Ben Stein is such a juicy target to beat up when he’s wrong. Which is frequently. I’m shocked I’ve done it only once before. Beating him up is like beating up Kudlow, Cavuto, — heck, all of the Team Bush apologists who wouldn’t recognize genuine free-market capitalism if it bit them in the ass — all at once.
There is no longer any doubt that we are heading for a deep, deflationary recession. But James Howard Kunstler is more worried about the “tidal wave” of monetary inflation that will follow. With the financial landscape washed clean, the economy will need to be rebuilt on productive enterprise.
Andrew Snyder says this credit crisis could eventually go down as one of the most profitable periods in US history. The country’s biggest and oldest companies are selling at an unprecedented discount. Andrew selects four blue chip stocks set to make huge recovery profits over the next two years.
The base metals were mixed on Thursday. Copper went on a wild ride, rising and falling sharply through a 10-cent range before settling little changed at $1.8571/lb., down just a penny.
It takes more than a globally competitive economy to have a sound banking system. For the third straight year, the United States finds itself at the top of the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as part of its annual Global Competitiveness Report.
“Investors are taking losses of up to 90% in the $1.2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) tied to corporate credit,” reports Bloomberg. Much of the losses have been triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers and Icelandic bank.
Last week, market volatility reached record levels. Dan Amoss says the wild gyrations in stocks are the result of hedge funds liquidating assets to cover their highly-leveraged positions. This means some good firms — especially those providing vital functions in the food and energy markets — are now massively undervalued.
Andrew Snyder says stock investors should look out for more market sell-offs around October 23 and November 4 and 5. This is when WaMu (OTC:WAMUQ) and Iceland’s bankrupt institutions face their CDS settlements.
Clean energy ETFs became hugely popular in 2007. But they’ve been taking a beating since this August, when crude oil prices began to fall from their year highs.
Nevertheless, Jim Stanton says alternative energy — and the wind-energy market in particular — has a big future. Wind energy is already the second largest source of new power generation in the US, and it now has the backing of the much-hyped Pickens Plan.
Jim says two clean-energy ETFs that look undervalued right now are PBW and GEX. He also recommends FAN for a more wind-specific ETF.
The collapse this weekend of the once venerable investment bank, Lehman Brothers, will cost 26,000 financial-sector workers their jobs.
On top of that, the take-over of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America will mean pink slips for approximately 24,000 of Merrill’s employees.