When I started this blog in early August, I was living near the equator in a city overlooking the Pacific, having packed up and shipped out of New York just after Bear Stearns blew up.  18 weeks ago, the Dow was solidly over 11,000, the 30-year bond was 4.6%, gold was $900, oil was $120 [...]

This is deflation, a contraction of money and credit. Hardy anybody argues about that anymore. So what happens next? Will Obama and the bailout maniacs inflate a new bubble in green energy in their new, green deal? Maybe, but it would only be a limited bubble, not the worldwide craze in any and all non-dollar [...]

I entered an order to buy GDX (a gold stock ETF) calls on Monday, but didn’t hit the buy button, since no matter the technicals, I’m never very comfortable going against my understanding of the forces at play, even just for a short-term trade. Turns out those contracts would be up by a factor of [...]

Almost all of the speculative froth has been blown off the agriculture sector in the past 6 months. The long-term picture for food still looks good, with the world population still growing like mad and Asia in a secular upswing (if cyclical trough). Grains are relatively cheap by historical standards (100 years, not 10!), and [...]

If this is ‘29, we’ll dip down to new lows in the next few days (tomorrow?) and then rally for five months before getting back to business for two more years of a crushing bear market. The analogous endpoint would be summer 2010 and Dow 1400.
We should be so lucky this time, since we have [...]

If you haven’t read this book:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Watch this video, a lecture by G. Edward Griffin:

Click here to watch.

The essence of why bailouts will only deepen our problems is that real credit cannot be created out of thin air. This counterfeit operation is what caused the bubble to begin with, and by trying to put out a fire with gasoline, Bernanke, Congress and Obama are going to burn down the whole city.
Frank Shostak, [...]

This spring, as gold topped out at over $1000 per ounce, platinum hit $2250, silver breached $20, and palladium reached $579. The ratios at the time were roughly 1:0.45, 1:50, and 1:1.75, respectively, about where they had been for the last several years.
Here are the five-year charts from Kitco, in order of descending pain:

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I expected [...]

If you don’t like stocks, why own any of them? Sure, you would be ahead if you had switched from Crox to Merck last fall, but Merck has still been cut in half in the last 12 months. Even Wal-Mart, Costco, Monsanto, Toyota and Honda have been among my better shorts this fall. In a [...]

Gold fever
Retail investment demand for gold (and silver) has exploded since this summer, even as the exchange price has fallen well off its highs. Coins and small bars have become unavailable for sale anywhere near the spot price. Even Krugerrands, of which 46 million ounces exist, are fetching a $100 premium on Ebay.
The largest bullion [...]