This article tentatively accepts the proposition that the default of sub prime mortgages and the subsequent decline of housing prices have been the cause of critical problems in the banking system and collapse of credit markets world wide. Letís do some housing math.  Last fall there were about one million delinquent ...read more

Now to the big subject of the day: Inflation. You’d think evidence of even bigger deficits in the U.S. is clearly inflationary. But not everyone thinks so. The new prophet of doom, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, says at least four factors are setting up what he calls “Stag Deflation” (as opposed ...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

Frank Holmes is the CEO of U.S. Global Investors, a money management firm honed in on the commodity bull market. I had dinner with him recently at the Blue Water Cafe in Vancouver. Over salmon and flying squid, as well as an excellent local ale, we again hashed out the ...read more

The media have dubbed it “the new age of epidemics.” From SARS to cancer, diabetes to the flu, we live in a world of increasingly powerful germs and diseases. Drug companies large and small have renewed their interest in one specific health care sector. It’s a true form of preventative medicine ...read more

In investing, the prospect of crisis has always been a sort of summons for me. It’s like when I was a little boy and the ice cream truck’s jingle sent me running for loose change on a hot summer day. These days, I’m just trying to get at goodies of ...read more

Ultra high-strength and super-light steels are the plastics of the 21st century. There is high demand for these steels for use in everything from jet engines to rail components. In turn, there is a big push for the quirky metals so critical in making them. And in those quirky metals ...read more

When the stock market turns ugly, the quest for “non-correlated assets” intensifies. A non-correlated asset is fancy Wall Street talk for something that doesn’t move lock-step with the overall market. When the market falls, a non-correlated asset might actually rise, or at least hold its own better than the market. Gold ...read more

Cats, the great humorist P.G. Wodehouse once wrote, are snooty because they cannot get over the fact that the ancient Egyptians once worshipped them as gods. Americans, like cats, might also struggle to get used to a changed world. The global economy no longer bows exclusively to the altar of ...read more

China is the new Germany. At the end of the Second World War, Germany was an “emerging market.” It was industrializing rapidly and producing brisk economic growth. Today, Germany is a mature “developed market” that grows slowly if it grows at all. Today, China is the new Germany. The industrial dynamism ...read more