The train wreck that is the state of Illinois has generated a lot of questions lately, including “Will its government ever pass a budget?”, “Will it ever pay its overdue bills?”, and “Is it possible for a state to go bankrupt?” Looks like we’re about to get some answers to these questions, along with one […]
Breaking News And Best Of The Web
New cyberattack goes global. CNN caught in fake news scandal. “Crypto-correction” as bitcoin, ethereum dive. Durable goods orders disappoint again. Inflation falling, yield flattens further. US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia edge towards war in the Middle East. Dow and S&P 500 at or near record highs, gold and silver open slightly higher. Best Of […]
Top Ten Videos — June 25
Gold and bitcoin are allies against fiat and government. To be a prepper you have to be in shape. We’re rushing to war in Syria. The financialized economy is “a magic trick.”
The Middle East Is Blowing Up
Every day brings another scary headline from the Middle East — which makes it easy to treat them as background noise rather than a clear and present danger. But the latest batch is reminiscent of the Balkans circa 1914, which means it may be time to tune back in. Some examples: A US Navy jet […]
Is Amazon/Whole Foods This Cycle’s AOL/Time Warner – A Sign That The Party’s Over?
Towards the end of the 1990s tech stock bubble, “new media” – i.e., the Internet — was ascendant and old media like magazines, newspapers and broadcast TV were yesterday’s news. This was reflected in relative stock valuations, which gave Internet pioneer AOL the ability to buy venerable media giant Time Warner for what looked (accurately […]
Welcome To The Third World, Part 23: Illinois Death Watch
It’s been a long time coming, but Illinois’ slow-mo financial disaster is now front page news. A few recent examples: Roadwork Could Shut Down Across Illinois Due To Budget Impasse (Chicagoist) – Roadwork across Illinois may grind to a halt at the end of June due to the continued state budget impasse, a representative for […]
The Everything Bubble, Part 1: Return Of The Subprime Mortgage
This cycle’s main bubble is in government bonds and fiat currencies, with a dash of large-cap tech thrown in for variety. But like a hurricane spawning tornadoes at its periphery, this Money Bubble is creating secondary bubbles like student debt and subprime auto loans that are impressively destructive in their own right. An example of […]
Next Generation Risks, Part 1: “Super EMP” Attack
The global financial system’s ever-increasing leverage pretty much guarantees another crisis in coming years — unless it’s pre-empted by new weapons that can, in theory, shut down entire national banking systems, thus screwing up the best-laid plans of today’s savers and investors. This series will consider some of them, beginning with the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) […]
Electric Cars Go Exponential
Until very recently, consensus opinion has viewed electric cars as at best a niche market and at worst a passing fad. That’s changing as production and sales take off: Electric Car Sales Are Surging, IEA Reports (Bloomberg) – The number of electric vehicles on the road rocketed to 2 million in 2016 after being virtually […]
Soaring Debt = Slow Growth = Even More Debt = Systemic Crisis
It’s just common sense: Borrow too much money and the weight of this debt makes it hard to do things that used to be easy. This truism is now (finally!) hitting home, and blame is being apportioned. A couple of recent examples: Over The Last 10 Years The U.S. Economy Has Grown At EXACTLY The […]
Time To Add Housing To The Bubble List?
Housing is hot again, but lately it’s been overshadowed by flashier bubbles in government debt, tech stocks and possibly cryptocurrencies. Still, the warning signs are spreading. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, reports that homeowners are back to using their houses as ATMs: Homeowners Are Again Pocketing Cash as They Refinance Properties Americans refinancing their […]
Really Bad Ideas, Part 2: Giving Up Without Admitting It
Doing the right thing is hard for both individuals and their governments. Name the goal – maintaining a healthy weight, paying off high-interest credit cards, keeping debt-to-GDP at reasonable levels, whatever – and with each missed deadline or broken promise success recedes further into the distance. And the temptation grows to just give up and […]
Is This Bitcoin’s Fatal Flaw?
Bitcon has been rocketing higher lately, as it gains widespread official approval and more people figure out how to use it. As the first of its kind to emerge, bitcoin has become synonymous with “cryptocurrency”. But lately it’s been joined by a lot of others – which together now account for more than half of […]
You’d Think We’d Be A Little More Worried…
By now everyone with an Internet connection is aware of the “ransomware” attack that shut down hundreds of thousands of computers over the weekend. The fact that the onslaught is just beginning — as the military-grade hacking tools developed by the NSA and recently leaked are weaponized by hackers and released into the wild — […]
Really Bad Ideas, Part 1: Modern Monetary Theory
The past century has been an orgy of experimentation. We tried fascism, which initially looked good to some before (literally) crashing and burning. We tried communism, which looked great to many before killing millions and withering away. Fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, meanwhile, still make sense to most economists and politicians but seem to […]
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