U.S. banks are going bad as quickly as a bunch of over-ripe peaches in the summer heat. On the heels of the Colonial Bank failure comes another sizable bank failure.
Guaranty Bank in Texas became the 81st U.S. bank to fail this year. It was the 11th largest bank failure in ...read more
The Effects of Epic Stimulus
Aug 25th, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Commodities, Featured, Macro Economics
What makes investing particularly difficult now is that the distortion in prices, as if reflected in a funhouse mirror. Normally market prices should reflect underlying demand and supply. As in a vegetable stand, the prices come from the buying and selling of people in the market.
But with all the artificial ...read more
Consensus on the Treasury Debt Bubble
Jul 30th, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
I've just returned from Agora Financial's Investment Symposium in Vancouver. The conference was full of good ideas and interesting speakers.
There is rarely any kind of consensus that emerges from these sorts of things. However, it did seem that virtually everyone saw the folly and risks in the debt-laden U.S. economy.
We ...read more
Gold Stocks Take a Hit Plus Worse Than Subprime
Jul 22nd, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Featured, Gold, Housing
The market clearly is not worried about inflation right now. That is the only way to explain recent 10-year Treasury yields of 3.30%. The deflationist view is the one that prevails. This view, which makes some compelling and elegant arguments, maintains that the credit losses far surpass the monetary and ...read more
Fear, Lust and That 1930s Feeling
Mar 16th, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Featured, Investing Strategies
I’ve had this ongoing project of reading as much as I can about the 1930s and the Great Depression. I favor the first-person accounts, stuff written by people who were there -- like Damon Runyon.
Some of his early stories written in the 1930s reflect on the mood of the era. ...read more
Mindless Risk Taking
Jan 8th, 2009 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Economics, Featured
Satyajit Das’s book, Traders, Guns & Money, opens with a great anecdote about a meeting with an Indonesian noodle company. The noodle men were “Indonesians of Chinese extraction,” Das writes. “They were part of the infamous ‘bamboo network’ of ethnic Chinese business interests that crisscrossed South East Asia.” The noodle ...read more
Crash in Food Supply
Dec 3rd, 2008 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Commodities, Featured
“In my own case, the Depression brought a strange result,” writes Eddie Cantor in 1931. “Before the crash, I had a million dollars, a house, three cars and four daughters. Now all I’ve got left is five daughters.”
Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was a comedian, singer, songwriter and actor. “Banjo Eyes,” as ...read more
Useful Activity Will Survive the Meltdown
Oct 21st, 2008 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Economics, Oil
The bell of American finance has cracked. It was a long time coming, as I’ll show you. The biggest change in the American economy in the last generation or so has been the rise of finance at the expense of making things. This seemed to work for a while, but ...read more
Useful Stuff, Not Inflated Debt
Oct 13th, 2008 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Economics, Investing Strategies
“If you crossed the street blindfolded, you’d probably be OK. But the consequences of being wrong are so great, it’s a bad idea.”
— Bill Bonner, Founder of Agora
The “financialization” of the American economy is an era coming to a close. It’s back to the basics of wealth creation, to the ...read more
Wisdom During the Sell-Off
Oct 7th, 2008 | By Chris Mayer | Category: Economics
I was in France the last time the markets sold off. Every time I leave the country, the markets go in the tank. But seriously, I'm sitting here watching the market as if it were some drama reaching a climactic conclusion. We live in truly extraordinary times.
I have been thinking ...read more

