The Return of Muddle Through The dollar reaches new lows. The housing market shows no sign of a bottom. Oil almost touches $84 before backing off. Interest rates go up after the Fed cuts. So naturally the stock market keeps climbing. But then, consumer spending came in strong, employment looks like it...
Introduction This week in a very special Outside the Box we have an investment outlook tour de force. My friend and South African business partner Dr. Prieur du Plessis gathered a group of some of the more interesting investment managers in the industry, along with your humble analyst, and let us have...
Introduction "I don't know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand now, it is more likely than not that it will be a financial crisis rather than a policy foresight that will force change." - Paul Volker How long can the United States...
Bretton Woods 2, Redux As I wrote last week, the first Bretton Woods system came about when representatives of most of the world's leading nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to create a new international monetary system. Under the Bretton Woods system, central banks of countries...
Introduction From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! --Old Scottish Prayer Coming back from Canada this morning, where the Canadian dollar is on a breath-taking rise, and reading several lengthy (and very conflicting) reports on...
Premise #3: A Falling Dollar In March of 2002, I wrote an e-letter entitled "King Dollar and the Guillotine," which as the title suggests was a quite negative view of the future prospects for the dollar. Two weeks earlier, I had written a bullish letter on gold, having been bearish (really...