U.S. hints at China truce as world warns of trade-war threat. ‘Silver tsunami’ hits as pension costs devour school budgets. Was the Syria chemical weapons attacks staged? If Treasuries reach 3%, “that would be big.” Peace may be breaking out in Korea. Northman Trader: It’s “do or die for tech.” Gold and silver still in […]
The Pension Crisis Gets A Catchy Name: “Silver Tsunami”
Pensions really are in crisis, but the story is so full of large numbers, obscure projections, and dry terms like “unfunded liabilities” that not many people are paying attention. The same is true for a lot of other big trends out there, which is why those sounding the alarm eventually settle on pithy/scary (if not […]
Top Ten Videos — April 21
Phil Sloan: “The dollar will have one last rally before it collapses.” Peter Schiff: “The period of calm is coming to an end.” Rick Rule: “The bond bull market is over.” Michael Pento: Get ready for a “global debt default.” Emigrate While You […]
Bad Bankers Drive Out Good Bankers: Wells Fargo, Wall Street, And Gresham’s Law
Back in the 1500s, a financial agent of Queen Elizabeth I named Thomas Gresham observed that that “bad money drives out good.” That is, if two kinds of money are circulating at the same legal value, people will spend the lower-quality money and save the higher. The latter as a result ceases to circulate. This […]
More Signs Of Inflation: Home Prices Jump Again And “$3 Gas Is Coming”
Cornflakes and milk may or may not be getting more expensive, but some higher-profile things are rocking like it’s 1979. Houses, for example: Home prices just took the biggest jump in four years (CNBC) – Homebuyers, hold onto your wallets. The gains in home prices are getting bigger as the supply of homes for sale […]
Is This The Long-Awaited Silver Short Squeeze, The Beginning Of The Next Bull Market, Or Both? Or, Sigh, Neither?
Silver’s popping today. Which is what people following the futures market action have been expecting for several months now. Speculators – usually wrong at big turning points and almost always at least slightly net long silver – have suddenly gone net short. This is almost unprecedented, and implies that a short squeeze – in which […]
Signs Of Inflation Spreading: Now It’s Trucks And Teens
In a world of cheap emerging market labor and ever-more-dexterous robots, inflation – especially the wage-driven variety – seems like yesterday’s news. But maybe not. It’s late in the cycle and things are getting tight, with pretty much the same result as in every previous expansion: Companies are having to pay up and look farther […]
No (Wall Street) Bank Left Behind!
Times have been hard for Wall Street banks lately, what with record amounts of cash pouring in and causing all kinds of bookkeeping headaches. So — big-hearted people that we are — Americans stepped up and helped by lowering the banks’ taxes. From Today’s Wall Street Journal: The Four Biggest U.S. Banks Made $2.3 Billion […]
The Empire Strikes Back, Part 3: “Big Meat” Tries To Define Away The Competition
Silicon Valley is pouring venture capital into startups that use cultured animal cells to grow meat. The hope (now backed with hundreds of millions of dollars) is that they’ll someday replace corn fields, feedlots and slaughterhouses with football-field sized vats from which an entire city’s hamburgers and chicken nuggets emerge sans animal suffering or land […]
More Absolutely Crazy Pension News
“War” and “pensions” are conceptually about as different as it’s possible to be. But – in a measure of how far into Crazy Town we’ve wandered – they’re both taking the world in the same direction. If a Middle East (or Asian!) war doesn’t spike oil prices and push the global economy into recession, then […]
Jay Taylor: How Much Longer Can the American Empire Run on Fake Money?
Excerpted from Jay Taylor’s Gold & Energy Stocks Newsletter: Gold rocketed to nearly $1,365 on Wednesday in New York, which is well above the $1,350 that Michael Oliver suggests is when technical price watchers will finally start to head into the yellow metal and related investments like gold stocks. But alas the banking cartel had […]
This Really Is The Everything Bubble: Even Subprime Mortgage Bonds Are Back
Record student loan balances? Check. Trillion dollar credit card debt? Check. Six tech stocks dominating the Nasdaq? Check. Subprime auto loans at record levels? Check. All that’s missing is subprime mortgages and we’d have every bubble base covered. Oh wait, those are back too, just under a different name: Subprime mortgages make a comeback—with a […]
Gold Tests Resistance – Again
Just when everyone was getting used to gold sitting around and doing nothing while tech stocks provided non-stop thrills and chills, the metal took off this morning on the “news” (read “Tweet”) that Trump is aiming some cruise missiles at Syria. Now the $1,360 resistance level that has been an absolute brick wall since 2014 […]
Illinois Enters Its Death Spiral
When an entity needs to borrow ever-greater amounts of money to survive, the markets – that is, the people who are being asked to lend the money – eventually rebel. This rebellion takes the form of rising interest rates as lenders demand a higher return to compensate for the extra risk, and falling credit scores […]
Strange Times In A Strange Sector: The US Housing Market Goes “Brutal”
Real estate tends to ride an emotional rollercoaster, as anyone who made it through the 2000s can attest. But in some ways the current market is even stranger than those of past cycles. Consider: Home buying market so brutal, some home buyers make offer sight unseen (CNBC) – This spring home-buying season should be a […]
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