MARKETS

There is an old adage on Wall Street: no one rings a bell to signal a market top or bottom. Yet, I have found that bells do ring; it’s just that few people know exactly what sound to listen for.  Perhaps the biggest and most liquid of all markets...

Pre-holiday cheer is certainly evident in the financial markets. The overwhelming consensus is that the Congressional agreement to not raise taxes while extending hundreds of billions in new stimulus will finally allow the recovery to take hold. The good feelings are...

?Despite the fact that the S&P is up over 80% in the last 21 months, US financial firms are currently tripping over each other in their zeal to raise their S&P 500 and GDP targets for 2011. JPMorgan’s chief US equities strategist, Thomas Lee, came out on...

This week Washington displayed the kind of “bipartisanship” that will bankrupt our country and wreck our currency.  Coming at a time when both parties say they want to address our long-term fiscal imbalances, the compromise extension of the Bush era...

Despite America’s economic problems, the US dollar has maintained its respected status the world over – and has even managed to maintain value in comparison to other currencies. It appears that the dollar will likely finish 2010 at the same levels that it...

This past Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes”, Americans received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke’s shaky delivery, and even shakier logic may cause faith in America’s economic leadership to evaporate faster...

If you’ve spent enough time in the gold community, you might be under the impression that the most imminent threat to the average American isn’t terrorism or unemployment, but rather gold confiscation. Starting with the fact that FDR confiscated gold...

Today’s payroll report severely disappointed on the downside and left economists scratching their heads to explain the weakness. The explanation, however, is plain as day. As I have been saying for years, the US economy will not create jobs as long as the Fed...

Given the opposing views of the potentially parsimonious new Congress and the continuously accommodative Federal Reserve, there is a movement afoot among Republicans to eliminate the Fed’s “dual mandate.” Prior to 1977, the Fed only had one job:...

Certain deflationists have recently gone on record saying that the increase in the Fed’s balance sheet is meaningless with regard to creating inflation because our central bank can’t print money, it can only create bank reserves. The problem with their...

Given all that stress that the Federal Reserve’s currency debasement program is laying on the global economy, last week’s G-20 summit in South Korea should have been the monetary equivalent of a military degradation for the U.S. dollar. The greenback...

?The continued bull market in the price of gold has been one of the staple discussions in the financial media for the better part of a decade. But, in that time, almost no consensus has emerged to explain the phenomenon. If you ask ten Wall Street pundits to explain...

With our economy sagging and our international clout waning, one of the few assets upon which the United States can rely is the confidence that the rest of the world has traditionally showered upon us. That confidence is the reason why the US dollar was elevated to...

As the world awaits another $600 billion flood from Bernanke’s printing press, central bank governors from Brasília to Tokyo are preparing to respond in kind. This is the monetary equivalent of a nuclear war, except instead of radiation, bombs of...

?While it’s true that history repeats itself, the patterns should always be separated by a generation or two to keep things respectable. Unfortunately, in today’s economic world, it seems the cycle can be counted in months.  On July 24, 2009, just as...

?It seems the Fed has given up on the idea that the country can build a viable and stable economy through the conventional means. Instead, our central bank has resorted to once again growing GDP and increasing employment by the creation of asset bubbles. This is a...

This week, desperation became palpable at the Fed. In both the formulaic statement that accompanied its FOMC policy decision and Chairman Ben Bernanke’s unusual (and clumsy) Washington Post op-ed follow up, the guardians of our currency expressed grave...

It seems the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve is of the belief that diluting the dollar is the cure for everything from a recession to male pattern baldness. And like other snake-oil salesmen before him, Mr. Bernanke is heavy on promises and light on results....

There has been so much discussion recently about “QE 2” that you would think the entire financial sector were about to embark on a transatlantic cruise. Unfortunately, they, and we, are not so lucky. In the year 2010, “QE 2” doesn’t refer...

Last weekend, the G-20 finance ministers met in South Korea to find areas of agreement in preparation for the main G-20 gathering in November. The Chinese rebuffed renewed American pleas for them to revalue their yuan. They rejected Secretary Geithner’s...

When the euro hit a low of $1.1917 against the US dollar on June 7th, 2010, the airwaves crackled with assertions that the European common currency, beset by Greek debt problems and intra-union discord, was destined to trade at parity with the greenback. They...

As the recession and resultant stimulus packages add to higher unemployment and increasing public-sector deficits, the government is seeking to boost the value of overseas earnings that are accrued by US corporations. To aid in this effort, the Fed is being...

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a heated debate over which Americans deserve not to have their taxes raised, with both claiming that some form of tax cut will stimulate the economy. The primary point of divergence is what type of cuts will be...

Any psychoanalyst looking at the behavior of investors today would see clear strains of schizophrenia in a comparison between the markets for gold and US Treasuries.     Currently, the 10-year Treasury yield is setting new lows on a daily basis. In...

Much of the content of the latest Fed statement, released on September 21, echoes the central bank’s previous post-credit crunch pronouncements: there is still too much slack in the economy, interest rates are still going to be near-zero for an “extended...

Since the US economy has failed to recover as widely predicted, pressure on the Federal Reserve to conjure a solution has increased. In fact, the Fed now faces the hardest choices in its history. It can either redouble its past efforts to re-inflate...

Billionaire David Tepper, one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the world, attracted much attention in a September 24th CNBC appearance by presenting such unrestrained optimism that even the normally buoyant network hosts were somewhat surprised. In a...

Over the last two weeks, seemingly good economic news offered some shreds of optimism to a stock market that was desperate for a pick-me-up. The week before last, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the US recession had ended back in June 2009....

There is wide agreement among economists and the financial media that our lackluster economic performance stems from continued “deleveraging” among consumers and businesses. Although it is certainly true that after decades of overly speculative borrowing,...

This week, after the Japanese yen had surged to a fifteen-year high against the US dollar, the Japanese government decided to intervene in the foreign exchange market. To great fanfare, the Bank of Japan initiated a vigorous campaign to buy US dollars, thereby...