All Posts Tagged With: "finance"

Extend and pretend…That’s the government’s way of handling the crisis. Extend credit and cash to those who don’t deserve it. Then, pretend that everything is okay…But the problems don’t go away. They just get stretched into the future…What did the feds do for GM? They took over the company.

Betting that the gold bull market is over is akin to betting on the wisdom of governments. I’ve happily taken the other side of that bet and following the recent sell-off, have just advised my subscribers to buy up a number of attractively priced gold companies. Investors with a little patience should do very well.

We said that despite an outlook for the world that was full of de-leveraging and falling asset prices, there is a time and a place to go on the attack. But is now that time and is here that place? And how would you attack anyway? Well, there is certainly a place (albeit small) for speculation in any well-diversified portfolio. But it’s important to remember that Black Swans – statistically improbable according to conventional models, but with very large consequences – don’t always have to be bad things.

Qatar is a red-hot economy. Last year it grew around 18% and this year it ought to grow another 16%. We saw the headlines in the Gulf Times in the lounge while waiting for our transfer to Dubai.

The grand poobahs of the world’s economy are wringing their hands in worry over the three Fs, each its own kind of crisis: food, fuel, and finance. As usual, it’s the people at the margin (whether lending or with food) that are affected first when surplus turns to scarcity. Despite all the daily signs of abundance here in Australia, let us not forget that there are about four and half billion people on the planet who have little margin for error in their daily lives.