The Daily Reckoning Archives... The Daily Reckoning archives include issues from:
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 July 2008 - Present <<Prev 11/20/08 - The Fall of Wall Street: Innocent Frauds and Armed Robberies
by Bill Bonner "But now, they that did ride so high now lie in the gutters of lower Manhattan. People practically spit at you on the street. They blame you for their losses...for taking away their retirements...for wrecking the whole world’s economy. You were a hero...now, you’re a schmuck."
- Guest Essay by Nathan Lewis: A New Bretton Woods vs. the Old Bretton Woods 11/19/08 - Welcome to the Great Unwind
by Bill Bonner "And just look at the bonds! A few months ago, investors stretched for yields. Now, it’s safety they reach for. They dump corporate bonds for fear they may be ‘toxic,’ and grab U.S. Treasury debt with both hands."
- Guest Essay by Ed Bugos: Voices of Reason Still in the Wilderness 11/18/08 - In the Beginning, There Was the Bubble
by Bill Bonner "In the beginning, there is The Bubble. Then, the bubble pops. Then, people look around and take fright. They realize they’ve got to stop spending. So, demand collapses. Then, stocks collapse too. And asset prices fall too – especially for speculative assets."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: Unsustainable Energy Trends 11/17/08 - The Paradox of Saving
by Bill Bonner "High rates of saving causes a recession to turn exceptionally nasty. People cut back...and all of a sudden...the cutbacks are magnified by millions of little decisions all up and down the economic ladder."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: The Governmental Gong Show 11/14/08 - O! Bama! The Whole World Turns its Weary Eyes to You
by Bill Bonner "Last week’s election was an event that will certainly go down in the history books. Everyone has their own take on what Obama’s triumph will mean for the United States...and yet most commentators are missing the point." 11/13/08 - A Trillion-Dollar Deficit
by Bill Bonner "And so...those questions before us...the world moves closer to its first trillion-dollar deficit. Wait...did we say ‘trillion dollar?’ Make that $2 trillion."
- Guest Essay by Doug Hornig: Hell, Meet Handbasket, Part II 11/12/08 - Prices Take the Plunge: The Fall of the U.S. Consumer
by Bill Bonner "And now, in the art market, ‘prices finally plunge,’ reports the Daily Telegraph. An auction in New York of Impressionists and modern art was supposed to bring in $800 million. Instead, it barely fetched half that much – only $470 million by Friday night."
- Guest Essay by Doug Hornig: Hell, Meet Handbasket, Part I 11/11/08 - Obama's Big Bang Bailout
by Bill Bonner "Meanwhile, we have some advice for Obama to cut taxes. Cut them so much it takes the world’s breath away. And then, talk up your Big Bang Bailout as if it were equivalent to WWII."
- Guest Essay by Dan Amoss, CFA: Government Guaranteed Depression? 11/10/08 - No Ordinary Cyclical Downturn
by Bill Bonner "Alan Greenspan courted power and fame. He got both. But you can’t get power and fame without being a jackass. At least, that’s our conclusion after reviewing the history of the United States of America."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Wounded Wolves on the Financial Prairie 11/07/08 - Apocalyps Now
by Bill Bonner "The last time the sky fell was 96 years ago. Few saw it coming; no one panicked. But panic wouldn’t exist if it weren’t a useful instinct from time to time. The celestial bricks came unglued in August 1914..." 11/06/08 - The "Balance Sheet Recession"
by Bill Bonner "Obama has pledged to change things. That part will be easy; things are changing fast. Trouble is, they’re not changing in the way he would like."
- Guest Essay by Puru Saxena: Selective Socialism 11/05/08 - The U.S Dollar: From Strength to Weakness
by Bill Bonner "The U.S. had the world’s strongest and most reliable currency for half a century. It was our greatest strength and our biggest export. But this much IS changing: the dollar is no longer our biggest strength; it is becoming our biggest weakness."
- Guest Essay by Jim Davidson: Playing the Tax Credit Card 11/04/08 - The Consumer Collapse
by Bill Bonner "Eventually, Mr. Government will have his day. Governments’ attempts to stop the correction...and re-inflate the credit bubble...will eventually create another bigger, badder crisis – a monetary crisis. Then, cash will be trash."
- Guest Essay: An Interview with Ron Paul 11/03/08 - Deflation Now...Inflation Later
by Bill Bonner "Deflation now. Inflation later. That is our guess how the reckoning goes. Falling asset prices...followed by falling consumer prices...followed by ‘money from helicopters’...followed by rising prices...followed by the end of the U.S.-dollar based worldwide monetary system."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: No Soothing Salve for Economic Ills 10/31/08 - Disappearing on the Pampas
by Bill Bonner "The average cab driver in Buenos Aires knows more about financial crises than Trichet, Brown and Paulson put together. His training comes neither from Keynes nor Smith. And what the typical Argentine has learned, the English and the Americans are about to discover for themselves." 10/30/08 - Financial Roadkill
by Bill Bonner "You’ll recall that the credit crisis began in the summer of ’07. Before that the ‘war’ between inflation and deflation had been an even match. But then, sub-prime debt came upon the battlefield like a new tank. In a matter of days, deflation seized the high ground and has been winning ever since."
- Guest Essay: An Interview with Paul O'Neill 10/29/08 - Mr. Market, Your Fair Weather Friend
by Bill Bonner "Mr. Market is a strange fellow, isn’t he? When he is pushing up prices, everyone loves him. When he is knocking them down, the mob gets a rope and comes after him. Even the short sellers turn against him, because he inevitably disappoints them too – causing stocks to rally strongly even in the midst of a major bear market."
- Guest Essay: An Interview with Paul A. Volcker 10/28/08 - The Masquerade is Over
by Bill Bonner "But there are still a few Bubble Era masks that have not yet come off. In fact, the belle of the ball is the mask on ‘progress.’ People still believe that the world grows and improves – if not steadily, at least episodically.
- Guest Essay by Byron King: The Coming Electricity Crisis 10/27/08 - The First World Depression
by Bill Bonner "The next stage will come when consumers go on a rampage of thrift. Credit cards will go in the trash. Malls will be silent. Sales clerks will fall asleep on the job – and then be fired. Higher unemployment. More foreclosures. More bankruptcies."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Reserved Seats for Big Credit Spenders 10/24/08 - Twenty-five Standard Deviations in a Blue Moon
by Bill Bonner "Sometimes it’s helpful to take a look back at where we were last year at the same time to gain some perspective on what is occurring now. And we think that this essay, first published on November 12, 2007 will do just that." 10/23/08 - Does Anyone Know the Way to Recovery Road?
by Kate Incontrera "Code Pink and the Party for Socialism and Liberation were in full effect at the convention, with their main issue being the over $700 billion bailout. The battle cry was 'Jail them, don’t bail them.' Catchy."
- Guest Essay: Greenspan Testimony on Sources of Financial Crisis 10/22/08 - Deleveraging the World Economy
by Bill Bonner "Most likely, there will be a big rally in the stock market – as there was in ’29. It lasted about six months and took prices back to shouting distance from their highs. But it was a sucker rally. In April of ’30, stock prices collapsed again. And then the economy fell apart."
- Guest Essay by Chip Wood: Only Government Could Do This To Us 10/21/08 - Time to Trim Another Tree
by Bill Bonner "Today’s headlines tell us that another stimulus package is being prepared in Congress. The pols are getting out the lights, the shiny balls, and the garlands – they’re going to Christmas tree this one even better than the last."
- Guest Essay by Olivier Garrett: U.S. in Crisis Mode – What's Next? 10/20/08 - When the Going Gets Tough...
by Bill Bonner "U.S. factories – those that are left – are going quiet too. Word came out last week that factory output slipped 6% in the third quarter; it’s biggest drop in 17 years."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Theatre of the Fiscally Absurd 10/17/08 - These Firefighters are Pyromaniacs!
by Bill Bonner "Today, we take a page from the book of one of our favorite economists, Murray Rothbard, and reiterate a point we’ve been harping on since the first issue of The Daily Reckoning: a correction is equal opposite to the deception that preceded it. This financial crisis is nothing new; but if the deception continues, we could see a new record for the world’s most difficult correction." 10/16/08 - What's Wrong With a Meltdown?
by Bill Bonner "Meltdown? What’s wrong with a meltdown? Why shouldn’t bankers fear to lend? Why shouldn’t prices go to what willing buyers and sellers will accept? Why should Wall Street be bailed out?"
- Guest Essay: I, Greenspan 10/15/08 - Capitalism Has Left the Building
by Bill Bonner "The Dow fell 76 points yesterday – a bad sign. Usually, following such a bad week, you'd expect the dead cat to bounce for several days. This one had a good bounce on Monday and then lay as still and as silent as a tax collector's tomb."
- Guest Essay by Ed Bugos: Deflation is a Non Sequitor 10/14/08 - The Bunkum Behind the Bounce
by Bill Bonner "A bounce in a bear market does not give cause for celebration. It gives cause for selling. Sell the rallies, buy the dips. Buy low, sell high, in other words."
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: The Crisis of American Capitalism 10/13/08 - Funny Money
by Bill Bonner "Well, it was just ‘paper profits,’ you might say. Maybe. But it was wealth that people depended on – for retirement, for vacations, for new cars and...even healthcare. And now, it’s gone – poof! What now?"
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Currencies Battle for Dirtbag Supremacy 10/10/08 - Him That Hath Has Less Than He Thought
"When investors had the wind at the backs, they were ready to believe the most outrageous things – that the financial sector could get rich by lending money to people who couldn’t pay it back..." 10/09/08 - Dimming the Lights
by Bill Bonner "Guess how much Americans have lost so far from the stock market decline? Almost $5 trillion. Stocks are down about 33% from their ’07 peak – resulting in the destruction of wealth on an unprecedented scale."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: Welcome to Murphy's Market 10/08/08 - Fear is Back...and Mad as Hell
by Bill Bonner "But when the cycle turns from greed to fear...all that credit is like excess fuel in a crash landing. It tends to explode. When a bank takes a loss – say, from its holdings of sub-prime debt – the fractional reserve credit system sends out sparks."
- Guest Essay by Jeff Clark: Back from the Future: Gold in 2012 10/07/08 - Get Ready for a Long Ride
by Bill Bonner "It could be a long ride. By our reckoning, the bear market began in January 2000. Then it was held off by a huge barrage of cash and credit - which sent property prices soaring...and caused stock prices to rally."
- Guest Essay by James Howard Kunstler: All Fall Down 10/06/08 - Viva Deflation!
by Bill Bonner "Without the ability to print your own money, you have to live within your means – and that means...you can spend no more than you can beg, borrow or steal. And that is what has so many people so desperately afraid."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Government Spending Spree 10/03/08 - Ghosts of the Great Depression
by Bill Bonner "At The Daily Reckoning, we are always advising you to pay attention to the past – history is a great teacher. Looking back, we can learn from their mistakes, and hopefully not be doomed to repeat them." 10/02/08 - The Sky is Falling
by Bill Bonner "It’s all in our imaginations! We don’t really owe too much money. We didn’t really spend too much money. And those nifty CDOs, MBSs, CDSs...Lehman...Bear Stearns...Fannie, Freddie...Northern Rock - they’re all okay after all."
- Guest Essay by Rep. Ron Paul: The Austrian School and the Meltdown 10/01/08 - The Case of the Disappearing Banking Industry
by Bill Bonner "Political authorities boss other people around. What do financial authorities do? Isn’t an economy a different thing...isn’t it based on persuasion rather than force...on markets rather than politics?"
- Guest Essay by Ed Bugos: Time to Cherry-Pick Gold Assets 09/30/08 - Still Waving the 'Crash Alert' Flag?
by Bill Bonner "The deception of the Late Bubble Period was mammoth. People deceived themselves in such extravagant and absurd ways, it took our breath away. That has been our beat, here at The Daily Reckoning, for the last 9 years – describing the delusions and hallucinations of the bubble era."
- Guest Essay by Oliver Garret: A Horrible Mess, And How We Got There 09/29/08 - Who Will Rescue the Rescuers?
by Bill Bonner "So far, the surprise is that the financial sector has been hit harder than expected. Each time an institution goes bust, the feds react with more money and more credit. Each time, stocks rally and word goes out that the crisis is over."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: The World's Most Powerful Currency? 09/26/08 - Too Big to Bail
by Bill Bonner "When everybody thinks the same thing, no one is thinking. And now, everyone thinks the market screwed up...and the bureaucrats rush in to unscrew things." 09/25/08 - Judgment Day
by Bill Bonner "Economists will tell you that this increase in the supply of ‘money’ is just what the world needs. Deflation is acting like the hair dryer from Hell – liquidity is evaporating fast. The feds are trying to put it back."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: From the Gold Pan...Inflation, Deflation and Precious Metals 09/24/08 - The Winter of our Discontent
by Bill Bonner "What has the War on Terror accomplished? The terrorists - whomever they are - go about their business. But the war has brought together the governments of the planet to work together in an international, coordinated attack on free travel and the free movement of money."
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: No Longer "Cheap as Dirt" 09/23/08 - Mr. Market Will Have His Say
by Bill Bonner "As the correction continues, we expect more and more frantic efforts on the part of the government to stop it. Look for the Fed to cut rates. Look for more bailouts...more junk on the Fed’s balance sheet...more guarantees...and more intervention."
- Guest Essay by Frank Holmes: Obama and McCain Don't Understand Markets 09/22/08 - Life Imitates Farce
by Bill Bonner "Yes, almost every imbecilic act we could imagine has become fact. No exaggeration is too extreme. Life imitates farce."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Financial Head Loppings 09/19/08 - The Dumbest Man in America
by Bill Bonner "AIG...Lehman...Fannie...they believed their own guff! It wouldn’t be the first time that something like this happened." 09/18/08 - A Financial Vesuvius
by Bill Bonner "Gold rose as much as $100 in intraday trading yesterday and ended up $50 - its biggest move ever. Investors were looking for a safe place to put their money. From the time of Pompeii, gold has been the refuge of choice for investors everywhere."
- Guest Essay by Dan Amoss, CFA: What Wall Street Needs is a Few Good Men 09/17/08 - The Land of the Free Lunch
by Bill Bonner "Ah yes, dear reader...the land of free markets and free men has become the land of the free lunch. Wall Street hustlers can make billions in bonuses – when the sun shines. As soon as it begins to rain, the losses are handed out to the general public."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: Buffalo Jumps 09/16/08 - A Deflationary Correction
by Bill Bonner "We are in a deflationary correction. The financial industry made a fortune by flogging debt; now it is taking huge losses because its collateral is going bad, its assets are declining in value and its business is soft."
- Guest Essay by David Galland: Whither Gold? 09/15/08 - It's Lehman's Turn
by Bill Bonner "Now, it’s Lehman that is failing. And no consortium of Wall Street banks is willing, or able, to bail it out. Lehman has some $80 billion of dubious credits. These were the products of its own - and many other - whiz kid financial engineers."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Spooky Stats from the U.S. Mint 09/12/08 - When Scams Collide
by Bill Bonner "A presidential campaign is often described as a horse race; a demolition derby is more like it. The candidates are always backing up – and smashing into their own scams. Things aren’t much better in the financial world either." 09/11/08 - No More Delaying this Decline
by Bill Bonner "The decline since then has been delayed and disguised - by a flood of new liquidity from the feds. But now, there’s no stopping it. And it’s much worse than it would have been eight years ago..."
- Guest Essay by Alex Green: How to Legally Stiff-Arm the IRS 09/10/08 - Where the Smart Money is Going
by Bill Bonner "But if smart investors are selling stocks, what do they do with the money? Our advice has been to buy gold. From the looks of it, the smart money is not following that part of our advice. Yesterday, the price of gold fell $26 to $781."
- Guest Essay by James Howard Kunstler: Last Ditch 09/09/08 - Don't Steal...the Government Hates Competition
by Bill Bonner "The government is in the business of stacking one monumental fraud on top of another...trying to give everyone the idea that he can live at someone else’s expense. Sooner or later, the whole mountain of flimflam falls down."
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: Investing in the Age of Scarcity 09/08/08 - The Fall of the Giants
by Bill Bonner "Of course, when you sell houses to people who can’t afford to pay for them, you have to expect to get some returns. And you have to expect that the folks who financed the mortgages will regret it."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: No Accounting for Currency 09/05/08 - Making a Bad Situation Badder
by Bill Bonner "A few reporters across the pond see the financial problems in the U.S. as small potatoes compared to those of the U.K., and that Bernanke and Co. have somehow set us back on the right track. Well, as Bill Bonner explains, they couldn’t be more wrong." 09/04/08 - Avoidance Tactics
by Bill Bonner "Buy gold. We don’t know what direction it is going, but it isn’t going away. And if the world’s monetary system is troubled – either by inflation or deflation – gold will be good protection. Consider it an insurance policy."
- Guest Essay by Don A. Rich: The Real Cost of a Full Bailout 09/03/08 - The Return of the Greenback?
by Kate "Short Fuse" Incontrera "The greenback is on quite a tear, reaching an 11-month high against major currencies today. Forbes reports that 'investors increasingly put faith in the U.S. amid a deteriorating global economic backdrop.'"
- Guest Essay by Nathan Lewis: The Battle for Investment Survival 09/02/08 - Ineluctable Truths
by Bill Bonner "An increase in the price of oil looked ineluctable in the early ’80s too. So did higher and higher interest rates - over 20%, in fact. And the stock market was dying too; Business Week magazine announced it on the cover: 'The Death of Equities' hit the newsstands in August 1982."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: How I Spend My Summer Vacation 09/01/08 - Economics is a Battlefield
by Bill Bonner "From a purely economic point of view, the collapse of communism was one of the worst things to happen to American. As long as China and Russia were red, the U.S. had no significant economic competition."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Silver Stats that Will Make You Salivate 08/29/08 - And the Last Shall be First
by Bill Bonner "Between what bond investors stand to gain in yield and what they stand to lose from inflation is a built-in loss of 1.8%. Where’s the margin of safety? Where’s the upside? Why bother?" 08/28/08 - Same Old Mistakes, Different Day
by Bill Bonner "At least 3 or 4 times over the past year, stock markets have rallied on news that 'it’s over.' Eventually, of course, it will be over...but probably not before people have stopped looking for the end."
- Guest Essay by Dan Amoss, CFA: Welcome to a Trillion Dollar Deficit, Mr. President 08/27/08 - Don't Think About White Elephants
by Bill Bonner "Ahead is perhaps the biggest credit contraction ever. Why? Because it takes time and money to correct mistakes. The bigger the mistakes; the longer and more expensive the correction."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: "People Are Policy" 08/26/08 - Spreading the Slowdown
by Bill Bonner "What we see coming, one way or another, is a fall in living standards. It can happen in one of two ways: either people lose their jobs and their incomes in a deflationary slump, or inflation makes their incomes and savings worth less."
- Guest Essay by David Galland: The Building Storm: Gold, the Dollar and Inflation 08/25/08 - Have Merced on Us
by Bill Bonner "Poor Merced; The New York Times calls it a disaster. Housing prices have been cut in half. Three out of four of the houses listed for sale are foreclosures. If a seller isn’t willing to cut his price to the level of a foreclosed house, he can forget about selling it, say real estate agents."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Worthless Money, Worthless Economy 08/22/08 - Clear and Present Financial Danger
by Bill Bonner "Before us is a clear and present danger. There is no doubt about it. Anyone who cares to look can see it. If something is not done to protect ourselves against it, the results will be either disastrous or fatal...we’re not sure which." 08/21/08 - The Golden Value of Reliable Numbskulls
By Bill Bonner "Gold is useful because humans are stupid. That’s why it is always useful; because humans are reliably numbskulls. And it is particularly useful when humans are particularly stupid." 08/20/08 - Turning Japanese
by Bill Bonner "In a nutshell, Japan could drop into a cushy bed of savings and sleep for a decade or two. When the United States gets knocked down, on the other hand, Americans fall onto the cold concrete of debt."
- Guest Essay by Dan Amoss: A New Short Idea in the Banking Sector 08/19/08 - The Worst is to Come
by Bill Bonner "Sometimes it’s nice to hear things laid out bluntly - and long time sufferers know that we aim to do that at The Daily Reckoning, as well. Former chief economist of the IMF, Professor Kenneth Rogoff is not one to sugarcoat or mince words."
- Guest Essay by James Howard Kunstler: Reality Bites Again 08/18/08 - The Word on the Street
by Bill Bonner "Along with 'jingle mail,' 'exploding ARMs' and 'liars’ loans,' it came into the popular language recently...and now everyone uses the term 'subprime' to describe anything that is cheap, low down, or deceitful...says the ADS."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Unemployment Survival Guide 08/15/08 - Sugar Daddy God
by Bill Bonner "Evangelicals preach the word of God from a pulpit made of pocketbooks...and lately, it seems like a lot of people are buying. Of course, this might be just another part of the baroque spectacle that makes America such an amusing place." 08/14/08 - The Plot Thickens...
by Bill Bonner "The storyline seems solid enough. The facts seem to fit more or less. But we have a strong feeling that there are more twists and turns in this plot...and that, when the show is over, the story will turn out be very different."
- Guest Essay by Jeff Clark: How to Calculate Your Own Gold Price Projection 08/13/08 - The Big "What If?"
by Bill Bonner "Would it make sense...maybe...if our ‘what if’ turned out to be correct? A worldwide slump would take the inflationary pressure off commodities and gold."
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: Blue Water Energy - The Offshore Oil Boom 08/12/08 - Inflation on the Run
by Bill Bonner "What is the reason for this stunning defeat of inflation? How come the central banks and financial authorities aren’t better at what they do best? The latest numbers we have show them trying hard."
- Guest Essay by Puru Saxena: End of an Era? 08/11/08 - Can You Spell "Sound Money"?
by Bill Bonner "As to the dollar/euro exchange rate, we have no prediction to make. It’s like a spelling Bee where both contestants are dyslexics. Neither the euro’s masters nor Ben Benanke can spell 'sound money.'"
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: The Pension Plan Cookie Thief 08/08/08 - Homage to Jacques Rueff
by Bill Bonner "In a free market, wages eventually ease their way down to levels that allow capitalists to exploit workers again. Always have. But for some reason, in Britain in the 1920s, this didn't happen." 08/07/08 - The Absent-Minded Credit Cycle
by Bill Bonner "One generation is convinced that interest rates always go up. The next is sure they always go down. One thinks credit gets easier and easier. The next knows it will never be able to borrow another dime – and doesn’t want to. One generation forgets what the generation before it just learned. That’s the credit cycle."
- Guest Essay by Marin Katusa: The War for Oil 08/06/08 - Financial Correction Center
by Bill Bonner "Initially, the correction was centered on housing and subprime mortgage finance. Then, it hit stock markets – doing most damage in the go-go markets of the emerging economies. And now, it is leaking into the rest of the financial industry."
- Guest Essay by Dr. Marc Faber: Very Modest Good News 08/05/08 - The Wind from Wall Street's Sails
by Bill Bonner "The correction has taken the wind out of Wall Street’s sales. But, so far, it has done very limited damage to U.S. stocks. Most likely, more pain lies ahead...before another upswing."
- Guest Essay by Kevin Kerr: First, Kill All the Speculators 08/04/08 - Decoupling in the Land of the Dead
by Bill Bonner "Here at The Daily Reckoning, we were always skeptical of the ‘decoupling’ concept. Coupling has been going on for a long time; it didn’t seem likely to us that it should suddenly go out of style."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: The Half and Half in Your Economic Coffee 08/01/08 - Cartoon Capitalism
by Bill Bonner "The 'consumer economy' was always a mockery. The more people consumed, the more GDP went up. Of course, GDP measures output, not wealth creation; but in a cartoon economy, who can tell the difference?" 07/31/08 - The Pin in the Monetary Hand Grenade
by Bill Bonner "Here is a case where many, many people did dumb things. Homeowners bought houses they couldn’t afford. Lenders lent them the money to do it. And then investors bought the loans as if they were good investments. Naturally, the whole thing blew up."
- Guest Essay by Greg Guenthner: Coal Keeps the Lights on in America - Can We Make it Cleaner? 07/30/08 - Every Party Has a Pooper...
by Bill Bonner "What would cause seasoned businessmen to go so wrong? For once, the president of the United States of America seemed to have it right. He said Wall Street had gotten 'drunk.' The party got a little out of hand, he might have added."
- Guest Essay by Byron King: What Makes the Wheels on the Bus Go 'Round and 'Round 07/29/08 - Is Inflation the Clear Winner?
by Bill Bonner "Could it be that inflation has topped out? Could it be that the ‘civil war’ between inflation and deflation is finally reaching a conclusion...with deflation the clear winner?"
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: Market Cycles Never Cease 07/28/08 - Dead Cat Bounce
by Bill Bonner "As they say on Wall Street, even dead cats bounce. But it will be a very long time before the big banks enjoy the kind of profits they made back in 2003-2007 - when they made billions by lending to people who couldn't afford to pay it back."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: Confessions of a Silver Optimist 07/25/08 - Lovable Moronic Capitalists
by Bill Bonner "Modern economists are more like auto mechanics. They think they can control the economy with a screwdriver. And to some extent they're right. Which is why the world economy is in such a mess; they turned the wrong screws." 07/24/08 - A Looney Tunes United States
by Bill Bonner "And the ‘civil war’ between inflation and deflation? How will it end? With a bang of hyper-inflation? Or a whimper of falling prices, bankruptcies and recession?"
- Guest Essay by Byron King: View from the Peak 07/23/08 - Nationalization at its Finest
by Kate Incontrera "As Milton Friedman once said, 'If you let the government run the Sahara Desert, soon there will be a shortage of sand.' And in the U.S., we have Fannie and Freddie, who represent a huge nationalization event in the United States."
- Guest Essay by Chris Mayer: The Innovator, the Imitator and the Idiot 07/22/08 - A Hank and a Hurricane Affect the Oil Price
by Kate Incontrera "Tropical Storm Dolly is not expected to have as much of an effect in the Gulf of Mexico as experts had previously thought. What was mainly dragging the price of oil down were comments from Hank Paulson on the need for Congress to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
- Guest Essay by Porter Stansberry: How to Make Your Net Worth Soar in the Midst of a Historic Financial Collapse 07/21/08 - Cracks in the Monetary Facade
by Kate Incontrera "The dark twins of the mortgage market have foreign investors nervously chewing their fingernails, as one out of 10 American mortgages are, in essence, owned by institutions and governments in other countries."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: The Power of the Chinese Credit Card 07/18/08 - Fannie and Freddie: Playing With a Stacked Deck
by Bill Bonner "Much of what goes on in public finance is fraudulent. The rest is nonsense. The hardest part of our métier is just figuring out which is which." 07/17/08 - Has Oil Topped Out?
by Bill Bonner "Where will the price of oil go? We wish we could tell you. It might very well sink below $100. But it will never sink as low as a busted dot.com or a crushed tulip bulb."
- Guest Essay by Ed Bugos: The New Gold Rally 07/16/08 - Visitors from the Planet Thrift
by Bill Bonner "Why didn’t he just come right out and explain that Americans have been living beyond their means...and now they’re being forced to cut back? That’s what yesterday’s retail sales figures showed…but the news struck economists and financial reporters like a UFO sighting – they didn’t know what to make of it."
- Guest Essay by Kevin Kerr: Shock to the System 07/15/08 - God, Guns and Gold
by Bill Bonner "Henry Paulson said a strong dollar was in America’s interest...and that there would be no more hanky panky going on with the greenback. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die."
- Guest Essay by James Howard Kunstler: Event Horizon 07/14/08 - The Dark Twins of Mortgage Finance
by Bill Bonner "Yes, the dark twins of mortgage finance dominated the news over the weekend. Every financial page covered the story. One story reported that the government was mounting a rescue operation."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: A Better Use for Your 401(k) 07/11/08 - The Biggest Transfer of Wealth in History
by Bill Bonner "With the advent of such enormous amounts of debt and credit, all of the heads on Wall Street seem to be rocking towards the East. Why? Because they’ve got all of our money." 07/10/08 - The End of the Boomland Economy
by Bill Bonner "The world as we know it...Boomland...the world of constantly expanding credit and rising asset prices...is finished, we think. Does it end with a bang or a whimper? Does it end with the bang of inflation? Or the whimper of dying prices?"
- Guest Essay by David Galland: Scorched Earth Economy 07/09/08 - Casualties of Financial Friendly Fire
by Bill Bonner "The United States has ten times more retail space per person than France. When people spend less, much of this space will cease to be commercially viable. Soon, abandoned shopping malls will follow abandoned houses."
- Guest Essay by Pierre Lemieux: The Idea of America, Part II 07/08/08 - Huge, Stupid, and Probably Fatal
by Bill Bonner "Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are to America’s great empire what the East India Company was to the British Empire in the 19th century...and the Louisiana Company was to France in the 18th. Huge, stupid, and probably fatal."
- Guest Essay by Pierre Lemieux: The Idea of America, Part I 07/07/08 - A Supersized Transfer of Wealth
by Bill Bonner "Now Americans are getting their supersized desserts. Not because they haven’t been nice. But because they haven’t been good. That’s how free enterprise really works; it rewards virtue – hard work, saving, investing, learning, taking risks, etc. As for those who spend too much and save too little – it kicks them in the derriere."
- Guest Essay by The Mogambo Guru: A World Without Inflation 07/04/08 - Land of the Free
by Bill Bonner "Today is the day we celebrate the unique American experience with ‘pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells and illuminations.’ But, in this DR Classique, first published on the Fourth of July, 2003, Bill Bonner can't help but notice that America has changed quite a bit since the Declaration of Independence was signed..." 07/03/08 - The Worldwide Consumer Shellacking
by Bill Bonner "Consumers are getting shellacked all over the world. So are investors. Europe’s stock markets are down nearly twice as much as Wall Street. And many foreign markets are down twice as much."
- Guest Essay by Lew Rockwell: Grand Theft Society 07/02/08 - The Limited Shelf Life of Dollar Fruit
by Bill Bonner "In the vaults of various central banks around the world lies $4.8 trillion worth of foreign currency reserves – the fruit of selling oil and widgets, mainly to U.S. consumers. And like oranges or papayas...these dollars have a limited shelf life."
- Guest Essay by Nathan Lewis: The Volcker Myth 07/01/08 - The Magical Debt-Free Sweet Spot
by Bill Bonner "People think there’s some magic, sweet spot in the universe where the old rules no longer apply. Many seem to think they will never have to pay back what they’ve borrowed. They think the government will bail them out."
- Guest Essay by Doug Casey: The Greater Depression and What You Should Do About It <<Prev
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