Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Dylan Ratigan's Emotional Speech on August 9th
Dylan Ratigan speaks what a majority of America would like to say and calls it right.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Dylan Ratigan on Policy Issues
Great video, towards the end of this segment, Dylan again points out where our structural problems are in our policies.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Dylan Ratigan on Free Trade
Great video's and Podcast from Dylan Ratigan, A must listen about the Free Trade Agreements impact on American people.
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/07/20/trading-our-future/
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/07/20/trading-our-future/
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Dylan Ratigan Challenges Congressman on Debt
This is a classic situation where a congressman is asked a very straight forward question and dodges every bit of it. The question is "if you were in control in Congress, what would you do to solve this debt issue?". The answer was not only irritating to me, but to Dylan as well.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Fed POMO Purchase
Even though I am taking a break in posting for a short while, I did want to show the acceleration in printing that is occurring and the new printing schedule that is out taking us well above the $600 billion by the end of June 2011. As of May 13th 2011, the FED has printed $639.77 billion since November 3rd 2011 (since the FED announced the printing of $600 billion dollars) and $ 704.23 billion since August 17th 2011.
The current printing schedule is as follows:
The current printing schedule is as follows:
Taking a Break
I am taking a break on posting and updates for a short period of time to recharge batteries.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Weekly King World News Interviews
This week Eric King of KingWorldNews interviews Bill Fleckenstein, Chris Whalen, Jim Rickards and Rick Santelli. A host of topics are discussed this week, but mostly centered around the FEDs speach this week and what it means to the economy and QE. This information is critical to aid in decision making defensive decisions in the market place.
Bill Fleckenstein - Discusses the amount of money going into the economy from the government and the value of the dollar due to FED debasement. Bill thinks that the dollar is still over owned with considerable risks from the FED's devaluation. Bill believes that the root of our issues is the money printing done by the FED which is leading to a massive debt in our country, which is slowly causing us to lose reserve status slowly over time. Bill says we are going to have a raging inflation problem down the road due to the non-stop money printing. He believes silver has a chance of really having a big move and that when silver goes over $50 it could take off as their is no ceiling defined prior.
Chris Whalen - Discusses how the FED is lost in policy guidance. He makes that point that if we don't let interest rates rise we are going to have a big problem with the banks soon, because they are not making any money. He mentions how the housing price index is down 8 months in a row and nobody wants to have that discussion. He says he is getting ready to downgrade the whole sector due to these issues. Chris says that the suppression of interest rates has not really helped housing or the home owner, which is putting a negative impact on the economy. Chris thinks that the dollar would be much lower right now if we weren't a reserve currency and sees that over time the dollar is going down further. He thinks we need not a better fiscal policy to help the economy and mentions until we prove to the world we have one and follow it, we won't be able to turn the dollars decline around. Chris says that if the FED stops QE then we will have a lot of problems. Listen to the entire interview for deeper insights.
Jim Rickards - Discusses how the FED is using its tools to get real GDP inline, but they can't control M1 due to lack of borrows and a lack of lending on the banks side as well. He also discusses the psychological factors adding headwinds against FED velocity, as velocity is declining due to people not feeling good about jobs, spending and such. Jim mentions that the stock market participation is actually very low (as well as volume) and mainly HFT (high frequency trading) is running the markets. He says if the FED gets into negative interest rates, that could stimulate borrowing, spending and such. He mentions that we should watch the TIPS spread if it widens then the FED is meeting his goal, but if it doesn't then he will keep rates close to zero. Jim also says that the end of QE2 will actually occur, but the FED has a reinvestment effect (maturing assets) going back into treasuries which blurs the lines. China wants to reduce their 1/3rd of their reserves (1 Trillion) out of the dollar, but Jim points out that is not going to be all at once and will be done in different ways. Listen to the entire interview for more information on the economy and the dollar which is critical to understand.
Rick Santelli - Discusses the destructiveness of the FED and how the printing towards inflation which is impacting the average family in discretionary spending due to the price at the pump and food. He also mentions how these artificially low rates are impacting retirees as they are supposed to stay with conservative investments with zero interest rates. Rick says that as we back off some of these spending programs GDP is getting impacted (as witnessed by the last years history and recent GDP). The policy is not creating lasting positive effects in the economy. Eric points out that about 8 to 9 dollars of spending equals 1 dollar of GDP currently which is really having a negative effect on the country. Rick says until we see Fiscal policy right we will continue to see the same dynamics going on now. Rick thinks that the FED actually acknowledged this week that the inflation play is actually not working for jobs and the economy. Rick believes that interest rates will eventually go up in a few years, but right now the economic headwinds will keep them down. Listen to the entire interview for more in-depth information from Rick.
Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List
CalculatedRisk has released its latest "Unofficial Problem Bank List" that increased to 984 institutions. There were 6 removals from the list (including the 5 bank failures from the FDIC failed bank list) and 14 additions to the problem list with assets of $422.1 billion dollars. To read more specifics please click here.
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Weekly M1 and M2 Money Supply
This week M1 money supply (which includes currency, checks, demand deposits and other checkable deposits) saw an increase of 0.25%. M2 money supply (which includes M1 plus retail Money Market Mutual Funds, savings and small time deposits) saw an increase of 0.14%. Year over Year M1 increased 9.83% and M2 increased 4.82%.
Weekly FDIC Bank Failures
This week the FDIC had 5 bank failures bringing the total number of banks failed to 39 institutions. This past week we lost Community Central Bank in Mount Clemens Michigan, The Park Avenue Bank in Valdosta Georgia, First Choice Community Bank in Dallas Georgia, Cortez Community Bank in Brooksville Florida and First National Bank of Central Florida in Winter Park Florida. The past 2 weeks have shown an acceleration in the number of lost banks. We'll have to see if this trend continues and/or accelerates. Currently the number of banks failed is behind 2010's number at this point one year earlier.
Weekly FED POMO Purchases
The FED performed four POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) purchases this week in the amounts of ; 7.24 billion, 1.999 billion, 6.678 billion and 6.679 billion dollars. This brings the total since November 3rd 2010 (The day the FED announced the printing of $600 billion by June 30 2010) to $589.08 billion dollars and since August 17th 2010 to $644.54 billion dollars.
Weekly Fund Flows
The fund flows report for 4/20/2011 showed stronger buying in domestic stocks again. Domestic stocks showed $1.93 billion dollars of in-flows and Foreign stocks had $1.15 billion dollars of in-flows. Taxable bonds continued to show strong buying with $3.32 billion dollars of in-flow, while Municipal bonds continued to see strong selling with -$1.151 billion of out-flows. This is the 24th straight week of out-flows in municipal bonds.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims
The initial unemployment claims were released today confirming the trend toward higher unemployment. Initial Unemployment Claims is a measure of the number of persons whom filed for unemployment benefits for the first time in the prior week. This provides an early look at what our unemployment rate may look like for the month. This weeks forecasted number called for 392k, but the actual headline number came in at 429k. This is a large jump in the number of unemployed and has increased the 4 week moving average to 406.5k from the previous weeks 396.25k. The 4 week moving average smoothes out the distortions in the numbers and provide a trend. Currently the 4wk moving average has been trending up, showing that our unemployment rate should be notching up again as well. Last weeks number was revised from 403k to 404k which is one of the smallest revisions we have seen in a while. Again, we need to keep our eyes on the revisions.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims
This week the Initial Unemployment Claims, which measures the number of persons who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time, was worse than forecasted (as always). The forecasted number was 394k and the actual headline number came in at 403k. I make the distinction of headline number as it is the first release of the number, unfortunately the one most paid attention too (instead of the revised number). Last weeks number was revised up from 412k to 416k edging the delta to 4k from last weeks 3k. Given this, we can possibly expect revisions for this weeks number to be conservatively 406k. The 4 week moving average moved up from 391k to 396k which shows a trend higher for the past few weeks.
Weekly Fund Flows
This weeks fund flows report showed what seems to be major confusion in the domestic stock market (based on the past few weeks trend). Last weeks number for domestic outflows was revised to a -$644 million dollars (hundreds of millions worse than what was reported the week prior), but this weeks domestic stock flows showed a in-flow of $495 million dollars. Foreign stocks saw a reduction of in-flows bringing this weeks in-flows to $340 million dollars. Taxable Bonds saw in-flows of $3.581 billion dollars (still major piling into taxable bonds) and Municipal bonds (with 21 weeks of selling) had out-flows of $1.167 billion dollars.
Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List
CalculatedRisk released its "Unofficial Problem Bank List" this week with 976 institutions on the list. There were 4 removals and 2 additions this week. The FDIC failed bank list had no banks listed this week as failures, most likely due to the Easter holiday close on friday. So we have yet to see if we have any banks failed from last week, they will be deferred to next week. The 976 institutions have an asset value of $422.2 billion dollars. Check out the article at CalculatedRisk by clicking here.
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Weekly M1/M2 Changes
This weeks M1 money supply (includes Currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits and other checkable deposits) decreased by -1.06% from 1903.6 billion in the previous month to 1883.7 billion this month. M2 money supply (includes M1 plus retail Money Market Mutual Funds, savings and small time deposits) increased by 0.06% from 8922.4 billion in the previous month to 8928.1 billion this month. M2 continues to rise week over week. Year-over-Year M1 expanded by 9.74% and M2 has expanded 4.53%.
This Weeks POMO Purchases
This week the FED performed 3 POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) purchases for; 2 billion, 6.678 billion and 1.5 billion. This brings the total since November 3rd 2010 (when the FED announced the printing of $600 billion dollars by June 30th 2011) to $557.484 billion dollars and since August 17th 2010 to $621.944 billion dollars.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Weekly King World News Interviews
This week on KingWorldNews Eric King has a terrific line up with Michael Pento, Rick Rule, James Grant and Jim Rickards. These interviews span multiple topics from the health of the stock market, the debt situation, Gold/silver, Japan economy as well as numerous other topics in our economy and their effects.
Michael Pento - Discusses inflation and how it is destroying the middle class currently. Michael says that Wages and Salaries have been falling while year-over-year prices have increased dramatically. Michael discusses various statistics that show huge inflation yet the FED says they have nominal inflation. He mentions how multiple countries have raised their interest rates and would probably be better served there as the FED has kept interest rates at zero. He mentions Q1 2011 GDP will be less than 2% and if you use a real rate of inflation which is close to 9.5/10% we have a very negative GDP reading. Michael believes the cuts being proposed still doesn't get the job done, even with the very aggressive Ryan plan. Michael puts together a very strong argument in this area. Michael believes the only way out of this debt issue is to default and that is what Gold and Silver is telling us. He believes we are experiencing a lower standard of living in the U.S. due to the currency destruction making discretionary spending dwindling and non-discretionary costs rising very quickly. This whole interview is a wealth of information and is a must listen.
Rick Rule - Discusses how silver is taking off, but Rick is taking some profits of silver (but is exiting the trade on the equity side, not the physical). Rick says that physical silver market is extremely tight as far as physical inventory. Rick says he doesn't think we are in such a gold bull market as much as we are in a paper bear market (causing the price to go higher). Rick thinks long term he is a bull on Gold, but believes short term we may see a retrenchment of gold. Rick says that their seems to be a race to devaluate all paper currencies, but gold is the only one that nobody is interested in or can devaluate. Rick says in the next 5 years the energy complex will increase significantly for multiple reason (supply side, growing energy demand). Rick goes on the discuss more about energy (impact of Fukishima on Uranium) and other interesting topics.
James Grant - Discusses how the FED owns the stock market and the FED claims responsibility for ensuring the markets rise since QE1. James asks what happens if the FED doesn't do QE3, which may cause the market to fall hard (making equity holders suffer). James says the humble saver has been left with nothing in their money market savings. He says the FED has been managed negating the original founders goals and provides multiple examples of those failures. James says he is bullish on gold right now mainly due to the reduction in confidence around the world in central banks ability to manage fiat currency. James believes we need to move back to a gold standard to manage money supply and says it need more study as to what number gold would have be valued at. James makes the best analogy I have heard which is "the country needs a debit card, not a credit card", which would definitely manage our spending. He says we need to get back to honest money (money convertibility to an asset) to regain confidence in our currency. James goes on with a very valuable discussion on multiple topics.
Jim Rickards - Discusses events around the world starting in Japan, where we are a month from the event and there are still people struggling to survive. Also he says that Japan is not going to recover from this incident very quickly (like is being said). There are multiple issues in the supply chain which is impacting businesses around the world. Jim says China and Japan could form a regional currency long term due to strengthened relations and linkages (to the dollars detriment). Jim says the Libya issue isn't as cut and dry as one might think with multiple issues on both sides (rebels and Khadafi's side). Jim raises some very interesting complexities in the Libyan conflict currently that are not easily solved. Jim says that the endgame of the Libyan war is a stalemate and has not stopped the decrease in oil flow. Jim discusses changes on how the FED communicates with the public (more like the other central banks in the world). He believes that the FED is going to let QE end in June (but will not terminate early) and will work on perpetual QE, which Jim discussed weeks ago (the size of the FEDs balance sheet is so big that they can continue to perform operations perpetually off the maturities). By creating higher inflation the FED creates negative interest rates and increases borrowing and stimulates spending. He says QE is not about monetization it is about suppressing interest rates. Jim says gold doesn't have many industrial uses and its increase has been due to dollar devaluation (gold as a currency) and may not move with other commodities that have industrial ties. Jim doesn't think gold will go to the 1330 level (be the bottom now) and goes on to make the argument on why gold is not a bubble due to being under-allocated by most. Jim discusses more market impacting topics which are very important and must listen topics.
Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List
CalculatedRisk released its weekly "Unofficial Problem Bank List" this week with 978 institutions on the list. This week the FDIC lost 6 more banks which helped reduce the list. In all there were 13 removals from the list (including he FDIC 6) and 9 additions to the list. This is a lot of activity for one week. The 978 institutions hold assets valued at $429.4 billion dollars. The following states experienced the following change:
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Weekly M1 and M2 Money Supply
This week M1 money supply (which includes currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits and other checkable deposits) increased by 0.057% and M2 (which includes M1 plus Money Market Mutual Funds, savings and small time deposits) increased by 0.29%. Year over Year M1 increased by 11.7% and M2 increased 4.5%. M3 (which is M2 +large deposits and other large, long-term deposits) has been rising since mid 2nd Quarter of 2010 after contracting since 2008 (probably due to loan defaults).
M3 Courtesy of Shadowstats.com
FED POMO Update
This week the Fed performed multiple POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) purchases which totaled $26.909 billion dollars (with Mondays removed as it was already posted $19.048 billion was printed). This brings the total since November 3rd 2010 ( the day the FED announced the printing of $600 billion dollars by June 2011) to $547.306 billion dollars and since August 17th 2010 to $611.766 billion dollars.
Weekly FDIC Bank Failures
Well the past few week have been uneventful when it comes to bank failures (a trend we would like to keep up), but this week a larger number of banks failed making things a little more eventful. This week we lost 6 banks; Heritage Banking Group out of Carthage Mississippi, Rosemount National Bank out of Rosemount Minnesota, Nexity Bank out of Birmingham Alabama, New Horizons Bank out of East Ellijay Georgia, Bartow County Bank out of Cartersville Georgia and Superior Bank out of Birmingham Alabama. This brings the total of banks failed during 2011 to 34 institutions.
Jim Grant on the FED's Actions
Jim Grant provides his views on the Federal Reserves actions to recover the economy, why they are unsustainable and why they are creating massive inflation. He also discusses the possibility that the punch bowl will be pulled away when most don't expect it and the stock market will fall.
Weekly Money Flows
This weeks money flows show another continuation of outflows in domestic stocks. Domestic stocks had -$335 million in out-outflows, foreign stocks had the largest in-flows in quite a while with $2.776 billion going into foreign stocks. Taxable bond had in-flows of $6.064 billion, which is almost double the prior few weeks trends. Municipal bonds continued to sell off with -$847 million flowing out of Muni's.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Matt Taibbi Explains How Wall Street Works
This is why people have an issue with paying more taxes or getting benefits cut to reduce the debt. The nations wealthy are getting money from the FED through non-recourse loans (don't have to be paid back) and they use the money to make more money or money is being given to their wives and such. Now that money, which went to the wealthy (through bailouts, loans and such), has to be paid back by the tax payers in the form of taxes, reduced medicare and Social Security benefits and such. Maybe if all that money was taken back and used to pay the debt down, we wouldn't have to pay so much in taxes and benefit cuts to decrease the debt. The bailed out entities say they paid money back and the Government says we are making money on it, well then why hasn't the debt decreased. The money surely doesn't seem to have made its way back and the American tax payer will pay the price.
In this interview Matt Taibbi explains where this money went and makes several points supporting the above stated.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims
This weeks Initial Unemployment Claims report got worse and shows a spike in initial unemployed. Initial Unemployment Claims are a measure of the number of persons whom filed for unemployment benefits for the first time in the prior week. The forecast called for 379k, but the actual headline number was 412k. The prior weeks 382k was revised up to 385k, giving a delta of 3k this week. The 4 week moving average now sits at 391k and shows a possible turning point from the previous falling trend.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Government Shutdown Not So Averted
Well it is coming out on the news now that the Government Shutdown that was seemingly averted was just extended until the vote this week which is now delayed until Thursday. Many in Government now saying they may vote against the budget which may cause the Government to shut down. Stay Tuned.
FED POMO Schedule to Purchase $97 Billion
The new FED POMO schedule came out covering the next month. Over the next month (4/13 - 5/11) the FED will print approx ~$97 billion dollars. Adding this to the amount printed already, this would bring the total printed by May 11th to $625.258 billion dollars which will exceed his target of $600 billion with another month and a half left to print afterward.
Monday, April 11, 2011
FED POMO Purchase
The FED performed the last POMO (Permanent Open Market Operation) purchase on the current schedule (which ended today) in the amount of $7.861 billion dollars. The new schedule for the next month will be posted tomorrow, therefore no POMO tomorrow. The current total since November 3rd 2010 (when the FED announced the printing of $600 billion dollars by June 30th 2011) is $528.258 and since August 17th 2010 the total is $592.718 billion dollars printed.
Bill Gross Shorts U.S. Treasuries
Does Bill Gross know something we don't? Obviously, he has taken the opposite position on U.S. Treasuries through the weekend by moving from getting out of U.S. Treasuries and then converting to shorting them. This means that Pimco is betting against U.S. Treasuries as they must see them going down in value due to the current fiscal crisis we are in. With QE2 due to expire June 30 2010, making inflation a question mark as we wonder whether QE3 will emerge to continue liquidity and fostering additional inflation. With China now slowing or not purchasing U.S. Debt at all, Japan being forced to sell Treasuries to raise money to recovery its devastation and now one of the largest U.S. Bond funds pulling out of U.S. Treasuries and shorting them, the path to QE3 seems to have been paved. To read more on Pimco shorting use Treasuries see the article on Zerohedge.
Karl Denninger on the Economy
Karl makes some very good points that have been getting raised by others as well as myself, if you cut or raise taxes the economy will suffer prompting more bailouts and stimulus. It seems to be somewhat of a double-edge sword at this point.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Weekly King World News Interviews
This week King World News interviews Eric Sprott, Dr. Marc Faber, John Embry & John Hathaway. The focus of the interviews were heavily around precious metals and rightfully so after the action we have seen in the precious metals market this past week. Other topics range from dollar devaulation, money printing and impacts on the standard of living.
Eric Sprott - Discusses Gold and Silver, saying that silver demand is outweighing the purchase of Gold currently. Eric says talks about how much of a tough time he had getting 15 million ounces of silver and indicating the silver market is pretty tight currently. Eric believes Silver will perform better than Gold currently. Eric talks about how Gold is very managed right now by the government as they don't want to see Gold go to high, therefore it gets suppressed to keep the price from rising$100 in a day.
Dr. Marc Faber - Discusses the amount of debt we have in the U.S. and that the amount they want to cut from the budget is too little. The big categories likes Social Security, Military and Medicaid will be too hard to cut. He believes that Gold shares are way under valued here, but is due for a correction sometime soon. Dr. Faber discusses the loss of strength in the dollar and how people are genuinely concerned about the loss of purchasing power in the dollar. Dr. Faber makes the point that people are slowly coming to the realization that Gold and Silver are not necessarily a commodity as much as it is a real currency, which is causing increased demand. Dr. Faber thinks the living standard in the U.S. is already bad, but is going to get worse. A lot more good information in this interview, worth a listen.
John Embry - Discusses Gold and Silver, how the price should be much higher. He points out that if it wasn't for the paper market the real price would be higher. He says that Silver Eagles on Ebay are going for 49.00 currently when the price is 40.00 and that could be the real price of Silver currently (I verified 2011 Silver Eagles going for 49.00). John makes the point that to recover the U.S. Debt problem you would have to raise taxes so high and lower spending that the economy would just crater totally making the issue mute. John discusses how Bill Gross brings up that the real debt including unfunded liabilities is $75 trillion dollars which would be 500% of GDP and is in horrible financial condition. John talks about more valuable information as it pertains to Gold that is very worth listening to.
John Hathaway- Discusses how Gold surged Friday with no significant news, which meant that it was a meaningful move. John points out that hedge funds that are shorting the Gold stocks are going to get roasted as Gold continues to rise higher. John has a hard time seeing the austerity that would be required to cut $5 trillion dollars out the debt over a number of years. John sees risk of interest rates rising causing interest on debt to be unmanageable.
Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List
CalculatedRisk published their "Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List" which now sits at 982 institutions, down from 985 the prior week. There were 5 removals and two additions to the list, 2 of the removals from bank failures (reported on the FDIC failed bank list), 2 action terminations and 1 unassisted merger. For more details click here.
FDIC Weekly Bank Failures
This week the FDIC reported the loss of 2 banks, this brings the total for the year to 28 institutions failed. For the week ending 4/8/2011 we lost Nevada Commerce Bank in Las Vegas Nevada and Western Springs National Bank and Trust in Western Springs Illinois. So far we have slowed down in the number of actual bank failures compared to 2009 and 2010 (which is a good thing).
Weekly M1/M2 Money Supply
This week M1 and M2 diverged away from each-other slightly. M1 (consisting of Currency, Traveler's checks, demand deposits and other checkable deposits) grew by 0.62%. M2 (consisting of M1 plus retail Money Market Mutual Funds, savings and small time deposits) shrank by -0.012%. Y-o-Y M1 has grown 10.08% and M2 has grown 4.18%, this is way ahead of Y-o-Y growth from 2009 to 2010 at this time. Growth for Mar 30 2009 to Mar 29 2010 was 8.13% (M1) and 1.63% (M2). So, the printing presses over the last year have really rev'd up.
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