02.07.23- Where’s Oil Going?
James Rickards

Where are oil prices going? That’s one of the most frequently asked questions (and most difficult to answer) in markets today.

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
James Howard Kunstler

“The White House has taken the entire West in such a direction and speed of triumphalism, arrogance and “egregious” imbecility that there is no going back or reversal possible without a total defeat of the official narrative and the consequent eternal shame.” — Hugo Dionisio

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
Michael Snyder

I can’t take it anymore.  Fake numbers that are released by the government get turned into fake news by the corporate media, and many Americans don’t even realize that they are being conned.  Major news outlets all over the country are breathlessly trumpeting the “blockbuster jobs report” as if it is a sign from heaven that good economic times are ahead.  We are being told that the U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs last month, but that isn’t true.  Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy actually lost 2.5 million jobs in January.  Yes, you read that correctly.  So how in the world does a loss of 2.5 million jobs become a “gain” of 517,000 jobs? Read More

02.03.23- You Think the Global Economy Is Brightening? Beware: The Big Hit Is Yet to Come
Dr. Thorsten Polleit

Relief is spreading among economic analysts and stock market experts. Energy prices are decreasing noticeably. The energy supply this winter seems secure; in Europe, government support for consumers and producers is available if needed. China is turning away from its zero-covid policy, and production is ramping up again. High goods price inflation is still a major concern for consumers and producers, but central banks are delivering at least some interest rate hikes to hopefully reduce currency devaluation. So should we bid farewell to crisis and recession worries? Unfortunately, no. Read More

02.02.23- Legendary ‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry issues an ominous warning after the latest stock market rally: ‘Sell.’
Will Daniel

After a dismal 2022, the stock market has had a red-hot start to the year, with the S&P 500 soaring over 6% in January and tech stocks having their best month since 2001. But Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the housing market in 2007 and 2008, is predicting a dark turn.

“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
Rachel Premack

Demand and output for cardboard boxes and other packaging material fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to data released by the American Forest & Paper Association and Fibre Box Association on Friday.

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
an Escalation in Ukraine
Clint Siegner

It will soon be a year since Russian forces invaded Ukraine. The U.S. has provided Ukraine nearly $100 billion in weapons, cash, and humanitarian assistance. The sanctions imposed on Russia may be even tougher now than during the Cold War.

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
John Rubino

Credible gloom and doom

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
John Rubino

View Video

01.27.23- Collapsing Real Estate Market
James Wesley Rawles

Today, in lieu of my usual economics and investing news and commentary, I’d like to briefly expound a bit on my view of the collapsing real estate market in the United States.

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
Andrea Widburg

I happen to be one who believes that the escalating war in Ukraine is entirely Biden’s fault, that the current Ukraine government is completely corrupt, and that the entire thing, which has seen tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths and the destruction of large swaths of that country, has become a profitable boondoggle for politicians and military contractors. Call me cynical or naïve, but that’s where I am. I also think the whole enterprise has taken on a truly hallucinatory quality, exacerbated by the news today: Putin is negotiating to buy abandoned American weapons from Afghanistan while Biden is sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. We will have armed both sides to the battle. Read More

01.25.23- Ted Oakley; Expect A Mass Die-Off Of Public Companies Later This Year
Adam Taggart

View Video

01.24.23- 2023: Year of the New Gold Bull
Greg Guenthner

Last week, we discussed the market forces behind the 2022 growth meltdown.

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?
Charles Hugh Smith

We’ve all heard about how the dollar’s days as the world’s leading reserve currency are numbered. Much of the world wants a new monetary system that isn’t based on 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

01.21.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: World Economic Forum Calls for Destruction of America’s Middle Class
Kurt Nimmo

Sociopath Chrystia Freeland argues middle class needs to embrace poverty.

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
Alasdair Macleod

Probably the greatest error in modern economics was the abandonment of Say’s law, otherwise known as the law of the markets. In a nutshell, it demonstrated that through the division of labour, production is firmly linked to consumption, and the former is tied to the latter through the medium of money and credit.

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
Dennis Miller

January is time to look ahead for the year. Sadly, way too much depends on the Federal Reserve and world central banks.

Michael Howell writes:

“It has been a bleak year for many investors. Global investors have lost $23tn of wealth…so far in 2022. …. That is equivalent to 22 per cent of global gross domestic product” Read More

01.18.23- All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front
Pepe Escobar

Lights! Action! Reset!

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
you will ever make
Simon Black

At precisely 8:13PM eastern time on the evening of October 28, 2003, a lonely 19-year old schoolboy took to the Internet to complain about the latest love interest who had left him dejected and angry.

“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
David Haggith

When several of the big money-driving voices in financial media and major financial institutions start saying the same thing I am, I start to wonder about myself. Or is it just becoming that obvious now? Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are now saying the stock market is delusional and is headed for a much deeper fall. Read More

01.14.23- Real Wages Fall for the Twenty-First Month as Rent and Food Prices Keep Rising
Ryan McMaken

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 fifteen months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 6.5 percent year over year during December, before seasonal adjustment. That’s the twenty-second month in a row of inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2-percent inflation target, and it’s fifteen months in a row of price inflation above 6.0 percent. Read More

01.13.23- We Won’t Be Fooled Again – Inflation Is Most Definitely Not “Under Control”
Michael Snyder

Inflation is going down!  Let’s all celebrate!  We all knew that when the Federal Reserve began aggressively hiking interest rates it would have an impact on inflation.  Higher rates have caused a new housing crash, they have crushed the tech industry, and they have sparked the biggest wave of layoffs that we have seen since the Great Recession.  We have entered a significant economic downturn, so it was inevitable that the annual rate of inflation would start to moderate.  But as I will explain below, that doesn’t mean that inflation is now “under control”.  The real rate of inflation is much higher than we are being told, and people all over the country are being absolutely crushed by the rising cost of living. Read More

01.12.23- Dip in Mortgage Rates Not Slowing Housing Bust 2: Mortgage Lenders Sing the Blues
Wolf Richter

It just keeps getting worse. 

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:
Awaken or Slumber
Nicholas Creed

As my UK trip draws to a close, I am struck by what a bizarre string of experiences I have had throughout this visit.

I have been overwhelmed with joy upon being reunited with family and friends. Yet I have had and have no more tears to shed. I have felt my soul being nourished from hugging loved ones, being close to them once again, enjoying their company, and reminiscing about the little things. Read More

01.10.23- Scammed!
Jeffrey Tucker

The incredible meltdown of FTX and the Bernie Madoff scam long before should tell us a thing or two about how much the government will protect us against scams. It does not and will not.

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
David Haggith

Surveying just the news that started this year in The Daily Doom, things look bad for the US economy. Worse still, if you dig beneath the few rosy headlines that did greet the year in lighter tones, the bottom falls out quickly, as it does when stepping out of a high-rise window.

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
Economic Bomb Cyclone Ahead?
Christopher Chantrill

First of all, nobody knows what will happen next with the economy. On the one hand our Democratic friends seem to think that their omnibus spending bill and glorious Inflation Reduction Act are already steering us to the green and pleasant land of woke Jerusalem.

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:

Most people under the age of 40 have no financial experience in a world of positive interest rates for most dates of maturity… When Ben Bernanke pushed his new policy [back in 2008], he was flipping all economic and financial logic on its head. Read More

01.06.23- Here’s What Happens in 2023
Brian Maher

The calendar has scrolled to 2023… for good … or ill.

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...
Pick Yer Poison!
Bill Blain

“Sometimes the stock market is quite investment-oriented, and other times it’s almost totally a casino, a gambling parlor — and that existed to an extraordinary degree in the last couple of years, encouraged by Wall Street.”

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
explode Asia’s 2023
William Pesek

Negative growth, high inflation, unsustainable debt and poison politics in the US will all drive investors to dump the dollar

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"
Tyler Durden

In the waning days of 2022, one of the most bearish (and accurate, at least as far as last year was concerned) strategists, SocGen's resident permabear Albert Edwards, laid out what he thinks will be the big surprise of 2023, which will be "a return to deflation fears as headline CPI inflation drops close to, or likely below zero. Investors are already anticipating recession and have an unusually strong preference for bonds." Read More

01.02.23- Free-Market Capitalism is the Next American Economy
Vance Ginn, Ph.D.

America is in the midst of an identity crisis, and it’s probably not the kind you’d think. Our nation is wrecked by an abysmal economy and unhappy people losing confidence in their country. In such unhappiness, people on both sides of the political aisle too often propose “solutions” that grant the government more control of our lives, even though that control is usually the source of the problem.

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