The dollar has clearly been under pressure this year. Most of the graphs of it that you have seen probably look like the first graph below, which shows what the dollar has done against two indexes since the start of the year. The blue line is how the greenback has fared against the major currencies like the Euro and the Yen, and the red line includes those, but also looks at how it has fared against a much broader collection of currencies. Since March 9th, the day the market hit bottom -- and the dollar hit its high for the year -- it is down 14.4% against the major currencies and down 11.5% against the broad basket of currencies. This has a number of implications. For starters, anyone from outside the country has seen nice gains if they invested in the U.S. market, but not nearly as ...

Back in May of this year, Taipan Daily posed the question, “Is Barack Obama the next Jimmy Carter?” (You can find part one of that discussion here and part two here.) The question is not meant as...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?i=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?i=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:wd9GD17jvC4"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=wd9GD17jvC4" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=U4M65yve8RU:aPPsVheFPJs:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/taipan/~4/U4M65yve8RU" height="1" width="1"/

67 WALL STREET, New York – September 22, 2009 – The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Alternative Energy/Clean Energy/Power Generation/Utilities Report report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 83 page feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Long Term Perspective on Alternative Energy Industry — Leading Indicators for Alternative Energy Components Companies — Mergers and Acquisitions in the Alternative Energy Industry — Break Even Business Fundamentals for Carbon Free Energy Providers — Development of Carbon Free Energy Production Infrastructure — NAT GAS Act — New Players in the Alternative Energy Industry — Solar Power Cell Manufacturers Market Strategy — Demand Response for Raw Materials for Solar Cell Production — Alternative

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So how should we look at today’s jobs report -- as good news since the number of jobs we are losing is slowing significantly, or as bad news since the unemployment rate is jumping? Personally I think that the number of jobs is the more significant of the two, since the data is more reliable and because it is the number of jobs that actually drives the economy. The unemployment rate is a lagging indicator of the economy while the number of jobs lost or created is closer to being a coincident indicator. The graph below shows both the unemployment rate as well as the year-over-year percentage change in employment. Based on the unemployment rate, things were actually worse in the 1982 recession, but in terms of employment growth, this downturn has been far worse than anything seen in the lifetimes of anyone but the most senior of ...

The following appeared in July’s Business Diary Botswana:

Speaking at a seminar in October 2006 devoted to the country’s efforts towards economic diversification, Happy Fidzani, Executive Secretary of the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA), warned that the government’s “heavy confidence” in its mining sector–namely rough diamond extraction through Debswana, the joint-venture mining firm operated in partnership with South Africa’s De Beers and dating back to the late 1960s–had created a welfare-like, “parasitic” dependency for revenue upon which the nation’s non-mineral sector was habitually tied. Largely unaware of just how prophetic his words would soon turn out to be, Fidzani told the audience that shocks originating from the mining industry were still “easily felt” across the economy, and that the government, despite its ceaseless rhetoric and campaigning about the importance of diversity, was as reliant as ever on just one resource. Less than three years later

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June 25 (Bloomberg) – “Barack Obama may be the worst thing that ever happened to tax-exempt bonds …. “

We certainly agree and see more trouble for tax-exemption down the road.

Obama Chief of Staff, Emanuel said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”, and the administration is taking that advice by sponsoring and subsidizing the issuance of fully taxable municipal bonds — “Build America Bonds” (the camel’s nose under the tent).

Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have tried to tax the interest payments from municipal bonds without success, but the debt crisis has provided Obama with a way.

Build America Bonds (we prefer “Obama Bonds”) pay 35% of the interest cost for fully taxable muni bonds.

Presumably the subsidy also improves the credit quality of the bonds by having a portion of the interest come from the US Treasury.

Example Bonds YTM Rate Comparison:

We based our credit quality argument on logic suggesting the

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What’s the true cause of inflation? Jimmy Carter underrated? Really? And what makes Von Mises right after all these years? Read on to find out…Thank you (once again) for all your excellent responses on the Obama-Carter connection. When your thoughts and comments roll in, my only lament is a lack of space in which to reply.

Well, that and one other small quibble. Where are all the haters? Surely more of you must think I’m off my rocker, or otherwise dead wrong somehow. Let’s start off with a rare bit of snark just for sport…

The lessons learned from the past…8 years of taking us down…and now a dynamic leader trying to pull it together…and presenting a better picture of America to the world…now, can you or Rush Bimbo do that?

– TD reader NB

Rush who? I’m not up on the guy, as I haven’t paid attention to him since the early ’90s.

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Let me start by saying that this is not a partisan post, it is about the economy, about your money, and about your livelihood.

The recently passed “stimulus” package, an $800 billion dollar billd that has been marketed as the ambulance for our economy. But is it?

Some Disturbing Facts

I received an article today from Larry Levin from SecretsOfTraders.com with some disturbing facts about the significance of the economic downturn. In the letter were some astounding figures about the American public:

Over $697 billion lost in real estate decline
Over $900 billion lost in the stocks
Over $650 billion lost in mutual funds

Over 2 TRILLION dollars were lost… In 2008 alone! The American public, from the top of the upper class to the bottom of the working class have taken a beating. Americans either don’t have any money or don’t have the confidence in the economy to spend money on anything but the essentials.

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As President-elect Obama toots his green-energy horn, the smart money in Silicon Valley is reversing its position on the moneymaking potential of wind, solar and geothermal power sources.

The pullback by Silicon Valley’s venture-capital elite is part of a complete overhaul of its investment criteria. The big surprise is that green investments are on the hit list along with other high-tech innovations — a reversal of the save-the-planet culture that has emerged in this Mecca of libertarian funding.

An article in today’s New York Times revealed that Silicon Valley VCs are now turning to shorter term opportunities versus the long-term returns that exemplify a healthy investment climate.

Alternative energy will get more critical assessment along with the Web 2.0 hype (think social networking), cell-phone advertising, massive enterprise software development and other long-term, big-ticket products.

Silicon Valley’s turn-around on green infrastructure comes at a time when the incoming Obama administration is pushing alternative energy as

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Steve McDonald looks ahead to the investment climate in the new year. He sees a bounce in the Dow reaching as high as 11,000. But an economic recovery will depend on whether the Obama administration can restore confidence in the public. For 2009’s top money-makers, Steve picks six high-dividend stocks and two corporate bond plays.

This from Investor’s Daily Edge:

So, for what it’s worth, here are my predictions for 2009, please adjust the time frame as necessary.

The bailouts will work. The banking/credit crisis will ease in early 2009, and with it businesses should be able to start borrowing again.  Once the money flows open up we should see some relief from the recession.

Ford (NYSE:F) will survive, I’m not sure about General Motors (NYSE:GM). Chrysler has been dead for a long time.

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