The Desidooru SaloonThe Desidooru SaloonThe Desidooru Saloon is a blog from us editors over at The Daily Reckoning. Not being technically savy, it has taken us a while to get into this crazy blogosphere. But, we figure this is a good way to have a more open and organic dialogue that reader Articles
Organized crime responsible for $119 oil?
2008-04-25 16:41:00 Amid the desperate finger-pointing that's been spawned by both the credit crisis and the worldwide commodities boom (It's storefront mortgage lenders! It's OPEC! It's speculators!), the U.S. attorney general has just thrown in his two cents. Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Wednesday that organized criminal networks have penetrated portions of the international energy market and tried to ... More About: Crime , Headline News , Organized Crime
Miscellaneous notes from a faltering economy
2008-04-24 16:00:00 Time was, "As General Motors goes, so goes the nation." What would be the suitable substitute for GM in post-industrial, post-modern, post-Bretton Woods America? Wal-Mart? Or maybe Starbucks? Starbucks, the coffee house chain, on Wednesday blamed a “sharp weakening” in the consumer economy for an unexpected decline in its US sales, sending its shares plunging more than 10 per cent ... More About: Economy , Notes , Headline News
Blame the speculators
2008-04-23 16:23:00 I have a feeling we're going to be hearing a lot more of this as the worldwide commodities boom goes on. A day after a run on rice in California prompted Costco and other chains to limit buyers to only a bag or two at a time, "Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday ... More About: Headline News , Blame , Speculators
“Zoo capitalism” and the left wing
2008-04-22 17:24:00 It appears left-wingers, of all people, are waking up to the reality of what Bill Bonner calls "zoo capitalism." In case you're not acquainted with the concept, or you need a refresher… Think about the New Era that came in the 1980s - thanks to the revolutions wrought by Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan. They brought in a fresh ... More About: Left , Wing , Left-Wing
Talking heads coming clean
2008-04-21 16:48:00 Allow me the chance to indulge a fantasy for just a moment — that a few years down the line, a host of talking heads on the business channels will come clean about how they knew they were being fed lines of BS from the Fed and the Treasury Department in the run-up to the ... More About: Clean , Talking , Heads
Three official explanations… and three real ones
2008-04-21 16:18:00 Oil prices have reached another record, in part on the announcement that Saudi Arabia won't be ramping up additional production anytime soon. In a series of statements, including one by the king himself, the kingdom has warned consumers it does not reckon there is a need for further expansion, an assumption disputed by the world’s biggest developed countries. The ... More About: Real , Official
Frightening foreclosure forecast
2008-04-18 16:13:00 A full 3% of U.S. homes could go into foreclosure before the housing meltdown is over, according to a new report [.pdf] from the Pew Charitable Trusts. That's 1 out of every 33. In Nevada, it'll be more like 1 out of 11. The forecast is based on data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and ... More About: Foreclosure , Headline News , Forecast
It?s not just China and India
2008-04-18 15:59:00 It's oil-producing countries themselves driving up demand for oil. And we don't just mean the ridiculous subsidies that make the retail price of gasoline in Venezuela and Iran considerably less than $1 a gallon. I was familiar with this phenomenon already, but a good piece by Kevin Hall of the McClatchy Newspapers (Miami Herald, Sacramento ... More About: India , China , Headline News
Americoflot?
2008-04-15 16:48:00 Delta and Northwest are merging. I can hardly contain my excitement. But here's something that does perk up my interest: Presumably intelligent people are talking about nationalizing the U.S. airline industry. Ex-Congresscritter Joe Scarborough said on his MSNBC morning show today that he's "ideologically opposed" but sees it as more or less inevitable no matter ... More About: Headline News
Oooh, now they?re getting tough!
2008-04-14 23:24:00 I can barely contain my laughter as I write this sentence: Fannie and Freddie are going to crack down on people who send "jingle mail." That, in case you're not up on your neologisms, is the expression for when homeowners upside-down on their mortgages send their keys back to the lender. The oh-so-serious tones of ... More About: Tough , Headline News
DR TV alert
2008-04-14 20:27:00 Kevin Kerr from Resource Trader Alert will discuss food inflation tonight on CNBC's Kudlow & Company at 7 PM EDT. By way of a preview… He's hearing bad things on U.S. farm field conditions. A sample from his recent reader emails… Just wanted to let you know what I saw traveling the western part of Ohio on Friday. ... More About: Headline News
$600 gold?!
2008-04-11 23:30:00 Buzzing around the Internets this week has been a prediction from the London-based precious metals consultancy GFMS that gold will reach $1100 or even higher during 2008… and then crash back to $600. The problem as GFMS sees it is that the current gold rally is being supported almost entirely by investment demand rather than jewellery demand. ... More About: Gold , Headline News
From the archive
2008-04-11 20:56:00 Not that it should come as any surprise, but Alan Greenspan and Co. were freaked by the "scary prospect" of deflation when they cut the fed funds rate to 1.25% in November of 2002 — the next-to-last move of the rate-cutting cycle that set off the housing bubble. Transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee's 2002 ... More About: Archive , Headline News
New Fed chairman?
2008-04-11 19:44:00 "All over the world, food fights are breaking out. Not because there is too much food or too little, but because it has gone way up in price," writes Bill Bonner in the Friday DR essay. "Of course, you could put that another way: the paper money in which food is priced is going down faster than ... More About: Chairman , Headline News
In the midst of the ?Demise?
2008-04-10 17:16:00 Imagine a United States of not too long ago, basking in the glow of an unprecedented housing boom thanks to George W. Bush's "ownership society" and Alan Greenspan's everyday low interest rates. Into this blissful scene steps an author who says the boom is artificial and the value of the dollar is due for a ... More About: Headline News
Alienating Arabs
2008-04-08 22:50:00 If Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states end up cutting their ties to the dollar, secure in the knowledge their petro-economies would emerge stronger from the upheaval, the process might well have begun in the summer of last year — when Dick Cheney tried to line up Arab support for an attack on Iran. You ... More About: Headline News , Arabs
Breathtaking hubris
2008-04-04 18:09:00 Like the Bourbons, Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz has learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. Amid five hours of blather on Capitol Hill yesterday about the credit markets' near-meltdown, Schwartz explained away the demise of his firm with a rationalization that even OPEC ministers no longer believe when trying to explain high oil prices: in ... More About: Headline News
Congresscritters uphold rule of law? for now
2008-04-03 18:44:00 It's a given that no matter what comes out of the housing-crash legislation in Washington, it'll be a botch. And no one will be happy with it. Liberals will complain it doesn't help the little people. Conservatives will complain it doesn't help the big shots enough. And free marketeers will be appalled at the ... More About: Headline News , Rule , Rule of Law
Credit crisis over; all that?s left is to bulldoze some homes
2008-04-02 16:43:00 I'm so glad the credit crisis is over. What, it's not? But clearly now that UBS and Deutsche Bank have done a few more writedowns, and Lehman's preferred stock offering has sold like hotcakes, and the Dow rose nearly 400 points yesterday as a result, it really, truly is over. And this morning, Ben Bernanke ... More About: Credit , Left , Homes , Headline News , Crisis
Rampant theivery: Grains and copper
2008-04-01 17:43:00 It's not just on the other side of the world where rising grain prices and shrinking supplies have touched off episodes of theft. It's happening right here in North America. A report from the Washington, D.C.,-based think-tank, the Urban Institute, calculated losses from agricultural thefts in the United States are now US$5-billion — though the real ... More About: Copper , Grains , Headline News
Fed screws up, Fed gets more power
2008-03-31 15:39:00 I'll leave it to others at the DR's main page and The 5 to comment later today on the specifics of the "biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression," as the news wires are putting it. I'll just note the truly ironic paragraph on the Wall Street Journal's home page linking ... More About: Power , Headline News
An annual revisit to the land of conventional wisdom
2008-03-29 12:04:00 It's a little presumptuous to offer up anniversary commemorations of one's own blogposts, but that's not what I presume to do today. Rather, I invite you to review something I wrote on this day a year ago, looking back on a front-page Wall Street Journal article from this day in 1995, predicting ... More About: Wisdom , Land , Headline News , Annual
Miscellaneous musings on the mortgage mess
2008-03-28 15:55:00 I'm starting to feel deja vu. Just as the establishment media failed the country miserably on the Iraq war, so it has failed us on the mortgage crisis, and the ensuing credit crunch. For instance, file this story under "Now they tell us"… A newly surfaced memo from banking giant JPMorgan Chase provides a rare glimpse into ... More About: Musings , Mortgage , Headline News , Mess
Rice crisis
2008-03-28 15:08:00 Here's yet another sign of Peak Food: A looming rice crisis on the other side of the world. Rice prices jumped 30 per cent to an all-time high on Thursday, raising fears of fresh outbreaks of social unrest across Asia where the grain is a staple food for more than 2.5bn people. The increase came after Egypt, a ... More About: Headline News , Crisis
A really lousy week
2008-03-27 15:17:00 The trajectory of an empire in decline is not always in one consistent direction downward. There are fits and starts, peaks and valleys. But for the U.S. Empire, this is shaping up to be one really lousy week. Where shall we begin? Well, how about in the country whose reconstruction, Paul Wolfowitz promised us, would ... More About: Week , Headline News
The ?Lost Decade?
2008-03-26 14:48:00 The Fox Business Channel editorial meeting must be a painful experience today. I mean, they're under a virtual mandate from Neil Cavuto to speak positive, soothing words about the stock market (and blame any turbulence that occurs on the prospect of Democrats getting elected)… and then out of the blue, the newest arm ... More About: Lost , Headline News
The Roubini Ratio
2008-03-26 14:21:00 I've just come up with another unscientific but nonetheless revealing indicator of economic health — the Roubini Ratio. Constant readers will recall some of my other attempts in this regard — the Stress Index and especially the iPhone Index. None of them have caught on, but it won't stop me from trying. The Roubini Ratio is ... More About: Headline News
Bear bailout illegal?
2008-03-25 14:24:00 Add this to the many troubling questions raised by the Bear Stearns bailout: It might well be illegal. That's the contention of John Hussman, manager of a leading long-short mutual fund (and a favorite of Strategic Short Report editor Dan Amoss). In his weekly note to shareholders, Hussman says the ... More About: Headline News , Illegal , Bailout
Militarized, Greenspanized: The Hillary economic plan
2008-03-25 13:57:00 Hillary Clinton has a plan for the economy: Militarize it, and consult the person who wrecked it to reconstruct it. Well, how else am I to interpret the economic proposal she trotted out yesterday? On the surface, of course, it's the usual "politician's punt" in dealing with a complex problem — name a blue-ribbon panel ... More About: Economic , Hillary , Plan , Headline News
A distraction?
More articles from this author:2008-03-24 15:22:00 Even posing the question might put me in tinfoil-hat territory, but I'm going to pose it anyway: Is all the sturm and drang this morning over J.P. Morgan upping its offer for Bear Stearns (Why was the original offer so low? Why were Bear shareholders getting such a raw deal? How long can Cramer ... More About: Distraction , Headline News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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