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09.25.20- The Most Dangerous Investing Decision You Can Make
Your choices are these:
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09.24.20- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: California... The Golden State in Utter Decay
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09.23.20- The Layoffs Are Just Beginning
The unemployment rate approached 15% in April and total initial claims for unemployment benefits exceeded 59 million between March and August. This was the worst episode of unemployment since The Great Depression in the early 1930s. Read More |
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09.22.20- "This Kind Of Thing Is Enough To Make One Go To The Pub. Oh, We Can't: It's Past 10pm..."
Gestalt psychology is a school that emphasizes organisms perceive entire patterns or configurations, not merely individual components. The view is sometimes summarized using the adage, "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." Within global markets where the psychology is that sums are made by only looking at the parts, not the whole, I often want to cry “Oy gestalt!” Read More |
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09.21.20- How the Stock Market Got to be Out of Touch with Reality
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09.19.20- This Is How Long the Bubble Will Last
Those policies won’t actually cause inflation, for reasons explained below. But, they will cause bubbles in certain asset classes, especially stocks. There’s a serious question as to whether the central bank “inflationary measures” will actually work. They won’t. Read More |
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09.18.20- China is killing the dollar
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The fires in California and Oregon are not due to climate change. They are due to arson and sheer stupidity on the part of many, including those who are responsible for the environmental stewardship that is supposed to prevent them in the first place. Read More |
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09.16.20- Down-to-Earth Aspects of the US Economy in Near-Real Time
The US economy is completing the sixth month of the Pandemic. So how is the recovery going, as seen by the near-real-time indicators that have sprung up as a result of the Pandemic? The raw unadjusted data of these indicators compare daily or weekly data this year to how it was just before the Pandemic, or how it was at the same time last year. There is some roughness in this data. For example, this year, Labor Day fell on September 7; last year, it fell on September 2 (prior week). So there are some wild fluctuations as Labor Day data gets compared to non-Labor Day data. Independence Day was similar. But that’s raw data. Read More |
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09.15.20- Isn't It Obvious We Need a New System?
Isn't it obvious that we need an alternative economic system that isn't controlled by corporations, the government and the central bank for the exclusive benefit of insiders and elites? Isn't it obvious that the current system has failed the majority of participants, and hence the ubiquitous sensations of: Read More |
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09.14.20- Economic Doom Due to the Covid Response Is on the Horizon and Beyond
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09.12.20- Teetering FAANG Stocks
In 2018, they shivered, as fears of trade war escalation took a big chunk out of their profits. These are just two recent examples of many that have caused uncertainty for the FAANG stocks. Yet so far, nothing has really impacted them. Which leads us to today…Read More |
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09.11.20- University Study Concludes: Fire Did Not Bring Down Building 7 on 9/11
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09.10.20- A September Stock Market Crash?
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09.08.20-Sound Money Is Key to Defending Our Liberties
The sound-money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.1 It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realise that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of right.2 Read More |
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09.07.20- Holiday Rant: “Are ‘we the people’ going to let that happen?”
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09.05.20- Weekend Rant: The Hard Math of Demography
The early classical economists — Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Marshall, and others — were keenly interested in the role that the young and the aged played in building wealth. Living at a time when birth rates were high and populations were expanding, they wanted to determine how demographic growth changed wages, savings, and output; which classes benefited; and whether a larger population was a long-term blessing. Read More |
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09.04.20- Signs Of Trouble As We Make The Turn Toward The Fall?
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09.03.20- Negative Interest Rates Have Arrived
We are often warned that negative interest rates are an approaching menace — not an immediate menace. Yet are negative rates already reality in the United States? Has the unholy day already arrived? Today we don the sleuth’s cap, step into our gumshoes… and unearth evidence that negative interest rates are not the future menace… but the present menace. Read More |
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09.02.20- United Airlines To Slash 16,370 Jobs
United said, in an internal memo, seen by Fox Business, that it will furlough 16,370 workers on Oct. 1. This includes 2,850 pilots, 6,920 flight attendants, and 2,010 technicians. Read More |
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09.01.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Ron Paul On The "CDC Bombshell" -
The rest had on average 2.6 serious additional diseases, with the addition in most cases of extreme advanced age. Read More |
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08.31.20- Much Worse Is Coming
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08.29.20- The U.S. Will See a
That was the response of a friend in the investment industry who reads my work. He obviously took issue with my claim about what’s driving all asset prices. The claim? That what you’re witnessing in financial markets is the decline of paper money relative to precious metals. This “monetary regime change” is driven by government debts over 100% of GDP and rising annual government deficits. Read More |
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08.28.20- America's Coming Double Dip
The double dip is not a dance. It is the time-honored tendency of the US economy to relapse into recession after a temporary recovery. Over the years, it has happened far more often than not. Notwithstanding frothy financial markets, which currently are discounting the nirvana of an uninterrupted V-shaped recovery, there is a compelling case for another double dip in the aftermath of America’s devastating COVID-19 shock. Read More |
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08.27.20- "Blind Hypoxic Euphoria" - What The Market Is Missing
Stock markets continue to grind higher. Why? There are reasons to be cheerful – global earnings haven’t been a bleak as feared, economies are posting some stronger than expected numbers, and the absolute numbers around the pandemic are improving in terms of better outcomes and fewer deaths. There are even a few analysts claiming we’re still headed towards a V-Shaped Recovery – although it won’t now be until mid 2021 – which sounds pretty much their best-case scenario is one year missing from Global Growth. Read More |
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08.26.20- What Are You Going To Do
The official response, tremendous monetary stimulus by the central banks paired with massive fiscal stimulus from national legislatures, has been pitched as “saving the system”. Read More |
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08.25.20- Beloved Country. Unloved Hedge.
Not this time. I hated every minute I spent working on this article. There are many reasons for this. A few times, as I wrote, I got close to a line I don’t like to cross – the politics line. I rarely discuss politics even with my friends. I have occasional political discussions with my kids (I try to show them all sides). I don’t allow broadcasts of political debates in IMA hallways. They don’t have the intellectual rigor we require in our research. They bring unwanted toxicity, resolve nothing, and nobody’s mind ever gets changed. Read More |
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08.24.20- Global Bankruptcies Soar Despite Trillions In Liquidity
The fallacy of the “lives or the economy” argument is evident now that we see that countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Austria, Sweden or Holland have been able to preserve the business fabric and the economy while doing a much better job managing the pandemic than countries with severe lockdowns. Read More |
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08.22.20- Weekend Rant: Governments Are Faking It, And Copying Each Other
In the course of two weeks, traditional freedoms were zapped away in nearly all developed countries. Read More |
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08.21.20- 2020 Is An Economic Nightmare – And Things Just Got Even Worse
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08.20.20- As the Bubble Slowly Pops, the Economic Chain Reaction Is Now in Progress
Much has been written about the economic consequences of covid-19, yet, just as in many of the analyses of the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, the years of accumulating debt preceding the event do not attract the attention they deserve. Covid-19—or to be more precise, the lockdown—has initiated a cascading liquidation of the debt bubble that has been building for a generation. From the early 1980s, each recession has been responded to with iteratively lower interest rates. Read More |
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08.19.20- The Great Election Fraud: Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Election?
And so it begins again, the never-ending, semi-delusional, train-wreck of an election cycle in which the American people allow themselves to get worked up into a frenzy over the misguided belief that the future of this nation depends on who we elect as president. Read More |
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08.18.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Trump Agonistes
It would be a remarkable political feat, on par with his stunning upset in 2016. A global pandemic (however statistically dubious) ravages the country, while riots ravage major US cities. The US economy produces a third less than it did a year ago, 40 million people are out of work and dependent on federal benefits, and 60 percent of all restaurants may go under. Millions of Americans will not pay rent, mortgages, or credit card bills for the foreseeable future. Millions of their kids will not go to school at all, or will simply stare at their teachers on Zoom. Others wear face shields and sit behind plastic screens at their desks. College football, a religion in America, may well be canceled altogether. Trump’s own Manhattan is a ghost town. And the media is intensely aligned against him. Read More |
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08.17.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Jefferson on the Family and Liberty
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08.15.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Selloff
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08.14.20- An Unexpected Systemic Crisis Is for Sure
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08.13.20- Could Wall Street Lose the Election?
While the corporate media is focused on the presidential election, perhaps the more interesting question is: could Wall Street Lose the election? That is, could Wall Street face potentially fatal restrictions regardless of who wins? If this seems farfetched, consider the history of abrupt social-political-financial turn-arounds that surprised the mainstream. Off the top of my head I would point to Big Tobacco and environmental controls on Big Industry. Read More |
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08.12.20- This Isn’t Going To Be Good At All
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08.11.20- The Economy Is Mortally Wounded
We all know the movie scene in which the character is wounded but dismisses it as no big deal, and then lurches into the closing sequence where we discover the wound was not inconsequential, it was mortal, and the character expires. That's a fair depiction of the economy--both the U.S. and the global economy.The rapt audience is assured it's just a flesh wound and the character will soldier on, teeth nobly gritted, and that sets up our surprise when he/she tragically expires in the climatic scene. Read More |
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08.10.20- "The Brutal Reality Of Slowdown
This morning’s opening quote isn’t an independent assessment of the Morning Porridge – but is lifted from a newspaper article on Artificial Intelligence. It ends on a very scary tag: the AI is asked if it is conscious and responds:
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08.08.20- The Origins of the Dollar's Value
Let us try another approach. Demand for a good arises from its perceived benefit. For instance, people demand food because of the nourishment it offers them. Likewise, people demand money not for direct use in consumption, but in order to exchange it for other goods and services. Money is not useful in itself, but because it has an exchange value—it is exchangeable in terms of other goods and services. Read More |
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08.07.20- Raoul Pal: ‘It May Not Be Worth Owning Any Asset Other Than Bitcoin’
CEO and founder of Real Vision Raoul Pal says his “conviction levels” in Bitcoin are rising on a daily basis as he compares the crypto asset to traditional investments on various timescales. Applying economic cycle theory in a series of charts posted to Twitter on Aug. 6, the former Goldman Sachs fund manager stated that although many investors choose gold as an alternative to fiat, Bitcoin (BTC) has been the only asset in the world to “offset the growth of the G4 balance sheet.” The G4 refers to the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank. Read More |
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08.06.20- The Unraveling Will Accelerate
The system appears stable until a catalyst pushes it off the cliff. Catalysts come in a variety of forms, from the apparently modest “straw that breaks the camel’s back” to a broad awakening that the status quo simply isn’t capable of adapting successfully to new realities. Read More |
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08.05.20- China Will Soon Be Able To Close Off The Straits Of Hormuz And The Red Sea
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08.04.20- The Dollar Standard
As commentators focus on the hospitalisations of two Gulf monarchs, and permutate likely succession issues, they may miss the wood for the succession trees: Of course, the death of either the Emir of Kuwait (91 years old) or King Salman of Saudi Arabia (84 years old) is a serious political matter. King Salman’s particularly has the potential to upturn the region (or not). Yet Gulf stability today rests less on who succeeds, but rather on tectonic shifts in geo-finance and politics that are just becoming visible. Time to move on from stale ruminations about who’s ‘up and coming’, and who’s ‘down and out’ in these dysfunctional families. Read More |
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08.03.20- "Massive Consequences Are Coming..."
A new month and what new madness for markets is the question? Non Farm Payrolls is the big one due on Friday… What will it tell us about the state of the US economy and indicate for the globe? Read More |
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08.01.20- We Are Experiencing Economic Devastation On A Scale That America Has Never Seen Before
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07.31.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Martial Law Is Unacceptable Regardless Of The Circumstances
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07.30.20- Why Are There so Few Female CEOs?
Despite all the efforts of equalization, women in high-ranking corporate positions are still exceedingly rare. But they are almost as rare in the dredges of society – and the reasons for both run deeper than sexism. It is more than passing curious that at a time when women constitute roughly half the workforce, and are in the actual majority in terms of earning college degrees, there are still so few female CEOs. The distaff side accounts for CEOs in only 167 out of 3,000 large companies, which translates into a rather modest 5.5 percent of the total. Read More |
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07.29.20- Silver’s Biggest Weekly Gain in 40 Years
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When billions of people are forced to hunker down at home for months on end, unable to visit their favorite restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theme parks or other leisure venues, they tend to drink fewer soft drinks, as the Coca-Cola Company can attest. In the second quarter, when roughly a third of the world population was put through some form of lockdown, the company’s global revenues slumped 28% year-over-year, to $7.2 billion. It was its largest drop in quarterly revenue in more than 30 years. Read More |
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07.27.20- Europe Bails Out Its Failed States with “Common” (i.e., German) Bonds
The adoption of a common currency was just the first, politically easiest, step in a process that would eventually – its architects hoped – culminate in something like the United States, where a bunch of different geographic and cultural entities are subordinate to a central government that handles war, diplomacy, and finance. Read More |
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07.25.20- A Lost Year – Where Do You Go From Here?
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07.24.20- The Numbers Tell Us That The ‘Economic Recovery’ Is Dead And Businesses Are Failing At a Staggering Pace
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07.23.20- “Don’t Fight the Narrative”
Joe Biden has a substantial lead over President Trump in the polls. But Biden’s platform is not what you would call market friendly. For example, it calls for a 39.6% tax rate on dividends and capital gains. But the stock market is near all-time highs again, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average nearing 27,000, the S&P over 3,200 and the Nasdaq actually at record highs. Read More |
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07.22.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Lincoln Destroyed the United States
Lincoln destroyed the federal republic established by the founding fathers, and he destroyed the Constitution that protected it. He violated every provision of, and every Amendment to, the Constitution. He then rewrote, in effect, the Constitution and left the 10th Amendment out. Read More |
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07.21.20- Brown Weeds, Not Green Shoots
That was the ubiquitous phrase used by White House officials and TV talking heads in 2009 to describe how the U.S. economy was coming back to life after the 2008 global financial crisis. The problem was we did not get green shoots, we got brown weeds. The economy did recover but it was the slowest recovery in U.S. history. After the green shoots theory had been discredited, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner promised a “recovery summer” in 2010. Read More |
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07.20.20- Welcome To The Crazed, Frantic Demise Of Finance Capitalism
When scams start unraveling, the scammers become increasingly frantic to maintain the illusion of legitimacy and the delusion of guaranteed gains that are the lifeblood of every scam. One sure sign that the flim-flam is about to collapse is the manic rise of FOMO, fear of missing out, as the scammers jam the Ponzi scheme's stellar returns to new extremes. Read More |
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07.18.20- Humpty Dumpty System is Irreparable
So just like Humpty Dumpty, the system has already had a big fall. But the world still believes that this is all a fairytale with a happy ending. No one wants to recognise that Humpty is totally broken and irreparable. Read More |
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07.17.20- Calibrating The Craziness
There is no doubt that public policy is part of the equation. While overwhelming policy responses to the Covid-19 related lockdowns certainly affected the markets, the Fed didn’t force anybody to do anything either. The key to managing through this is understanding what has happened and why. Read More |
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07.15.20- Where Markets are Still Free
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07.14.20- A Serious Message From Chris Martenson
Like a windstorm toppling a hollowed-out tree, SARS-CoV-2 didn’t cause the current recession so much as it exposed how rotten things already were. Even before SARS-CoV-2, households were struggling. Far too many were limping along without any savings at all, one crisis away from financial ruin. Read More |
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- Pledge of Allegiance, with a revision made in 1923 Conservatives are generally quick to point out that America is a republic, not a democracy. But what really is the difference, and are they even right? Read More |
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07.11.20- The Insane U.S. Budget Deficit
These actions are not without controversy, and you’re about to read one reason why… The recent pandemic and the resulting lockdowns have added a new dimension to this year’s federal deficit. Uncle Sam has had to go on a spending binge to keep things afloat. But nothing like the “spending binges” of the past few years. Read More |
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07.10.20- ‘What Were You Thinking?’ Part Deux
At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking? Read More |
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07.09.20- Total Market Insanity: Toyota vs. Tesla
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07.08.20- The U.S. Economy Hasn’t Experienced Anything Like This Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s
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07.07.20- Investing in a World Gone “Covidious”
In Agora founder Bill Bonner’s take: wandering through life facelessly suspended “between six feet apart and six feet under?” In a country that locks down its healthy and productive citizens, while refusing even to bother, let alone lock up, crazed mobs of masked arsonists and burglars in the streets? Read More |
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07.06.20- Year Zero
It’s the Fourth of July, and revolution is in the air. Only in America would it look like this: an elite-sponsored Maoist revolt, couched as a Black liberation movement whose canonical texts are a corporate consultant’s white guilt self-help manual, and a New York Times series rewriting history to explain an election they called wrong. Read More |
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07.04.20- Important Update: ER Doc –
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07.03.20- Prices are going to rise - and fast!
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07.02.20- Great news from the most prosperous nation on earth
The national government under its dictator Robert Mugabe had spent years confiscating private property– real estate, businesses, factories, bank deposits, etc. And unsurprisingly, this had a disastrous effect on the economy. Read More |
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07.01.20- The Insanity Of The Political Left And The Balkanization Of The US
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06.30.20- Forget the V, W or L Recovery: Focus on N-P-B
The fantasy of a V-shaped recovery has evaporated, and expectations for a W or L-shaped recovery are increasingly untenable. So forget V, W and L; the letters that will shape the future are N, P, B: there is No Plan B. All the hopes for a recovery were based on a quick return to the economy that existed in late 2019. All the bailouts and stimulus programs were based on this single goal: a quick return to The Old Normal. This was Plan A. Read More |
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06.29.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: You Don’t Have To Take the Gates Vaccine
The decision to vaccinate will likely be the biggest healthcare decision any American will ever make in their lifetime. Will Americans voluntarily line up and get immunized against the COVID-19 coronavirus? The vaccine will have been rushed to market. All of its side effects won’t be known till millions of Americans have been vaccinated. Read More |
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06.27.20- V-Shaped Narrative Dies As Commercial Real Estate Bust Accelerates
With that being said - the V-shaped recovery narrative is imploding - as many on Wall Street indiscriminately bought stocks (some used picking Scrabble letters to buy) as their belief in the Federal Reserve's money-printing would lift the economy out of one of the worst downturns since the 1930s. Read More |
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06.26.20- The Looming Bank Collapse
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06.25.20- Virus pummels commercial real estate, could end long boom
Hotels, restaurants and stores that closed in March have seen only a partial return of customers, and many may fail. Commercial landlords have already reported an increase in missed rent payments. They expect vacancies to rise through the end of the year. Read More |
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06.24.20- Not a silk purse…
Stock markets are determined to surge. The World Bank’s Carmen Reinhart is warning about the dangers of confusing rebound with recovery. European PMIs rose spectacularly, but remain far below normal. JP Morgan is talking about the sharpest, deepest and shortest recession on record. The US Treasury head is pontificating about further fiscal stimulus. There is a massive bubble around Tech stocks – a bubble within a bubble within a bubble as some describe it. Every single senior market talking-head is warning of dangers ahead. The new-minted day-trading hot-shots scream buy, buy, buy! (Which will likely morph into: “bye, bye!” fairly soon.) Read More |
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“I do think it’s something that happens sooner rather than later,” the economist told MarketWatch during a Monday-afternoon interview. Read More |
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06.22.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: George Floyd Was Not Killed By Police
Think about this for a minute. What becomes of a society in which facts do not matter? The US media, Democrat Party, white liberals, and the sorry excuse for a leftwing are so primed for “white racism” that they jumped to their desired conclusion and egged on riots and looting that resulted in massive property damage in multiple cities, some deaths, many injuries, and much damage to racial relations. Read More |
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05.20.20- The crisis goes up a gear
The most important mistake economists and financial watchers make is to assume events and prices tomorrow are simply projections of those of today. It is the basis of all economic and financial modelling. Yet despite the hard lessons of experience economic forecasters persist with their misleading models. Nowhere is the failure of linear projection from the past more important than in the lifeblood common to everything. While knowing that state-issued currencies change in their utility over time, almost no one expects their demise, other perhaps at some point in the far distant future. But what if this generally linear expectation is as wrong as all other forecasting models? Read More |
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06.19.20- One weird sign of trouble
They grew up, lived, worked, and retired, all in the same place. And that was normal. Travel and relocation didn’t really become commonplace until after World War II. But even then, the most common reason people moved was because of a job. Read More |
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06.18.20- Retail Sales Headlines Are
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06.17.20- Trust No One
On the other hand, you should never trust anyone or anything that hasn’t given you good reason to do so, and if someone or something gives you good reason not to trust them, you should never forget that. The more power a person or institution has in society, the less trustworthy they tend to be. I don’t say this because it’s fun to be cynical, I say this because my life experience has demonstrated its accuracy. Read More |
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06.16.20- A dollar crash is virtually inevitable, Asia expert Stephen Roach warns
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06.15.20- This Is Why We Are Facing A 6 Week Countdown To Immense Economic Despair…
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06.13.20- “Trash Stock” Speculation Signals Dangerous Trend
While not perfect, we can add an increase in “trash stock” speculation as another potential signal for the peak of the market cycle. That signal may have arrived, according to ZeroHedge: In nearly every market cycle, speculation in low-quality, virtually valueless and literally bankrupt stocks, marks a market top. Read More |
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06.12.20- Rabobank: So Silly It Hertz
I joke, of course. Yet that is what a host of financial market participants new and old will be thinking or hoping as they wake following a trading session which saw the Dow -6.9%, 10-year Treasury yields down 17bp at one point (now up 3bp to 0.70%), and the USD surge the most in two months against many crosses. Read More |
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06.11.20- No, The U.S. Economy Will Definitely Not Be Returning To “Normal”. In Fact, Things Will Soon Get Even Worse.
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06.10.20- A Crash in the Dollar Is Coming
Already stressed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. living standards are about to be squeezed as never before. At the same time, the world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. Currencies set the equilibrium between these two forces — domestic economic fundamentals and foreign perceptions of a nation’s strength or weakness. The balance is shifting, and a crash in the dollar could well be in the offing. Read More |
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06.09.20- Rabo: "Insolvent US Companies Should Take The Fed's New Bailout Loans
The S&P is now up for the year. Which is pretty much what one would expect against the backdrop of the World Bank calling a deep global recession, the worst US economic downturn since the 1930s, and the worst civil unrest since 1968. Regardless, companies with no income but cool names are up. Openly bankrupt firms are being panic bid. Retail money is pouring in to the market; risk parity funds are pouring in too as volatility comes down; and market shorts have largely been covered, while soon we will get the next leg-up as we actually go long. Read More |
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06.08.20- America’s Moving Toward
Where next? How about an 80% crash from here on the S&P 500? Maybe you think the Federal Reserve won’t let that happen. But consider this… Wall Street Perversity The initial down moves from the 1929 and 2000 crashes were matched by almost identical up moves. It was only after those huge dead cat bounces that the real bear market took hold. Read More |
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06.06.20- As Economies Reopen, the US Dollar Faces This Triple Threat
Let’s look at three recent developments. Big Bank Bets Against the Dollar Now that most state economies have at least started to reopen, Goldman Sachs is betting against the dollar, according to a recent CNBC article Read More |
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06.05.20- The Coming Bond and Real Estate Collapse and Where the Next Bubble Will Be
What do you think will cause central banks to lose control and for interest rates to head higher? Doug Casey: Even with the Fed bailing out major institutions—which it will continue to do, just like back in 2008–2009—the fundamentals underlying many businesses are so bad that a lot of them are going to collapse. I’m not just talking about the obvious candidates—retail, restaurants, airlines—but across the board. Read More |
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06.04.20- To Cure Every Corrupt Industry (Including Law Enforcement), the Solutions are the Same
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06.03.20- Key Economic Indicators Are Weirdly Inverted. It’s a Warning Sign.
The inversion came in the form of figures showing Americans’ collective income rising by double-digits, even as tens of millions of people lost jobs, incomes, and businesses. It’s a statistical oddity caused by Congress’ massive infusion of cash into the economy. It suggests that the economy may be even more precarious than previously believed, because when government help dries up, there will be less purchasing power supporting the broader economy. Read More |
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06.02.20- Think Coronavirus Caused the Crash? These Two Charts Beg to Differ
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06.01.20- We're Living The Founding Fathers' Nightmare: America Is Corrupt To The Core
The Founding Fathers were wary of institutional threats to liberty and the citizenry's sovereignty, which included centralized concentrations of power (monarchy, central banks, federal agencies, etc.) and the tyranny of corruption unleashed by small-minded, self-interested, greedy grifters who saw all elected offices and positions of government influence as nothing more than a means to increase their own private wealth. Read More |
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05.30.20- Weekend Rant: As The World Burns
Decades of unfairness are now boiling over in the United States in the form of protests, riots, burning buildings and violence. Minneapolis is on fire – literally – and the unrest has spread to numerous other major cities. Read More |
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05.29.20- There Will Be A Lot More Rioting, Looting And Civil Unrest As The U.S. Economy
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05.28.20- An Economy That Cannot Allow Stocks to Decline Is Too Fragile To Survive
Feast your eyes on the chart below of the Nasdaq 100 stock market Index, which is dominated by the six FAAMNG stocks: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Google which now account for over 20% of the U.S. stock market’s capitalization. Read More |
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05.27.10- The “Lockdown” Has Turned America Into a Despotic, Cash-Strapped Basket-Case
Economic activity across the country has collapsed, GDP is shrinking at the fastest pace on record, and the economic data is worse than anytime in history. Every sector of the economy is contracting and every economic indicator is pointing down. According to economist Nouriel Roubini, the country is headed towards a decade of “depression and debt”, and that is probably an understatement. Read More |
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05.26.20- America Is Dead and Buried
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05.25.20- Holiday Rant: The Slippery Slope to Despotism: Paved with Lockdowns, Raids and Forced Vaccinations
You have no rights. That’s the lesson the government wants us to learn from this COVID-19 business. Well, the government is wrong. Read More |
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05.22.20- CRITICAL Price Level Could Prompt A BIG MOVE In The Stock Market After Holiday
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05.21.20- "Somebody Is Dumping Everything": Mystery Investor Pukes $333M In Real Estate ETF In Dark Pool Trade
We've found at least one investor who doesn't want to stick around and find out. Read More |
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05.20.20- Modern Monetary Theory:
How many articles have you read lately that started off with a variation of the phrase, “These are strange times”? It’s the understatement of the millennium. Before the coronavirus crisis, if we saw someone in a grocery store wearing a face mask, we might casually wonder, “What’s wrong with him?” Today, if you walk into a grocery story without a face mask, people will indignantly wonder and sometimes ask out loud, “What the hell’s wrong with him?” Read More |
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05.19.20- Another week, another $3 trillion bailout
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05.18.20- Our Indefensible Media
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05.16.20- Overpriced Stocks May Be Bubble
But now, there’s one additional challenge being considered by billionaire David Tepper: over-inflated stock prices:
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05.15.20- The Biggest Economic Threat Today
Is a higher evil possible? Thus we are informed:
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05.14.20- Total Catastrophe of
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05.13.20- The Worst Is Yet to Come: Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing
That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot. Read More |
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05.12.20- Five Viral Lessons
For thousands of years, people who lived through what we call “history” didn’t realize it. We are the exceptions. We’re seeing history and we know it. The Vietnam War was certainly historic, but the coronavirus killed more Americans in the last two months than died in that long conflict. The Great Depression was historic but by some indicators we are well on the way to matching it. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo missions were historic, but right now even more massive, world-changing technology and biotechnology are being hastily developed under pressure. Read More |
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05.11.20- The Worst Jobs Report in History
Today’s unemployment figures were not as cataclysmic as feared. Consensus came in at 22 million. Here is the bad news: Today’s unemployment figures were cataclysmic nonetheless. Read More |
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05.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: No Trust: The Tree of Liberty is Parched
The nanny state, aided and abetted by a corporate news media thirsty for scared viewers confined to their homes, is about to jumpstart the nagging micro-management to level-10 warp speed – with the help of the neoliberal propaganda arms of the establishment formerly known as the free press. The rotten neoliberal 4th estate and the soulless cowards that staff them have to go. Read More |
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05.08.20- 52% Of Small Businesses "Expect To Be Out Of Business Within Six Months";
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05.07.20- Don’t Bet on America
Countries, like individuals, make mistakes. And they have their seasons. It was a bad idea to bet against America throughout most of the 20th century. That, of course, is when Warren Buffett got the idea. But this is the 21st century. America’s capital industries are losing value. Its GDP growth is slowing. Its government – technically insolvent already – prints $1 million PER SECOND to cover its deficits. Its military is engaged in pointless meddles all over the world. Its menfolks’ life expectancy is falling. Its Swamp is rising. Read More |
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05.06.20- This “Cure” for the Economy
Red states are generally more willing to reopen their economies, while harder-hit coastal blue states are generally more reluctant to open theirs. Read More |
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05.05.20- Stocks Bottomed and Rallied 30%
The announcement was historic in nature: never before in its 107-year history had the Fed bought corporate bonds before. IN fact, it was technically illegal for the Fed to do this as the Federal Reserve Act of 1933 expressly forbid the Fed from buying corporate bonds and other risk-assets. Read More |
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04.04.50- Why Assets Will Crash
The increasing concentration of the ownership of wealth/assets in the top 10% has an under-appreciated consequence: when only the top 10% can afford to buy assets, that unleashes an almost karmic payback for the narrowing of ownership, a.k.a. soaring wealth and income inequality: assets crash. Read More |
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05.02.20- The Market Isn’t Done Falling
It wasn’t a lucky wild guess, but the conclusion I came to after putting together the different pieces to see the big picture, which is what we do at Crisis Investing. Read More |
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05.01.20- "It's A Crock Of S**t!" - Here's Why I am so Furious This Morning
The Coronavirus has completely turned the global economy on its head. It will create the most profound changes to the way we live and our future prospects – we are all beginning to realise that. There is not going to be a V-Shaped recovery. Many lives will be shattered and ruined in its wake. Yes, what I saw yesterday confirms two terrible truths we’ve long denied: Read More |
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04.30.20- No American Will Be Spared from Impending Public Pension Bailouts
The truth of the matter is that they had screwed up and wanted U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill. This situation left a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans. Read More |
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04.29.20- The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s
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04.28.20- BREAKING: White House Eyes Second Round Of Direct Payments To Americans
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters on the White House driveway that those who qualify could receive another check. Read More |
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04.27.20- How the Unicorn Blowup & Oil Bust Bleed into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities
The office segment of the commercial real estate market – and the debt and the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that are backed by it – are going through serious gyrations on a combination of factors. Companies have figured out how to make work-from-home manageable. Other companies are moving out, leaving buildings vacant, or are deferring rent payments. Read More |
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04.25.20- Weekend Rant:
One magazine that lingered, Chronicles, was a mild and not very exciting voice, but recent issues under the new editorship of Paul Gottfried have resurrected trenchant writing and analysis of America’s perilous degeneration into a Tower of Babel. Read More |
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04.24.20- Business Owners Understand Why the Economy Can't Just Be "Reopened"
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04.23.20- Trump Says "No" To World Money
This was more than just rhetoric. It was a clinical description of a pattern of worsening crises on an approximately 10-year tempo, along with escalating bailouts. Read More |
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04.22.20- "Negative" Oil?
I made the comment on Saturday’s call, “we had negative interest rates, now we wait for negative oil prices”. I received a few questions because the negative price of anything makes no sense right? Well actually it does. Because demand has dropped so precipitously and production has continued unabated, supply is piling up. In the real world this is a huge problem because the oversupply must be stored somewhere. Oil is now being stored on previously empty tankers because land based storage facilities are overflowing. Read More |
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04.21.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What if the Lockdown Was All
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04.20.20- Is Private Equity Having Its Minsky Moment?
Today I’m going to write about how private equity is reacting to the pandemic and the bailouts. PE is heavily indebted, and therefore is at high risk in a shock. I’m going to explore PE’s vulnerability, and how the industry is engaged in a political strategy to repurpose the Federal Reserve to its ends. I’ll also explore whether their strategy can work. Read More |
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04.18.20- Coronavirus in the U.S.:
Fox News and the right-wing media trust Trump’s instincts. They believe the medical bureaucrats are trying to bring him down. But we are in a credulous age. People are ready to believe anything. Read More |
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04.17.20- The looming derivative crisis
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04.16.20- Will it be an Inflationary or Deflationary Depression?
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04.15.20- Coronavirus And The Coming Financial Revolution
Already, economies around the world are shutting down. The federal reserve has pumped trillions into the United States economy in just a matter of days. Global supply chains have collapsed as entire Chinese industries went dark. And this is just the first stage. We’re heading into a year’s long recession that will have far-reaching consequences, some of which we can predict with near certainty, and some of which will be entirely unpredictable. Read More |
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04.14.20- Total system failure will give rise
Is the world on a collision course with the financial and economic equivalent of a meteor impact with shock wave? Fractal illustration: AFP Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility. Read More |
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04.13.20- Buy The Tumor, Sell the News
No, buy the tumor, sell the news ™ is not a typo: the stock market is a lethal tumor in our economy and society. Buy the rumor, sell the news encapsulates the old traders’ wisdom that markets rise on the sizzle of hope, promises, projections, Federal Reserve pimping (see below), tax cuts, etc. etc. etc., not on the actual steak of sales and profits. Read More |
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04.11.20- Markets and Black Swans
After the collapse and subsequent rescue, I chatted with one of the LTCM partners who ran the firm about what went wrong. I was familiar with markets and trading strategies, but I was not expert in the highly technical applied mathematics that the management committee used to devise its strategies. Read More |
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04.10.20- The Greatest Financial Crisis & Global Hyperinflation That Will Spread Like Coronavirus
A Hyperinflationary Depression has always been the inevitable end to the biggest financial bubble in history. And this time it will be global. Hyperinflation will spread from country to country like Coronavirus. It could start anywhere but the most likely first countries are the US and the EU or ED (European Disunion). They will quickly be followed by many more like Japan and most developing countries. Like CV it will quickly jump from country to country with very few being spared. Read More |
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04.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Michael J. Burry (The Weird Genius in the Movie “The Big Short”): “End the Lockdown”
The movie The Big Short was inspired by the true story of Michael J. Burry, the weird and slightly autistic hedge fund manager who shorted the mortgage bond market in 2007 (his role was played by Christian Bale). Read More |
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04.08.20- The Greatest Idiot...
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04.07.20- The global food supply chain wasn’t designed for this
The situation was so alarming that the CDC in the United States set up a special task force in 1982 to study the condition. Read More |
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04.06.20- The JackPot Chronicles Scenario 1: Force Majeure
We are frequently told that there exists some manner of “Social Contract” to which we are implicitly bound by virtue of being alive. This implied Social Contract confers legitimacy upon the institutions that order our world, the national governments, the central banks, the miltary and police. And by extension certain communication outlets and media are endowed with a status of official curators over the narratives around institutional power. Read More |
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04.04.20- Government and Economics
It's that simple. Really. Read More |
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04.03.20- What Is America Going To Look Like With Tens Of Millions Of Unemployed Workers?
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04.02.20- Italy's Communist Recipe for Disaster
Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago. Read More |
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04.01.20- Is the U.S. Able to Handle COVID-19? – Global Prospects Hang on This Question
As the lockdowns across Europe began to bite, the U.S. Establishment began its ‘wobble’. The more elegant amongst élite circles pointed to a dangerous mis-match in timelines: The medical advice has been: ‘lockdown until the virus begins to subside’, but that advice encompassed too, the possibility of Covid-19 returning later in the year in a Phase Two, thus requiring further personal distancing. Hands shot high in absolute horror amongst some business and Wall Street leaders: Could the U.S. economy sustain such a prospect? Might not a long shutdown inflict permanent damage? Would there even be an economy left – to resurrect – in the wake of ‘peak Coronavirus’? Read More |
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03.31.20- The Economic Depression Of 2020: Many Of The Restaurants, Bars And Retailers That Have Closed Will Never Open Again
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03.30.20- Forced Liquidation
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03.28.20- No, You Do Not Hear the Fat Lady Warming Up
Forget that. You cannot have every supply chain in the world chopped in two and have a recession. A depression was baked into the cake before the Corona popped out of the six-pack. The US government dumping a $6 trillion dollar bailout for their buddies that has more pork in it than the butt of a two-ton pig is the proverbial pissing up a rope. We are in a depression. The entire financial system, education system, medical system, political system, hell, the entire artifice needs a total reset. Read More |
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03.27.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Can This Pandemic Usher in
When NATO scaled back its war games in Europe because of the pandemic, Russia reciprocated. Moscow announced it would cancel its war games along NATO’s border. Nations seem to be recognizing and responding to the grim new geostrategic reality of March 2020: The pandemic is the real enemy of us all, and while we fight it, each in his own national corner, we are in this together. Read More |
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03.26.20- Professor Malinen: The Euro Won’t Survive This Crisis
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COVID-19: Market panic and how to navigate through it
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03.24.20- COVID-19 Data Study: Ammunition Sales Continue to Soar in Response to
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03.23.20- This Is Not a Recession
Undeterred by lacking a definition, the geniuses at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere on Wall Street are unrestrained in predicting the imminent arrival of the condition they can’t describe. Read More |
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03.21.20- The Crash of the “Everything Bubble” Is Here – And It’s Not Going Away Anytime Soon
In that article, I warned: Read More |
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03.20.20- Banks are going to drown in an ocean of defaults
Now, if English is not your native language, allow me to clear the air: ‘misunderestimate’ is not a word. But then again, George W. Bush was legendary for hilarious slip-ups like this. There are entire books dedicated to his ‘Bushisms,’ the ridiculous made-up words and incomprehensible sayings that became routine for the 43rd US President. Read More |
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03.19.20- Quantum Computing. Honeywell
So what’s the big deal here? Why another story about quantum computing and “the latest breakthrough”? Read More |
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03.18.20- S&P 500 Plunged Most Since 1987, Gave Up in 18 Days the 42% Gains of Past 3 Years. Boeing Shares Collapsed
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03.17.20- "What The F**k Are These Guys Smoking...?"
Happy St Patricks day. Meanwhile… back in Today Yesterday was another nasty day – uncertainty, panic and fear fuelling the worst fears for the market. The scale of capitulation was massive – Treasuries heading for zero percent, stocks biggest down day for 33 years, and gold sliding because investors literally have nothing else to sell to meet margin calls. If you aren’t out yet, you are stuck. Forget liquidity – it’s impossible to exit even liquid index ETFs. Read More |
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03.16.20- When the Coronavirus Scare Is Over, Economic Armageddon Will Remain!
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03.14.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: WOW! Watch Term Limits Advocate SHRED Congress!
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03.13.20- Predictions are hard. But here goes…
Even people who have been irrationally dismissive of the Corona pandemic up until this point finally had to wake up and smell reality yesterday. The NBA. Tom Hanks. European travel ban. Our human brains, while magnificent and inspiring, are also wired in bizarre ways. We’re filled with countless ‘cognitive biases’ which affect our judgment, usually for the worse. Read More |
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03.12.20- The Butterfly Effect
If I had written a commentary on how 4,000 people dying from the flu would topple global financial markets, I think I would have been deemed insane. Yet today that is exactly the story. Read More |
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03.11.20- “The Most Critical Time Since the Financial Crisis”
This we have on the grim authority of money man Sven Henrich. Last evening prepared us for this morning’s hells…Read More |
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03.10.20- Why the Fed Won’t Save the Market
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03.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Virus is a Time Machine
For a proper understanding, we must remember that China was 4-5 weeks too late in reporting the disease, and after that the west was 4-5 weeks late in acting on the news. This happens simply because a politician who cries wolf will have a short career, and reporters, certainly today, follow that same model. Read More |
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03.07.20- What Your Financial Advisor Isn’t Telling You About Bitcoin
You see, many Wall Street firms won’t tell you the truth about bitcoin – at least, not yet. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan ban their financial advisors from talking about bitcoin. Wells Fargo advisors can only hand out research “primers” on bitcoin – if their clients ask about it. Read More |
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03.06.20- Will This Coronavirus Outbreak Cause A New Financial Crisis And
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03.05.20- Stock Market Overmedicated on FedMed, Patient Goes into Cardiac Arrest
At first, the medicine hit like nitroglycerin tablets, and the patient’s heart leaped. You can see how instantly the patient bolted up on the operating table in the graph, but the double dose the Fed administered was too much, and by the end of the day the patient’s vital signs were down 785 points. Read More |
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03.04.20- Peniaphobia Prevails
(Peniaphobia: fear of poverty) This weekend, newsletter writers the world over are scrambling to explain to their paid subscribers why they are now showing losses in portfolios that were supposed to be showing gains, and especially because it was only two weeks ago that the S&P 500 hit all-time highs at 3,393.52. Without going into a long diatribe over the multiple warnings I issued in January, Mother Nature (or a bioweapons lab) has provided the pinprick that has now popped the global equities bubble, triggering a gargantuan rush to the exits and liquidity. Read More |
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03.03.20- Why The Coming Economic Collapse Will Not Be Caused By Covid-19
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03.02.20- Globalization and Our Precarious Medical Supply Chains
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02.29.20- Market Meltdown Update
We’ve been covering the spread of the coronavirus so intently over the past 30 days that we’d understand if you might have forgotten that, actually, we usually focus on many other topics on this website than global pandemics. Read More |
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02.28.20- The Great Melt-up Melt Down
And here we are! A single black swan has knocked the legs out from under the bull. It’s not a full-blown correction yet (requiring indices fall by, at least, 10%) or a crash (20% or more), though it looks like it could hit that mark by the end of today. That would be a full correction in just four days. Read More |
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02.27.20- The Greatest Depression Just Began. This is no Drill
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02.26.20- “1984” Has Come to China
The novel describes a world of three global empires, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, in a constant state of war. Orwell created an original vocabulary for his book, much of which is in common, if sardonic, usage today. Terms such as Thought Police, Big Brother, doublethink, Newspeak and memory hole all come from Nineteen Eight-Four. Read More |
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02.25.20- When the world became unrecognizable in less than a decade
To us, Schoner’s map is pretty amusing. There’s scarcely any American continent. Instead he drew some amorphous blobs to mark Brazil and the ‘West Indies’. And there’s a very narrow body of water where the Pacific Ocean is supposed to be, separating Brazil and India. Read More |
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02.24.20- Coronavirus Slams Chinese Economy
Here are the official statistics on the coronavirus (technically COVID-19) as of today: There are 75,685 confirmed infections worldwide, with 98% of that total in China alone. Of those cases, 82.5% are in the single province of Hubei, mostly centered in the city of Wuhan, with 11 million residents. Of the over 75,000 worldwide cases, there have been 2,236 deaths; that’s a mortality rate of roughly 2.5%. If a 2.5% mortality rate sounds low, it’s not. That’s roughly comparable to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919–20 that killed 50 million people by some estimates. Read More |
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02.22.20- The American dream of retirement isn’t going to be fulfilled, says Raoul Pal
Older Americans looking to retire may want to reassess their investment portfolio before the next market downturn. There are many strategies to invest for retirement, but if they include loading up on stocks in your old age, they’re dangerous, says Raoul Pal, former hedge fund manager and chief executive officer and co-founder of financial media company Real Vision. Read More |
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02.21.20- It’s Too Late to Make America Great Again
That things go down as well as up… and get worse as well as better… is blindingly obvious to everyone over 55. But it will come as a rude shock to today’s investors. So will today’s insight: that there are hard seasons in human life as well as soft ones. Read More |
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02.20.20- We’re in an Age of
Here’s our little cottage:>>> But even down here in the tropics, our Dear Readers’ comments reach us. Here’s one:
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02.19.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why the Tax Man Won’t Let
As impressive as this showmanship is, a thriving economy and a balanced budget are already within our reach – no redistribution of wealth required. We just need to stop leaving money on the table. The legal and fiscal mess that currently surrounds legal marijuana proves this point. Read More |
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02.18.20- Q4 Earnings Shocker: Excluding The FAAMGs, Net Income Is Down 7.5%
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02.17.20- Coronavirus and credit – a perfect storm
The credit crisis was already likely to be severe, given the combination of the end of a prolonged expansionary phase of the credit cycle and trade protectionism. These were the conditions that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929-32. Given similar credit cycle and trade dynamics today, the question to be resolved is how an overvaluation of bonds and equities coupled with escalating monetary inflation will play out. Read More |
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02.15.20- Minerd: There Is a "Stunning Cognitive Dissonance" Just Like Before
Minerd says, "cognitive dissonance in the credit market is stunning." He compares today's uncomfortable and eerie stillness in the corporate bond market to the late 1930s, right before the Nazis started bombing Britain. Read More |
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02.14.20- The Coming Decade Will Be Bad For Just About Everyone, Except Goldbugs
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02.13.20- Our "Come to Mao" Reckoning and the Next Cultural Revolution
Let's start our "Come to Mao" reckoning with the obvious: To the U.S. stock market: |
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02.12.20- The Forces That Degenerate an Empire
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Day by day, the empire ages… drooping unto death. Yesterday came news that Bernie Sanders narrowly won the New Hampshire primary. Read More |
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02.11.20- Just 4 Companies Account For 67% Of The S&P 500’s YTD Returns
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02.10.20- The end of the global economy
For some this will come as news; at AOTH, it is confirmation that our earlier warning, reported here, has come true. Read More |
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02.08.20- Tesla Stock Price Volatility a Sign of 'Frothy' Market
According to Investopedia, "Froth refers to market conditions preceding an actual market bubble, where asset prices become detached from their underlying intrinsic values as demand for those assets drives their prices to unsustainable levels." Read More |
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02.07.20- When Trust Evaporates
Now, I’m not going to get into which virus wins the “I killed more faster”, (thus far, it was SARS with a fatality rate of 9.6% vs 2.8%). Or which is more infectious (SARS again, though Coronavirus can spread while still incubating). Or join the silly debate of whether we should eat bats (they carry the disease, so ummm…NO). Rather, I’m going to focus on what’s been different in terms of the reaction globally…and why this is important. Because let’s face it, statistically, you’re still far more likely to be killed by some dolt crossing the centerline while watching his Insta feed…and nobody is running around like chickens screaming…don’t drive, don’t drive. Read More |
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02.06.20- How are Stocks Going Up While Earnings Go Down?
This week’s chart looks at some data which is buried deep within the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ report on National Income and Product Accounts. You can find it here, then go to table 1.10, line 15. Like I said, it is deep. Read More |
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02.05.20- When Pelosi Ripped Trump’s Speech In Half, Was It A Harbinger Of What Is About To Happen To America During This Election?
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Anyone familiar with the Bible is familiar with the Mark of the Beast: Without this mark, no man may buy or sell. Read More |
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02.03.20- Coronavirus Creating Worries of an Economic “Black Swan”
Originating in Wuhan, China, the virus moved from animals to humans at a local food market. Since then, it has since spread to other parts of China and beyond. Jim Rickards compares this virus with a potential economic “contagion” that can result as the concern over the virus turns into panic and causes distress. Read More |
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02.01.20- Will The Coronavirus Outbreak Cause A Massive Stock Market Crash?
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01.31.20- Estimating the shape
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01.30.20- More than 250,000 Chinese people will have coronavirus by early February, warns researcher
In a model assessing the potential fallout from this highly contagious outbreak, this team of experts is expecting that more than 250,000 Chinese people will contract coronavirus by the turn of February – a number significantly higher than the roughly 6,200 cases that are currently being reported. Read More |
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01.29.20- Blink and you miss it: The U.S. yield curve inverts again
Yields on the 10-year Treasury note briefly fell below those of the 3-month bill early Tuesday for the first time since October, on concerns over the economic impact of the coronavirus. An inverted yield curve has historically been an indicator of looming recession as it tends to reflect worries over future growth among bond investors. Read More |
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01.28.20- The Black Swan Event Begins
If this is early price activity, or a reactionary price move, related to fear of what may come, then the warnings signs are very clear that global traders and investors believe this virus outbreak may very well turn into a major Black Swan event. Read More |
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01.27.20- The Federal Government Has Devalued the Dollar Since 1971
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The nice thing about inflation, at least from the feds’ point of view, is that it doesn’t leave fingerprints. Today’s dollar, for example, is worth only three cents of the pre-1971 dollar. But who dunnit? Who stole 97 cents out of every dollar? Read More |
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01.25.20- Irrational fears of deflation
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01.24.20- Don’t Mess With the U.S. (Financially)
Because as you’ll see below, it can directly impact your wealth. Financial warfare tools include account seizures and freezes, expulsion from global payment systems, secondary fines and penalties on banks that do business with targeted entities, embargoes, tariffs and many other impositions. Read More |
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01.23.20- The Corporate Debt Bubble Is A Train Wreck In Slow Motion
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01.22.20- You’ll be surprised to see what investment has destroyed the S&P 500
Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February, and the South African government began talks to end Apartheid soon after. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August. Read More |
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01.21.20- Swift Impeachment Trial and Acquittal Coming Up
The Trump impeachment trial starts Tuesday. It rates to be a swift one. The Hill reports McConnell Proposes Compressed Schedule for Impeachment Trial.
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01.20.20- Tech Expert Shares Five Predictions
5G wireless networks went live in cities around the world on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Artificial intelligence accelerated faster than anybody predicted. And precision medicine technology is on the cusp of rewriting health care as we know it today. This is such an exciting time to be a technology investor. And we have a lot to look forward to in 2020. Read More |
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01.18.20- Got Gold? - David Rosenberg Warns "We're Going To Have Helicopter Money"
Mr. Rosenberg is also the author of Breakfast with Dave, a daily distillation of his economic and financial market insights. Read More |
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Citing violence that erupted in Charlottesville during a Unite the Right rally in 2017, Northam said that there are credible threats that “armed militia groups plan to storm the Capitol” during Monday’s rally. In an executive order, he announced he is banning all weapons from Capitol Square for the day. Read More |
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01.16.20- Instability Rising: Why 2020 Will Be Different
Economically, the 11 years since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 have been one relatively coherent era of modest growth, rising wealth/income inequality and coordinated central bank stimulus every time a crisis threatened to disrupt the domestic or global economy. This era will draw to a close in 2020 and a new era of destabilization and uncertainty begins. Read More |
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01.15.20- 2020 - Year of Living Dangerously (Pt 2)
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01.14.20- 2020 - Year of Living Dangerously
The shocking crime being committed during this century under the unscrupulous initiative of a few evil men is ongoing and no longer hidden from those willing to open their eyes and see the truth. As conspiracy theorists have proven to be right through the sacrifice of Snowden, Assange, and other patriots for truth, the Deep State psychopaths have double downed and are blatantly flaunting their power and control over the levers of government, finance and media. Read More |
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01.13.20- Surf’s Up!
Nothing seems right anymore. In whichever direction we choose to look, things are unraveling at a quickening pace. Welcome to the Fourth Turning; and with it, a profound loss of trust in institutions and government. Such lack of social cohesion is a hallmark of a Fourth Turning. Sadly, it’s happening at a time when society desperately needs to pull together, set aside our differences, and make some really big decisions. Read More |
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01.11.20- Predictions for the 2020s
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01.10.20- Sex, Drugs & Reality Distortion
A Reed College dropout is on his way to meet a new student at his dorm-room to sell him a typewriter. After knocking on the buyer’s door, eager to get the deal done, he tries the handle and steps inside only to find his would be buyer enthusiastically mid-coitus. Read More |
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Local Puerto Ricans invariably tell me I’m overpaying on rent, and that I could have found a cheaper place to live. I’m sure that’s true. But somehow I’m not upset about my gorgeous view over the ocean and private roof deck. Beautiful beaches are right in front of me, along with three pools, a gym, and tennis courts. Read More |
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01.08.20- A New Gold Standard:
Then in 1945, a new monetary system emerged at Bretton Woods. I was at Bretton Woods this past summer to commemorate its 75th anniversary. Under that system, the dollar became the global reserve currency, linked to gold at $35 per ounce. In 1971 Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold. For the first time, the monetary system had no gold backing. Read More |
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01.07.20- How Money Printing Contributes to America’s Downward Spiral
It would be hard to invent a more effective method for the destruction of modern society. – “The Hidden Link Between Fiat Money and the Increasing Appeal of Socialism” by Patrick Barron Read More |
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01.06.20- "World War 3? The US Has Crossed A Red Line... But It’s Not The One They Think"
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01.04.20- How Trump Could Really Make US Industry Competitive Again
As president, Trump has used tariffs and other protectionist measures to try to reduce the trade deficit. What do you think of Trump’s trade policies and tariffs? Read More |
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01.03.20- New Rules for the New Decade
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – A new year! A new decade! And it’s going to be great. Back in the 18th century, people went to insane asylums to laugh at the crazy people. Today, we only have to turn on the TV or read the news. That’s progress! And it just gets better and better. But we need to put it in perspective… Read More |
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01.02.20- The Cold, Hard Facts Which Prove That The Past Decade Was Actually Quite Awful For The U.S. Economy
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01.01.20- Global Financial System Is A Big Rube Goldberg Machine
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What is the most dangerous investing decision you can presently make?
California is a mess; no secret there. But the degree of decline that befalls it, and the quickness with which that decline is moving, seems to be largely ignored, particularly by Californians themselves. The nation's most populous state, and arguably its most naturally beautiful, is falling apart virtually everywhere we look. Yet state and local governments not only insist on moving forward with leftist policies, but continually double down by moving even farther left, and the state's voters return them to office with ever-increasing electoral margins. California's current approach to virtually all aspects of society — the economy, environment, legal system and culture — is unsustainable, and the time for reckoning is rapidly approaching. 
Stocks went down yesterday, which is generally considered to be a very, very bad thing that needs some serious “Don’t worry, this won’t last” headlines from Bloomberg. Not my bag, however. Let’s go a whole different route: gestalt.
Late last year, the FAANG companies - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, 
It has been heartbreaking to watch what has been transpiring on the streets of America in recent months. Our founders intended for us to be united by a common set of values, but now our differences are literally tearing our nation to pieces. Americans are fighting other Americans in the streets, and that should make all of us incredibly sad. Does anyone out there actually believe that all of this violence will be resolved by the upcoming election? If anything, rising political tensions are likely to make the violence even worse, and if the result of the presidential election is contested by either side that could easily take things to an even higher level. We have entered such a dangerous chapter in American history, and I am extremely concerned about the months ahead. 
"No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is still delighting his scent with the flowers of spring."
Misguided lockdowns have destroyed the global economy and the impact is likely to last for years.
Thomas Jefferson has valuable things to say about two key criticisms of the free market. I learned about these from reading C. Bradley Thompson’s America’s Revolutionary Mind (Encounter Books, 2019) Thompson has done an immense amount on research on the thought of the leading figures of the American Revolution, and I urge everyone to read this excellent book. 
The “European Project” was designed with something like the current crisis in mind.
On America's birthday, celebrating the corporate-sponsored revolution
I am deeply uneasy about what’s happening in financial markets
Please note, this article was posted for subscribers Monday morning after suggesting “negative oil” on Saturday’s weekly call.
In the early 1980s, doctors and medical researchers around the world were confounded by the growing number of young, otherwise healthy patients who were dying of rare infections that typically only occurred in people with very weak immune systems.
Force Majeure means:
There are only two types of governments. Two. That's it. There are those where the people control the government and those where the government controls the people. Likewise, there are only two types of economic systems: economies where free markets control commerce and economies where bureaucrats control commerce.
In all of U.S. history, we have never seen a spike in unemployment like we are witnessing right now. Last Thursday it was announced that more than 3.2 million Americans had filed new claims for unemployment benefits during the previous week, and many believe that the number that will be announced this Thursday will be even larger. By the way, the previous all-time record for a single week was just 695,000. So what is happening right now is absolutely nuts. 
Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy . “As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. (
It appears that we are heading into the worst economic downturn of the post-World War II era, and that is going to be true no matter how this coronavirus pandemic ultimately plays out. There are some that believe that this virus will only kill thousands, and there are others that are warning that it could kill millions, but everyone can agree that this outbreak is causing an unprecedented amount of fear. And even once this pandemic starts to fade, a certain percentage of the population will continue to be afraid to go to restaurants, bars and other small businesses that are open to the public. 
Historians of the future, pan-roasting fresh-caught June bugs over their campfires, may wonder when, exactly, was the moment when the financial world broke with reality. Was it when Nixon slammed the “gold window” shut? When “maestro” Alan Greenspan first bamboozled a Senate finance committee? When Pets.com face-planted 268 days after its IPO? When Ben Bernanke declared the housing bubble “contained?”
Those who never predicted a financial collapse in the first place are now edging closer to the swamp to dip their toes into the water. Now they are suggesting, 
To fight the coronavirus at home, France is removing all military forces from Iraq.
To better understand the economic consequences of the Corona pandemic, I wanted to interview an expert on economic crises. Namely, Tuomas Malinen.Malinen is the CEO and Chief Economist of GnS Economics, a macroeconomic consultancy. He’s also an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of Helsinki. He has studied economics at the University of Helsinki and New York University. His focus is on economic growth, economic crises, central banks, and the business cycle. 
I haven't written any market updates in some time, and was quite surprised to be receiving requests for one. I am going to attempt to go over as much as possible without devolving into a rant. There is so much happening to analyze and consider, everything from the markets, to politics and of course the corona virus pandemic, and every bit of it is interconnected and affecting the outcomes of everything else. I am going to break this into individual sections analyzing the important issues, markets, and ending with a feasible investment and savings plan for people to follow as we navigate through some of the most volatile markets in this country's (and the world's) history. 
“We’re faced with the most critical time since the financial crisis.”
We haven’t seen anything like this since the last financial crisis erupted in 2008. Wall Street has been gripped by a tremendous amount of fear, and the volatility that we are witnessing would have been unimaginable just a couple of months ago. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,013 points. To put that in perspective, the largest single day decline that we witnessed in 2008 was just 777 points. A disagreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia about oil prices coupled with increasing concern about the coronavirus pushed many traders into panic mode, and the result was absolutely stunning. Hopefully stock prices will bounce back throughout the rest of this week, but many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of the carnage. The stock market crash of 2020 is here, and the losses are already staggering. Just consider these facts… 
Around mid-January I started including coronavirus news in the daily Automatic Earth “Debt Rattle” news aggregators, and wrote the first essay on the topic on January 29. Tons of people since have asked why, but I thought the virus had “potential”. Though not everybody would agree, I still think that. So the Debt Rattles are full of coronavirus these days.
If you have a financial advisor, you’ll probably want to fire them after you read this.
The term “black swan event” is increasingly being used to describe this coronavirus outbreak, and many are concerned that what we are headed for will be much worse than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009. Already, we have witnessed a staggering drop in global demand, Wall Street has had to deal with 
The Federal Reserve on Tuesday gave the market a double-dose of exactly what it thought the market needed, and the market just about died! On the theory that, if a little is good, more is better, the Fed gave a double cut of interest. It did not go as planned. 
Sector expert Michael Ballanger charts tumbling markets amid the scare of a coronavirus pandemic.
With last week's collapse in the stock market, the internet has been set ablaze with discussion of a new crash looming on the horizon (even with today's record-breaking point-gain in the Dow). The fact that such a chain reaction collapse was only kept at bay due to massive liquidity injections by the Federal Reserve’s overnight repo loans should not be ignored. 
The grave risks and dangers in the process of worldwide out-sourcing and so-called globalization of the past 30 years or so are becoming starkly clear as the ongoing health emergency across China threatens vital world supply chains from China to the rest of the world. While much attention is focused on the risks to smartphone components or auto manufacture via supplies of key parts from China or to the breakdown of oil deliveries in the last weeks, there is a danger that will soon become alarmingly clear in terms of global health care system. 
Sentiment has snapped. Did the 10-year bull market just end?
That didn’t take long. Just a month ago, I wrote, “
Exactly a month ago I warned that the Corona Virus outbreak was going to 
You’re probably familiar with George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four; (it’s often published as 1984). It was written in 1948; the title comes from reversing the last two digits in 1948.
Could it be possible that this coronavirus outbreak will be the trigger that finally bursts the biggest stock market bubble in U.S. history? As I have discussed 
We don’t know what will trigger the crisis, but a likely candidate is foreign selling of US dollars combining with a collapse in the US government’s finances. Perhaps the coronavirus will turn out to be a black swan event, but the underlying conditions for an economic and monetary crisis already exist.
We’re just a few days away from month two of what’s shaping up to be quite the tumultuous new year, and researchers from the United Kingdom 
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A closely watched bond market phenomenon has again flashed yellow, but investors are loathe to give it much weight.
As the Asian markets opened on late Sunday, traders expected a reactionary price move related to the threat of the Wuhan virus and the continued news of its spread. The US Dow Jones futures markets opened close to -225 points lower on Sunday afternoon and were nearly -300 points lower within the first 25 minutes of trading. Gold opened $10 higher and continued to rally to a level above $15 higher.
The benefits of a deflation of prices brought about by a combination of sound money and markets free from government intervention have been demonstrated to be the best economic environment, the denial of which in favour of inflationary financing has led to repeated monetary and systemic failures.
I’ve been documenting financial warfare in my articles for years, but it still doesn’t get the mainstream attention it deserves.
There are two subjects that the mainstream media seems specifically determined to avoid discussing these days when it comes to the economy - the first is the problem of falling global demand for goods and services; they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that demand is going stagnant and will conjure all kinds of rationalizations to distract from the issue. The other subject is the debt bubble, the corporate debt bubble in particular. 
The year was 1990, and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. The Berlin Wall was still in the process of being destroyed, and East and West Germany were set to reunify later in the year.
2019 was an incredible year for technology…
David Rosenberg, Chief Economist & Strategist of Rosenberg Research, doesn’t believe in the sustainability of the stock market rally, and warns that investors may be disappointed at the end of the year. He is bullish on energy stocks - and predicts that the gold price will surge to $3000. 
The drama in Virginia has escalated again as Governor Ralph Northam declares an official State of Emergency before January 20th’s “
In 2020, increasing monetary and fiscal stimulus will be the equivalent of spraying gasoline on a fire to extinguish it.
In 
