Tag Archive: On Economy

With Fiat Money, Everything Is Relative

2016-04-30

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2016-04-30

  What Determines a Currency’s Value? At the end of March the price of the euro in terms of US dollars closed at 1.1378. This was an increase of 4.7 percent from February when it increased by 0.3 percent. The yearly growth rate of the price of the eu...

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Peak Data: When Not Enough Is Already Too Much

2016-04-27

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2016-04-27

  The Wild 1990s Not so long ago, during 1990’s, the connecting world of the connected world we now know was literally and comprehensively in the development stage during those wild crazy go go years before the crash in technology stocks in 2000.   T...

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US Economy – Gross Output Continues to Slump

2016-04-26

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2016-04-26

  The Cracks in the Economy’s Foundation Become Bigger Last week the Bureau of Economic Analysis has updated its gross output data for US industries until the end of Q4 2015. Unfortunately these data are only available with a considerable lag, but th...

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The “Canary in the Coal Mine” for Chinese Stocks

2016-04-26

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2016-04-26

  The Largest Online Marketplace in the World This company is twice the size of Enron at its peak ($100 billion). Pharmaceutical giant Valeant, which blew up in the last year, was only $90 billion at its peak. Before I get to what the stock is, let m...

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Rational Insanity

2016-04-23

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2016-04-23

  Intel Employees Get RIF’d Dark storm clouds gather along the economic horizon.  They multiply ominously with each passing day.  The recovery, weak as it has been, has run for nearly seven years.  Now it appears to be sputtering and stalling out.   ...

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100 Years of Mismanagement

2016-04-21

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2016-04-21

  Lost From the Get-Go There must be some dark corner of Hell warming up for modern, mainstream economists. They helped bring on the worst bubble ever… with their theories of efficient markets and modern portfolio management. They failed to see it fo...

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Fighting Recessions with Hot Air

2016-04-20

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2016-04-20

   “Prepping” for Recession GUALFIN, Argentina – Stocks are going up all over the world. Meanwhile, it appears to us that the U.S. economy is going down. Go figure. For instance, a labor-market index created by Fed economists… and closely watched by ...

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A Morally Sound Tax Reform Proposal

2016-04-19

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2016-04-19

  The Oppressed U.S. Taxpayer This year, Americans’ day of tribute to their federal overlords falls on April 18.  As calculated by the Tax Foundation, the average American will work from January 1 to April 24 (Tax Freedom Day) to pay his share of tax...

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US Economy – Ongoing Distortions

2016-04-18

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2016-04-18

  Business under Pressure A recent post by Mish points to the fact that many of the business-related data that have been released in recent months continue to point to growing weakness in many parts of the business sector. We show a few charts illust...

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11 on the Nutty Scale – Banks are Paying Interest to Mortgage Borrowers

2016-04-18

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2016-04-18

  Wicked Don Giovanni GUALFIN, Argentina – Tuesday evening, we went to the main opera house in Buenos Aires, the Teatro Colón, to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni. On our way over, our taxi driver told us that Luciano Pavarotti rated it as the second best o...

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Double Whammy Economics

2016-04-16

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2016-04-16

What’s up with U.S. consumers? They seem to have come to their senses at the worst possible time. They can no longer be counted on to push economic growth up and to the right. Specifically, they’re not spending money on stuff.A little public service on etymology: “Double whammy” was reportedly first used in a 1941 Oakland Tribune article related to boxing. It means a devastating blow, setback or catastrophe. In today’s economy, it often means...

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Why All Central Planning Is Doomed to Fail

2016-04-15

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2016-04-15

We’re still thinking about how so many smart people came to believe things that aren’t true. Krugman, Stiglitz, Friedman, Summers, Bernanke, Yellen – all seem to have a simpleton’s view of how the world works.

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China – A Reversal of Urbanization?

2016-04-13

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2016-04-13

  Economic and Demographic Changes We have discussed China’s debt and malinvestment problems in these pages extensively in the past (most recently we have looked at various efforts to keep the yuan propped up). In a way, China is like the proverbial ...

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Argentina – The Times, They Are A-Changing

2016-04-13

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2016-04-13

  Our Argentine “Ranch Rebellion” Is Over… for Now… BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Not much action on Wall Street yesterday. The Dow sold off slightly. Gold and oil were up a bit. How about here in Argentina? “Everything has changed. Everything.”   Mauric...

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Going Into Debt to Invest Into Debt…

2016-04-06

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2016-04-06

  Bankers Hate It When You Hold Cash In an extraordinary turn of events, last week we were contacted by our local bankers. Since we were turned down for a mortgage in 1982 (our business finances were thought to be “too shaky”), we have had little tru...

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Rotten to the Core

2016-04-06

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2016-04-06

  Poison Money BALTIMORE – We live in a world of sin and sorrow, infected by a fraudulent democracy, Facebook, and a corrupt money system. Wheezing, weak, and weary from the exertion of trying to appear “normal,” the economy staggers on.   Staggering...

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A Tribute to the Jackass Money System

2016-04-04

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2016-04-04

  A Witless Tool of the Deep State? Finance or politics? We don’t know which is jollier. The Republican presidential primary and Fed monetary policies seem to compete for headlines. Which can be most absurd? Which can be most outrageous? Which can ge...

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The Other Problem with Debt No One is Talking About

2016-04-01

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2016-04-01

  Faux Growth Recovery Nearly 7 years have elapsed since the official end of the Great Recession.  By now it’s painfully obvious the rising tide of economic recovery has failed to lift all boats.  In fact, many boats bottomed out on the rocks in earl...

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The Path to the Final Crisis and Negative Rates

2016-04-01

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2016-04-01

  Reader Questions on Negative Interest Rates Our reader L from Mumbai has mailed us a number of questions about the negative interest rate regime and its possible consequences. Since these questions are probably of general interest, we have decided ...

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The Pitfalls of Currency Manipulation – A History of Interventionist Failure

2016-03-30

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2016-03-30

  The G-20 and Policy Coordination Readers may recall that the last G20 pow-wow (see “The Gasbag Gabfest” for details) featured an uncharacteristic lack of grandiose announcements, a fact we welcomed with great relief. The previously announced “900 p...

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