You are here: Home » Articles

Articles

Is This It? Or Can They Fool Us Again?

by John Rubino on August 9, 2011

A stressful weekend for the world’s bankers and politicians, followed by a sleepless Monday, and all with a single question rattling around in their heads: How can we fool them again? For decades now the financial/public sector complex has been able to clean up its recurring messes — from Long Term Capital Management to the [...]

{ 46 comments }

Housing’s Next Leg Down And QE3

by John Rubino on July 26, 2011

That US home prices are once again trending down is no secret. But just how bad things are likely to get is not yet well understood. Consider this from the Atlantic’s Daniel Indiviglio: Chart of the Day: The Housing Market Is Worse Than You Think Has the state of the housing market gotten better or [...]

{ 23 comments }

More Bad Ideas and Broken Promises

by John Rubino on June 2, 2011

While we’re on the subject, consider the fact that pension funds are once again loading up on “alternative investments”, this time in the form of hedge funds: Pensions Leap Back to Hedge Funds Public pension plans are lifting hedge-fund investment, seeking to boost long-term returns despite losses suffered in some funds in the financial crisis. [...]

{ 15 comments }

Junk Bond ETFs: Another Big Short

by John Rubino on August 22, 2010

Sometimes the market makes it too easy. Check this out: Desire for income drives high-yield bond ETFs’ popularity BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Investors fed up with U.S. stocks’ negative returns over the past decade and paltry rates in today’s fixed-income markets are piling into exchange-traded funds that invest in high-yield corporate bonds. “Where else can you [...]

{ 20 comments }

The Low-Interest-Rate Trap

by John Rubino on August 15, 2010

Pretend for a second that you recently retired with a decent amount of money in the bank, and all you have to do is generate a paltry 5% to live in comfort for the rest of your days. But lately that’s been easier said than done. Your money market fund yields less than 1%. Your [...]

{ 15 comments }

Euro Crisis, Part II

by John Rubino on August 12, 2010

Remember the euro-zone crisis? Front page news for weeks, and then…nothing. Could they have found the secret formula for eliminating an overwhelming debt load without hyperinflation or depression? Nah. They were just taking a break, and now they’re back. Greece’s economy is contracting and Spain’s regional governments are being shut out of the debt markets. [...]

{ 17 comments }

A Sign of Things to Come?

by John Rubino on August 11, 2010

This isn’t how it normally goes. For the past couple of decades — that is, during the parabolic phase of the global credit bubble — the financial markets have responded to US Fed announcements of easier money like kids whose daddy has promised them a trip to Disneyland. The euphoria doesn’t always last, but the [...]

{ 11 comments }

Doug Noland: "Significant Unavoidable Cost"

by John Rubino on July 30, 2010

In this week’s Credit Bubble Bulletin Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland makes a crucial point: It’s not inflation that the U.S. risks by issuing trillions of dollars of new debt, but “a crisis of confidence at the very heart of our monetary system.” Exactly. If we keep this up the financial markets might abandon dollar-denominated assets, [...]

{ 15 comments }

"We Could Really Use Some Good News"

by John Rubino on July 16, 2010

Normally, the consumer sentiment number that comes out each month seems like a piece of media fluff, far less substantial than, say, housing starts or the gold price. But today’s report is unusual enough to deserve a longer look. From MarketWatch: Nothing happened, but the news was bad anyway Commentary: Historic decline in sentiment comes [...]

{ 27 comments }

Preying on the Pumpers

by John Rubino on July 12, 2010

When you run a website that contains Google ads you constantly have to watch out for penny stock hustlers promising ludicrous returns. They’re generally “pump and dump” operators who push up the price of thinly-traded stocks and then bail, leaving their hapless clients holding worthless paper. Dirtbags, in other words. So it was with some interest [...]

{ 18 comments }