STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Showing 6851 - 6900 of 7086
June 10, 2009
Wasn't the Federal Reserve supposed to take over risk-regulation for a grateful, needy nation? We expected it, given how predictably the crisis was playing out. Like an adult Ferris wheel, the central-bank-driven business cycle was rotating as anticipated, alon ...
June 09, 2009
If one truly seeks to create a global currency, what would be the easiest path? Would it be to debase the dollar while quietly encouraging a controllable alternative? Is this what is taking place? Of course, the monetary elite never offers a single solution. Th ...
June 08, 2009
No, we're not really suggesting that the Post lifted our story, only that we believe we provided our readers with the above analysis three days sooner and with a broader frame of reference. Why is this important? It buttresses a serious point, one we've made pr ...
June 06, 2009
Climate change is back - and big. The Obama administration wants a federal cap-and-trade program that would damp down carbon emissions in the United States. It may get one given the congressional advantage it holds currently. But the problem with cap-and-trade ...
June 05, 2009
Apparently, the issue is not whether the Obama administration should be spending a budget of US$3 trillion-plus for 2009, and even more for 2010, but whether the administration is spending bailout portions of it fast enough. Say, what? Yes! This is the burning ...
June 04, 2009
Until the real economy itself is allowed to work out the mal-investment, the financial slump will continue in some form or other. Funds that would be used to create new and more realistic endeavors will instead find their way into sour companies propped up by g ...
June 03, 2009
Were they laughing WITH him? Actually, we bet the Chinese were laughing AT him. That's the way it is going these days for American monetary policy. Across the sea and around the world, people perceive what the current congress and administration apparently can ...
June 02, 2009
This is truly a top down approach to economics. Can a handful of individuals make all the right decisions all the time? Monetary inflation has brought the world near to ruin in the past few years and this desperate bet on China is likely to end in tears. It is ...
June 01, 2009
Oh, Mama! Once again top central bankers grapple with the deepest problems of high finance - and admit the struggle is a most difficult one. Are we supposed to empathize? It is all so complicated, apparently. More data is doubtless needed; more analyses should ...
May 30, 2009
Those who believe governmental involvement can cultivate "shoots of green" may well be caught by surprise when the positive rhetoric does not match the negative results. The new, improved GM may come to resemble Amtrak rather than the old auto powerhouse. Centr ...
May 29, 2009
Faber obviously understands free-market economics, but the vocabulary being used makes for confusing reading for free-market thinkers. The mainstream media uses "inflation" as a catch-all term. In fact, from a free-market perspective, inflation is an expansion ...
May 28, 2009
We wonder how these groups and individuals come up with their conclusions. The mania to elaborate on hyper-regulated nation-states with increased protections for central banking monopolies can only lead to more inflation, more innovation stifling regulation, mo ...
May 27, 2009
We've been waiting to see how the Republican party is going to fix itself in America. Despite electoral losses, there are far more constituents for American republicanism in our opinion than for any other political persuasion. Most Americans in our opinion want ...
May 26, 2009
The article also portrays the debt issue as a face off between the Anglo Saxons and the Chinese. This is actually refreshing. While we have made the point many times about the British/American monetary-military partnership – the Anglo-Saxon axis – we have r ...
May 25, 2009
For anyone watching the unfolding economic crisis and using the mainstream media narrative, the timeline is fraught with surprises and even helplessness. There is a "virus" in the economy, so it is said, and it's "spreading" - according to such sources as AP (s ...
May 23, 2009
One thing is certain. Whether the current state of affairs is merely a natural unwinding or a devious plot by a monetary elite, the results will still likely involve considerable currency chaos, inflation and massive interest rate hikes. Hard money - holdings o ...
May 22, 2009
Greenspan, in our estimation, is in this instance providing a fairly reasonable assessment. If, at the height of a bubble, bad investments are made, then once the bubble has deflated those investments must be shut down and losses taken. If those loss-making inv ...
May 21, 2009
We have written that the current situation is analogous to the days of the Gutenberg press: Finally, people could read the Bible and see priestly untruth. Today, of course, the West's establishment religion is monetary. Think about it. Are we so wrong? The main ...
May 20, 2009
It is difficult to see a way out for those who are determined to ensure that there will be a new fiat-money regime to take the place of the old one. Instead of letting a real market of honest money emerge, every lever of power and profit will be pulled to make ...
May 19, 2009
When someone like Faber user the word "capitalism" and predicts its failure our brains seize up a little. The term comes from Karl Marx. And it is therefore a sentiment that is difficult to process. Is Faber upset by the idea that capitalism might fail? The cap ...
May 18, 2009
OK, so the unrolling depression is actually an "infection." And the infection is caused by high energy prices, too much growth and millions of uninsured Americans. Yet, in our opinion, the current financial problems are not an infection. An infection may be def ...
May 16, 2009
Money is an incredibly powerful force. As more and more people realize that gold and silver are going to continue to gain in value through this latest business cycle, the prognostications of the mainstream media, and those it supports, are going to be increasin ...
May 15, 2009
We've noticed how Jim Rogers seems to have raised his profile recently, and the only reason we can come up with is that he wants the world to notice what he's investing in. But in providing so much information, he is also muddying the free-market message and le ...
May 14, 2009
Before this business cycle is finished, the currencies of the Western world may well be in tatters, the European Union may have collapsed and the credibility of the American Federal Reserve may be badly damaged as well. We reported on part of the story yesterda ...
May 13, 2009
The Grayson/Coleman confrontation has to be seen to be believed, and even then it may not seem quite believable. How could the Fed, in all its monied majesty, offer up someone so unprepared to answer the questions of a single quiet and persevering congressman. ...
May 12, 2009
The budget Obama has released, borrowing 50 cents on every dollar is NOT the result of problems left over from the Bush administration. Probably at least half of it is dedicated either to economic stimulation (which is destructive to the real economy in the lon ...
May 11, 2009
We think it is reasonable to speculate that panic takes over for most middle and working class people long before they get to the point of creating a reasonable contrarian strategy. They fear, rightly, that it could all come tumbling down, even though investmen ...
May 09, 2009
We have a hard time believing this all will work as planned. The idea that central banks are to be empowered to monitor systemic risk is especially ironic given that central banks create the instability in the first place by over-printing money. What this sort ...
May 08, 2009
Two possibilities occur. One is that this time round the monetary elite has simply run out of the political capital necessary to staunch the price inflation, in which case gold and silver will go sky high. The second possibility is that they do hike rates to 20 ...
May 07, 2009
Sure, and it did for Amtrak, too - just not for investors. We were trying to figure out where GM and Chrysler were headed when we came upon an article recently by free-market financier Peter Schiff in which he stated that the outcome of the government's interfe ...
May 06, 2009
This is a fragile sort of recovery indeed, and it the basic reason why Bernanke sounds schizophrenic. He understands that a Fed-led recovery inevitably starts with the banking industry, translates itself gradually into equity growth and from there kick-starts t ...
May 05, 2009
Commercial real-estate in America and abroad will surely constitute the next wave of defaults. Perhaps it will not be as severe a wave as the one that came before, but we wouldn't bet on it. The hard money business cycle is in full-swing and the central bankers ...
May 04, 2009
Buffet is once again busy finding value that others don't seem to assess and reinvesting in the companies and brands that he thinks will provide the next big thing. The world's most brilliant investor is perfectly willing to investigate thousands of company bal ...
May 02, 2009
Well ... we have been trying to avoid reading (or writing) about Niman (again) because he has the inevitability of a broken record. But since he has such a high profile on the 'Net, and is so very quotable, we suppose we should rehash his background for readers ...
May 01, 2009
Obviously so. The leadership, worldwide is beginning to demand it. In America, Vice-President Joseph Biden advises citizens to avoid subways and planes. Mexico has closed its government offices and is urging businesses to shut. The European Union is warning aga ...
April 30, 2009
We stayed away from commenting on the swine flue sickness because we have learned from experience that once the mainstream media gets into full cry on a story, the story inevitably changes and the reporting is deficient, or at least inaccurate. In this case, th ...
April 29, 2009
We're not quite sure why the Obama administration has such an aching desire to nationalize America's banks, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that's the goal. Of course it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch. The cynicism of America's banking class e ...
April 28, 2009
Does anyone who follows these sorts of issues closely believe that the regulatory solutions that Oddsson offers would have made a real difference? Iceland is in debt up to its ears, a nation ruined by paper money. But this situation is systemic. It has to do wi ...
April 27, 2009
Wall Street was wiped out less than a year ago. In September 08, we've read, the American banking system froze up and absent an injection of some US$700 billion the current paper money system would have foundered and failed. But just because the banking system ...
April 25, 2009
Do citizens of the West have confidence in their banks? Will they have more confidence in them if they survive "stress tests?" The question is a fair one given the nature and composition of the current industry. Given all that has happened to the financial syst ...
April 24, 2009
The European enculturation – despite stirrings of individual initiative – remains focused on government empowerment, at least to hear the mainstream media tell it. We have a suspicion, however, that the Internet has made inroads on such cultural conditionin ...
April 23, 2009
Water, food, energy, oil ... there just doesn't seem to be enough to go around. You know, there's even a theory that oil is abiotic (not a "fossil fuel") since oil wells keep filing back up in the United States and elsewhere. Say, maybe oil is manufactured deep ...
April 22, 2009
The recovery that the IMF is forecasting is not a recovery at all. What the IMF really means but won't say, is that it is going to take several years to basically build a new banking system with new players - even if the names don't change. Unfortunately, the ...
April 21, 2009
The rise of markets around the world and the six-week upward trend of American equity markets certainly excited the media financial presenters who were convinced that the V-shaped recovery was on. But of course it's not that simple. Top bankers in the United St ...
April 20, 2009
The tea parties are focused on this latter point -- taxation -- but the entire system is set up to ensure that individuals cannot easily control money nor keep it. This is not a helpful stage of affairs during a severe economic downturn (or at any time in fact) ...
April 18, 2009
We've offered the idea that the Western world is "overbanked" – that the biggest bubble of all is the banking bubble. This is a logical outcome in fact of central banking, which would naturally tend to its own industry and to its continual expansion. While so ...
April 17, 2009
No, we can't see the Chinese giving up on their own paper currency. We may be wrong but we think the allure of central banking will prove more attractive ultimately than building a commodity-based currency. We may be incorrect, and we hope we are. Certainly a c ...
April 16, 2009
The tea-parties are neither left nor right but Libertarian, and free market. On this issue, the waters are muddy indeed. While the mainstream media cannot ignore what is going on in America, and to a lesser extent Europe, it can still represent powerful interes ...
April 15, 2009
Where does this leave us? Those in government and even in economics have powerful incentives to employ classical trend-analysis while paying lip service to modern economics – which doesn't recognize it. The politics of scarcity will remain attractive to burea ...
April 14, 2009
The tea party protests taking place around the country in America are not merely a reaction to current events. They are part of a much larger movement that is anti-big-government and pro-freedom. It is fashionable to decry the possibilities for change in an era ...
