Karl Marx got some things right. “History repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.” The spectacle emanating from Washington in recent months is nothing if not a farce. Republican neo-Confederate nihilists pushed the limit over the debt limit in October, causing a 16 day shutdown of government services and threatening to drive the U.S. […]
The revelation that the U.S. government is vacuuming up, storing and data mining virtually all communications of U.S. citizens is probably not a huge surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to policy trends since 9/11. Just the same, Edward Snowden has done the country a great service by sparking a public discussion of […]
Global central banks have been flooding the world with liquidity in an attempt to fend off debt deflation and re-inflate the global economy…a collective action that is creating the Mother of All Bubbles. On the macro level we are presently experiencing deflationary pressure due to continuing fallout from 2008, and government attempts to reign in […]
The marathon 2012 presidential election campaign is almost finished. Polling has been volatile, but at press time with just a few days to go, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog gives Obama an 84% probability of electoral college victory. Intrade has Obama at 67%. This campaign gets the prize for banality. With almost $6 billion spent on […]
The topic of this quarter’s letter is gold. Is it a “barbarous relic” or the only true currency? Should everyone own some, or is it a useless asset? Few issues in the financial world provoke as much passionate and opposing commentary as the role and value of gold. Gold has rallied over 700% from its […]
I have been writing about the inevitable consequences of our fiscal and political insanity since 2001, when those inevitable consequences were almost universally ignored. Since then, much of what I warned about has come to pass, the balance is looming on the horizon, and it has become de rigueur to be pessimistic about the future […]
The reality of the economic catastrophe that has been created by 30 years of debt creation, laissez-faire globalization and upward redistribution of wealth, is gradually and steadily asserting itself. Our leaders have been doing everything they can think of to first deny, and then delay, delay, delay the inevitable, but big changes are beginning to […]
Washington can be an ugly place even in the best of times, but the recent debt ceiling debacle was downright obscene. House Republicans, loud and proud in their ignorance and extremism, successfully took the nation hostage over the national debt ceiling. All their demands were met by our Compromiser-in-Chief. I am certainly not unsympathetic to […]
Only four months into 2011 and we’ve already had a decade’s worth of drama. The year began with the Arab uprising that continues to reshape the Middle East, followed by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, another war in Libya, and finally the killing of Osama bin Laden. Given that the global financial system […]
Egypt and Libya have been the most visible parts of a wave of popular revolt sweeping through the Arab world. Whether this is a miracle or a catastrophe only time will tell. Who will actually end up wielding power in these countries is the critical “unknown unknown” at this time. The one clear outcome of […]