All Bets Are Off

Posted on August 25, 2015 by MN Gordon

Stock markets across the planet gazed out across the economic landscape yesterday and vomited all over themselves.  After that, they convulsed and dry heaved again and again.  For the global economic disfiguration has grown so grotesque, so awesomely awful, that the collective stomach of world markets has wrenched into knots.

Japan and China started the great purge.  In the land of the rising sun, the Nikkei 225 expelled 895 points.  The Middle Kingdom followed this up with a remarkable feat…the Shanghai Composite Index projectile spewed 8.49 percent.

Unfortunately, the sickness spread to Europe and the United States.  The German Dax gave up 4.7 percent and, in London, the FTSE gutted out 4.7 percent.  The Dow followed this up with an initial 1,089 point freefall…before crawling its way back to just a 588 point discharge.

What’s next?  No one quite knows, for sure.  But something different is underway.  Over the last six years there’s hardly been a notable stock market decline. Continue reading →

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The Fed’s Edifice Crumbles Away

Posted on August 21, 2015 by MN Gordon

There have been many appeals to ignorance over the last several years with respect to the effectiveness of monetary policy.  One popular tactic of policy goons is to point to an improved economic statistic – like unemployment – and self-adulate for maneuvering it down.  The fading print media rarely questions these spurious claims.

But just because one action was taken doesn’t mean it was the cause of a later result.  For correlation does not imply causation.  Or, as the post hoc fallacy claims, “after this, therefore because of this”…post hoc ergo propter hoc.

“Gross domestic product has increased,” a policy conspirator may hold up as evidence of their handiwork, “therefore, quantitative easing must have worked.”  Maybe so.  Or maybe not.  Without a control group, and all other things being equal, how can you really know if quantitative easing caused GDP to increase?  You can’t.

One of the great vanities of our time is that government officials and academic bureaucrats control the economy.  That, somehow, upon assuming their positions, they take on god like qualities, which allow them to manifest outcomes by decree.  This is far from the truth. Continue reading →

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Doug Casey on the Real FIFA Scandal

Posted on August 18, 2015 by MN Gordon

Doug Casey on the Real FIFA Scandal
By Doug Casey, The Casey Report

The truth be known, I really don’t give a damn about soccer.  Nor do most Americans.

Indeed, until recently, all that most Americans knew about “football” was that Brandi Chastain ripped off her jersey, to display a great physique, after she scored the winning goal for the US in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup playoff against China.

However, “football”, as it’s known to the 6.7 billion non-Americans on the planet, is revered by the rest of the world as a secular religion.

But now football, and FIFA, the sport’s governing body, is in the news because of an alleged corruption scandal.  Let’s not discuss the details of who was bribing whom, and where all the money went, for two reasons.

First, that’s all over the Internet, and you don’t need me to repeat it here.

Second, and much more important, it’s really none of our business.  Despite the fact that the FBI has taken it upon itself to prosecute at least 14 FIFA officials for corruption. Continue reading →

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The Fatal Dangers of a Fading Bull Market Run

Posted on August 14, 2015 by MN Gordon

It is too bad that mobile devices don’t set off a signal before their users do something terminally stupid.  Perhaps a warning alarm would help them change course.  Rather than texting and walking in front of a city bus, the preoccupied mobile user would be signaled to look up before stepping off the curb.

Instead, mobile devices offer an intoxicating distraction.  They actually entice people to do things they’d otherwise know better than.  Add the glory of capturing a public jaw dropper real-time and instantly posting it to YouTube or Instagram and the opportunities for stupidity are endless.

Social network users don’t stand a chance.  Take poor David Mellado Lopez.  The man thought he was using his mobile phone to film something astounding early Sunday morning.

He was, no doubt, marveling at his footage of a motionless bull lying on the ground just before something even more astounding happened.  In hindsight it would’ve been better to have stayed in bed that morning. Continue reading →

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