Tag: Economy

Guest Post by Doug Casey

“The only element in the universe more common than hydrogen is stupidity.”

– Einstein

I’m not a fortune teller. In fact, the only things anybody knows about predicting – even if you gussy the concept up by calling it “forecasting” – are 1.) Predict often and 2.) Never give both the time and the event.

The worst offenders are those who pretend they know where the economy’s headed.

Statistics – so often the basis of conjecture with regard to the economy – are so subject to interpretation, and so easy to take out of context, that most of the time they’re best used as fodder for cocktail party conversations.

Still, as potentially wrong-headed and tendentious as the subject is, “the economy” is occasionally worth talking about simply to establish a clear point of view.

In fact, I place the phrase “the economy” in quotes because I don’t even accept the validity of the concept, nor that of “the GDP”; they’re both chimeras.

Continue reading “The Height of Idiocy”

“Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.”

Eric Hoffer

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Joseph Stalin

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Winston Churchill

“All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.”

Ayn Rand

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

The story line is going out that the economic boom is weakening and the Federal Reserve has to get the printing press running again.  The Fed uses the money to purchase bonds, which drives up the prices of bonds and lowers the interest rate.  The theory is that the lower interest rate encourages consumer spending and business investment and that this increase in consumer and business spending results in more output and employment.

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of England have been wedded to this policy for a decade, and the Japanese for longer, without stimulating business investment.  Rather than borrowing at low interest rates in order to invest more, corporations borrowed in order to buy back their stock.  In other words, some corporations after using all their profits to buy back their own stock went into debt in order to further reduce their market capitalization!

Continue reading “The State of the Economy”

From Birch Gold Group

U.S. markets have sustained upward momentum for the past several years. But major warning signs suggest the end of their winning streak may be near.

Rallies can’t go on forever; every upswing — no matter how long — will eventually be followed by a correction. And that leads us to these two fundamental questions for Americans…

How can we tell when we’re nearing a ceiling? And can we predict the next downturn?

Well, there’s no guaranteed method to know the answers to these questions for sure, but we can get a relatively high level of certainty if we simply look at the facts. Here are three big red flags in the U.S. economy today, and what they mean for you.

Continue reading “3 Signs U.S. Economy Is Near Tipping Point”