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

• Mohamed El-Erian and Ramin Toloui (Financial Times): How to fill the gaps left by dollar decline, November 5, 2009. We should expect to see more discussion in the next few years on new types of reserve assets.

• James West (GoldSeek): Gold price is no bubble, November 4, 2009. The price performance of gold recently has all sorts of armchair economists waxing philosophical on the idea that this is the advent of a price “bubble”. While certainly everyone has and is entitled to their opinion, there are other features of humanity that we all possess, and much like many opinions, are best obscured from view. Declaring that gold is in a “bubble” demonstrates complete ignorance of or disregard for

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

• Matt Taibbi (Taibblog): An inside look at how Goldman Sachs lobbies the Senate, September 29, 2009.

Samuel Brittan (Financial Times): A cool look at the current deficit hysteria, October 1, 2009. In the early Victorian period the debt ratio was nearly 200 per cent and almost reached that level again in the early 1920s.

• Edmund Conway (Telegraph):  An inconvenient truth: financial crises are inevitable, October 1, 2009. The IMF’s new early warning system to avoid crises such as the credit crunch is doomed to disappoint.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): The recession is over but the depression has just begun, October 1, 2009. This post discusses why we are in a depression, not

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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.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): We’re speaking Japanese without knowing it, September 28, 2009. After the bubble burst in Japan in 1990, Japanese banks were not compelled to properly disclose their losses either. The predictable result is that the problems resurfaced later, but worse, because they had not been addressed.

• John Authers (Financial Times): A risky revival, September 25, 2009. The speed of the rally is itself cause for concern. Historically, big sell-offs have typically been followed by big bounces. But as measured by the S&P 500, the current rally is stronger after six months than any predecessor, including those that followed the lowest points of the market in 1932, 1974 and 1982.

• Tom Petruno (Los Angeles

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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 find enjoyable.

• Lori Montgomery (The Washington Post): Tax pledge is a target as deficits, debt grow, August 29, 2009. During last year’s campaign, President Obama vowed to enact a bold agenda without raising taxes for the middle class, a pledge budget experts viewed with skepticism. Since then, a severe recession, massive deficits and a national debt that is swelling toward a 50-year high have only made his promise harder to keep.

• Peter Goodman (The New York Times): A reluctance to spend may be a legacy of the recession, August 28, 2009. Even as evidence mounts that the Great Recession has finally released its chokehold on the American economy, experts worry that the recovery may be weak, stymied by consumers’

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The U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 9.4% in July from 9.5% in June, the most encouraging sign yet that the U.S. recession is easing.

But the news – released in a government report Friday – isn’t all good: Unemployment is likely to remain high in the months to come as some of these encouraging indicators of new economic growth evolve into a painful jobless recovery.

Friday’s jobs report and other recent data “reinforce our view that the U.S. recession ended in June, and we have raised our third-quarter 2009 growth forecast to 3.5%,” Christian Broda, a Barclays Capital (NYSE ADR: BCS) economist in New York, wrote in a research report yesterday.

Alan Krueger, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top economist, said he thought forecasts that growth would resume this year were “plausible” but expressed concern about long-term unemployment, which remains as a nagging problem.

“The administration is constantly looking

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The U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 9.4% in July from 9.5% in June, the most encouraging sign yet that the U.S. recession is easing.

But the news – released in a government report Friday – isn’t all good: Unemployment is likely to remain high in the months to come as some of these encouraging indicators of new economic growth evolve into a painful jobless recovery.

Friday’s jobs report and other recent data “reinforce our view that the U.S. recession ended in June, and we have raised our third-quarter 2009 growth forecast to 3.5%,” Christian Broda, a Barclays Capital (NYSE ADR: BCS) economist in New York, wrote in a research report yesterday.

Alan Krueger, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top economist, said he thought forecasts that growth would resume this year were “plausible” but expressed concern about long-term unemployment, which remains as a nagging problem.

“The administration is constantly looking

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My apologies for the Sunday silence - I'm told that spending a day away from the internet in the summer is good for my health.  At any rate, as many readers already know, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton spent an hour on Meet the Press on Sunday, part of which was spent taking care of some janitorial duties after VP Joe Biden's stupendously honest comments to the Wall Street Journal on Russia (we wish more diplomats would occasionally speak so colloquially).  Clinton's aim was clearly to make sure nobody's feelings got hurt in the Kremlin.The full transcript of the Meet the Press interview is here ("We want a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia."), and some links to ...

“In a fundamental shift, consumers are saving rather than spending,” notes the Los Angeles Times. This is the shift we’ve been talking about for months. The great credit expansion of 1945-2007 is over. Now cometh the great credit contraction.

During the bubble years, more and more credit produced less and less real prosperity. It was as if you were borrowing more and more, to invest in your business or merely to increase your standard of living, but your income didn’t rise fast enough to keep up with the interest payments.

In 2005, Americans saved nothing. Not even aluminum foil or string. Now, the savings rate is approaching 5% of disposable income - a big turnaround.

We know from logic and experience that saving money - not spending it - is the key to getting wealthier. Saving money gives you capital. And it’s capital accumulation - in the form of factories, roads, ships, buildings,

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Bankruptcies, Depressions and Mark Stanford with his Argentine beauty.

Everything is working out just like we thought it would. The stock market is performing as expected. The economy is on track. Even the politicians are doing what they thought they would.

Let’s begin with the stimulus/bailout/boondoggle/BS plan. As anticipated, it has failed. That is, the economy is getting worse, not better. It has failed the test set for it by its own creators. Back when the Obama Team was arguing for a big bailout bill, it warned that without a bailout unemployment would rise above 8% in 2009. ‘Pass this bill today,’ said Ben Bernanke, or words to that effect, ‘or there may not be a tomorrow for the US economy.’

Congress dutifully bent its back to the task of adding boondoggles to the bill and then okayed the measure. And here we are in the middle of 2009 and the unemployment rate

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Gold slid about four dollars between the Globex open on Thursday night and around 10:00 a.m. in London on Friday morning. From there, gold quietly rallied about $11…with the peak coming shortly after 9:00 a.m. on the Comex in New York…and that was it for the day.

Silver was a different animal altogether. After sliding about a dime in Far East trading, silver also began its climb starting around the same time as gold in early London trading…and by the 8:30 a.m. on the Comex…it had tacked on 40 cents. That was obviously too much strength for somebody in New York, as the rally got squashed, and half that gain disappeared.

The HUI peaked about the same time as the gold price in New York and closed quietly positive in pre-long weekend trading. But having said that, please don’t think that yesterday was a quiet trading day. Far from it. Here is

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