While working on a post about what a waste the European bailout of Greece will turn out to be, I found this from Hussman Funds’ John Hussman, who comes at it from an interesting angle: Greek Debt and Backward Induction On Sunday, the IMF approved its 30 billion portion of the 110 billion euro bailout […]
The Long Wave Versus the Printing Press
The fascinating thing about “long wave” analysis (broadly defined to include Kondratieff waves, Elliott waves, and William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Fourth Turning) is that while each theory uses its own indicators and terminology to show how societies move through recurring cultural/psychological/financial stages, they’ve all reached the same conclusion: we’re toast. 2000 marked the theoretical […]
Doug Noland: “There Is No Concern For Short-Term Funding Issues”
Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland was a must-read in the years leading up to the bursting of the housing bubble. Almost alone out there, he got not just the fact that we were heading off a cliff, but the exact mechanism of our demise: “Wall Street alchemy” was creating unlimited amounts of artificial securities that the […]
The Best Volatility Play
Take a look at the chart below, and note the unnaturally smooth 80% decline. Kind of makes you think “imminent bankruptcy”. But now consider that the security in question is 100% guaranteed not to fall to zero and about 90% guaranteed to stay above 10. It’s VXX, an exchange traded fund that, according to its […]
Time to Get Short, Part 2
Signs of a top are accumulating. Here’s survey of the market’s happy mood from Wednesday’s Financial Times (love the first line): Irrational equanimity is back. Not only are developed market stocks back to pre-Lehman levels, but investors’ comfort levels are in a zone not seen since the eve of the credit crisis in early 2007. […]
Classic Videos: Hyperinflation Nation 3/3
In the third and final part of this series, the National Inflation Association takes us through the hyperinflations, price controls and societal breakdowns of Weimar Germany and Yugoslavia, and makes the case that the U.S. is heading for something similar. “This all but guarantees a dramatic decline in the quality of life in the U.S….Most […]
Now Start Watching Interest Rates
The phase change happened almost imperceptibly. One month we’re shedding jobs and agonizing over a long list of insolvent European countries and US states — and the next month we’re back in a bubble. U.S. employment has stopped shrinking and started growing. Iron ore is up 170% in the past year and oil is flirting […]
The Coming Precious Metals Short Squeeze
With the gold price suppression scheme apparently breaking open — see this article and this interview — the question becomes when, not if, holders of futures contracts will start demanding physical delivery. Most will discover that the metal isn’t there, which will, ahem, unsettle the commodity and currency markets. This impending bullion bank disaster is […]
Collapsing Spreads and Booming Junk: Time to Get Short
Looks like the past year’s borrowing and printing are finally paying off. Junk bonds are setting records and emerging stock markets are booming. See this overview and this look at today’s action. But even in this kind of hot money environment, the collapse in spreads between emerging market bonds and U.S. Treasuries is remarkable: Emerging […]
Art of the Collapse
Extreme times spawn interesting art. From the Great Depression, Brother Can You Spare a Dime, Grapes of Wrath, We’re in the Money, and about a thousand other works live on as classics. And the chaos of the 1960s gave us the Beatles, the Stones and the rest of classic rock’s pantheon. So it’s not surprising […]
Classic Videos: Hyperinflation Nation 2/3
Here’s the middle part of a great series created by the National Inflation Association. It begins with a look at Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, then goes on to explain that the U.S. is traveling the same road. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, the dollar is heading for its intrinsic value, and gold is the solution. It […]
The Boredom Before the Storm (Time to Buy Volatility)
As eventful as the past few months have been (what with Greece, California, Illinois, Iran, the Lehman Brothers revelations, U.S./China trade friction, and record deficits just about everywhere), you’d think the financial markets would be agitated, to put it mildly. Instead, just about everything is range-bound, and the things that aren’t, like U.S. stocks, are […]
Technology Ends Offshore Tax Evasion
Not so long ago, one of first things a newly-rich person would do was move some money into a numbered Swiss account or Cayman trust, where it would be safe from spouse, creditors, and tax collectors. Maybe not the most ethical way to behave, but what the hell, you’re rich and you can get away […]
The Difference a Printing Press Makes, Part 2
The original, long-since discarded, blueprint for the United States had the central government managing foreign affairs and protecting citizens’ Constitutional rights while the states designed and ran their own economies. The wisdom of this setup wasn’t always clear (segregation for instance) but lately the contrast between states that have to balance their budgets and are […]
Classic Videos: Ron Paul During the Last Election
The best way to understand how far the U.S. has drifted from its original design is to listen to Ron Paul. He sounds like Thomas Jefferson would if he were around, which makes him a flake and a radical to most of today’s Republicans and Democrats. But he strikes a chord with a surprisingly wide […]
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