So this is what it feels like in an inflationary melt up. House prices were up 6.2% in the third quarter over the same time last year, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. House prices in the capital cities are surging. Stocks are surging. Gold and oil ...read more
Gold Price Says U.S. Monetary and Fiscal Policy Stinks
Nov 10th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Currencies, Featured, Gold
The Fed’s been carrying on with its wayward monetary policy. And it's carried on with the carry trade by keeping short-term rates low.
In deciding to make hardly any changes to its interest rate policy or even the language from its last statement, the Fed is encouraging traders to resume the ...read more
Debt to GDP Ratios Indicate Governments Going Bankrupt
Nov 5th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
Are the Western Welfare States (the U.S., Japan, and EU nations) really going bankrupt? Things were headed that way before the credit crisis began. The Global Financial Crisis may be becoming a sovereign debt crisis and that will worsen an already bad situation.
First, let’s check out the chart below from ...read more
Mortgage Defaults May Trump the Fed
Jul 21st, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Featured, Housing, Macro Economics
Good news everyone! The end of the world has been postponed indefinitely. You may now carry on as if another credit bubble is blowing (which it is, in China).
It was a truly bullish way to wrap up the week. China reported a 7.9% rise second in quarter GDP, driven mostly ...read more
Money Isn’t Wealth
Jul 7th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Featured, Gold, Macro Economics
Some Fridays are better than others. This last one was not pretty. Like a character that refuses to die in a bad horror movie, the U.S. job market posted some shocking June numbers. It has revived the dormant nightmare that this may be a long "L" shaped recession. Or even ...read more
Climate Change, Cap, Trade, and the End of the Industrial West
Jul 1st, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Energy, Featured
Hey here's a question to start your Wednesday off with. If Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme, what do you think the people who designed Social Security and the Superannuation scheme ought to get?
And speaking of colossally stupid government programs, you may have seen ...read more
The Fed and Zombie Investors
Jun 26th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Featured, Macro Economics
Damn you, World Bank.
The World Bank now says the global economy will contract by 2.9% this year instead of 1.7%. That could be right. But that's not the reason stocks are falling. The rally that began in March has now run out of steam. It's also run out of news ...read more
Last Decade: Buy Gold. This Decade: Buy Energy.
Jun 11th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Energy, Featured, Gold
It's not technically a new decade yet. But if the trade of the last decade was to sell stocks and buy gold, then maybe the best trade for the next ten years is to sell bonds and buy energy. Gas, coal, oil, conventional, unconventional, renewable, alternative. You have a whole ...read more
What Are Commodities Saying About the Financial Crisis?
Jun 2nd, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Commodities, Featured, Gold
Can you believe it's already June? What a month May was for commodities. They are Lazarus, come from the dead to tell us all that the world will not stop turning if there is a financial crisis in the West. Or something like that.
If we were using numbers instead of ...read more
Progressive Taxation, an Assault on Liberty
May 15th, 2009 | By Dan Denning | Category: Featured, Macro Economics, Politics
Societies that use tax law as a way to achieve political or social goals are societies based on envy and resentment. That is, how a nation treats taxes tells you something of the character of a nation.
So when you hear anyone say that the level of taxation in a country ...read more

