Obama: A One-and –Done President?
By the Editors of The Casey Report, Casey Research
President Obama promised to turn around the floundering economy that he inherited from his predecessor. He promised jobs. He promised transparency. Not only did he not deliver on those campaign promises, he has led the nation further into the abyss on all counts. Today we are less prosperous, deeper in debt, and enjoy fewer liberties than when Obama first stepped into the Oval Office. His own party is losing faith in the messiah.
You can see that loss of faith in the steady downward trajectory of Obama’s approval ratings. While Democrats can take heart from the fact that no truly viable candidate has emerged from the GOP, it’s clear that “Hope and Change” will not be sufficient to rally the electoral troops for Obama again in 2012. Voters are hurting, and Obama’s claims that the blame lies with George W. Bush no longer provide any solace.
Not only is the president’s own reelection in jeopardy, his sagging polls are dragging down other Democrat candidates as well. Republican Bob Turner handily took Anthony Weiner’s seat in New York’s 9th Congressional District, a district that had been a Democrat stronghold since 1923. New York’s 9th District has previously been represented by such Democrat stalwarts as Chuck Schumer and Geraldine Ferraro. During the special election for Weiner’s seat, Obama had only 31 percent approval in that district, although he won there with 55 percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election.
A Democrat pollster attributed Turner’s win to “the incredible unpopularity of Barack Obama dragging his party down in the district.” Similarly, Republican Scott Brown took the Massachusetts seat that had been held by Ted Kennedy for almost 46 years. Brown’s win was attributed in large part to widespread discontent over Obama’s policies, particularly Obamacare. Continue reading
Doug Casey: Is a US-Iran War Inevitable?
Interviewed by Louis James, Casey Research
US-Iranian saber-rattling or impending shoot-out? In his usual, candid manner, contrarian investor Doug Casey talks about why he believes it’s serious this time… why the US is the greatest threat to peace today… why Iran might move towards a gold standard… and what smart investors should do.
L: Doug-sama, I’ve heard you say you think the US is setting Iran up to be the next fall guy in the wag-the-dog show – do you think it could really come to open warfare?
Doug: Yes, I do. It could just be saber rattling during an election year, but Western powers have been provoking Iran for years now – two decades, really. I just saw another report proclaiming that Iran is likely to attack the US, which is about as absurd as the allegations Bush made about Iraq bombing the US, when he fomented that invasion. It’s starting to look rather serious at this point, so I do think the odds favor actual fighting in the not-too-distant future.
L: Could they really be so stupid?
Doug: You know the answer to that one. We’re dealing with criminal personalities on both sides, and criminals are basically very stupid – meaning they have an unwitting tendency to self-destruction. One thing to remember is that most of those in power in the West still believe the old economic fallacy that war is good for the economy.
L: The old broken-window fallacy. Paraphrasing Arlo Guthrie, it’s hard to believe anyone could get away with making a mistake that dumb for that long. Continue reading
The European Debt Crisis and Your Investments
A look back on 18 months of analysis and reports on the European Credit Crisis
In 1999, 11 European countries surrendered their currencies for the euro and a shared monetary authority. Barely a decade later, the once-celebrated EU is in the midst of a credit crisis and its currency is facing collapse.
Elliott Wave International’s analysts have been anticipating and tracking the credit contagion across the European nations for the past two years. EWI subscribers were first alerted to the still-developing European debt crisis back in December 2009.
The following is excerpted from a December 2010 report from The European Debt Crisis, a new report from EWI. This free report provides important analysis from February 2010 through today that helps you understand what the European economic crisis can mean for your investments. Plus, you’ll get a unique perspective on what’s ahead. Find out how to access this free report below.
The Credit Crisis Spreads — December 2010
The credit crisis is escalating as expected. Back in January 2010, when ratings agency Moody’s bestowed “investment grade” status on a widely followed index of sovereign bonds, The European Financial Forecast argued that a renewed Primary-degree decline would in fact aim the credit crisis directly at this critical new realm. Our case for the looming sovereign debt debacle rested primarily on two pieces of evidence: (1) Primary wave 3 (circled) had begun in Europe’s peripheral markets, and (2) premiums for credit-default swaps on European sovereigns (think of an insurance policy against a national default) were already signaling the next phase of the crisis by surpassing their 2008-09 price extremes. The February 2010 issue of EFF published a chart showing rising Greek, Spanish and Italian swaps and offered this description of how Europe’s credit crunch would escalate: “The theme during Primary wave 1 (circled) was default at the individual, corporate and quasi-government level. The theme for Primary wave 3 (circled) will be default at the sovereign level.”
Today, the credit crunch is clearly angling itself away from mere corporations and toward whole countries. On November 15, Bloomberg announced the escalation with this headline: Continue reading
Stock Market Is Not Physics Part III
The following series is excerpted from two classic issues of Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. Although originally published in 2004, the valuable series has been re-released in the Independent Investor eBook, along with over 100 pages of other reports that challenge conventional economic thinking.
Here is Part III of the series. You can read Part I and Part II here. Check back in a few days to read Part IV, or you can download your free copy of the Independent Investor eBook here.
Cause and Effect In the 1990s, a university professor sold many books that made a case for buying “stocks for the long run.” In a recent issue of USA Today, he told a reporter, “Clearly, the risk of terror is the major reason why the markets have come down. We can’t quantify these risks; it’s not like flipping a coin and knowing your odds are 50-50 that an attack won’t occur.”1
In other words, he accepts the physics paradigm of external cause and effect with respect to the stock market but says he cannot predict the cause part of the equation and therefore cannot predict stock prices. The first question is, well, if one cannot predict causes, then how can one write a book predicting effects, i.e., arguing that stocks will go up? Or down or sideways? A second question is far more important. We have already seen that economic performance, earnings and inflation do not necessarily coincide with movements in apparently related financial markets. In fact, the two sets of data can utterly oppose each other. Is there any evidence that dramatic news events that make headlines, such as terrorist attacks, political events, wars, crises or any such events are causal to stock market movement? Continue reading
The Stock Market Is Not Physics: Part II
The following series is excerpted from two classic issues of Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. Although originally published in 2004, the valuable series has been re-released in the Independent Investor eBook, along with over 100 pages of other reports that challenge conventional economic thinking.
Here is Part II of the series. You can read Part I here. Check back in a few days to read Part III, or you can download your free copy of the Independent Investor eBook here.
Action and Reaction In the world of physics, action is followed by reaction. Most financial analysts, economists, historians, sociologists and futurists believe that society works the same way. They typically say, “Because so-and-so has happened, such-and-such will follow.” The news headlines in Figure 1, for example, reflect what economists tell reporters: Good economic news makes the stock market go up; bad economic news makes it go down. But is it true? Continue reading
The Stock Market Is Not Physics: Part I
The following series is excerpted from two classic issues of Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. Although originally published in 2004, the valuable series has been re-released in the Independent Investor eBook, along with over 100 pages of other reports that challenge conventional economic thinking.
Here is Part I of the series. Check back in a few days to read Part II, or you can download your free copy of the Independent Investor eBook here.
See if you can answer these four questions:
- In 1950, a good computer cost $1 million. In 1990, it cost $5000. Today it costs $1000. Question: What will a good computer cost 50 years from today?
- Democracy as a form of government has been spreading for centuries. In the 1940s, Japan changed from an empire to a democracy. In the 1980s, the Russian Soviet system collapsed, and now the country holds multi-party elections. In the 1990s, China adopted free-market reforms. In March of this year, Iraq, a former dictatorship, celebrated a new democratic constitution. Question: Fifty years from today, will a larger or smaller percentage of the world’s population live under democracy?
- In the decade from 1983 to 1993, there were ten months of recession in the U.S.; in the subsequent decade from 1993 to 2003, there were 8 months of recession. In the first period, expansion was underway 92 percent of the time; in the second period, it was 93 percent. Question: What percentage of the time will expansion take place during the decade from 2003 to 2013?
- In 1970, Reserve Funds kicked off the hugely successful money market fund industry. In 1973, the CBOE introduced options on stocks. In 1977, Michael Milken invented junk bond financing, which became a major category of investment. In 1982, stock index futures and options on futures began to trade. In 1983, options on stock indexes became available. Keogh plans, IRAs and 401k’s have brought tax breaks to the investing public. The mutual fund industry, a small segment of the financial world in the late 1970s, has attracted the public’s invested wealth to the point that there are more mutual funds than there are NYSE stocks. Futures contracts on individual stocks have just begun trading. Question: Over the next 50 years, will the number and sophistication of financial services increase or decrease?
Observe that I asked you a microeconomic question, a political question, a macroeconomic question and a financial question. Continue reading
The Light Bulb Moment for the Eurozone
EWI’s free EU debt report sheds some light on what’s in store
How many European bankers does it take to change a light bulb? That’s a joke in search of an answer, but EWI’s European analyst Brian Whitmer explained five months ago that the “light bulb moment” was coming — that’s the time when most people would clearly recognize the severity of the European debt crisis. He offered this spot-on analysis back in July 2011, before the larger world came to know recently how bad things really are in the eurozone.
This chart shows how markets in Greece, Ireland and Portugal have behaved over the past five years, including the bailouts. Whitmer says that the turmoil in Greece is due mostly to both social mood and Greek markets having plummeted for more than a year and a half, while the larger EU stock markets have levitated. Once they turn down, he forecasts that what you saw in Greece will be replayed in the eurozone. Continue reading
Markets Aren’t Rational
EWI’s Brian Whitmer shows how the European financial markets move despite the news
As the news from Europe about bailouts and the euro’s viability changes by the hour, EWI’s European editor, Brian Whitmer, doesn’t see the uncertainty as a problem. In fact, he points out that when uncertainty blooms, you can really see that markets aren’t rational and that Elliott waves tend to become even clearer. He discusses the “uncertainty in Europe” in this excerpt from the November European Financial Forecast:
Markets Aren’t Rational
How many times did analysts blame the summer sell-off on “uncertainty in Europe”? But as stocks rallied over the past two months, notice that the European situation became more uncertain, not less, as the headlines in this chart attest. Who would have guessed that stocks could jump 30% amidst such uncertainty? Continue reading
The Gold Investor’s Biggest Risk
By Jeff Clark, Casey Research
While we’re convinced that our gold and silver investments will pay off, they don’t come without risk. What do you suppose is the biggest risk we face? Another 2008-style selloff? Gold stocks never breaking out of their funk? Maybe a depression that slams our standard of living?
Though those things are possible, we at Casey Research don’t see that as your greatest threat:
“Your biggest risk is not that gold or silver may fall in price. Nor is it that gold stocks could take longer to catch fire than we think. Not even the prospect of the Greater Depression. No, your biggest risk is political. As bankrupt governments get increasingly desperate for revenue, any monetary asset held domestically could be a target. It is absolutely essential that every investor diversify themselves politically. In fact, at this point, it is the one action that should be taken before anything else.” – Doug Casey, September 2011
I know many reading this are prudent investors. You own gold and silver as solid protection against currency debasement, inflation, and faltering economies. You set aside cash for emergencies. You have strong exposure to gold stocks, both producers and juniors, positioned ahead of what is likely the next-favored asset class. You feel protected and poised to profit.
Yet, despite all this preparation, you remain exposed to one of the biggest risks. Continue reading
Economic Insights from a Lord of Finance
By David Galland, The Casey Report
Of all the social memes related to the economic and investment landscape, none is more dominant than that there is a small cadre of powerful Wall Street money men who, working behind the scenes, effectively control investment markets, the global economy and the politicians that play such a big role in that economy.
Whether you call them fat cats, greedy bankers, soulless manipulators or unindicted co-conspirators, the one sure thing, in the minds of most, is that they wield the power behind all thrones and that it is their whispered agreements, invariably made in darkened rooms full of cigar smoke, that decide the economic fates of us all.
Over the years, I have met quite a few of these “Lords of Finance” and found them to possess the same wide range of traits, positive and negative, shared by all humans: fear, insecurities, self-delusion, high hopes, good intentions, social aspirations, good habits and bad. Continue reading
