By Doug Casey, Casey Research Everyone knows that the US government is bankrupt and has been for many years. But I thought it might be instructive to see what its current cash-flow situation actually is. At least insofar as it's possible to get a clear picture. As you know, the so-called Super Committee recently tried to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion and failed completely. To anyone who understands the nature of the political process, the failure was, of course, as predictable as it was shameful. What's even more shameful, though, is that the sought-after $1.5 trillion cut wasn't meant to apply to the annual budget but to the total budget of the next 10 years … [Read more...]
Why the System is Coming Unglued
It is ironic that a country that was built on a system of checks and balances now has a monetary system that is accountable to no one... the way our monetary system is structured, the government can literally print money and spend it on anything, no matter how foolish ... it has no checks and balances. And so according to many estimates the unfunded liabilities run $75 to $100 trillion... these can never be paid off. It has grown to this level because there are no real operating principles other than buying the votes needed to get re-elected and to stay in office for as long as they can. If you would have asked anybody on this planet five, six years ago, if the US government could run a … [Read more...]
Money Essentials for These ChaoticTimes
Trying times are upon us. There are a few essentials you absolutely must understand if you are going to thrive or at least survive financially over the next few years. If you want serious money, you have to get serious about money. You need to understand these fundamentals and never forget them. Here are the fundamentals: Liquidate, Consolidate, Create and Speculate. The key to becoming wealthy is simple to state but totally incomprehensible to modern society. Simply produce more than you consume and save the difference. But we are taught that consumption is the goal. He who dies with the most toys wins... Consumption is the good that will save our country. But is it true or is … [Read more...]
Home Prices vs. Home Values
By Charles Vollum, BIG GOLD On June 3, Standard and Poor’s issued the latest update to its Case-Shiller Home Price series. The press release begins, “Data through March 2011 ... show that the U.S. National Home Price Index declined by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, after having fallen 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. The National Index hit a new recession low with the first quarter’s data and posted an annual decline of 5.1% versus the first quarter of 2010.” Then comes the key statement: “Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels.” This means that on the average, a home in the U.S. that was purchased for $200,000 in mid-2002 would have sold for about the … [Read more...]
Where is the Global Economy Headed?
Roy Furr, Contributing Author To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I'm writing today after spending the last three days in Boca Raton, Florida, attending The Next Few Years: A Casey Research Summit. If you're not already familiar, the purpose of this summit was to bring together many of the world's top economic and investing minds to share with us where they believe we're headed in the months and years ahead. The cast of speakers was impressive, to say the least. They brought a variety of view points, an almost overwhelming amount of data and analysis, and a perspective on what the current world means for investors that would be hard to build on. Yet, with all this variety of … [Read more...]
Escaping the Great Depression – and Extending the Greater Depression
By Doug Casey, The Casey Report Here at Casey Research, our view of the Great Depression of the 1930s is a little different from that of most people. In our eyes, Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t a hero, he was a villain. Nearly everything he did served to extend and deepen the economic downturn. With the exception of supporting the 21st Amendment for the repeal of Prohibition, Roosevelt’s involvement in the economy was an unmitigated disaster. But in popular memory, that failure is obscured by U.S. success in WW2, over which Roosevelt presided. Today, unfortunately, Obama and his minions are taking Roosevelt as a model and are straining to repeat his mistakes. Because the distortions in … [Read more...]
Depression Within a Depression
By James Quinn, Contributor, The Casey Report Regular Casey Report contributor James Quinn is the head of strategic planning for one of the world's most prestigious business schools and the host of TheBurningPlatform.com blog. In this article, he is presenting historical indicators that may tell us what’s in store for the U.S. economy. In recent months, worshippers at the altar of Keynes have been hyperventilating over the possibility Congress will run a deficit of “only” $1.5 trillion in 2010. They have issued dire proclamations about a replay of the 1937-1938 Depression within the Great Depression. White House favorite and #1 Keynesian on the planet, Paul Krugman, declared that not … [Read more...]
No Way Out
By Doug Casey, Casey Research I really dislike sounding inflammatory. Saying that things are going to go terribly wrong runs a risk of being classed with those who think the world will end in December 2012 because of something Nostradamus or the Bible says, or because that’s what the Mayan calendar predicts. This is different. In the real world, cause has effect. Nobody has a crystal ball, but a good economist (there are some in existence, though very few) can definitely pinpoint causes and estimate not only what their immediate and direct effects are likely to be (that’s not hard; a smart kid can usually do that) but the indirect and delayed effects. In the first half of this … [Read more...]