fubar02

Disappearing Dividends

This is serious stuff and a very good observation. I could not get to the "whole thing". Page must be out-of-date. Would like to see it.

Revisiting the Weimar Gold and Silver Ratio

I wonder what happened to the gold/silver ratio when Roosevelt made it illegal to own gold and refused to buy back American's dollars at 1/20th of an once of gold? Would think that would have made silver very attractive to the average investor.

Is The Financial Times's Lex Right to Favor Platinum Over Gold?

Go back more than 20 years when auto catalysts were not an issue, i.e. when they did not exist, and the author will see that gold and platinum used to normally trade at a 1-1 ratio....perhaps because platinum is also a precious metal. Thus the current ratio is back to normal as if the auto industry did not exist. It seems when will it revive? is the only operative question.

Three Reasons the Stimulus Will Fail

Outstanding! This fellow has serious big picture lucidity.
The myopicity and ignorance of our public and politicians is challenging. What's really scary is that the foxes are still guarding the henhouse; and we are the hens.

Time to Short the Utilities

For what it is worth, the author's fundamental argument is flawed. He states "(a) Note yields are declining (i.e. interest rates are rising)." When interest rates rise, note prices decline and their yield to maturity increases, not vice versa. His use of the word "yields" is incorrect. (From the technician).

Time to Short the Utilities

I submitted an article to Seeking Alpha on July 17th (three weeks ago) on this same issue when XLU was at 39.48 with exactly the same conclusion. It was rejected as being too technical as opposed to fundamental and was not accepted for posting. Once again, charts come in first.

Historic Financial Collapse Underway?

Most of Stansberry's article is solid. The only problem I see with it is that as a student of and believer in the Kondratieff Wave and member of "Who's Who in Hard Money Economics" in the early 1980s, I wrote an advisory article that sounded pretty much the same. Back then they called people like me "gold bugs."

Now twenty five + years and constantly inflationarily later, the U.S.A. is still here, oil prices are up once again, and the dollar is again in deep do do as it should be. (Last time it was saved by a hike in short rates to near 15% as I recall.)

Today we seem to be back at a similar point in a long-term cycle as we were in 1981+/-.

As an investment advisor then, I found the hard way that meritoriously dwelling on the true risk of fiat currencies was no way to make or save client money over a forseeable future, for gold dropped from $850 an ounce to about $250 and silver from near $50 an ounce (the market was cornered...maybe like oil is today) to $4.15.

All this happened, of course, while the U.S. continued to inflate the money supply and put interest rates at fire sale levels.

That of course added fuel to house prices, allowing Wall Street to securitize the smoke and sell it to the rest of the world.

This is all to say that while my head and gut tell me the author is right, historically the U.S.A. has managed to muddle through some pretty tough stuff (weak $, Vietnam War, collapse of the savings and loans, etc.) in the not so distant past.

Hopefully, this muddling medium-term cycle will continue and the very long-term and complex one signifying the complete decline and fall of the U.S.A.'s currency and democracy will be further off in the future this trip as it was last time.

Jim Rogers' Picks and Pans - Barron's Interview

Having been in the investment research business for 40 years + I can remember that, ever since his days with George Soros, Rogers has been net bullish on commodities. He understands that inflation is not what you see in prices of goods...that comes after the real inflation which is the government's freedom and penchant to water the currency. Stick with Rogers. He is a brilliant long-term fundamental thinker. We do the long-term technical when.