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
Monday economic roundup
2008-03-03 15:59:00 Time is short for me today, so I'll just quickly draw your attention to a few things. Even more hard numbers are backing up the word we got last week that Americans are cutting gasoline consumption. Robert Shiller, he of the Case-Shiller housing index and one of the handful of mainstream figures who saw the ... More About: Roundup , Economic , Monday , Headline News
Running on fumes: Tapping credit cards and 401(k)s
2008-02-29 16:39:00 As Bill Bonner noted in yesterday's DR, a consumer society inevitably shrinks when consumers stop consuming. And this morning, it seems clear that while consumers are still cruising along, they're running on fumes. Credit bureau analyses of consumer payment data show that financially squeezed borrowers have begun paying their credit card and car bills before their mortgages. ... More About: Credit Cards , Running , Cards , Headline News
Breaking news: Cole to Lebanon
2008-02-28 23:28:00 Good grief: The United States has ordered a warship into position off the coast of Lebanon . The USS Cole was sent there amid growing concern about the political impasse in the country, which has not had a president for four months. The Western-backed governing coalition and the Syrian and Iranian-backed opposition are at loggerheads. A US official quoted by news agencies ... More About: News , Breaking News , Breaking
Buckley lives on
2008-02-28 16:30:00 There's an odd synchronicity to the death this week of William F. Buckley , Jr. Most of the obituaries credit him as being a leading light in modern conservatism, but few of those obit writers realize the full import of that description. As "Mr. Republican," Sen. Robert Taft, approached his final days in the early 50s, Buckley ... More About: Lives , Headline News
Who?s #1? Intriguing poll results
2008-02-28 15:56:00 We do much on this blog and at our parent Daily Reckoning site to chronicle the slow, inexorable decline of the U.S. Empire, but a new poll shows perceptions are racing ahead of reality. A few days ago, Gallup asked 1000 Americans this question: "Which one of the following do you think is the ... More About: Results , Poll , Headline News
A final, fitting act
2008-02-27 16:37:00 Let the record show that one of the last official acts of Countrywide Financial before its takeover by Bank of America was to come this close to holding a lavish shindig near Vail: Countrywide Financial, the besieged mortgage lender, has canceled a gathering of bankers from smaller mortgage banks at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch ski resort (where room ... More About: Final , Headline News
Do you have a paddle?
2008-02-27 15:54:00 As I write, the major U.S. stock indices have opened down a half-percent or so. Traders are trying to get a grip on the latest pronouncements from Fed governors who are making it pretty clear more rate cuts are on the way. Not that that's any big surprise, but the euro has hit a record ... More About: Headline News , Paddle
Plans for IMF gold sale firming up
2008-02-26 16:22:00 More details are emerging about the International Monetary Fund's plans to sell off some of its gold holdings. You might recall a few days ago, finance ministers of the G7 countries agreed to a sale to shore up the IMF's balance sheet. The process would start sometime in April. Now comes word that Team Bush ... More About: Gold , Sale , Plans , Headline News
The generations and the polls
2008-02-26 16:11:00 From his post in London, Lord Rees-Mogg speculates in Whiskey and Gunpowder that Obama mania is about to sweep Europe, in the same way Europeans swooned for Jack Kennedy nearly half a century ago. That alone might not be a huge revelation; if memory serves, there was a poll a while back indicating that if it were ... More About: Polls , Headline News , Generations
Impact of rising gas prices: ?Less meat, more pasta?
2008-02-25 16:49:00 It's taken a long time, but finally statistical evidence is beginning to trickle in: Americans are starting to curb their gasoline consumption: Average daily gasoline consumption in the United States has decreased in each of the past four weeks from a year ago, according to recent data [from the U.S. Department of Energy]. In the past six ... More About: Meat , Pasta , Gas Prices , Headline News , Prices
Why Turkey?s invasion of Iraq is not causing $100/bbl. oil
2008-02-25 16:26:00 For months, the purveyors of conventional wisdom have told us that rising oil prices are the consequence of 1) speculators and 2) the ever-popular "geopolitical tensions." So this morning, when oil spikes back up near the $100 mark, what gets the blame, with no factual basis? #2: Oil prices neared $100 a barrel Monday with supply concerns ... More About: Iraq , Turkey , Invasion , Headline News
China needs beans
2008-02-22 16:51:00 China's soybean imports are set to double compared to a year ago. I wish I could tell you more, but true to form for a lot of Bloomberg's market wrap-up stories, this fascinating nugget is pretty much just hanging out there, buried amid the minutiae of the day's market moves, with little further explanation. So ... More About: China , Beans , Headline News
Fed obsesses over inflationary psychology
2008-02-22 16:27:00 A day after the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times went gaga over the prospect of stagflation , the Financial Times has stepped back and uncovered the real story . It's written in a rather — no, make that highly — convoluted way, so let me lay out the bottom line right here: The ... More About: Psychology , Headline News
Stagflation makes the front pages
2008-02-21 17:30:00 It's as if the editors of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal held a joint editorial meeting yesterday. They looked at the CPI numbers along with the Fed's growth forecast… and together concluded that 70s-style stagflation is staging a comeback and the story deserves front-page treatment — above the fold in ... More About: Front , Headline News , Pages , Stagflation
3Com deal dead
2008-02-21 16:55:00 Somewhere, the ghosts of Smoot and Hawley and smiling this morning. A Chinese firm, Huawei Technologies, has pulled out of its plans to buy 3Com because it became obvious a federal panel wouldn't approve the deal. The reason: 3Com makes anti-hacker software for the military. Can't have that falling into Chinese hands, according to the ... More About: Deal , Dead , Headline News , 3com
Wheat soars
2008-02-20 17:02:00 Never mind $100 oil. It's wheat prices that have reached the stratosphere: Decades from now, farmers will still talk about this week - the moment when wheat in Minneapolis soared to nearly $20 a bushel. Like a 100-year flood, spring wheat prices have risen relentlessly all winter, obliterating every record in sight. At the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, wheat fever pushed ... More About: Wheat , Headline News
Miscellaneous scenes from a fading empire
2008-02-20 15:52:00 Scene #1: Canadians come to the rescue of the South Florida condo market. Or at least they're snapping up bargains. Scene #2: Team Bush tries to pull strings on behalf of its preferred satrap in Pakistan, who got trounced in Monday's elections in large part because he's perceived as an American toady. (Hey, didn't ... More About: Empire , Headline News , Scenes
Castro steps down; US moves to prop up new regime
2008-02-19 16:00:00 Well, that ought to be the headline on today's coverage of Fidel Castro permanently giving up his role as Cuba's president. President Bush, traipsing around Africa with an entourage that puts any Roman emperor to shame, took time out to offer up this oh-so-predictable reaction: "The international community should work with the Cuban people to begin ... More About: Headline News , Moves , Prop , Steps
It?s not just SWFs
2008-02-19 15:37:00 Hmmm… Seems it's not just sovereign wealth funds looking for a better return than U.S. Treasury paper. So is the U.S. agency that (in theory anyway) backs traditional corporate pension plans. The government-sponsored body that insures the pensions of 44m Americans is to dramatically increase its investments in risky assets such as equities and real estate as ... More About: Headline News
Breaking news: Top accountant stepping down
2008-02-15 23:12:00 Coming shortly in a special e-mail alert to Agora Financial readers: Details on the resignation of David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office and a key player in our Sundance-premiered documentary, I.O.U.S.A. But here's a preview: “As comptroller general of the United States,” says David Walker, the federal government’s top accountant, ”there are real limitations on what I ... More About: News , Breaking News , Breaking , Headline News , Accountant
Student loan market suddenly tightens
2008-02-15 16:49:00 First it was the mortgage market. More recently it's been auto loans and credit cards. Now comes the latest fallout of the debt crisis — student loans. A hint of the trouble came earlier this week when the state of Michigan "temporarily suspended" one of its student loan programs. Deputy State Treasurer Tom Saxton said ... More About: Market , Student , Loan , Headline News
Condi?s energy envoy ? and her tin ear
2008-02-14 16:30:00 A favorite blogger parlor game is whether Condoleezza Rice is the worst Secretary of State ever. I won't presume to answer that question, but this is about as ham-fisted a statement as any "diplomat" can possibly make: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she will appoint a special US energy envoy to monitor the use ... More About: Energy , Headline News , Condi
What they won?t talk about on Capitol Hill
2008-02-14 16:06:00 Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Hank "Strong Dollar" Paulson testify before a Senate committee today. I know it won't happen, but it'd be nice if one of the assembled Solons would ask them about this: Fear that a hobbled banking sector may set off another Great Depression could force the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to take the ... More About: Talk , Hill , Capitol Hill , Headline News , Capitol
?Gold awareness? increasing
2008-02-13 16:40:00 Here's an indication that the bull market in gold might be about to transition from skepticism to optimism, well on its way to euphoria. I wrote last November about the level of "gold awareness" — the degree to which the rising price of gold is on the minds of ordinary people. At the time, gold ... More About: Gold , Awareness , Headline News
Mapping foreclosures
2008-02-13 15:57:00 RealtyTrac is out with its annual listing of the top 100 metro areas when it comes to foreclosures . The top of the list doesn't hold many surprises, but lower down is another matter. Detroit comes in at #1. Nearly one in every twenty homes there is in foreclosure now. #2 is Stockton, California (which if ... More About: Foreclosures , Headline News , Mapping
Losing Afghanistan
2008-02-12 16:19:00 Establishment media has become so wrapped up in the meaningless minutiae of the presidential campaign (Are Hillary's tears real? Why won't Huckabee quit?) that all real news is getting lost in the shuffle. Never mind the media's myopia with the economy I already noted today; there's the fact that the war in Afghanistan is ... More About: Headline News
A debt crisis
2008-02-12 15:54:00 Team Bush is sticking to its guns: There will be no recession this year. I have two reactions to this: Well, they can manipulate the GDP and unemployment stats to say whatever they want, so within the confines of how they define a recession, they may well be right. Who's kidding whom? And while we're on the ... More About: Debt , Headline News , Crisis
The $5.2 trillion hit
2008-02-11 16:26:00 S&P just toted up world stock market losses for January: Standard & Poor's said the world's equity markets lost a combined 5.2 trillion dollars as emerging markets fell 12.44 percent and developed markets lost 7.83 percent to register one of the worst starts to a new year. "There were few safe havens in January as 50 of the 52 global ... More About: Headline News
The Revolution retrenches
2008-02-11 16:26:00 In case you missed it, Ron Paul has announced 1) he will not run for president on a third-party ticket; 2) he's slimming down the current campaign effort. You might have missed it because the announcement came in an email to supporters issued late Friday. This might be the first strategically intelligent thing his campaign ... More About: Revolution , Headline News , The Revolution
So now what?
More articles from this author:2008-02-06 16:36:00 Ron Paul said for months he'd stick out the primaries through Super Tuesday. Now it's over. So now what? There were a handful of bright spots in the results — breaking past the 20% barrier in Montana and North Dakota, for instance. Too bad they're both winner-take-all states when it come to delegates. Paul supporters can ... More About: Headline News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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