Financial Sense Blog

Cleaning up the mess that Mr. Greenspan left behind was never going to be easy. Banks and brokers around the world face more than half-trillion dollars in write-offs as a consequence of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, which is spreading from the US property market and roiling global stock markets.

Commodities, including precious metals, have lately been lauded as the sector-du-jour by the momentum-investing crowd. Suddenly, the mainstream financial media is fervently discussing the merits of fertilizer companies, farm equipment companies, and even gold mining companies.

On Monday 17th March the Daniel numbers in Gold and Silver stopped those markets almost to the tick at the "conspirators" price targets as the bears savaged complacent bulls in 4 brutal days. Subscribers to the Danielcode knew those numbers and also knew with a high degree of certainty that the low of the initial drive down was in by the end of Easter week; they knew the numbers for that turn too as the charts below attest.

In 1892 Congressman William McKinley warned that abandoning American protectionism and adopting free trade would “revolutionize” the country’s values. Today America is flooded with foreign manufactures and our values have indeed been revolutionized.

Well, apparently good to the last drop is indeed the case when it applies to US households still “extracting” equity from residential real estate. I want to quickly roll over the recent refi stats as of year-end 2007. And this is important why? Because although many Street pundits are trying to claim that...

The markets have been doing the Texas two-step for the past couple of weeks – having moved in circles around the same point for the past two plus months. At the center of the circle is a raging “debate” – are we in a recession, and what are the implications of the slowdown in the real estate markets?

America is divided along ideological lines, and the division may be strategically significant. The Vietnam War provides an object lesson. There are people who violently oppose America’s military campaigns and thereby give aid and comfort to America’s enemy.