Gary Dorsch's Contributions

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.

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.

After watching the price of silver soar to as high as $15/ounce in May 2006, Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” offered some sagely words of wisdom. “What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end.

In today’s highly sophisticated financial marketplace, there is no longer any need to employ Federal Reserve officials to figure out the most appropriate target level for the federal funds rate. Instead, it’s already done by remote control...

Economic events in the United States often provide a preview of what’s around the corner for the British economy. Both countries run large external trade deficits, and much like the US, the British economy has been expanding on little else than the availability of easy credit and asset price inflation in the housing market.

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.

“Too much money, chasing too few commodities,” might be the best way to explain the historic rally that has lifted the Dow Jones AIG Commodity Index into the stratosphere. Central bankers in 18 of the top 20 economies in the world have been expanding their money supplies at double digit rates for the past several years, trying to prevent their currencies from rising too quickly against the terminally ill US dollar.

For the Bernanke Fed, the devil of hyper-inflation is preferable to the specter of a bear market for the Dow Jones Industrials and weaker home prices. Exercising the “Bernanke Put” means the Fed will slash the federal funds rate further below the US inflation rate next month.

Central bankers and finance ministers from the world’s top-10 economic powers, huddled behind closed doors in Tokyo last weekend, trying to work out a joint strategy to rescue the global stock markets from another possible meltdown.

European Central Bank chief, Jean “Tricky” Trichet, likes to operate behind a veil of “Smoke and Mirrors” in managing the Euro zone’s monetary policy, which is designed to fool most people, most of the time.

After Wall Street’s dismal start in 2008, there is a growing unease within the Republican Party that this election year could be one of scanty returns. The highly accurate “January Barometer” states that as goes the stock market in January, so goes the year.

US stock markets have been on a weak footing since their Santa Claus rally, rattled a sharp contraction in the ISM manufacturing index to 47.7, and a 0.3% increase in the jobless rate to 5 percent.

Let’s say the US economy goes into a deeper than expected slide and gets slammed with a nasty recession, S&P 500 profits shrivel up, and banks get hit with hundreds of billions in losses from sub-prime debt.