The $300 Trillion “Money Bang” Keith Fitz-Gerald and his team have just produced a groundbreaking report that shows how this historic “Money Bang” is gaining steam. You’ll find out why China is investing $200 billion in one company – and why it’s expected to gain 356%… Why the Dept. of Energy is “backing” one solar company – and why it’s 506% revenue jump is a “smidgen”… And why one recently IPO’d water company is headed for a 600% run. Just go here for details.

It wasn’t long ago that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to nationalize state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) resulted in a failed coup that very nearly cost him his post.

Now, Chavez’s aggressive economic policies are again being called into question, this time as the country slides into what could be a protracted period of stagflation, which is …

Debt-based monetary systems are inherently unstable. Money is created out of thin air by the banks and lent to government, consumers and businesses. In order to service and replay those debts, the borrowers take on more debts. Asset prices are inflated, and the vicious cycle continues until the debtors are unable to borrow or the banks are unwilling to lend. At that point the system snaps, everything is sold off, and we have a financial crisis at hand. In this paper we examine what happens to equity and currency markets in the aftermath of financial crisis.

1998 Russia

Declining productivity, an artificially high fixed exchange rate between the ruble and foreign currencies to avoid public turmoil, and a chronic fiscal deficit were the background to Russia ’s financial meltdown in 1998. The economic cost of the first war in Chechnya that …

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /Maybe many people outside (or even inside for that matter) Spain didn’t especially notice the fact, but last Sunday’s Barça match with Racing de Santander did not go out on regional TV as planned. This caused a few eyebrows to be raised among football supporters and commentators, but little in the way of serious analysis or comment. But the reason the match wasn’t broadcast is perhaps rather more interesting than many imagine, since behind Saturday’s blackout lies a dispute between the Catalan regional TV station and Barcelona football club which goes well beyond that sport where 22 able bodied men run up and down a pitch for 90 minutes and the Germans always win. The details of the present dispute are obscure, and this is not the place to go into them, but the nitty gritty is that Barça are asking local channel TV3 …

Interesting story in this week’s Economist (”Preparing for tougher times”) underlines a plethora of dour economic forecasts for Latin American economies heading into 2009: In the past two months, Latin America has seen its stockmarkets crash, currencies wobble and credit start to dry up. That comes on top of falling exports and the plunge in the prices of the commodities it sells to the world. Twisting the knife, less money is being sent home by Latin Americans working abroad. Specifically: As recently as October, the IMF expected growth in the region next year of 3.2%.  This week the World Bank forecast 2.1%.  The same day Morgan Stanley, an investment bank whose Latin American research team is among the more pessimistic about the region, cut its forecast for the seven largest economies in 2009 from growth of 1.5% to a contraction of 0.4% ...

By grabbing $26 billion in private pension money last month, Argentina may have put itself on track for its second debt default in a decade – ironically, the very situation that country’s government had hoped its bit of leisure-fund larceny had hoped to avoid.

“The misguided macroeconomic and monetary policies, especially the confiscatory tax policy and huge government spending – much of it inefficient – was doomed to catch up with the country someday,” says Horacio Marquez, a Wall Street veteran, emerging markets specialist and editor of two trading services affiliated with Money Morning: The Money Moves Alert and the Shadow Stock Trader services.

Argentina’s act of not-so-petty larceny was launched late last month when the government, in a surprise move, ordered Argentine pension funds to liquidate their foreign holdings, the first step in a plan to transfer that money into the state pension system. Argentine

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The masks are coming off. It’s the end of the party, now we get to see what people really look like. And it’s not a pretty sight.

You’ll recall that one of the fairest of the Bubble Era’s revelers was the idea that, over the long run, you would make money in stocks. All you had to do was ‘buy and hold.’ Who didn’t like her? She seemed so easy…so willing…so fetching and attractive.

Yesterday, the Dow lost another 203 points. Investors are down 44% so far this year. Worldwide, they’ve lost $10 trillion this month - far worse than the crash of ‘29.

The most successful economy of the 20th century was the United States of America. The second was probably Japan. It rose from the bombed-out ruins of WWII to become a worldwide export powerhouse, dominating the auto and electronic equipment industries.

But yesterday, stock prices in Japan fell to more than

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