The pinnacle of the global financial system is warning that conditions are right for a “full-blown banking crisis” in China.  Since the last financial crisis, there has been a credit boom in China that is really unprecedented in world history.  At this point the total value of all outstanding ...

The “whatever it takes” economy is progressing nicely around the world, with governments and central banks doing things that no 20th century economist would have viewed as possible, let alone wise. Now the question becomes, where does this process hit the wall first? Based on recent events, Euro...

Gold surged sharply this week after the Yellen Fed yet again chickened out on raising its benchmark interest rate.  Gold-futures speculators’ irrational fear of Fed rate hikes has been a major drag on gold.  And rate-hike risks just plummeted in the coming months, since the Fed can’t risk acti...

In this past weekend’s newsletter, I discussed the markets walk along a bullish trend line: “There is little reason to believe, at the moment, the current bull market has ended. I say this for the following reasons: Central Banks are still engaged globally which continue to provide liquidity s...

The confusion at the Fed continues as Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams painted an upbeat picture of the U.S. economy in a speech on Tuesday. This, of course, comes despite recent disappointing data on both the employment and economic fronts. “The economy is in good sh...

Gold’s young bull market has totally stalled out in the past couple months.  This major loss of momentum following gold’s powerful surges in 2016’s first half is really souring sentiment and vexing traders.  They are trying to figure out if gold’s recent consolidation drift is the dawn of ...

In this past weekend’s newsletter, I discussed the return of volatility to the market: “While it seemed for a while that volatility had been completely eliminated from the market by an ever present Fed, I warned this was a dangerous assumption to make. On Friday, volatility returned with a ven...

At the end of August the inflation-adjusted S&P 500 index price was 90% above its long-term trend, up slightly from 87% the previous month. About the only certainty in the stock market is that, over the long haul, over performance turns into under performance and vice versa. Is there a pattern ...

Gold stocks have suffered a terrible month, plunging in a serious selloff.  The resulting carnage has left investors and speculators shaken, wondering if this red-hot sector’s blistering new bull this year has already run out of steam.  These fears are misplaced, as massive corrections are commo...

The silver miners’ stocks have enjoyed an epic year, skyrocketing higher with silver’s new bull market.  At best since mid-January alone, some of these elite stocks had actually septupled!  Naturally such extreme gains beg the question of whether they can possibly be fundamentally justified. ...

Market Cap to GDP is a long-term valuation indicator that has become popular in recent years, thanks to Warren Buffett. Back in 2001 he remarked in a Fortune Magazine interview that “it is probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.” The four valuation...

I’ve always thought that Shirley Yam of the South China Morning Post has a great nose for financial risk, and this shows in an article she published last week on mainland real estate. For anyone knowledgeable about the history of financial bubbles and crises, much of the following story will se...

While the world has been focused on the Federal Reserve, the markets, and the upcoming election, few have noticed the expansion of the deficit in recent months which is now in excess of $667 billion up from a recent low of $530 billion. The chart below shows the history of U.S. surplus/deficit: Dur...

For most of the world, the past decade’s monetary and fiscal experiments are viewed as failures. See, for instance, French support for the EU project crumbling on both left and rightand Why were smart people suckered by Abenomics? So what do the best and brightest now running global economic polic...

With roughly 97% of the S&P 500 having reported earnings, as of the end of August, we can take a closer look at the results through the 2nd quarter of the year. Despite the exuberance from the media over the “number of companies that beat estimates” during the most recent reported period, ...

The latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index was released earlier this week based on data collected through August 18. The headline number of 101.1 was a solid increase from the final reading of 96.7 for July, a downward revision from 97.3. Today’s number was substantially above theIn...