All Posts Tagged With: "government"

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.

Before we get stuck into today’s financial world, a request: please don’t store petrol in your garage. A reader took us to task for suggesting that last week in our survivalists “to own” list. It was just a list. But her point is well taken. Petrol doesn’t keep well. And you may need it later to burn all your paper money and furniture to keep warm. So store it somewhere safe, if you’re going to store it at all.

In the real world, the economy is always making mistakes and always correcting them. Making mistakes and correcting them. And markets are always discovering what things are worth. They figure out what one thing is worth, conditions change and they change their minds.

Eventually, investors are going to realize that the discussion of a “recovery” is nonsense. The economy can never recover the pace and frenzy of the bubble years – and so much the better. It has to move on to something new. The big question is: What will this new economy look like?

When a blind mathematician exits the market because an ominous technical omen indicates a crash ahead, what do you make of it? Last week the whole internet was abuzz with the phrase “The Hindenburg Omen.” The “Omen” is actually a convergence of technical and momentum indicators which, when sighted, usually leads to a big market correction. Its creator Jim Miekka has used it to forecast major market tipping points.

Not only did the grasshoppers make the things that the ants used, the ants took the grasshoppers’ money and lent it back to them, so they could buy more. The grasshoppers were ruining themselves. But the ants were making a mistake too. They were building up capital, but what could they do with it?

Peter Wilby at The Age has come up with one of the most enraging reads ever read. There is so much wrong and outrageous about this article that we can’t even get to the point of analysing it. We have just provided some of the highlights, not that they do the article justice.

If Goldman Sachs is publicly bullish on gold, is that a good thing or bad thing for gold bulls? Wall Street’s notorious trading house published a report on gold earlier this week setting a price target of US$1,300 in the next six months. The report cited several factors. But before we get into them, we’ll confess it made us a bit nervous. Whenever any broker is saying one thing, you have to wonder if they’re actually doing the opposite.