Doug Casey is an American free-market market economist, financial author and entrepreneur. He has been writing a monthly investment newsletter, the International Speculator since 1979 and I always find his ideas quite refreshing.

I the paragraphs below, he is interviewed by Louis James, editor of the International Speculator.

L: So, Doug, it’s well known that in addition to investing in resource stocks, especially gold juniors, you also have a passion for playing the real estate market. What can you tell us about real estate in today’s world?

Doug: Real estate has been very, very good to me. The reason that’s true is that I buy only things that I like myself. I don’t try to second-guess what other people may want. If you do that, you’re guaranteed to wind up with mediocre stuff that nobody really wants. I have an inclination

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Yucheng Technologies Ltd. reports that for a second year the company has ranked in the FinTech 100. The rankings are made on selection criteria which include key applications in the banking sector including: core processing, branch, tellers, loan management, credit card, mortgage origination, CRM, online banking and cash management, along with many other services.

Yucheng is a turnkey solutions provider with products that serve banking needs from front office solutions, such as e-banking, to back office and risk management. Yucheng currently has the widest portfolio of IT solutions targeted to banks in China.

Mr. Weidong Hong, CEO of Yucheng Technologies, commented, “Yucheng’s exclusive focus on the banking sector in China makes it uniquely able to provide customized solutions that meet banks’ rapidly developing requirements,” “This win acknowledges the importance of the Chinese banking market and Yucheng’s contribution to developing superior solutions for banks.”

The FinTech 100 survey has been tracking

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• George Soros (Financial Times): Do not ignore the need for financial reform, October 25, 2009. It is not the right time to enact permanent reforms. The financial system is far from equilibrium. The short-term needs are the opposite of what is needed in the long term.

• Paul Sandison: The two main threats to democracy and modern capitalism, October 20, 2009. In the present burgeoning economic crisis, already well over a hundred million people across the globe have been thrown into poverty, despair, sickness and are struggling to avoid a premature death. Billions of people abroad are vowing never to allow the United States and the United Kingdom to do this to them again. The remaining question is whether the

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Billionaire investor George Soros said yesterday (Monday) that the U.S. recovery would be a slow one because of all the “basically bankrupt” financial companies impeding it.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Congress agreed Friday that the financial system – not the American taxpayer – should bear the costs of bank bailouts. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), wants the banks to ante up $45 billion – three years’ worth of deposit-insurance premiums – to bail out the fund that insures bank deposits.

When it comes to bank stocks, we all know that there were a number of Money Morning readers shrewd enough to buy Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) shares when the foundering giant’s stock price was below $1 a share.

If you’re one of those investors, good for you: With Citi’s shares now trading at nearly $4.70 a share,

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Yesterday the insider blog Caracas Chronicles ran a cool post about Eligio Cedeño, a once successful banker turned political prisoner whom (as you probably know) Bob represents.  The article captures the sinister threat of legalistic machine that Hugo Chávez had built, but the source is a little off on what contributed to the motives (such as Eligio's support to Carlos Ortega) as well as any suggestion that Eligio was some kind of Boligarch (he build his banking group out of abject poverty).   In speaking with this anonymous source, Quico gets into a little comparative discussion on the situation in Russia:"And in a way, it's much worse this way. Because if you're in a ...

While prices of gold don’t necessarily affect silver prices or vice versa, history has demonstrated that when gold rises or falls, silver usually follows suit.

This time around, silver has failed to match the gains that gold posted in recent months, spawning a widespread believe that silver is poised for a bull run. Such factors as a decline in supply and a weakening U.S. dollar have buttressed that bullish belief. And so has the fact that China’s government is strongly encouraging that country’s residents to buy the white metal.

With Beijing’s plan to inject $587 billion (4 trillion yuan) into China’s economy, and a growing desire to diversify away from the U.S. dollar as its key reserve currency, the Asian giant could increase its reliance on such precious metals as gold and silver – especially if global inflation takes hold.

China’s central bank “could use gold, silver or even a basket of

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• David Rosenberg (Financial Times): Equities carry too much risk, September 23, 2009. The banker J.P. Morgan was fond of saying: “I never buy at lows, I never sell at the highs, I play the middle 60 per cent.” Well, from our lens, we are well past that middle 60 per cent point of this bear market rally.

• Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg (Financial Times): An economics of magical thinking, September 23, 2009. Confidence seems to be returning to markets almost everywhere, but the debates about what caused the worst crisis since the Great Depression show no sign of letting up. Instead, the spotlight has shifted from bankers, financial engineers and regulators to economists and their theories. This is not a

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Today, I’d like to play make believe by pretending we’ve just won $100 million with a Powerball ticket. I only suggest playing the lottery in Fantasy Land, of course. In real life I consider it the world’s most popular voluntary tax. But let’s just say we played, and things went our way. Our next big question should be how we’re going to invest our windfall. Oh, you’re worried about taxes? You shouldn’t be. This is Fantasy Land — there are no taxes! Back to our wonderful dilemma of how to invest the cash. Sure we could just keep it in cash equivalents. Heck, we should be able to scrape by even if we only make 1 percent a year on our lousy $100 million. Still that seems rather unfulfilling. So let’s ...

Yesterday I reviewed key sections of Obama's speech on Wall Street here: Obama On The Street.

In general I liked the speech, but think that the steps he has proposed are, at best, only a good first step. I hope that the proposals are strengthened in Congress, but have zero hope of that happening. More likely they will be watered down significantly. The end result is that we will face another market meltdown in the future; the only question is when.

Regulation of the financial industry is one of those extremely important, yet dry and dull subjects, that the general public will ignore, and the lobbyists will own. The bank lobby is extremely powerful and is going to fight things tooth and nail. Obama got a distinctly cool reception from the financial executives in the audience, with only a single round of applause.

However, one year after the government spent hundreds

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Las Vegas Sands Corporation (LVS) has announced its intention to infuse up to $600 million of capital through the sale of exchangeable bonds to strengthen up its balance sheet prior to the scheduled Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) of its subsidiary. The bonds will be compulsorily exchanged into common stock of its Macau unit after the unit's pending IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The bonds will mature on September 4, 2014, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, for which Goldman Sachs (GS) is the banker. This pre-IPO financing is a part of Las Vegas Sands' current efforts to strengthen its financial position. Recently, the company has amended its $3.3 billion Macau credit facility. The amended agreement would enable it to sell a minority interest in its Macau operations for bolstering cash. Senior secured or unsecured notes can also ...