Deflation rearing its head again. Obamacare repeal/replace effort fails. Stocks down on disappointing earnings, valuation concerns. Cryptocurrencies recovering from latest slide. Trump Russia investigation heats up. Gold and silver bounce off their recent bottom, COT structure and seasonality now working in their favor. Best Of The Web Secular disinflationary trend hits new highs: deflation […]
Top Ten Videos — July 19
So much for the bitcoin correction. Is China the biggest bubble in history? “No more downside for precious metals.”
COT Report Gets Even More Favorable For Gold And Silver
Just a quick, happy update on the gold/silver COT reports. See last week’s post for a little more background. Speculators are running scared in the paper precious metals markets. And that’s a good thing. The past few months’ correction has finally led hedge funds and other technical/momentum traders to shed their long positions and load […]
Speculators Sour On Gold And silver, Which Means The Bottom Is Near
The stars — in the form of smart and dumb money futures contract positions — have once again lined up favorably for precious metals. Here are those positions for gold and silver as of Tuesday the 4th. Notice that speculators (the dumb money) got a lot less optimistic — that is, less long and more […]
Car Sales Have A Long Way To Fall
The past decade’s historically low interest rates convinced millions of Americans to buy cars they could only afford with hyper-cheap credit. This made auto sales one of the drivers of the recovery, but it also left far too many people with underwater “car mortgages” that will limit their spending on other things and prevent them […]
Welcome To The Third World, Part 24: Illinois About To Default?
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 […]
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 […]
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