April 2011

"60 Minutes" aired a segment last night on the foreclosure fraud that we in the blogosphere have been discussing for sometime. See "Videos: Depositions of Alleged Robo-Signers From Nationwide Title Clearing" from…

By Michael Hudson It all seems so long ago! On October 23, 2008, Alan Greenspan choked up a mea culpa for his deregulatory policy as Federal Reserve Chairman. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to…

World War II was the last war the United States fought with a formal declaration of war. The wars fought since have had congressional approval, both in the sense that resolutions were passed and that Congress appropriated funds, but the…

Here is a good 17-minute Bloomberg video with Marc Faber. He talks a lot about Mexico and he is bullish on that economy. As for the US, his view, like mine, is that printing money does give a temporary boost to economic activity. However,…

henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,…

M1 is the narrowest definition of money. It includes currency and coins, traveller's checks, and checking accounts (so-called demand deposits).  The chart below from the St. Louis Fed shows the relationship between base money that the…

I was on CNBC's Power Lunch yesterday talking about European debt markets in the wake of the Irish stress tests. I certainly think the Irish stress tests were a significant event. But the Euro Crisis is really all about Spain.

By Comstock Partners The massive U.S. debt problem that we have been discussing so often for many years has now become widely known both to investors and the general public. It has been a major topic of discussion in the media as well as…

In September 2008, the Federal Reserve let banks turn more than $118 billion in junk bonds, defaulted debt, and other securities into cash. The role of a central bank in a crisis is to act as a lender of last resort by helping market…