Government

On Happy Hour for weeks, we've been all over the rice hoarding and food riots. News that Sam's Wholesale is limiting sales of rice is either a perfect top indicator in a mis-perceived "shortage" of food that's actually just a figment of all you momentum traders and commodity bulls (most of whom are just mindless speculators chasing the latest trend on Wall Street). Or this really is the start ... read more

As rationing has become the best case scenario in the food markets (rioting being the worst case scenario), we have to wonder if there really is starting to be a shortage of food in the world. And if so, why? I think we're seeing food shortages for these reasons: 1.  The food markets are totally manipulated and controlled by the developed world's governments and their cronies. The UN and ... read more

Intel's report was shockingly good, if only because we all expected so much bad.  I certainly, even as bullish as I am for the near term, didn't expect that Intel would talk up demand trends.  I mean, you mean business is GOOD?! Remind me again why we've taken hundreds of billions of your tax dollars and given to the richest people on the planet who are simply worried that the market's going ... read more

Didn’t I mention yesterday something about this market’s ability to rally on bad news these days? That jobs report was clearly bad news. To be clear, I don’t care that it was worse than some clueless economists polled by some news organization or not. The point is that we lost 80,000 jobs as measured by our antiquated governmental measuring systems, and the magnitude of that along with ... read more

Didn't I mention yesterday something about this market's ability to rally on bad news these days? That jobs report was clearly bad news. To be clear, I don't care that it was worse than some clueless economists polled by some news organization or not.  The point is that we lost 80,000 jobs as measured by our antiquated governmental measuring systems, and the magnitude of that along with all the ... read more

Let’s say we find out there’s another $100 billion in losses at the US investment banks from the mortgage bubble coming unwound. No, even better, let’s say there’s another quarter of a trillion of losses at than i-banks and other financial institutions in this country. And what would you think if you wake up tomorrow and find out that oil supplies are being disrupted and the world’s ... read more

Let's say we find out there's another $100 billion in losses at the US investment banks from the mortgage bubble coming unwound.  No, even better, let's say there's another quarter of a trillion of losses at than i-banks and other financial institutions in this country. And what would you think if you wake up tomorrow and find out that oil supplies are being disrupted and the world's economies ... read more

Speaking of being preemptive, how about the relentless attack by the NYTimes on the pending new "regulations" proposal for Wall Street and the banking industry from Paulson and the administration. Don't get me wrong now, I'm all for bashing these proposal and all of the convoluted ways it will redistribute wealth from taxpayers to the government and its cronies on Wall Street (to be sure of ... read more

The multi-talented Mark Lieberman, senior economist at Fox Biz, just sent out this to all of us at the network: GDP grew at a 0.6% quarterly rate anualized in 4Q '07, according to today's "final" report, the same growth rate as reported in the advance and preliminary estimates. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, this is the first time all three GDP reports have been the same since BEA ... read more

As Ben Stein so eloquently put it in this weekend's NYTimes, the fact is that by any standard definition of "recession" (typically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth) that we're not in one.  Yet, we've already thrown hundreds of billions of dollars of your tax money into the banking system through intraday liquidity injections, ... read more