Blog

August 20, 2007 – “A banker is the person who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it rains.” We can smile at the humor in these words penned by Mark Twain over a hundred years ago, but the ugly truth they convey is not so funny.Read more

Aug 10, 2007 – A new but inevitable twist has emerged in the escalating subprime woes. Bank solvency is now being called into question. As a rescue package was being put together for a failed German lender, that country’s central bank denied that it was holding emergency talks to discuss problems at West LB, aRead more

July 30, 2007 – I recently wrote an article published on Kitco.com that made reference to a July 10th speech by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The full text of his speech can be read at this link: www.federalreserve.gov My article was critical of Mr. Bernanke’s analysis as well as his conclusions. I wrote: “InRead more

July 12, 2007 – Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke delivered on July 10th a lengthy presentation on the public’s expectation of future inflation. The full text of his speech can be read at the following link: www.federalreserve.gov. In recent years the Federal Reserve has made much of its contention that inflation is a result ofRead more

July 9, 2007 – Counterparty risk is often ignored and misunderstood. But it can only be ignored at one’s peril, particularly now that the subprime mortgage blow-up is looking more and more like a mushroom-shaped cloud. The knock-on effect from the initial subprime defaults will I expect lead to more defaults, notwithstanding the Pollyanna’s atRead more

June 25, 2007 – The terse Reuters announcement this past Friday contained only 101 words. Brookstreet Securities Corp., an Irvine, California broker-dealer, closed its doors on Friday after heavy losses in the collateralized mortgage obligation market, terminating at least 650 independent brokers, the firm’s president said. Brookstreet President Stanley Brooks said the firm faced heavyRead more

June 4, 2007 – Last week the S&P 500 Index made a new all-time record high, finally joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average in that exulted territory. Much has been made of this news, and all types of reasons have been offered for the remarkable gains being scored by these major stock indices. However, whenRead more

May 28, 2007 – I am writing this newsletter one week earlier than planned because several markets are at critical points. In short, there is simply just too much happening at the moment to leave this letter until next weekend. In the last letter I wrote about the Battle for $700. The gist of theRead more

May 14, 2007 – We have a battle on our hands. It’;s the Battle for $700, and it is just the latest clash in a long war being fought between gold and its perennial antagonist – the gold cartel. I feel like an old soldier, having already endured so many of these battles. They happenRead more

May 7, 2007 – Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was an indicator that accurately predicted when the price of gold was about to rise? Well, here’s an indicator that so far is batting 100%. The important point is that this infallible indicator recently flashed another ‘buy’ signal. The Economist rarely writes about gold, butRead more