.23- Dollar’s demise about to
TOKYO — If you want to know how worried Asian officials are over a sliding US dollar this year, look no further than the frantic scene at Bank of Japan (BOJ) headquarters. Read More |
 |
01.03.23-Michael Burry: "US Is In Recession, Fed Will Cut And Will Cause Another Inflation Spike"
|
 |
01.02.23- Free-Market Capitalism is the Next American Economy
The American experiment has paved the way for millions to escape poverty and build a better life via a free-market system with a constitutional republic that encourages innovation and results in more human flourishing than ever before. Read More |
According to some commentators, to counter inflation interest rates in the US must increase to a level that effectively restrains the economy. It is held that this increase in interest rates does not have to cause a recession if Fed’s policy makers could orchestrate a “soft landing.” The economy is portrayed as a spaceship that occasionally deviates from a path of “stable” economic growth and “stable” prices. All that is required to fix the problem is for the central bank to give a suitable “push” to the economy (i.e., the spaceship) to bring it back to the right growth path. 
There is a little here that is extremely important for everyone and a lot here that is even more important for a privileged few.
If there’s one thing to understand about what’s going on in the political economy today, it is the fundamentals of debt. You do not need to be a bean counter or get too deep into the weeds to get a handle on things.
An often-repeated saying among Arabs, widely believed to be the panacea to our political ills, goes like this: “The right person in the right position” by which we mean that if we insert the most qualified person for a specific job, many of the problems affected would be solved. This is a strong phrase since it seems to be irrefutable. After all, should we otherwise put the “wrong” person in any position? Conversely, should we not create the right positions for the right people? 
The incumbent government's job-one in an election year is to make all news read like we've gone in the right direction, but where are we really headed?
For many years, I’ve described a period that I envisaged to be in the future, in which much of what was considered “normal” would change dramatically.
In 1848, a 29-year-old Sacramento shop owner named Samuel Brannan was tending the cash register at his store when a pair of shoppers asked if they could pay him in gold.
And it's all the economy's fault. Well, that and the fault of everyone who ignored basic truths about the economy in order to price stocks far above all rational sense.
For well over a year, there has been somewhat of a puzzle: How financial conditions, as tracked by broad measures such as the Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index, have been getting looser since March 2023, and are now at the loosest level since November 2021, even though the Fed has hiked policy rates to 5.5% at the top end and 
Yuval Harari is best known as a globalist “philosopher” or “guru” closely tied to the World Economic Forum. He is infamous for his Ted Talks and summit speeches declaring the coming abandonment of personal individualism and independence while elevating AI as the harbinger of a new technological religion. He joyously preaches about the fusion of AI technology with the human body to give certain elitist groups the power of “gods.” His notions of the supposedly infinite abilities of algorithms to influence culture and politics are so overblown they enter into the realm of children’s fantasy. 
How will future historians come at the 2024 presidential election?
Over the next couple of years, pharmacy chain Walgreens will 
Modern monetary theory (MMT) is 
Geopolitical/financial risks are proliferating and becoming more difficult to predict or hedge for a very basic reason:
There was an oblique message buried in a New York Times 
Are we on the verge of an apocalyptic global war in which billions of people could die? Very few people anticipated that World War I would erupt, but it happened anyway. And very few people anticipated that World War II would erupt, but it happened anyway. All throughout human history, there have been wars. Ever since the very beginning, it has just been a matter of time before major powers collide. Unfortunately, even though very alarming warning signals are flashing all around us, most of the population of the western world seems absolutely clueless about what is really going on out there. 
Historic leaders often share something important in common. They are not born great. Their greatness is a result of a lifetime of difficulty and consequential choices.
The Fed just confirmed my thesis.
During a bull market, imbalances build up that seem scary but are not, in the moment, a deal-breaker. It’s only with hindsight that we look back and say, “Oh yeah, that’s where it started to change.” 
There’s been so much happening over the past 24 hours that it’s hard to keep up. The Supreme Court has been releasing several key rulings that will have a major impact on American politics.
The Biden administration and its fawning PR industry, also known as the mainstream media, have over the past year been desperate to explain to ordinary deplorables Americans why the US economy is ackchyually doing "so much better" than most peasants give the 81-year-old's handlers credit for (see "
Valuation extremes combined with macro inflection signals provide generational opportunities to position opposite the crowd for potentially large gains. At Crescat, we live for such times. We continue to believe we are on the cusp of a rare macroeconomic shift, like in 1972 and 2000, where a monumental investment setup exists on both the long and short sides of the market.
If a financial implosion does occur in 2024, as seems increasingly possible, it could actually be a blessing in disguise.
If you were to do nothing but listen to President Biden and the corporate media 
At some point, systems flip from being complicated, which is a challenge to manage, to being complex. Complexity is more than a challenge because it opens the door to all kinds of unexpected crashes and events.
It’s quite possible that economic conditions are 
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
There’s an increasing abundance of skittishness surrounding the future of East and Gulf Coast ports. 
As I write these words, the death toll in the Gaza massacre (not “war”) has surpassed 28,000, of whom some 70% are women and children. As I write these words, nothing has evidently changed in Jewish attitudes, of which roughly 80% of American Jews and 95% of Israeli Jews are satisfied with the brutal assault.
In 234 years of American history, no president has been criminally prosecuted. The entire world knows that the felony and civil charges against Trump are fabricated and concocted. It is obvious that the Democrat Party uses law as a weapon against political opponents just as Stalin did. Democrats are the worst and most dangerous enemy the Constitution and American citizens have ever had. 
The latest inflation figures in the United States look relatively positive, with a slight decline in annualized inflation rates. However, only three items of the CPI components declined in December. 
Do immigrants solve labor shortages?
Over the last several years we have seen commercial real estate values plummet dramatically all over the United States. One of the reasons why this is happening is because millions of Americans started working from home during the pandemic, and many of them never returned to the office once the pandemic subsided. Another reason why this is happening is because there has been a mass exodus of businesses from our core urban areas. Conditions have rapidly deteriorated in many of our largest cities, and it is exceedingly difficult to run a profitable business in the midst of an environment of constant theft and violence. Ultimately, it is very easy to understand why commercial real estate values have crashed, and they will almost certainly go even lower. 
This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving precious metals and the overall economy. Stories include: Global de-dollarization as a major driver of gold prices, gold demand statistics for 2023, and how silver is becoming more industrial by the day.
We have yet to reach a full reckoning of the consequences of the era of easy money, but it’s abundantly clear that it ruined us.
For several days, ever since the supposedly amazing GDP report from quarter four 2023, we’ve been blasted by the media about how great the economy is doing.
“As goes January, so goes the year.”
As it stands right now, it appears like Biden’s entire first term will have been plagued by varying degrees of 
I received an email this past week concerning George Soros’ “Theory Of Reflexivity.”
The severity of the migrant crisis may be new to those who do not live on a bordering state. Yet Texas has been grappling with this issue for years, resulting in countless calls for a secession from the United States or “
Attention! All True Texas Citizens!
With the action seen over the past month, Gold has been locked inside an expected correction phase, with the U.S. stock market still inside a larger 'vacuum' period - one which will take us into the next 'kill zone' date for that market. 
CNBC:
Should any of us be surprised that the news industry is being hit by a massive wave of layoffs? Survey after survey has shown that the American people have lost faith in the mainstream media, and millions of us have decided to turn to other sources for news and information. Mainstream news outlets have been bleeding viewers and readers for years, and now many of the biggest names in the news industry are losing staggering amounts of money. It was only a matter of time before we witnessed large scale layoffs, and now they are here. 
The president 
Capitalism, whether praised or derided, is an economic system and ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and operation for profit.
ETFs just made it easy to buy. Should we? 
He introduces the book on p. 1 in uncompromising terms: 
The latest United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization data shows global food prices have just recorded the biggest annual decline since 2015. This is terrific news for emerging market countries whose governments have been battling high food inflation with mounting risks of social instability. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of globally traded food commodities, averaged around 118.51 at the end of 2023, down 10% from the previous year. 
Is this the year of the 493?
Now that my parents are only half a mile away, long-forgotten memories have flooded back. Thanks to my mother’s unimpeachable cooking skills, I’m again enjoying all the trappings of my youth.
In 2023, we saw the outbreak of a banking crisis (that isn’t over), a new Middle East war break out in Gaza, two states ban Trump from the ballot in the 2024 elections and the mainstreaming of AI, among other things.
The U.S. Department of Energy has made its 
If the U.S. economy really is in “good shape”, then why are so many prominent businesses rushing to permanently shut down locations that were once profitable? As you will see below, U.S. banks are closing thousands of branches and U.S. retailers are closing thousands of stores. If a new golden age of prosperity is dead ahead, that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Of course the truth is that most Americans 
As of this writing, US dollar reserves have fallen by 6.5% as foreign central banks cut ties with the currency. The BRICS countries, especially those in the global South, are leading the charge to depart from the decades-long dominance of the American currency. China and Japan’s central bank shares show the most significant rise in central banks. Interestingly, the Euro is just slightly behind in losing a share in the world currency market. 
When I was a kid, I could never hit a curveball.
The following commentary and analysis is from the December 17th issue of the Short Seller’s Journal. To learn more about this newsletter, follow this link: 
The Biden administration and the corporate media are telling us over and over that the economy is just fine, but the term “silent depression” has been going viral on TikTok.
An economist who focuses on consumer spending has issued a dire warning about the U.S. economy in the coming year.
Here’s something you don’t want to hear from your political leaders, especially in the federal government:
Should market participants be concerned about the possible government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30?
The United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike on 
The debt cycle is something many North Americans have become all too familiar with.
Should stock valuations track this same decline in profits, it's entirely reasonable to expect the stock market to lose 2/3 of its valuation premium. 
That was quite a week we just had in the market. In fact, if you are a news follower, you are probably confused as hell.
U.S. stocks are falling as investors readied for the highly-anticipated two-day Federal Reserve policy meeting.
We’re still living in 2008.
Taking a look at 3 new stories over at Zero Hedge, one might think we’re closing in on WW3. With the most recent one reporting 
Some of America's largest cities could be on the verge of an economic "doom loop" thanks to the crashing office real estate market, according to one Columbia economist.
Can the Wall Street Journal‘s headline writers save America’s juiced-up economy from going bust? They are certainly trying. Check out their lede in Friday’s editions: The Fall in Home Prices May Already Be Over. Fancy that! With mortgage rates headed toward 8%, many readers must have done a double-take when they read this seeming howler. Your editor wondered why the copy desk had not punctuated the headline with three or four exclamation points, lest the story fail to goad potential buyers who have been sitting on the sidelines into action. 
Higher interest rates are absolutely strangling the real estate industry, and there is no relief in sight. The sudden shift from a very low interest rate environment to a much higher interest rate environment has paralyzed sales. As I have discussed 
As the world descends into a much-heralded recession, the surprise will be that interest rates will continue to rise as economic activity contracts. This is not what the economic establishment expects.
US military recruitment crisis rooted in obesity, drug addiction, mental health issues and low educational attainmentThe US military faces an unprecedented rebe a significant factor in declining US military recruitment rates. “Woke” refers to awareness and attention to critical societal facts and issues, especially related to race, gender and social justice. 
No sooner had the BRICS Summit in South Africa ended on Aug. 24 that Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell took the podium at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 25.
Have you heard the good news?
Many of us don’t know whom to support for President. Brain-dead Biden is of course impossible. Donald Trump is better but he supports many bad policies, such as Covid vaccines and high tariffs, and his term as President was almost a total disaster. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is still better, but he is unsound on economics. There is only one person in the United States today who has the intellectual substance, homespun eloquence, charm, and charisma to galvanize the American public, who are tired of politics as usual and want a change. We know he has this ability because he has demonstrated it already in past campaigns, and he is 100% right on all issues. I refer of course to the heroic Dr. Ron Paul. 
Corporate media 
Truly, you’d have to be an oblivious idiot at this point to think the government’s COVID orders are intended to benefit the people. You’d also have to be an idiot to think that N95 masks stop COVID transmission, that social distancing works, or that COVID vaccines prevent infections and transmission.
We aren’t quite there yet, but an enormous credit card debt crisis is definitely brewing. Americans are becoming increasingly dependent on their credit cards to make ends meet from month to month, the percentage of us that are carrying balances from month to month is growing, and the average rate of interest on such balances has risen above 20 percent. If you can possibly avoid it, do not carry credit card balances from month to month, because that will strangle you financially. Unfortunately, our young people are never taught this in school, and so many of them get into deep financial trouble when they become adults. And once you get into deep financial trouble, it can take many years to get out of it. 
Summer trading is sometimes a slow, tedious affair — especially toward the end of August.
Anyone paying attention to NVDA?
If there ever was an “uh-oh” moment for the U.S. economy, it’s coming very soon.
Xi did not even show up to his own keynote speech, and everyone downplayed Brazil's notion of a BRICS currency ... even Brazil!
It’s finally here…
The BRICS Leaders’ Summit is scheduled to begin tomorrow, Aug. 22 in South Africa, which will run through the 24th.
Unexpected things tend to happen when the real source of problems are papered over and then suddenly reality intrudes.
Do you remember what happened in 2008? Many people believe that another historic financial disaster is coming and that it will absolutely devastate the U.S. economy. Earlier this week, I wrote about an investor named Michael Burry that has actually bet 
After sending local capital markets into a tailspin and triggering a currency devaluation 
At the start of August, Fitch Ratings downgraded the US government's top credit rating. Last week, Moody's cut the credit ratings of small and midsized US banks because of higher funding costs, potential regulatory capital weaknesses, and rising risks tied to commercial real estate loans. Now, another week, another possible downgrade, this time of major banks.
No nation clinging to the current "waste is growth / landfill economy" will survive the emergent global polycrisis. 
Lawmakers in Washington seem oblivious to the threat of America’s mounting public debt. For the second time in its history, the United States saw its AAA rating on long-term 
This chart strongly suggests that US Treasury bond yields, widely regarded as the risk-free yardstick against which all other credit is measured are going significantly higher, not stabilising close to current levels before going lower as commonly believed. I conclude that US Treasury bond yields could easily double, and the political class will be powerless to stop them going even higher. The implications for interest rates globally are that they will be forced considerably higher as well. 
As youth the Road Runner cartoon show amused us vastly.
You’re probably aware that Fitch has downgraded the credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+. It was big news last week.
“The West can’t do diplomacy in general, it can’t run its cities or countries except into the ground, its high-tech projects fail almost as a rule, its infrastructure is crumbling, its economies are crumbling, and all public policies seem to have a civilizational suicide as a final goal.”
After pouring more than $100 billion in taxpayer dollars into the black hole known as Ukraine, the neocon war hawks in Washington and London will have a lot of explaining to do when Ukraine implodes into chaos. Poland will likely move in to take a spoil in the western provinces, settling an old score against the Ukrainians, while Russia will take parts of the east. Below, Martin Armstrong explains the ugly history that makes Ukraine the cesspool of corruption that it is today — history of which Americans and Brits are almost completely ignorant. (Notes in parentheses are mine). 
The United Auto Workers is seeking a 46% wage increase over four years as a part of its negotiations with the Detroit Three automakers, according to a page of the union's written demands.
Do things seem “slow” to you this summer? If so, you are definitely not alone. In recent weeks, my wife and I have heard from so many people that are saying that activity at their businesses or organizations has been really slow lately. In other words, less money has been coming in than usual. This has caused a lot of confusion, because when these people turn on their televisions they are told that the U.S. economy is doing just fine. Of course that is 
The bulls are running wild.
Less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. ceased all operations at 12 p.m. Sunday, according to a notice on the gates at its terminals.
The stock market has been up and away this year.
Days after a House hearing on censorship that saw Democrats attempt to prevent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from testifying, a new Harvard-Harris poll showed that he has a higher favorability rating than any other presidential candidate.
I’m on the road early this week.
Company says in plea to judge it will be forced to file for bankruptcy
ESG scoring and mandates remain a subject we have contested since it sprang to life in 2020. The push of “woke activism” on, and by companies, to meet nebulous or artificial standards has led to various bad outcomes.
Mexico’s top diplomat said Friday her country has sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. government expressing concern that Texas’ deployment of floating barriers on the Rio Grande may violate 1944 and 1970 treaties on boundaries and water. 
At the end of June government leaders and think-tank power brokers from around the world met at the 
As a result of data released over the past week (mostly, the last 3 days), it seems clear to me that we may be facing a clear market emergency in COMEX silver futures. I am trying hard not to be alarmist, but what I see alarms the heck out of me – to the point that I believe we are at the most critical juncture in COMEX silver since the peak of prices back in early 1980, when all sorts of emergency measures were enacted to deal with the Hunt Brothers that are debated to this day, 43 years later. 
Qatar was the world’s biggest arms importer in 2022, according to 
Since last March the Federal Reserve has been elevating its target rate — with fantastic abandon.
Inflation is going down! Isn’t that wonderful? When many less educated Americans hear this news, they will think that prices are going down. But that is not true at all. In fact, prices are still going up. They are just going up at a slower rate than they were before. According to the federal government, the Consumer Price Index was only 3 percent higher in June 2023 than it was in June 2022. That sounds like pretty good news, but it is imperative to realize that the formula used for the Consumer Price Index has literally been changed dozens of times over the decades. If the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would still be 
Eventually policy-makers turn the dials to 11 and nothing happens. 
The big, bad tech stocks have dominated the market during the first half of 2023.
Now that debt is rising faster than "growth," and "growth" is dependent on speculative credit-asset bubbles, the collapse of the Keynesian dream looms large. 
And it’s structural. Variable-rate CRE mortgages and much higher rates just speed up the process.
Today we celebrate insurrection.
Today we abandon our focus upon the Ukraine situation. We abandon our focus upon Wall Street. We abandon our focus upon politics, mercifully.
WSJ explains why many white-collar workers are getting the pink slip before other employees. Illustration: Adele Morgan
In this twenty-minute conversation with Investor Talk’s Jan Kneist, 
That didn’t take long. Twelve days after Biden signed the ballyhooed legislation unfreezing the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, the public debt crossed the $32 trillion mark on June 16th. And that was only nine months after it crossed the $31 trillion level in October 2022.
Since its inception, International Man has offered prognostications about what the future will bring – economically, politically and socially. The principle writers of the publication have been at this for decades. Each one began by studying world economics and politics in order to make the best choices as to where to live, where to invest, where to store wealth, etc. Over the years, each one got better at researching, better at reading the signs and, ultimately, better at predicting future events. 
Shudder is an interesting word, in this case, when talking about the economy, it is being used as a verb that means to wobble or shake in not a good way. While the verdict is not yet in, recently there has been more talk about the lag effect coming home to roost. The lag effect suggests that it sometimes takes a while before we witness the effect of an action. When you poison a plant, or tree there is a time lag before the damage you have inflicted upon it becomes obvious. 
Following the collapse of First Republic last week, the 
Every time that they tell us that everything is fine, things just seem to get even worse. This banking crisis was supposed to be “over” after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed. It wasn’t. Then it was supposed to be “over” after First Republic collapsed. It wasn’t. By now, most of you already know about what has been happening to PacWest, Western Alliance, First Horizon and countless other regional bank stocks. In all my years, I have never seen banking stocks fall so quickly. If this avalanche continues to pick up momentum, pretty soon we will have to stop talking about a “banking industry crisis” and start talking about a “banking industry apocalypse”. 
The one thing about the financial world that never ceases to amaze me is how far behind the curve mainstream economists always seem to be. Not long ago we had both Janet Yellen and Paul Krugman, economists supposedly at the front of the pack, both proving to be utterly ignorant (or strategically dishonest) on the effects of central bank stimulus measures and the threat of inflation. In fact, they both consistently denied such a threat existed until they were crushed by the evidence. 
We wrote in our March Wellington Letter that the free market, i.e. the banks, will now do what the Fed has refused to do: Tighten credit! The Fed only hiked interest rates, which actually fuels inflation. Most central banks make that mistake. 
The big news is last night’s release of the new short report on stocks, which indicated a massive 25 million share reduction in the short position on SLV, the big silver ETF, as of the close of business April 14. The short position on SLV fell from 41.5 million shares to 16.3 million shares, the largest by-monthly drop (60%) in history, to the lowest short position on SLV in more than two years – back to the time in Feb 2021 when BlackRock (the trust’s sponsor) amended the trust’s prospectus to include new risk factors warning short sellers to beware of shorting shares due to serious concerns of the availability of physical silver bullion. 
Japan just reported inflation of 3.5%.
Earlier this month, 
It is becoming increasingly clear that the world is losing faith in the United States dollar… and rapidly turning to alternatives. And that’s a huge deal for the United States.
It’s a fact of life that in any group of students, some are likely to be smarter and quicker than others while some just can’t keep up.
Together, these factors generate a self-reinforcing cycle of debt saturation, declining collateral and credit contraction. 
The resulting erosion of collateral will collapse the global credit bubble, a repricing/reset that will bankrupt the global economy and financial system. 
"Capital markets stop panicking when officials start panicking" - Michael Hartnett
Eurasia’s geo-economic integration took a great leap forward as a result of the 
We will enter a world without finance, and it will be a better world, for the economy will no longer be in thrall to the derangement and inequality of parasitic, predatory finance.
Credible gloom and doom
