Jean-ClaudeTrichet, the president of the European Central Bank (EC), talked days later of "the most difficult situation since the Second World War, and perhaps the First".
The ECB's latest monthly bulletin gives us some startling details. It reveals that the bank’s "systemic risk indicator" surged sudden... (more)
Sometimes what is happening before our very eyes escapes recognition – that a major change in modern American society is underway.
For example, when Starbucks Coffee Company went public in 1992 with an existing chain of 165 coffee shops and a track record of success, who would have guessed a revolution was underway – that Americans would begin paying $3–4 for a hot cup of java instead of 10-cents for a cup of mud.
Anybody who would have invested in Starbucks early o... (more)
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. may soon face higher borrowing costs on its swelling debt and called for a “tectonic shift” in fiscal policy to contain borrowing.
"Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading," and current long-term bond yields are masking America's debt challenge, Greenspan wrote in an opinion piece posted on the Wall Street Journal's website. "Long-term rate increases can emerge with unexpected suddenness," such... (more)
NEW YORK (TheStreet ) -- Gold prices hit a new record high Friday as investors fled into gold as a safe-haven asset.
Gold for August delivery settled $9.60 higher to $1,258.30 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price has traded as high as $1,263.70 and as low as $1,243.10. The U.S. dollar index was slipping 0.01% to $85.68 while the euro fell slightly to $1.237 vs. the dollar. The spot gold price Friday was adding $12, according to Kitco... (more)
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s government pledged to cut the nation’s tax on businesses and nurture the environment and health care industries as part of a plan to defeat deflation and end two decades of economic stagnation.
The government pledged in its medium-term economic plan today to bring the corporate tax rate down to a level “commensurate” with other leading nations. That rate is “about 25 percent,” Yosuke Kondo, parliamentary secretary for the Trade Ministry, sai... (more)
Last August the British conglomerate Rio Tinto sold off its Alcan Packaging division. Some of these assets were sold to Australia-based Amcor Limited in a transaction valued at just over $2 billion. The U.S. Department of Justice objected to one part of the sale -- Alcan Packaging Medical Flexibles, valued at a mere $65 million. Rather then litigate, Amcor agreed to re-sell these assets to a buyer approved by the DOJ.... (more)
Another fantastic interview and some typically outspoken observations from everyone's favorite Doom and Gloomer: "I think that governments have become like a cancer, they have expanded in the financial system...The biggest problem is too much intervention. Whatever the government touches is usually done worse than in the private sector. I think any government intervention has unintended consequences and is negative. Eventually the market will break the intervention and things will blow out...Pe... (more)
Featuring Joseph Calandro, Kevin Duffy, Marc Faber, Robert Murphy, Thorsten Polleit, Lew Rockwell and Frederick Sheehan. Emceed by Jeff Scott. The Mises Circle in Manhattan; 22 May 2010, New York, New York. [36:40]
Before the economic meltdown was in full swing, a Florida real-estate developer named William Pitts correctly read the signs pointing toward tough times ahead. In an effort to preserve some of his savings, he bought financial products that would increase in value as real-estate and banking collapsed. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. But though his analysis was correct, his investments went bust — because the U.S. Federal Reserve made them go bust.
Just when Americans thought that the bailouts were over, Bloomberg Financial News service reported on June 13 that the final tab for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout is increasing and may total as much as $1 trillion.
“The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three... (more)
Yesterday two readers of the Wall Street Journal weighed in against hard money. Steve Connor rejects the idea of a gold-backed dollar because the supply of gold can’t be controlled, using the hypothetical example of “a technological breakthrough enabling inexpensive extraction of gold from seawater,” with the result being a a gold-water hyperinflation, I guess. Mr. Conner is als... (more)
Minimum wage laws seem like a good idea, but arbitrarily mandating a ce... (more)
Minimum wage is a form of economic warfare and social engineering. If you can keep people out of the work force and get them dependent on welfare you create a massive voting bloc who will vote for an oppressive, thieving, wealth redistributing, criminal government. Of course the majority of the loot this government steals will go into its own coffers, only the leftover scraps will be thrown to the dependent plebs. - Chris
'Stimulus': The president has sent a letter to congressional Democrats asking for a $50 billion bailout for "teachers, police and firefighters," all to support economic recovery. When is this shell game going to end?
Calling it an "emergency," President Obama urged lawmakers to approve the new chunk of cash as quickly as possible. Inaction will surely lead to layoffs that would slow the recovery. But even Democrats aren't buying it. House Majority Leader Steny Hoy... (more)
The health-care bill that Congress passed in March contained two surprising new taxes to help pay for the changes: an extra 0.9% levy on wages for couples earning more than $250,000 ($200,000 for singles) and a new 3.8% tax on investment income on those same people (technically, people with "adjusted gross incomes" above those amounts).
Each tax signals a radical change in policy. For workers, the extra 0.9% levy puts a progressive element in what used to be a totally flat tax. T... (more)
Are you ready for interesting times and an exodus from the United States? A possibly apocryphal ancient Chinese curse goes "May you live in interesting times." Those words may derive from an authentic Chinese proverb: "It is better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in chaos."
Either way, the message is easy to understand for anyone living in the summer of 2010. As I look over at Lucky, my golden retriever whose only concerns are when do we eat and when do we... (more)
The Wall Street Journal reports that the median price for a home in major Australian cities just hit A$471,818 (US$394,661), a more than doubling of the median price since early 2002, reports the May 28th edition of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
“Revealed: The home loan that could save you a fortune,” writes Nick Gardner for The Daily Telegraph.
When high prices make homes hard to buy, enter... (more)
It’s starting to look like the Federal Trade Commission’s aborted “review” of the Google-AdMob merger was just a pretext towards the regulator’s real target, Apple Inc. The FTC said it decided not to attack Google due to Apple’s recent moves in the mobile web advertising market. And now the FTC is poised to attack Apple, reports the Wall Street Journal:
WASHINGTON--The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple Inc.’s business practices harm competition i
"Kill the speculators!" is a cry made during every famine that has ever existed. Uttered by demagogues, who think that the speculator causes death through starvation by raising food prices, this cry is fervently supported by the masses of economic illiterates. This kind of thinking, or rather nonthinking, has allowed dictators to impose even the death penalty for traders in food who charge high prices during famines. And this is done without the feeblest of protests from those usually concerned ... (more)
June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Investor Marc Faber said cash and bonds will be “very dangerous” in the next 10 years as governments increase money supply to cover fiscal deficits.
“There’s no other way out but to print money,” Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, said at a forum in Seoul today. “In the long run, all paper money will go exactly to its intrinsic value, which is zero.” Faber advised investors to protect themselves with assets such gold and silver. ... (more)
It's one of those dispatches from the world of social science that leave some gloating and some fuming: A pair of researchers have concluded that when it comes to grasping basic economic concepts, liberals and Democrats are significantly less "enlightened" than conservatives and libertarians.
Researchers Daniel Klein and Zeljka Buturovic put forth their analysis in a recent article in Econ Journal Watch, an online scholarly journal, and in a subsequent column Mr. Klein wrote for t... (more)
