This Market’s Bound to Bust

Posted on May 29, 2015 by MN Gordon

Sporting events are overrated.  Think of the latest Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight.  What a dud that turned out to be…twelve rounds of pat-a-cake.  We’ve seen harder hits watching the squirrels go at it along the back fence.

For any real action these days, you must turn elsewhere than professional sports.  Some prefer reality television for kicks and titters.  Others like to keep up with the gossip on Facebook.  Here at the Economic Prism we have other hankerings.

For the greatest show on earth, we set our sights to the stock market with eager anticipation.  We don’t know what will happen next.  But we do know something big – like a massive meltdown – is coming.

On Tuesday, for instance, the stock market took a nose dive.  The S&P 500 lost a full percent.  From what we gather, good news for the economy was perceived as bad news for stocks.

New home sales data exceeded forecasts.  Orders for capital equipment rose in the U.S. for a second month. Continue reading →

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Cynics and the Big Fat Greek Default

Posted on May 26, 2015 by MN Gordon

Cynics and the Big Fat Greek Default“Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius.  Please don’t forget to pay the debt,” were the final words of Socrates.  He uttered them shortly after downing poison hemlock in 399 BC, in fulfillment of his death sentence for corrupting the youth.

Asclepius was the Greek god for curing illness.  One interpretation of Socrates’ last words is that death is the cure – or freedom – of the soul from the body.  Another is that Socrates viewed his death as a cure for Athens’ ailments…including its decline from the height of hegemony and defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

By all accounts, Socrates’ followers were left searching for direction following the death of this profound gadfly.  Plato, for example, went on to explore, broaden, and clarify Socrates ideas, making them lasting contributions to the world.  However, many of Socrates’ other followers dissolved into various factions, and became nothing more than historical footnotes.

The Cynics, for instance, took Socrates’ teachings of the virtues of a simple life and extended them into loony land.  Before long Diogenes of Sinope was begging for a living and stumbling around the marketplace with a lamp in full daylight, claiming to be looking for an honest man. Continue reading →

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Monkey Economics

Posted on May 22, 2015 by MN Gordon

Despite the advent of the tablet phone and microwave kettle corn, there are still rudimentary evolutionary responses hardwired into the core of the human psyche.  During moments of failing they take over and suppress clear thinking.  How else can one explain modern man’s continued imbecilities?

Perhaps at another time and another place this animal instinct served a valuable purpose.  The luxury of thoughtful contemplation wasn’t always an option.  When backed into a corner just a moment of hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.

These days this archaic trait can become a great liability when put to the test.  For instance, rather than slamming on the brakes to prevent a bus from driving off the cliff, a driver will often do the opposite…they’ll accelerate.

Several months ago the European Central Bank (ECB) initiated a new mass money debasement scheme.  It involved buying €60 billion ($66 billion) a month of European government bonds.  Somehow this was supposed to improve the economy. Continue reading →

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Get Paid by Politicians

Posted on May 19, 2015 by MN Gordon

Get Paid by Politicians“I’m out here studying what appears to be an epidemic of arrested development in the American Dream,” wrote Hunter S. Thompson from San Francisco to a New York Editor in the mid-1960s.

Fifty years later the effects of this epidemic have spread their ails across the entire American landscape.  You can hardly peer about without evidence of the rampant degeneration – be it lack of manners or people too large for their sweat pants – lacerating your eyeballs.

There’s not much you can do to stop it.  But you don’t have to be part of it.  What’s more, there are ways you can make the best of it.

Today’s insights are for the patient and shrewd individual.  If you are one among these few and far between fellows you’ll delight – and prosper – from what follows.  And even if you can’t hold on to a buck, for fear it’ll burn your fingers, you may somehow find it within yourself to exploit this clever and elegant opportunity.

You only live once.  Why not dare to do something that’s both fun and profitable…and a little subversive? Continue reading →

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