As the fiesta of “globalism” (Tom Friedman-style) draws to a close — another consequence of currency problems — we’ll have to figure out how to make things in this country again. We will not be manufacturing things at the scale, or in the manner, we were used to in, say, ...read more

Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it’s hardly reassuring to know that it’s been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the U.S. Treasury has become and sucked out a multi-billion dollar dose of embalming fluid so it can go on pretending to be a ...read more

There is nothing so sad as to see an elderly person with a whole medicine cabinet full of various prescription drugs, which are regularly taken several times a day and for some strange reason their health doesn’t seem to improve. Thousands of times, a son or daughter has come upon ...read more

“Well, God knows you don’t need any brains to buck barley bags...” — John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) Alpha used to be what hedge-fund managers promised their clients. Better still, portable alpha — defined in the easy bed-time reading of finance MBAs as the “generation of excess return over a benchmark ...read more

I was looking through my pocket-copy of the U.S. Constitution for the “Bailout Clause.” I must have missed it. If any readers out there can find the Bailout Clause, please send me a note and let me know where it is. There is, however, a “Bankruptcy Clause” in the ...read more

Under Bernanke’s direction, the Federal Reserve has completely rewritten its mission. Many articles in the International Speculator and The Casey Report have reported the strange growth in the loans they have made and explained that Bernanke has, for a long time, espoused unconventional actions to avert deflation and to expand ...read more

“...Prolonged inflation (and, especially hyperinflation) cannot continue without increases in the monetary base...” “A country’s long-run inflation is caused primarily, or perhaps exclusively, by increases in its own monetary base,” wrote Richard G. Anderson — a vice-president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — in a ...read more

Along with the market decline, the price of oil has fallen. It’s down 50% within three months. Back when oil hit $147 per barrel in July, I said that the price “ought” to be in the range of $100-110, with the possibility of a drop into the $90s. That’s what ...read more

“...Take a look at this chart of gold prices measured in the top 10 most important world currencies...” So the spot gold price sank in October, dropping right back to 13-month lows at $683 an ounce. After failing to breach $930, this collapse marked the third step lower from March’s all-time high ...read more

There are only two things gold bulls should worry about from this point forward, now that the general commodity correction is out of the way and the froth has been worked out of the market: deflation in the strict sense of the term (monetary, not asset deflation) or a suddenly ...read more