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Have You Seen This?

Have You Seen This?

  • The Room – 03/27/2009

    For this edition of The Room, I'm going to try to tell a story, but using snippets from other sources with, perhaps, a side comment thrown in now and again.

    I am taking this approach because, frankly, since hopping on the plane to Las Vegas last week, the sheer volume of proposed new regulations, legislation, and plain idiocy have outstripped my processing abilities. It seems that every hour or two over the past week, there has been a breaking story that has me saying out loud, 'What, are you kidding?' Or, 'Wow... we're really in trouble now!'

    It came to me as I started writing to you this morning, that these many stories – rather than just random spatters of inanity – together form a distinct pattern. And the pattern seems to point to a new paradigm now materializing here in the U.S. and, by extension, the world.

    As I think the following stories demonstrate, the new paradigm is not one any thinking person will embrace....
  • The Room - 10/10/2008

    In last week's edition of this meandering missive, I mused as follows... "What, I wonder, will the government do when next week, or the week after maybe, the U.S. stock market takes another header for 500 points? Stay tuned. Meanwhile, gold is at $826, down considerably over the past week. Like when a tsunami sucks the water away from the shore just before hitting, we're in a transition period. I'm not worried about where gold is going next. I wish I could say the same about the world." According to the number crunchers, the U.S. stock market is on track to have its worst week since 1937. Which, as you can see from the DJIA chart here, is an acceleration of the broader trend that has held sway for some time now. While we can't yet say what action the U.S. Government will take next, glancing over the horizon, we see a growing number of countries implementing a euphemistically named "market holiday." In Iceland, all banks and markets are now enjoying a day off. And Kevin Brekke, our Switzerland-based researcher, just wrote that there is a rising call to halt trading in Germany. It would not surprise me in the slightest if the same were to occur in the U.S....
  • The Room - 10/03/2008

    We're no longer in Kansas, Dorothy. At this point, the world's financial markets are in the firm grasp of a massive tornado. Our vision is blurred with fast-moving images of abandoned houses, crumbling banks, pontificating politicians, alien-looking Treasury secretaries on one knee, and suicide stock and commodities charts. When the whole mess crashes back on terra firma, the landscape will look considerably different. But, what? We remain convinced that the result, with the unavoidable time lag, will be inflation on an epic, global scale. But if history provides one lesson in rich abundance, it is that the future is unpredictable. Who is to say that the government of these United States -- and of similarly indebted and in-trouble countries "over there" -- aren't too late to the game? Or that even $700 billion, or a trillion... or...?... will not prove to be too little, too late?...