otbricki

The holiday shopping season got off to a surprisingly solid start, with Black Friday sales up 3% (or 11%) from a year ago.

With gas prices down people might be out and around, but I bet the cash is staying in the pocket unless there is a special deal.

Not sure about spendingpulse. People could be keeping the plastic in their pockets and paying cash.

Stephen Roach: It’s game over for the American consumer. The good news? Runaway consumption may give way to a renewal of saving and investment. "That’s the best hope for economic recovery and for America’s longer-term economic prosperity."

Silly. Consumers will start spending again like crazy as soon as they can borrow again. Six months does not a cultural revolution make.

Mission Impossible? Obama Must Rebuild Confidence in Federal Government

Mr. Socialism Cannot Compete has proven he is a complete and total idiot.

Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate was provided by his campaign and was certified as being authentic by the state of Hawaii officials.

www.snopes.com/politic...

www.factcheck.org/elec...

Sentiment Overview: Are We Finally Getting Bearish?

Are you saying the use of unprecedented is unprecedented?

Seriously there should be some sort of contrarian play on the idea "unprecedented&qu... or "it's different this time".

It is never really different. Trees don't grow to the sky. Civilization is here to stay. Things only seem bad because we measure differences, not absolute values. We are in a severe recession because economic activity has gone down two per cent.

Home Price Plunge Produces Sales Spikes In Many Cities

Shocking that the supply and demand theory works. Who would have thunk it.

Now we need more of it. A housing recovery is needed for economic recovery. It is always like that.

Consumer Shopping Backlash Could Reverse ‘Misery Effect’

I don't know about fear factor. Actually I am kind of liking this. I sold all my equities last summer and now I'm buying up stuff at 50% off. Talk about 2 for 1 sales! The whole stock market is on holiday clearance.

Whooppppeeee!

Gold 1, Oil Analysts 0

Gold has nowhere to go but down from here. We are in a deflationary spiral for the next year because of massive deleveraging destroying money faster than the Fed can force-feed it into the economy.

Longer term though the pendulum will swing the other way and gold become a good investment as oil skyrockets and the dollar tanks.

Peak Oil, Cars, and Depressions

Good article, no question that we are entering a period where US consumer consumption will not be the great engine of growth in the world that it has been. However there are mitigating factors, including growth overseas of large new middle class cohorts. And the housing situation is not as bad as you might think - US population is increasing and these people will want to live in houses.

If the US was smart it will keep the dollar cheap (no apparent problem there) and become more focused on exports.

Iceland: What It's Like to Live in a World Without Money

Crikey. I hope all you gold bugs realize that FDR confiscated gold once. It could happen again.

The Biggest Bubble of Them All

Uranium yellowcake yummy - yours for $11/lb. Only slightly more dangerous than Duncan Hines Yellow Cake. Yellowcake is simply milled uranium ore. It's not enriched, or fissionable, and needs a LOT of high tech processing before it can be made into a weapon.

As far as socialism not being able to compete, phagh. There are some socialistic economies out there that have measurably better quality of life for their citizens than the US. The US has the best per capita income, but the distribution of that money is so weighted to the top end that the US middle class is doing much worse than in many countries.

Surviving the Short-Term to Participate in the Long-Term

Historically a Black Swan event is an occurrence or discovery that breaks a long held belief system based on a long history of observations that leads to a set assumptions of fact based on inductive logic. It isn't based on the statistically improbably result, but rather a binary event that totally trashes a belief or system of beliefs. One classical example of a Black Swan event was the discovery of microorganisms. Another was the discovery of black swans in Australia forever altering the belief that all swans are white.

The current stock market behavior is not a Black Swan event except in the vernacular of the hyperbolic prose that so often is the content of financial blogs these days.

As far as stock markets go, it is quite apparent we are in a asset deflation period. It is also quite apparent that this will not going to continue for a long period of time given the extraordinary monetary supply inflation that is going on right now. As such it is absolutely the worst advise imaginable to recommend people should be totally in cash. That boat has sailed. The time now is to start buying harder assets. Yes, you might have to wait a while. But maybe not. The other side of this may be merely six months away.

An Opportunity for Patient Investors - Barron's

Riiggghhhht. Plenty of time also to miss the boat if things start turning around in the next few weeks. When fear turns to greed the upside will be like a rubber band snapping back. The prudent investor would be wise to start allocating money to equities.

Short Selling Levels Down. Is This a Surprise?

Naked short selling is destructive since it places no limit to the number of stocks that can be sold. There is no countervailing long side structure to balance this. It is a travesty that this was not banned. Total incompetence.

Three mode control algorithms are nice if you have a linear system or are operating over a limited range that approximates linearity, and you have a stable operating point. None of these criteria are met by the current equities market.

As far as fractional reserve banking, NOBODY is forcing anyone to use banks that use this business model. You are perfectly free to bury your money in a cigar box in the back yard if you want. Otherwise, don't tell me how to use my money.

If fractional reserve banking did not exist some other mechanism would have to be created to supply to economy with credit and money. The mechanics of this may or may not be better than the current system, hard to say which because nobody has tried it.

Margin availability is stock price neutral because borrowed funds can fund both upside and downside bets. Look at the hedgies for a perfect example of this.

The Recession Is Already Priced Into Stocks

Past p/e multiples do not apply? What kind of nonsense is that? The fundamental maths of finance are still operative. A P/E of 8 = 12% ROI. With fixed income funds in low single digits sooner of later the pressure to get better returns will overwhelm and equities will explode.

Charts of the Day: Gold, and Baltic Dry Index

Gold is just another commodity that will continue to plunge in value just like all the other commodities as deleveraging by the banks destroys trillions of dollars of money supply.

The gold bugs just do not seem to grasp that this is a deflationary period, not inflationary.

Throughout history gold has maintained a more or less stable purchasing power; that is its value against other commodities remains more or less fixed. With all other commodities plunging vs. the dollar, what makes anyone think gold will go up? The gold bugs are ignoring fundamentals in favor of wacko conspiracy theories.

Once the deleveraging is done the time to buy commodities will come back, along with significant inflation. We aren't there yet.

For those who MUST own physical gold, YOU CAN TAKE DELIVERY OF A FUTURES CONTRACT. Gold coin shortages are due to production capacity issues, not a shortage of actual gold.