I don't believe there is any investment, outside of a mania, that elicits more emotion, both positive and negative, than gold. People love it or hate it, there isn't much in between. It's because of these strong emotions that there are so many misconceptions about the yellow metal. Emotions tend...

New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch made a statement last week that should have gotten headlines, but didn't.

"I believe that the states across the United States will face deficits a year after stimulus ends of $300 billion to $500 billion a year," Ravitch told about 200...

Now that the Great Recession has been declared dead and gone by everyone who failed to see the possibility of it happening in the first place, it is important to examine the reasons for its demise.

The White House has been busy declaring that its stimulus policies have ...

A lot can happen in two weeks. Normally the foreign exchange market for developed nations move like glaciers. But in these days of global warming even glaciers are breaking speed limits.

Less than two weeks ago the World Bank President had some interesting things to...

Hundreds of years ago the Incas would sacrifice virgins to appease their Volcano God.

The Gods and methods of sacrifice may have changed, but the tradition remains.

Like the Incas of old, we find ourselves helpless against forces we do not understand. The foundations...

On Sunday FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair spoke out against the regulatory protection of the big Wall Street banks, also known as "too big to fail."

"We need to end 'too big to fail' and this needs to be an overarching policy that applies to everyone," Bair said.

There are regulatory agencies with good reputations, and then there are agencies with bad reputations. There are bad ideas, and then there are criminally bad ideas. That's why it is so disturbing to see a regulatory agency with a good reputation like the FDIC propose a criminally...

In today's debt-based currency system, credit is the life-blood. Without credit the economy has no money and nothing can grow.

That's why all this talk about economic recovery is puzzling. There is no talk about more jobs, higher incomes, or more paid working hours. So any recovery must come from...

With most of the media focused on Obama's speech about health care on Wednesday, this item got largely overlooked.

Sweeping regulatory reform of the financial sector-thought to be a 2009 legislative given just four months ago-may now come down to a piece-meal approach, with the White...

Casino capitalism has returned to Wall Street with a vengeance.

Lehman shares peaked last week at 32 cents, having spent much of the year at less than 5 cents. When the rally in Lehman began in late August, trading volume soared above 100m shares on one day,...

The unemployment rate climbed to 9.7% last month, a 26-year high...and the media told us that this is a good thing. "[W]hether or not today's and other recent reports overstate the case, the improving trend of the labor market after the autumn/winter carnage cannot be...

There's been a lot of talk recently about the economy. Has it bottomed? Are we recovering? Will we see a "V" shaped bounce? Or a "U"? Or a "W"?
Since most of the economic numbers are still negative, it seems a little premature to talk about a recovery....

"We must break the Money Trust or the Money Trust will break us."
- Louis D. Brandeis, 1913

When the economy appeared to be melting down last September, Wall Street bank representatives began showing up in Congress like mobsters walking into a mom-and-pop business looking for protection money.

By now we've all seen reports about the amazing stock market rally of 2009.

The widely followed stock market measure broke above 1,000 on Monday for the first time in nine months as reports on manufacturing, construction and banking sent investors more signals that the economy is gathering...

The massive and unprecedented amount of debt being issued by the Treasury Department, and the relatively finite amount of savings in the world, has left the country vulnerable to a currency crisis. The place where evidence of this crisis might first turn up is in the treasury...

Two years ago this Friday the financial crisis started.

Most financial media pundits and politicians didn't recognize that we had a problem until Lehman Brothers went under on September 15, 2008. The official start of the recession is marked at December 2007.

But the real start of...

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
- Hunter S. Thompson

When you live in interesting times it is sometimes hard to distinguish the real news from the fake news. For instance, I read this today.

WASHINGTON--A new report has revealed that...

The news out today told a story of Americans going back to their puritan fiscal roots.

Americans Pay Back Debts Most Since '52 as Jobless Spur Savings

(Bloomberg) -- For the first time since Harry S. Truman was in the White House, Americans are paying back their...

Robert Shiller, the co-creator of the S&P Case-Shiller Index, which tracks national housing prices, is a man that has earned a great deal of respect for his knowledge of the real estate market. Yet he is still guilty of saying the silliest of things.

For instance, the other day

On June 24, 1982, four bank examiners from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City walked into the rear of a small shopping mall in Oklahoma City.

This unlikely location marks the start of a series of events that have brought us to the brink of a global...