By Adam Hewison, President INO.com Regardless of what others might say, there is no quick fix for the economy. To illustrate this point, a friend of mine recently sent me a chart which I would like to share with you. This charts shows that we may be going into a prolonged period of no growth overall in the stock market. The NASDAQ peaked at 5,132.52 on March 10th, 2000. The NASDAQ market is in many ways more important than the DOW, and should be considered more of a leading indicator. If that is truly the case, then we have been in a bear market for the last eight years. … [Read more...]
Men Staring at Goats
What Hollywood can teach us about the Washington, DC establishment … and Obamanomics By Rob Carlson On November 3, 2009, a new movie opened in theatres, starring one of America’s favorite sons -- George Clooney. In the film, Men Who Stare At Goats, the government gathers and trains a group of people with “special” mental capabilities. These men of rare ability are to be trained as Top Secret… Psychic Soldiers. The film was, ostensibly, “based in a top-secret true story.” Employing their special “abilities,” these “Jedi” warrior monks would pass through walls, and see into the future. They would fight – not with guns, but with their minds. Directing their gaze at the enemy, they … [Read more...]
Gold Investing
Gold Is Going Nowhere…But Up By Joshua Burnett My father-in-law recently sent me an article from the Money section of CNN under the title: “Beware The 4 New Asset Bubbles,” written by Shawn Tully, senior editor at large at Fortune. Mr. Tully contends that there are four new balloons in the economy: Treasuries, Oil, Gold, and Stocks. My father-in-law was primarily concerned with gold so let’s look at that. The “Historic Average” of Gold Mr. Tully makes several claims concerning gold. His first indirect statement address all four items: “They’ve already seen huge run-ups that put their prices far above their historic averages, and far above the levels justified by fundamentals.” Au … [Read more...]
Stock Market vs. Gold
Editor's Note: Often people are skeptical about the Government's Inflation numbers and I frequently get questions like "Are they fudging the data?" And to some extent they might be. Since Gold is the original money and it is freely converted to cash, it is still a reasonable scale to gauge other prices against. If gold was a true inflation indicator, the gold price in dollars would progress steadily upward with very few downward periods and the inflation adjusted price of gold would be constant. Although this is not the case, never-the-less gold is a good scale to use for comparison purposes. So the following article on Gold vs. the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a good place to … [Read more...]
What the Deflationists Are Missing
by David Galland, Managing Editor, The Casey Report An interesting article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard came my way the other day. It’s worth a read, if for no other reason than that he paints an appropriately dark picture of the current state of the U.S. economy. You can read it here. While I very much share Mr. Evans-Pritchard’s view that the global economy is far from out of the woods, our views diverge in that he sees devastating deflation speeding our way down the tunnel. Casey Research readers of any duration know that we see devastating inflation. While we could both be right, with deflation first and inflation later, I’m not so convinced. For starters, there is already a … [Read more...]
Which is Better: High or Low Inflation?
It would seem intuitively obvious that low inflation is good for consumers, because costs are not rising faster than their paychecks. The problem with high inflation is that even with "cost of living" increases there is a time lag between when the cost of goods increases and when you get your raise. But recently commentators have been saying that "Low inflation introduces uncertainty". This is nonsense. During the high inflation "Eighties" I remember commentators saying "High Inflation introduces uncertainty". This is not quite true either. The truth is that steady inflation, whatever its level, if it can be relied upon to remain steady, does not introduce uncertainty. Changing … [Read more...]
Deflation or Inflation – Which is it?
By Tim McMahon, Editor It seems the debate on whether we will be facing inflation or deflation is heating up. This week I received emails from two different subscribers insisting that I was wrong. Well that is always a possibility but we will see... The first letter I received was from Jeff L. it said, "Your current "Annual Inflation" chart, graph, and commentary are very helpful. Thanks very much. The data would appear to contradict a recent article on your own site predicting a long period of deflation." My response was, "Personally, I think we are in for inflation. Robert Prechter (who is much smarter than I am) believes it will be deflation. At this point we are on a “knife … [Read more...]
The Calm Before the Inflationary Storm
I must be getting old. Things seem to change awfully quickly. It seems like just yesterday that gasoline was well over $4.00 a gallon and inflation was 5.6%. It was July 2008 and inflation was the hot topic, everyone was worried about costs climbing exponentially. It seemed like every time I went to the store things cost more. Oil was a speculator’s dream and a car owner’s nightmare. And then came the crash. Oil prices came crashing down along with the stock market and the banks. The big news was deflation. The media was beating the drum about how bad deflation was and how this was the first deflationary period since 1950. Funny, I didn’t hear anyone at the gas station or the … [Read more...]
Why Deflation is in the Cards
By James Stephenson Deflation is not just cost of living, but also declines in assets values and debts. Deflation started in 2008 with declines in stock prices down (40%), houses (20%) and commercial real estate. In a credit crisis, falling prices trigger more selling as we saw in late 2008. As people scramble for cash, falling asset prices actually reduce the supply of potential liquidity or cash. Don't be fooled by the "bear market rally" which will end. As the credit contraction continues, prices will be slashed to stimulate sales at any cost and deflation will be seen in cost of living and consumer prices. The "problem" is too much debt built up over 25 years - up 80% since … [Read more...]
Gold… the Timeless Inflation Hedge
In the article Is Gold really a good Inflation Hedge? I said, Gold is actually a "crisis hedge." But here Jeff Clark tells us how gold can also be a store of wealth and a long term inflation hedge.~Tim McMahon, editor What Do You Have in Common with King Nebuchadnezzar? By Jeff Clark, Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report “There’s no reason to invest in gold,” said the finance editor of a major newspaper interviewing me. “If gold goes up because of inflation, then so does everything else, so why buy it? It’s not really a good investment.” She was serious. Yes, she is a finance writer. And yes, it’s a newspaper you’ve heard of. I was so dumbfounded that I must have sounded … [Read more...]
