Economic Overviews

Is the market overly complacent? Overly optimistic? Absurdly cheap or expensive? A great buy on dips? "No" is the best answer to all these questions, in my view. Now is not a time to take on oversized risks, but neither is it a time to cash in all your chips. Let me explain with the help of the 12 charts below.

Take note: what's going on today in the economy and in the markets is not unprecedented or extraordinary. Below are 6 charts to support said contention:

The system is the problem and few comprehend this issue [and, unfortunately,] few desire to comprehend this issue [so] we will see no meaningful change until the economy turns down significantly. Watch and wait is all we can do for now!

I wistfully remember the good old days of blissful naiveté about economics, which is before I found out about the Austrian school of economics, which led me to completely comprehend the unbelievable Keynesian econometric insanity of excessively expanding a fiat currency, especially over an extended time.

In a conversation posted at You Tube, GoldMoney's brain trust -- founder James Turk, CEO Roy Sebag, research chief Alasdair Macleod, and Vice President John Butler -- discuss the market possibilities for the new year and how gold may figure in them. They seem to agree that big changes are in the air.

Would abrogating NAFTA, withdrawing from the WTO, and not ratifying the TPP be appropriate and sufficient policy responses to the shedding of manufacturing jobs? The clear and obvious answer is: NO. Here's why.

Neither the White House nor the CBO have adequately considered the real impact of the very deficits they themselves are projecting. While they admit the deficits will be off the charts they fail to connect the dots from that admission to its obvious natural consequences — no fewer than FIVE ominous, vicious cycles.

Collectively, our net worth reached a new high in nominal, real, and per capita terms according to the Fed's Q3/16 estimate of the balance sheets of U.S. households released last Friday. While we are living in the weakest recovery ever, and things could and should be a lot better, it is still the case that today we are better off than ever before.

There's a good chance U.S. growth will pick up from 2016 [because, as I see it,] two key shifts are helping to propel growth higher, albeit within the context of broad structural trends keeping growth rates lower than in prior economic cycles.

Higher interest rates will lead to higher deficits and still higher borrowings. As such, we will have the perfect vicious circle that leads to the whole caboodle collapsing.