In this past weekend’s newsletter, I touched on the outcome of the mid-term elections and why it would likely not be as optimistic as the mainstream media was portraying it to be. To wit: “It is likely little will get done as the desire to engage in conflict and positioning between parties wil...

I admit: I’m a permabear. This is no surprise to those who know and have followed me over the years. But I’m publicly proclaiming my ‘bearishness’ because doing so might open up a needed and long overdue dialog. Here’s my fundamental position:  Infinite growth on a fi...

Someday, stock, bond and real estate valuations will matter again. And the mechanism by which this return to sanity is achieved will probably be the torrent of money now flowing in from people who, for various reasons, don’t care about (or understand) the prices they’re paying. Millennials, for ...

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and through the mechanism of government debt virtually the entire planet has become the servants of the global money changers.  Politicians love to borrow money, but over time government debt slowly but surely impoverishes a nation.  As the elite get gov...

All eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains for 2017 through June 26. The top performer thus far is China’s Hang Seng with a gain of 17.60%, followed by India’s BSE SENSEX not far behind at 16.94%. In third is our own S&P 500 with 8.94%. The Last Four Weeks The table...

All of a sudden the Fed got a little tougher. Perhaps the success of the hit movie Wonder Woman has inspired Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen to discard her prior timidity to show us how much monetary muscle she can flex when the time comes for action. Although the Fed’s decision this week to ...

Did you know that the sixth largest bank in Spain failed in spectacular fashion just a few days ago?  Many are comparing the sudden implosion of Banco Popular to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, and EU regulators hastily arranged a sale of the failed bank to Santander in order to avoid a f...

Gravity eventually overpowers financial fakery. When debt-asset bubbles expand at rates far above the expansion of earnings and real-world productive wealth, their collapse is inevitable. The Supernova model of financial collapse is one way to understand this. As I noted yesterday in Will the Crazy ...

Housing is hot again, but lately it’s been overshadowed by flashier bubbles in government debt, tech stocks and possibly cryptocurrencies. Still, the warning signs are spreading. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, reports that homeowners are back to using their houses as ATMs: Homeowner...

The UK’s Telegraph just published an analysis of global debt that pretty much sums up the coming crisis. Here’s an excerpt with a couple of the more hair-raising charts: Global debt explodes at ‘eye-watering’ pace to hit £170 trillion Global debt has climbed at an “eye-watering” pace o...

Economic data for February provided clear indications that the global economy is experiencing a broad recovery, with the major advanced economies growing close to or even above their estimated potential growth rates. This positive macroeconomic environment is providing a tailwind for equity markets...

In the past, I’ve warned about the coming Great Wealth Transfer.  But now we need to talk about it in the present tense, because it’s here. And it will only accelerate from here on out. The Rich will get richer at the expense of everybody else. This isn’t personal. It’s simply ...

It’s impossible to predict with certainty how much more insane our financial markets will get before an inevitable correction. But my personal bet is: A lot! For my reasons why, take a few minutes to watch the chapter on bubbles below from The Crash Course. For those who haven’t seen it ...

Every few years, it seems, one or another mismanaged eurozone country falls into one or another kind of crisis. This leads to speculation about the end of the common currency, which in turn spooks the global financial markets. Then the ECB conjures another trillion euros out of thin air, buys up and...

I know it’s bad form to express sympathy for the people running the world’s central banks. But come on, they’re human beings in an impossible spot with no idea how to escape. The pain they feel is both intense and legitimate, and we should respond with at least a bit of empathy. Just kidding....

Our good friend Michael Pollaro just sent a chart from the St. Louis Fed that shows the US drifting back into yet another banking crisis. The green line tracks fluctuations in the US yield curve, defined as the difference in yield between 10-year and 2-year Treasuries. When the yield curve is steep...