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The UK, Europe, the US and Canada are different degrees of welfare states. By way of regulation, government controls via taxation. The states and their inhabitants send taxes to Washington, which takes its cut and sends funds back to the states with strings attached. You either do what we want you to do, or we cut off your funds. The states and the people are subject to extortion with government using their funds to do so. By using regulations, welfare and extortion, the federal government creates dependency.
November 4th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
After German blog “All is Smoke and Mirrors” floated an idea of an organized bank run (something attempted previously in the US without much success) in France in response to French austerity protests (which have resulted in no gains), the effort has since expanded to a pan-European organized bank run day on December 7, 2010, and has metastasized to Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Greece. We are confident that very soon the rest of Europe, which is currently gripped in a climate of extremely unpopular austerity, will join in this symbolic protest against banking, which unlike the US, may just succeed, considering the European banking system is in total shambles, and in far worse shape than its American counterpart.
November 2nd, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
The mainstream media is full of happy economic news these days. The S&P 500 has shot up 16 percent since the beginning of July. Ford Motor Company (F) just reported a profit that jumped nearly 70 percent in the third quarter. It was Ford’s best third quarter performance ever and it was the 6th quarterly profit in a row for the company.
Other major firms have announced earnings that have far exceeded expectations in recent weeks. Hooray! The pundits are proclaiming that the economic collapse is over and that the U.S. economy has won. It is almost enough to make one tear into a stirring rendition of “Happy Days Are Here Again”.
October 27th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
The British Government is about to sell off over half of all UK Forests that are currently under the control of the Forestry Commission to private corporations as the asset-stripping of the UK is begun on behalf of the International Monetary Fund and the Big Six Beast Banks.
Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, has just announced plans to sell around half of our forests to the mega-corporations – that is 150,000 hectares of prime woodland – as well as numerous other properties. The New Forest, Sherwood Forest, and the Forest of Dean could be targeted for sale.
The Sunday Telegraph provided a map of which forests are owned by the state through the Forestry Commission:
The vast majority of these forests are in Wales, West Scotland and the North East of England.
October 25th, 2010 | Posted in Business,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
John Hussman had a piece out yesterday that dissects the current economic environment in two parts. In part one, Hussman puts a spotlight on quantitative easing (QE) and why it is unlikely to have the intentioned effect on the U.S. economy. And in part two, Hussman explains how the current technical recovery has been what I call a “fake recovery,” predicated on government backstops, accounting subterfuge, regulatory forbearance and banks’ raising capital. To date, this has worked in buoying both the real economy and financial markets. However, longer-term Hussman remains sceptical both regarding the efficacy of QE and of exit strategies from QE.
October 19th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
PRINCETON, NJ — Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is at 10.0% in mid-October — essentially the same as the 10.1% at the end of September but up sharply from 9.4% in mid-September and 9.3% at the end of August. This mid-month measurement confirms the late September surge in joblessness that should be reflected in the government’s Nov. 5 unemployment report.
October 18th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
Does anyone really want to hear that America is in decline? For decades, most of us have been raised to believe that the United States is “number one” and that anyone who doubts that fact is a “gloom and doomer” that should just pack up and move to “Russia” or “Iraq” or some other country where things are not nearly as good. But does it do us or future generations any good to ignore the very serious signs of trouble that are erupting all around us? The truth is that it is about time to wake up and admit how much trouble we are actually in. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt. The entire society is absolutely drowning in debt. We are being slaughtered in the arena of world trade, and every single month tens of billions of dollars (along with large numbers of factories and jobs) leave our shores for good. Our infrastructure is failing, our kids are less educated and our incomes are going down. We have serious, serious problems. At one time, the U.S. economy was so dominant that it was not even worth talking about who was in second place. That is no longer the case in 2010. Our forefathers handed us the greatest economic machine in history and we have allowed it to fall apart right in front of our eyes. A national economic crisis of historic proportions is getting worse with each passing month, and yet most of our leaders seem to be asleep at the switch.
October 13th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
Let’s face it. When banks put together the mortgages that have collapsed the real estate system, they were helped tremendously by the Fed money printing of Alan Greenspan. You would think with this help, the banks would have at least done the documentation on the loans correctly. They didn’t.
Beacuse of the sloppy documentation, the banks may now technically be unable to foreclose on many of the absurd loans they made. Edge mortgage holders.
Or at least it still is edge mortgage holders, but likely not for long. President Obama who has shown a total disrespect for the rule of law and the sanctity of contract (see what he did to the debt holders of the auto compnaies) appears to be about to overule contract law, again.
October 8th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
Isaac Newton gave us a fundamental law of physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the investment world, currency is the action. Since the US is still the biggest economic player, the US dollar moves everything. Some things have the same action as the dollar. Others are the opposite reaction of the change in the value of the dollar.
Like it or not, commodities like oil and sugar rise in price when the dollar drops in value versus other currencies. More precisely, commodities rise in price when the dollar drops in value versus gold. Commodities are the equal and opposite reaction of the currency trend action. We can make the same analogy with gold and silver. As the dollar falls, gold and silver rise. The chart this week (see below) shows the relationship of the intraday trading for this past week with the US dollar represented by the green line (the ETF UUP) and the gold ETF, GLD, represented with the candlestick line. They are opposite action and reaction. The only question of the day is whether or not gold is in a bubble.
October 7th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
Wall Street economists are reviving a bet that the global economy will withstand the U.S. slowdown.
Just three years since America began dragging the world into its deepest recession in seven decades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. and BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research are forecasting that this time will be different. Goldman Sachs predicts worldwide growth will slow 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent in 2011, even as expansion in the U.S. falls to 1.8 percent from 2.6 percent.
October 5th, 2010 | Posted in Economy,Featured,Web-Only Content | Read More »
