Black Swan Event: Can This Economic Crisis be Worse than the Great Depression?
Black Swan events are said to be impossible events. That is until they happen. The PBS News Hour has an interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the famous economist who authored The Black Swan and his mentor Dr. Mandelbrot who is a professor of Mathematics who has done research on chaos theory. It is a fascinating [...]
Toxic wife and Toxic Assets: When the Money Goes get Ready for Divorce.
Leave it to the sense and sensibility of the United Kingdom to talk about the gold-digging wives that are now leaving their high income husbands for greener pastures. This isn’t an uncommon thing. We have witnessed high profile celebrities and athletes fall from grace only to see their “loved one” depart once things got bad. [...]
$50 Trillion in Global Wealth Gone in 1 Year: Examining the Financial Markets of the World.
Even after the historic stock market rally, global markets have lost $50 trillion in wealth over one year. I think people still haven’t come to terms or grasp the magnitude of wealth destruction we have just lived through. Sure, we can flip out about the $200 billion the U.S. Treasury injected into consumer debt markets [...]
Citigroup Analyst Predicts $2,000 an Ounce Gold in next 2 Years: Another Stupid Move by U.S. Government Where we Should Have Invested the Bailout Money in Gold Bars.
So what do we get for our massive bailout of Citigroup? How about an ominous warning that global markets will collapse or we will face massive inflation. Either way, the suggestion from one analyst at Citi is gold will go to $2,000 in the next 2 years. We just backstopped $306 billion in toxic mortgages [...]
Dow up 1,174 Points in 4 Days: A Gain of 15.5%. Last Time we Had a 4 Day Gain this Big? August of 1932.
We have seen an unprecedented 4-day rally in the stock market. This is rather astounding given the parade of bad news. New home sales hit half century lows. Consumer spending has fallen to lows not seen since 2001. Unemployment claims are running at multi-decade lows.
$8 Trillion for the Financial Bailout. Nice Holiday Gift.
As if we needed any more evidence that this financial bubble is one for the history books. The government has now committed the American taxpayer to roughly $8 trillion. We’ve already used up over $2 trillion and the risk is absolutely amazing. Can you believe the state of California is now a higher credit risk [...]
Family Budget: How to go Broke on $100,000 a year. Why the Middle Class has a hard time Living in Expensive Urban Areas.
One of the challenges during this economic crisis is budgeting. As much as we hear about the housing collapse or the stock market seesawing like a playground, we rarely get a glimpse into the actual budget of real live Americans. Sure we know housing is expensive. We all intuitively knew that $147 a barrel oil [...]
The Menace that is Deflation: 5 Specific Areas Where Deflation is Already Showing up.
Be very afraid of the “D” word now making the rounds in economic circles. Today the Federal Reserve hinted that we are now tipping into the prospect of deflation. This is very bad from their perspective. In fact, it is a horrifying prospect for the Federal Reserve since every action they have taken in this [...]
Southern California Home Prices at a 67 Month Low: Sales Jump Unseasonably due to Major Price Cuts.
The recent data for the Southern California housing market was released today. A pattern is starting to emerge. Low price homes are helping to increase sales and lower priced areas are also pulling the median price down for the entire region. This is symbolic of the drastic price reduction we have witnessed over the past [...]
