Tag Archives: Debt and the Fallacies of Paper Money

Beyond Human Capacity Distilling down and projecting out the economy’s limitless spectrum of interrelationships is near impossible to do with any regular accuracy.  The inputs are too vast.  The relationships are too erratic. Quite frankly, keeping tabs on it all is beyond human capacity.  This also goes for the federal government.  Even with all their data gatherers and number crunchers they are incapable of...

A Convocation Of Gamblers The Wall Street Journal and BloombergView have just run articles on the shadow banking system in China.  This has put me in a nostalgic mood. About 35 years ago when I was living in Japan, I made a side trip to Hong Kong. I took the hydrofoil to Macau one afternoon and the same service back early the next morning.  On the morning trip, I am sure that I saw many of the same faces that I saw...

  Home of the Brave? BALTIMORE – It is a bright summer day outside. A dry breeze sweeps down Cathedral Street and blows away the hot, humid air. It is hard for us to imagine that anything bad could happen today. But bad things do happen – even on nice days. The weather was fine when General Custer rode out to the Little Bighorn, too. Over the weekend, we worked at putting up a board fence – with half-round treated...

In the long run, as someone once said, we are all dead, but in the meantime, as BofAML’s Michael Hartnett provides a stunning tour de force of the last 5000 years illustrates long-run trends in the return, volatility, valuation & ownership of financial assets, interest rates & bond yields, economic growth, inflation & debt… The Longest Pictures reveals the astonishing history investors are living through...

Offending People Left and Right Bill Bonner, whose Diaries we republish here, is well-known for being an equal opportunity offender  – meaning that political affiliation, gender, age, or any other defining characteristics won’t save worthy targets from getting offended. As far as we are concerned, we generally try not to be unnecessarily rude to people, but occasionally giving offense is not exactly beneath us...

Muhammad Ali Could Take a Punch BALTIMORE – You had to admit. Muhammad Ali could take a punch. Unlike Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, he was a real war hero. He stood up and faced his enemies on the draft board, rather than dodging them. And when the feds walloped him as a criminal draft resister, Ali didn’t throw in the towel in a whimpering surrender to superior force. Instead, he used...

  From Subject to Citizen BALTIMORE – June 5th, the Swiss cast their votes and registered their opinions: “No,” they said. We left off yesterday wondering why something for nothing never works. Not as monetary policy. Not as welfare or foreign aid. Not in commerce. Not never, no how. But something for nothing is what people most want. The Swiss voted against awarding all citizens a “universal basic income” of about...

Pro-BREXIT campaigners Boris Johnson (ex-mayor of London) and Michael Gove (UK Secretary of Justice) are in a good mood. Photo credit: Paul Grover / REX Polls Show Growing Support for a Break with the EU In the UK as elsewhere, the political elites may have underestimated the strength of the trend change in social mood across Europe. The most recent “You-Gov” and ICM pools show a widening lead in favor of a UK exit...

Groucho dispensing valuable advice Photo via imdb.com Destroying Lives BALTIMORE – A dear reader reminded us of the comment, supposedly made by Groucho Marx: “A free lunch? You can’t afford a free lunch.” He was responding to last week’s Diary about the national referendum in Switzerland on Saturday. Voters will decide whether to give all Swiss residents a free lunch – a guaranteed annual income of about $30,000 a...

Is it Time to Buy Income-Producing Real Estate?  No, No, No. Much to the dismay of my real estate buddies, who are complaining about how high prices while watching the cash flow of their portfolios bursting at the seams from a few good years of rent increases, the answer is no. Capitalization Rates REIT cap rates (as of mid 2015, they have declined further since then) Capitalization Rates Valuation is one big red...