Personal conversions sometimes mark dramatic turns in history. Saul of Taursus saw a vision so bright it left him blind. The next thing you know, he had changed his name and was pushing Christianity all over the world. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire fell as a consequence. Then, on the advice of his mistress, Gabrielle, Henry IV became a Catholic, leading to the Edict of Nantes and its subsequent revocation.
The inflation/deflation debate is hot… It crackles and pops like a pine fire. But it gives off little helpful light. Abe Lincoln may have read by the light of an open fire. But when we tried it, we singed our eyebrows. It made us suspicious of Old Abe; maybe he wasn’t quite as truthful as he pretended to be. Later, we realized he was a mountebank. But that’s another story…
The trouble with being a contrarian is that you can never be quite contrarian enough.
You wanna know what is going on? David Rosenberg explains…
Let’s get this straight.
Household credit is shrinking…
Profits are shrinking…
Employment is shrinking…
Housing values are shrinking…
The wage base is shrinking…
But the recession is over!
Whoa… how is that possible?
This week, the big story was once again coming from the gold market. Mid-week, the yellow metal hit $1020 – but the rally was not of the usual variety. Generally, investors flock to gold when the dollar is weak and inflationary fears run high. But as we all know, inflation is not a problem right now – despite the Fed’s best efforts.
Gold took off yesterday…closing at $1020. Here at The Daily Reckoning, we’re impressed. But we’re not that impressed. Gold, of course, is half of our Trade of the Decade, which we announced almost 10 years ago. We’re bullish on the metal…have been for a very long time. But recent comments in this space have made readers wonder what the Hell is going on…so we will spend a few minutes clarifying.
“I’m Brazilian. I have gold. And I’ve just arrived from Rio richer than anyone…” Thus sang one of the characters in an operetta by Jacques Offenbach. But that was in the mid-19 th century. But hey… what goes around…
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy. The media struggles to say something meaningful about it. Here at the Daily Reckoning we will not even attempt meaningfulness. We’ll be satisfied with a few snide remarks.
The press attributed this week’s rise in gold to benign causes. The end of the world seems to have been postponed – indefinitely. Bloomberg reported that a clear majority of those polled thought the world economy was recovering.
