Even the Wall St Journal is on the Fed's Case
Editor's Comments, 04/30/08
In the lead editorial of the April 28th edition, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled financial mainstream organ takes the Fed to task for "a major policy mistake" in dropping rates so aggressively since last summer. As Mr. Bernanke continues his...Read More >>

A Global House of Cards: Interview with Josh Rosner
The Institutional Risk Analyst, 04/07/08
We start this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst with some final thoughts on the Bear, Stearns & Co (NYSE:BSC) failure and the bailout of the other primary dealers following the Senate Banking Committee hearings last week. First, we notice...Read More >>

Thomas Paine on Paper Money
Thomas Paine, 04/24/08
This essay — a blistering attack on paper money and an embrace of gold and silver as the money of a free society — is part of a larger pamphlet on government written in 1786. It appears in the Complete Writings of Thomas Paine,...Read More >>

Triple-A Failure
Lowenstein, 04/27/08
The Ratings Game - In 1996, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, remarked on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” that there were two superpowers in the world — the United States and Moody’s bond-rating service — and it...Read More >>

The Meaning of Stage II
Doug Noland,  04/25/08
...[T]o avoid implosion Washington had no alternative but to explicitly and implicitly nationalize both system Credit and   liquidity risk. It was desperate policymaking in the extreme...I believe U.S. policymakers are today unknowingly risking...Read More >>

"The SEC Should Investigate the Fed..."
Eric Fry, 04/23/08
In today's edition of the Rude Awakening, we provide no answers whatsoever.  We merely ask one question: Why isn't the SEC investigating the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury? This question springs to mind from a recent...Read More >>

The Fed Muddles Through a Bailout
George Will, 04/21/08
WASHINGTON-- And some say it will end because of subprime mortgages. But for those who cultivate fears of catastrophes as excuses for expanding government supervision of other people's lives, the bad news is that the world is not...Read More >>

Wages of Sin
Bill Bonner, 04/21/08
Capitalism is a panacea, after all. It cures symptoms of affluence as well as poverty. We file this report, coincidentally, from Manchester...where, according to legend, the industrial revolution began. Modern tools, steady money, and fossil...Read More >>

The Collapse of America's Service Economy
Peter Schiff, President - EuroPacific Capital, 04/18/08
Recent high profile bankruptcies of mainstay American retailers, such as The Sharper Image and Linens ‘n Things, as well as the proposed mergers between Blockbuster/Circuit City and Delta/Northwest, and the admissions from...Read More >>

Setting the Backdrop for Stage Two
Doug Noland, Credit Bubble Bulletin, 04/18/08
Martin Feldstein, Harvard professor and former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, wrote an op-ed piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal – “Enough with Interest Rate Cuts” – worthy of comment. “It’s time for...Read More >>

Friedman and the Fed: Is Liquidity the Answer?
William L. Anderson, 04/17/08
I recently heard a radio interview with a prominent economist who was defending Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's moves to shore up the markets on Wall Street. Bernanke, the economist said with emphasis, had spent years studying the...Read More >>

Bailing Out the Banks
Ron Paul, 04/16/08
There has been a lot of talk in the news recently about the Federal Reserve and the actions it has taken over the past few months. Many media pundits have been bending over backwards to praise the Fed for supposedly restoring stability to...Read More >>

Junk Bond Nation
Bill Bonner, 04/15/08
America's triple-A credit rating may be in danger, says Standard and Poor's. If the country has to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through a prolonged recession, it could cost the nation's treasury as much as 10% of GDP. We're...Read More >>

The Dollar Hasn't Bounced
Gold Money, Edited by James Turk 04/13/08
Chart and Observation-- "When taken together, the eerie calm as the dollar collapses and the arrow in the chart pointing to the building downside momentum suggest that the dollar is nowhere near its final low." All the signs indicated...Read More >>

The Greenspan Episode
Doug Noland, 04/11/08
The Greenspan Episode will be seen from a historical perspective as central banking lunacy. It was the exact intoxicant for market participants and politicians to wallow in during a spectacular Credit-induced boom. I find it repulsive today that...Read More >>

An Intoxicated World
Hugo Salinas Price, 04/11/08
The financiers and the monetary system are intoxicated. Their intoxication (with bad money) began on Aug 16, 1971, when everybody decided to go on as they had been doing up to Aug. 15, 1971; then things started real quick to get out...Read More >>

CHAOS CHRONICLED
Alf Field, 04/10/08
[Excellent primer, historical review, and analysis] “Men haven’t changed much in the last 2,000 years and, in consequence, we must still learn from history.” – Kenneth Clark, “Civilization”--“You shouldn’t be worried. You should be angry...Read More >>

Behind the Scenes at the Fed
Agora Financial's 5Min. Forecast, 04/09/08
...Meanwhile, quants behind the scenes are desperately trying to engineer new ways to increase liquidity…without dropping the fed funds rate. The Fed’s Term Auction Facility (TAF), offering 28-day loans to commercial banks, spat out another...Read More >>

Overconfidence Always Costs
Jim Sinclair, 04/08/08
The spin about the proper valuation of credit derivatives, which is the meltdown process now called the sub-prime mortgage problem, is that all is well and the problems ended with the Bear Stearns rescue. The equity participants have signed...Read More >>

Goodbye to the dollar?
Kenneth Rogoff, 04/06/08
As central bankers and finance ministers ponder how to intervene to prop up the dollar, they should also start thinking about what to do when the time comes to pull the plug. As the world's financial leaders meet in Washington this month at...Read More >>

Economic Structure and the "Liquidationist Thesis"
Doug Noland, 04/04/08
...[A]ll the best efforts by the Federal Reserve and Washington politicians to sustain the U.S. Bubble Economy are doomed to failure...We’ve experienced a protracted and historic Credit inflation and it will simply be impossible to keep...Read More >>

The Assault on Free Markets
Peter Schiff,  04/04/08
Those blindsided by the recent financial meltdown are now loudly blaming the free market for its failure to police its own excesses, and are calling for greater regulation to prevent future disasters. But for those who clearly observed the...Read More >>

The great inflation cover-up
Elizabeth Spiers, 04/03/08
If the price of dinner is pinching us, why don't the CPI numbers acknowledge it? My friend Dana, a former real estate investment banker who got out of investment banking comfortably before subprime mortgages hit the fan, has a...Read More >>

Bear market rallies only delay day of reckoning
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 04/01/08
The capitalist system is now so deformed by debt that it requires ever lower interest rates to keep going. It survives on perma-bubbles. Monetary rigour at this late stage would endanger democracy. Every slump is punctuated...Read More >>