Roger Knights

What's Up with Gold Inventories?

Maybe money is shifting towards miners. What does the GDX chart look like?

Crisis in Context: 'This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,' by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff

A recent SA article in a similar vein is "Yet Another Finger of Instability" (see link below), which in turn recommends a book by one Buchanan (with link).

seekingalpha.com/artic...

Two Great Bounces: 1929 vs. Today

We're at the bungee apogee.

Headless BofA

"Lewis, by contrast, made sure to throw any potential rivals out of their top-floor windows on a regular basis."

Stockholders should similarly "toss" the current BOD and elect the defenestrated execs in their place.

At the Bull-Bear Crossroads

A little stick save in the last 40 minutes today, to keep the Dow in the green & above 10,000.

("The Invisible Thumb.")

Wells Fargo's Mortgage Conversion Scheme: Delaying the Inevitable

I guess WFC's losses will get put onto the gov't.'s balance sheet if/when a gov't. agency or the Fed buys these mortgages and the owners get converted to renters. Uncle Sham will backstop his fellow humbuggers. But then there'll be a "sudden stop," when foreigners stop backstopping US (buying Treasuries).

Treasury's Stress Tests Weren't Stressful Enough

"That clearly has not happened, and leaves open the question of whether the banks that were pronounced "safe" really are."

The decline in bank stocks over recent weeks may be a harbinger of that concern.

10.2%

There'd be less unemployment if DC hadn't raised the minimum wage.

Is the Hated U.S. Dollar About to Rally?

Denninger is saying the same thing. Dollar bears should tighten their stops.

The Fed: Sending Investors to the Slaughter?

"do you buy now or wait it out for the inevitable bust?”

Gold is a good place to wait.

Why Gold Is Rising

"That said, the premiums to buy that insurance are getting pretty expensive…"

There's maybe a 10% downside before the limit-order buys from Asian and Arab central banks get triggered.

"Personally, I don’t see how we escape this crisis without a dramatic decline in paper wealth. Credit can’t expand forever, much as the Fed and Treasury would like for that to happen. Eventually the cycle goes into reverse."

Exactly--something's gotta give.

More Misdirection from the Fed

If critical financial institutions aren't allowed to incorporate, they'll be more prudent, and they won't grow too big to fail.

How Apple's Market Share Will Propel Stock to $500, Part 2

PS: The conventional wisdom a year ago was that AAPL would underperform in a recessionary environment, given its premium prices, onrushing smartphone competition from Palm's Pre and BB's Storm (etc.), and the uncertainty about SJ's health. Only uncertified bloggers got it right.

Research In Motion: Still the Best Positioned Smartphones Play

PS: "Motorola's (MOT) Droid is more likely to be a "Research in Motion (RIMM) killer than an Apple (AAPL) killer," remarked Cramer, who criticized RIM for buying back stock rather than finding new ways to grow the company."

Research In Motion: Still the Best Positioned Smartphones Play

There's a devastating InfoWorld review of RIMM's Blackberry, at www.infoworld.com/d/mo...

"Deathmatch: BlackBerry versus iPhone: It’s time for us to bury the BlackBerry and move on to modern mobile -- even for e-mail

"By Galen Gruman / InfoWorld / MAY 26, 2009"

It concludes, "For everyone else, the BlackBerry is yesterday's mobile messenger, way past its prime and heading toward retirement. The iPhone is light-years ahead of the BlackBerry on almost every count."

Subsequently Gruman felt betrayed and wrote about it when a revision to the iPhone's OS made the basic iPhone (not the GS version) inoperable with Microsoft's Office interface if hardware encryption security is enabled. But still, the iPhone GS is way ahead of the BB, and worth the extra $100 to a company.