Contrarian investing is the key to consistently making money. This should be obvious, as everyone knows that the basic goal is to buy low and sell high. For some reason, however, human psychology makes this very difficult, as emotion makes it much easier to go with the flow despite what one can see on any market chart.

What investors failed to realize back in 1999 is that the all-time record highs that the stock market indices were hitting were not cause for celebration, but concern. And what even more investors, homeowners, real-estate agents and mortgage sellers fail to realize today is that the all-time record highs being registered by home prices in 2004 should be a similar cause for concern. MORE>>

On November 2000, Saddam made a fateful decision to convert 10 billion U.S. dollars to euros. This was a radical move for an OPEC country. This single decision may have sealed his fate. That single transaction must have sent shock waves through London and New York. The reason for alarm is cast in a story about oil, greed and geopolitics. MORE>>

With oil prices touching $42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, many economic commentators have gone into denial, pointing out the many reasons why prices can be expected to relapse again to the $30-35 range. Yet there is an alternative scenario, in which supply disruption causes oil prices to rise much further, and it's worth looking at how such an event would play out. MORE>>

In Washington a babysitting syndicate was once created which relied on tokens that were given to each parent, so that when each used a babysitter they paid a token, and when each sat for babies they received one. All parents started with the same number of tokens and the syndicate got off to a flying start - with everyone going out when they wanted to and eagerly offering their services as sitters to replenish their reserves.

Unfortunately those who were disposed to work more and play less (or those who fantasised about being able to spend a year going out every night without ever having to sit for the noisy brutes again) ended up accumulating all the tokens. MORE>>

Debt and the dollar, employment and interest rates, the US economy and world trade, money supply and inflation/deflation, taxes, deficits, commodity prices, politics, war, regulation plus a host of other variables. They are all related in a very complex and dynamic fashion. Changing one of them may change each of the others in often unpredictable ways, which in turn affect all the others. Today, we start a series trying to understand how they fit together and what the implications are for our investments. MORE>>

It should not be surprising that you probably would not find many out there who believe we are in the early stages of oil wars that will dominate the first half of this century. And if oil is the commodity of choice in the first half of this century then water will probably become the focal point in the second half of the century. But right now it is oil that is up front. Oil (energy) is the engine of the global economy. Without it we could quickly revert to a Road Warrior type of world run by warlords whose armies fight over the remaining pockets and supplies of oil (energy). That still might be our future baring of course some huge changes in how we run our economies or major discoveries and conversion to alternative forms of energy.MORE>>

North Korea is not an easy state to understand, for three reasons. First, the DPRK is a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that is also a hereditary dynasty, and is thus fundamentally different from the sorts of states we are familiar with. Second, its government enforces a statistical blackout. Finally, the North Korean government makes its living, and has done so for over half a century, through significant reliance on strategic deception on a grand scale. MORE>>

The financial and popular press has lately focused on the now obvious problems for the dollar created from our massive budget and trade deficits. Indeed, everyone now realizes that for the deficits to be brought into balance, the dollar must go down. It seems that virtually every financial pundit, though, still assumes that not only will the Asian and other foreign central banks continue to accumulate dollar assets forever, but that "those foreigners will never spend their dollars". However, very little is written about what will happen when all the dollars, built up as foreign central bank and private holdings, get spent. Indeed, we believe that not only will the dollars get spent, but this spending will have massive inflationary implications for America. MORE>>

In order to understand Arafat's life, it is essential to understand the concept "Arab," and to understand its tension with the concept "Muslim," at least as Arafat lived it out. In general, ethnic Arabs populate North Africa and the area between the Mediterranean and Iran, and between Yemen and Turkey. This is the Arab world. It is a world that is generally -- but far from exclusively -- Muslim, although the Muslim world stretches far beyond the Arab world. MORE>>

Are we doomed to repeat history in the war on terrorism? If we continue to follow the circular path we are now taking, I believe that we are. But to find out if that is true, we need to go back in time. So, I invite you to join me, now, in my time machine. We are going to splash around in history for a while and look at some great events and huge mistakes to see if there are parallels, any lessons to be learned for today. I must warn you: it will seem that we are lost in time. We are going to go here and there, and then jump back further, and then forward in time, and we will be examining issues that may make you wonder “What on earth has this to do with today?” But I can assure you, when we reach the end of our journey, you will see that everything we cover has a direct relevance to today and, in particular, to the war on terrorism. MORE>>

NOT SO long ago, a certain well-known international figure penned a heart-felt speech he called his “Letter to the American People”. In it, he said: “You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.” The author was Osama bin Laden.

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The Honorable Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -neither more nor less." Alice responded: "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things." The Hon. Humpty Dumpty replied: "The question is, which is to be master -that's all." MORE>>

It's no secret - the world is draining dry its oil inheritance. Outside of the Middle East, a new giant oil field hasn't been discovered in 30 years. America has only 21 billion barrels of oil reserves left, enough to meet demand for just two years.

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Our monetary system is an abomination. It violates almost all of the principles that civilized people hold dear:

From the Biblical point of view, our monetary system violates the admonitions in Deuteronomy not to tamper with weights and measures, and, as clergymen pointed out after the Civil War, it violates the Eighth Commandment .

From a moral point of view, mindful that our money is legal tender, Salmon Chase, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1869, wrote that the legal tender quality of money is only needed for the purposes of dishonesty.

Economically, fiat monetary systems such as ours have been collapsing for nearly 1,200 years wiping out savings and promises of future payments, such as pensions and annuities. There have been no successes. MORE>>

A number of years ago I predicted China was the country most likely to give the U.S. serious competition as a world power in coming years. The response was skepticism (to put it mildly). Communist systems had collapsed around the world and China would obviously continue to be a backward, over-populated nation unable to even feed its own people. Being ignored was China 's bold move to bring about a free-market economy within a communist political system.
That it has worked is an understatement. MORE>>

“So many wishful thinkers are hoping, praying and betting on the idea that Saudi Arabia will come to the rescue. They think the world's top exporter should be able to boost capacity enough to bring U.S. oil prices below $40... Sorry, it ain't gonna happen, folks.” MORE>>

I live 65 miles from one of the most exclusive mountain resorts in America, and that is Telluride. Telluride, where the rich and famous build multi-million dollar homes with spectacular views, and sometimes occupy them for a mere two or three weeks a year. Telluride, where the bloom was never going to fade, and where extreme prosperity was going to live forever. Prices continually going up, was gospel. Twenty five foot lots going for over a hundred thousand dollars, and no expense spared, the norm. Well, it's depressionville in Telluride, as well as Aspen, and Vail, two other swank Colorado towns, where the money flows like water, or did anyway. MORE>>

Pebble has been a mining prospect for years. But in January, mineral test results came back indicating that the the deposit was much larger than previously thought, said Bruce Jenkins with Northern Dynasty Minerals, a company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that hopes to develop a mine.

The deposit is thought to contain at least 26 million ounces of gold, 16 billion pounds of copper and 900 million pounds of molybdenum. If developed, Pebble would be Alaska's largest mine, Krause said. At current metal prices, the mine has an estimated value in the $28 billion range.

"It's massive," Jenkins said. MORE>>

For us, it is the logic of Toyota's position which is most revealing. Toyota sees China as a rapidly expanding economy, which will continue to expand. That will produce a huge increase in demand for automobiles. The motorization of China is already pushing up the price of oil, now at $37.50 a barrel. It is likely to go further and create a world oil shortage. In turn that will create a demand for "green" cars. Here Toyota is already in the lead of world development, so much so that Ford has recently agreed to buy hybrid technology direct from Toyota. The Toyota technology is said to be about three years ahead of Detroit. MORE>>

What is the ÒrealÓ value of a dollar? It is a question of metaphysical dimensions. The dollar is the unit of account by which all participants in the economic process make decisions. Whether or not to buy, hire, produce, or invest depends on millions of daily calculations measured in dollars. Decades ago, thirty-three years to be exact, dollar centric decisions were pretty much confined to the borders of the United States. The 1971 decision to decouple the dollar and gold marked the beginning of an explosion of international reserves. It gave birth to the dollar-based system of global credit and an era of unprecedented world prosperity. Today, the preponderance of global economic decision-making is rooted in some notion as to the intrinsic value of a dollar expended, received, or held as an investment. MORE>>

In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long-distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss. MORE>>