Tag Archives: Debt and the Fallacies of Paper Money

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...

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog, We are watching an entire nation collapse right in front of our eyes.  As you read this article, there are severe shortages of just about anything you can imagine in Venezuela.  That includes food, toilet paper, medicine, electricity and even Coca-Cola.  All over the country, people are standing in extremely long lines for hours on end just hoping that they will be able to purchase some provisions for their hungry...

    Preposterous Initiative BALTIMORE – No whining and kvetching about the Deep State today. Instead, we sit at its feet, admire the cut of its jaw, and sing its praises. We are grateful to it… and not just as a source of amusement. In short, we delight in its incompetence. What brings this to mind is a small item in the news, which, like a pool ball careening across a felted table, knocked two or three others in their pockets before coming to rest. We had to go pluck each one out of its...

  Home of the Anti-Bubble It seems like almost everybody has an opinion about Twitter (TWTR) – both the company and the stock. As for the company it seems that their “window of opportunity” to massively succeed has essentially closed as user growth and revenue have both slowed, quite dramatically, over the past 18 months. Plus management turnover is clicking at a rapid pace. Company executives typically do not leave if the firm’s future seems bright. Even the ubiquitous Co-Founder/CEO,...

  Stuffing the Futon Our friend Ramsey Su just asked what Haruhiko Kuroda and Shinzo Abe are going to do now in light of the strong yen (aside from perhaps doing the honorable thing). Isn’t it time to just “wipe out some debt with the stroke of a pen”? We will return to that question further below, but first a few words on the new Samurai futon. Apparently the Japanese are becoming more than a little antsy about Kuroda-san’s negative interest rate policy (and the threats of more of the...

  Seven Year Achievement “Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.” — Lewis Carroll U.S. consumers are at it again.  After a seven year hiatus they’re once again doing what they do best.  They’re buying stuff. PCE: personal consumption expenditures up 1% According to the Commerce Department, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which is the primary measure of consumer spending on goods and services in the U.S. economy, increased $119.2 billion in...

The Parasite – easily the most terrifying Superman villain Image credit: Marvel The Parasites Begin to Attach Themselves BALTIMORE – “Tommy… who are you voting for?” We put the question to a local bulldozer operator whom we’ve known for at least half a century. Tommy, now 80 years old, is the last of a dying breed. He grew up plowing the earth to grow tobacco on Maryland’s Tidewater, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. In the 1970s, when tobacco farming became unprofitable, he...

Felix Zulauf Photo credit: Sigi Tischler / Keystone Government Intervention is Making Things Worse Claudio Grass, the CEO of Global Gold, has recently interviewed legendary Swiss fund manager Felix Zulauf. A wide range of topics was discussed, including monetary policy, the market outlook, investment decisions and precious metals. About Felix Zulauf: Felix Zulauf started out as a trader for Swiss Bank. He joined Union Bank of Switzerland in 1977, ultimately becoming the head of the...

The new Utopian socialists believe that the latest capitalist gizmos will help them realize their dream of a society under the full control of socialist philosopher kings. Image via grundeinkommen.ch Robotic Utopia In spite of the fact that Marx expressed nothing but disdain for his Utopian socialist predecessors such as Henri Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, variants of Utopian socialism evidently live on. The latest iteration of the socialist dream is firmly focused on the capabilities...

  An Alert for the Global Posse of Liquidity Junkies In the summer of 2015 and again in December-February this year, global stock markets were rattled by weakness in the yuan’s exchange rate vs. the US dollar. Yuan weakness is widely held to exacerbate pressures on other (already weak) emerging market currencies, but more importantly, it is seen as a symptom of accelerating capital flight from China. USD-CNY, daily; onshore yuan rate USD-CNY, daily (a rising price denotes yuan weakness)...