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 ...
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Tags: Commodities, Infrastructure, stimulus
Posted in Commodities, Featured, Macro Economics |
3 comments
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 ...
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Tags: debt, government, Treasury
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics |
14 comments
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 ...
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Tags: Gold, inflation, mortgage
Posted in Featured, Gold, Housing |
No Comments »
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. ...
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Tags: 1930s, great depression, Odlum
Posted in Featured, Investing Strategies |
No Comments »
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 ...
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Tags: currency, leverage, risk
Posted in Economics, Featured |
7 comments
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 ...
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Tags: China, credit crisis, food
Posted in Commodities, Featured |
6 comments
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 ...
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Tags: American financial sector, competing oil reserves, manufacturing sector, new Silk Road
Posted in Economics, Oil |
No Comments »
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 ...
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Tags: buy what people are selling, Durable old investment ideas, investing in farming, John Templeton, recent market crash
Posted in Economics, Investing Strategies |
No Comments »
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 ...
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Tags: bear markets and recessions, credit crisis, John Templeton wisdom
Posted in Economics |
No Comments »
Oct 1st, 2008 |
By Chris Mayer |
Category: Commodities
“Taking the long view, we are running out of dirt.” —David R. Montgomery, geologist
Over the summer, Iran bought a large amount — more than ONE million tons — of wheat from the U.S.
That’s something we’ve not seen in 27 summers. In Iran’s case, a tough drought cut the wheat harvest ...
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Tags: Agriculture Soil Shortages, global food supply, Iran's wheat harvest, shortage in fertile soil, shortage of quality topsoil
Posted in Commodities |
No Comments »
