Earthlings are all convinced that a financial crisis of cosmic proportions befell the planet last fall. Had the authorities failed to act with determination and speed, it would have been the end of the world. In the popular mind the politicians have saved capitalism from its own excesses. Our views are ...read more

Most money managers have misdiagnosed what’s currently driving the global economy. The multiple that investors are willing to pay for next year’s earnings means more than any sentiment polling. The forward P/E multiple on the broad stock market is not nearly as high as it was during the Internet bubble, but ...read more

"The transcending value seen in the Dollar has lost its foundation..." A short series of secret memos, published and dissected at ZeroHedge, provide the "smoking gun" of gold-market manipulation. Apparently. And given this little slew of dusty archive-digging – throwing up three documents from 1968 to 1975, each one declassified within thirty ...read more

Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall Street, they'd be starting ...read more

In many ways it always has been.  Simply put, the economy is at the root of everything we do.  For example, despite President George H.W. Bush’s success with the first Gulf War, he was unseated in 1992 by Bill Clinton’s use of  “It’s The Economy, Stupid!” Did that phrase have any ...read more

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

For every U.S. household that SAVED part of its income last year (you know who you are), there was another that spent more than it took in (and YOU know who YOU are, as well). On the surface, it may seem like there's nothing wrong with households spending the whole ...read more

The Great Wish across America is to resume the life of comfort-and-convenience that seemed so nirvana-like just a few short years ago, when the very constellations of the heavens might have been renamed after heroic Atlanta realtors and Connecticut hedge fund warriors, and the boomer portfolios groaned with earnings, and ...read more

The other day I had lunch with a “brain trust,” of sorts.  Participants included a retired executive from an aerospace company.  This guy helped design and build many of the reconnaissance satellites that the U.S. has launched.  There was a senior executive from a large steel company.  There was a ...read more

People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W. Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol's east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I'm hardly the first observer ...read more