Financial Sense Blog

In an age where governments of every political stripe distort economic data to promote their own self-interests, it’s hardly surprising that they present inflation statistics that are wildly at odds with the reality faced by consumers and businesses, and regarded with utter disbelief.

Inflation – where? According to the data released this morning, prices are not going up. Now everyone has an opinion about prices – yes food/energy prices are rising rapidly and they are purchased often by everyone.

The S&P 500 index is now at 1403.04 which has proven to be an important support level in 2007, and an important resistance level in 2008, thus far. It has yet to decisively break the 1400 level to the upside and both momentum and volume are diminishing.

The precious metals stocks have played a supporting role, at best, in the world-wide commodity boom of the last few years. Oil, base metals, food commodities and gold bullion itself have outperformed the precious metals equities.

"Greed and avarice, avarice and greed" intones Dr Fell, the new persona of Hannibal Lecter as Anthony Hopkins again brings this wonderful character to life in Robert Harris' "Hannibal". Hannibal's soliloquy at the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, Roma takes us on a tour of historical personifications of these samples of the Seven Deadly Sins...

As an American, I've taken for granted that I can get just about any food I want at the supermarket.

It has been quite some time since we've had a little check in on foreign sector buying of US financial assets. We have a fair number of charts here that will kick things off and do most of the talking, so we'll try to keep discussion commentary relatively brief. Here's how we see this important topic.

The “Group of Seven” central bankers, who control the money spigots in 2/3’s of the world’s economy, huddled with their colleagues from China and Russia behind closed doors in Basel, Switzerland this week, haunted by the “Crude Oil Vigilantes,” who threaten to unravel G-7 schemes to rescue troubled global banks.

While we believe in a stock market rally mid 2008 because of fiscal and monetary stimulus, we don't believe it will be the start of a new bull market as many predict.