Economic Overviews

Before this great financial crisis ever comes to a close, you'll see the Federal Reserve copy Europe and also implement negative deposit rates to try and get commercial banks to lend money into the economy. I have absolutely no doubt about it - and it will have three chief consequences for the markets. Let me explain.

America’s and the world’s appetite for drugs is insatiable. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent on both the consumption of illicit drugs and fighting the war on drugs. At first glance as an investor, you probably don’t think this affects you (that is, if you don’t use or sell drugs) but a closer look will reveal the enormous economic impact that the war on drugs has on America. Prepare yourself for some very alarming numbers.

When there is lots of economic activity, there is lots of money changing hands. When there is not very much economic activity, the pace at which money circulates through our system slows down. That is why what is happening in the U.S. right now is so troubling. Let me explain.

The U.S. stock market has been closing at one record high after another but, despite the seemingly unending investor optimism more than five years into the current bull market, some worrisome issues are continuing to build under the surface. Like all past bull markets, the latest episode will eventually come to an end and a new bear market will begin and it has the potential to be even worse than the two previous downturns since the start of the new millennium...

The current U.S. equity market has something for everyone. Whether you are bullish or bearish, there is no shortage of indicators or charts you can use to support your thesis. Let’s run through both the Bull and the Bear case here. In the spirit of Confirmation Bias, feel free to skip ahead to the part that best supports your current positioning.

China's model (and economy) will fail drastically, proving once and for all that government-planned economies do not work as well as free market capitalism balanced by democracy. This article identifies seven signs showing that the end is near.

China has decided to try and walk back from the edge of a Minsky moment and engineer a soft landing. They have made a decision to pop the bubble deliberately, allow defaults to instill market discipline and remove the moral hazard currently in place. They are moving into the modern world as fast as possible based on the enormous tasks they have embraced so we probably can expect no more booms but probably not a bust either. Let me explain.

Many mainstream economists want nothing to do with economic cycle theorists, but it should be noted that economic cycle theories have enabled some analysts to correctly predict the timing of recessions, stock market peaks and stock market crashes over the past couple of decades - and there are many economists who believe that the period from 2014 to 2020 is going to turn out to be pure hell for the United States.

In the not-too-distant future, sociopolitical and economic conditions in the U.S. will be changing dramatically, affecting tens of millions of Americans and to that end the U.S. government has enacted new legislation that allows it to transform itself into a full-on police state.

The impending emergence of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Debt, Derivatives, Deficits & Dollar) may soon sound the death knell of the entire U.S. economic recovery [we have seen] since early 2009 and eventually and sadly morph into mass Unemployment, Home Foreclosures, Stagnant Wages & Shrinking Retirement.