t’s official, for what it’s worth. Both Europe and Japan are in recession. The Eurozone contracted by 0.2% for the second straight quarter. Germany (the largest economy in Europe) and Italy (fourth largest) both shrank in the third quarter. Japan’s economy-the world’s second largest-shrank by almost half a percentage point in the third quarter.

The world’s largest economy, as you already know, is in recession too. In the U.S., financial capitalism is imploding. Citigroup’s CEO Vikram Pandit told analysts the company would lay off over 50,000 workers. He cited rising loan losses and an economy slowing much faster than the company previously expected.

Gulp.

As over-sold as we believe Australian stocks are at the moment, we’d be foolish to ignore the warning signs flashed yesterday all over the globe. Bill had better take down the crash alert flag and run up the depression alert flat.

World GDP is around $54 trillion. The U.S., Japan,

...

The election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president creates plenty of profit plays for investors in the New Year. By Martin Hutchinson Contributing Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report With his landslide election victory Tuesday - coupled with Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and in the Senate - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will have the ability to pursue more or less any policy he wants. For investors who have been trying to analyze the economic outlook for the New Year, the election of U.S. Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) provides a major piece of the forward-looking jigsaw puzzle that these analysts hope to assemble. That’s because the likely trends of the United States and other economies around the world - and the relative success of different sectors within those economies - depends crucially on who’s in the White House, what policies they have, and ...

Market conditions are also setting the scene for the next leg up of the commodity supercycle. There are three things that are happening today that will guarantee higher prices for commodities in the future, once the current jitters have started to ease.

In a bull market people get away with some shocking things.

A few years ago I met a 21-year old geography student. He had been investing in the stock market for years. He had seen some success, so now his biggest ambition was to get rich. Very rich.

He wrote for a few publications and through this work got to meet some interesting City players. They told him that the biggest game in town was floating companies on Aim, talking them up. This would make him rich, he believed. So, he decided to join the game. He formed a uranium mining company, installed a geologist to give it some credibility and

...