Considering the Labor Government’s record when it comes to government construction programs, we would like to issue the following warning: Do not go bush walking. You may be run over by a tractor laying fibre optic cable for the NBN trials.
September 25th, 2010 | Nickolai Hubble | 1 comment | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "government"
Funds Flowing, But For How Long?
We’ve made this point before, but we’ll make it again. Today’s modern financial system depends critically on continued debt growth to stop asset prices from collapsing. In modern economies dominated by governments and their agents, central banks, money is debt and debt is money.
September 24th, 2010 | Greg Canavan | 43 comments | Continued
Why Spending on Infrastructure Won’t Lead to Prosperity
It’s an argument we see and hear all the time in Australia – “Spend on roads, spend on ports to reduce bottlenecks, spend on schools,” and so on. Well, if you want to see the longer term impact of infrastructure spending and how it isn’t the golden egg laying goose, just take a look at America today.
September 23rd, 2010 | Kris Sayce | 26 comments | Continued
Buy Emerging Markets…Once Again With Feeling
This discussion about Emerging Markets is essentially one of analyzing the risks you wish to take and the ones you don’t. If you were a young, heterosexual male, for example, you might be willing to risk missing a new episode of The Simpsons to risk going on a date with Megan Fox.
September 23rd, 2010 | Eric J. Fry | 0 comments | Continued
Long-Term Investing: Gold Versus Stocks
Should you buy gold? Again, it depends on what you’re trying to do. Here at The Daily Reckoning, we don’t encourage speculation. So if you buy gold in the hope of making a lot of money, you’re on your own. We don’t recommend it. Gold could go up…or down.
September 21st, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued
Technicalities
What’s your take on technical analysis? The idea that prices can be forecast from charts seems counterintuitive, let alone at odds with the Daily Reckoning philosophy. Well, working alongside Murray Dawes, our trader here in St Kilda, would change your perception rather quickly.
September 18th, 2010 | Nickolai Hubble | 1 comment | Continued
Rising Debt and the Great Market Waiting Game
In practice, free information turned out to be worth no more than people paid for it…and the dot.com revolution blew up in January 2000…leaving only a handful of survivors (who have done very well, thank you.) In our view, the stock market has been in a bear trend ever since…
September 15th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 25 comments | Continued
Buffett Commands
Buffett, in his role as aloof spokesman for a bygone era, said, “I am a huge bull on this country…We will not have a double dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.” All of that is interesting. But only some of it is relevant. Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders would be more concerned with the actual performance of its units than how Buffett feels about America. But to the extent that Buffett himself has become a brand (cliché)…
September 14th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 65 comments | Continued
Losing Faith in the Zombie-Run Government
Zombies join government because it’s a good place to work if you’re brain dead and all you can do is slouch and shuffle. The feds can earn a living without actually doing very much. Well, no one knows whether they are doing anything or not. That’s the beauty of government.
September 14th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Capital Inadequacy
It is important to grasp just how important capital adequacy standards are. They control the money supply… sort of. To be more specific, they control the velocity of money. Please don’t go to sleep. This is actually the biggest fraud ever committed. It goes as follows:…
September 13th, 2010 | Nickolai Hubble | 10 comments | Continued
You say Obama; I say Ozawa! You say boom; I say ka-boom!
The Nobel Prize committee has never withdrawn a prize. It might want to consider it. In Tuesday’s New York Times, prizewinner in economics, Paul Krugman reveals either that he knows nothing about economics…or that there is nothing worth knowing in it. We’re beginning to think it’s the latter.
September 13th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
US Real Estate Market Sits in the Waiting Room
…Maybe. We will leave the question dangling…and turn to real estate. Let’s imagine that Ben Bernanke succeeds. Let’s imagine that he nudges consumer price inflation upwards. What happens to mortgage rates? Well, they go up too. Then, what happens to the housing market?…
September 10th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 87 comments | Continued
Faith in the Gold-Dow Ratio
Strikes make travel tough today – in both London and Paris. The unions have called for massive snarl-ups to protest governments’ efforts to bring spending under control. The subways aren’t running. Trains are halted. The French leftist newspaper, Liberation, says that “millions are expected to take to the streets.”
September 8th, 2010 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
The Needs Justify the Ends
Remember back in the good old days? Back when there was no government in Canberra and stocks rallied because investors knew there wouldn’t be any moron law makers to pass moron laws? Ah yes…the good old days. Sigh. If there’s a deal that puts a Labor/Greens/Independent government in place, you might expect that to be a negative for shares, inasmuch as it could mean mining tax and, down the track, some kind of carbon tax.
September 7th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 3 comments | Continued
Millionaire Factory Misfires
The Aussie market is up 2.77% since the Federal election on August 2nd, if you’re using the ASX/200 as your proxy. This whole “not having a government thing” is working out well for investors. It turns on the uncertainty of having no-one in charge is better than the certainty of having someone in charge. Maybe that will all change this week, though. To begin with, the jobs data from the U.S. gave the market a positive lead. We’re not sure this matters one little bit.
September 6th, 2010 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
