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
Wheat shortages
2008-02-05 15:59:00 Wheat shortages are making news everywhere, it seems — from the Mideast to the Midwest. One of the hotspots early this year is a place with enough strife to begin with — Pakistan: …flour shortages and rising food prices may well be the most pressing issue for Pakistanis before next month's elections. They may even overshadow concerns about violent attacks that ... More About: Wheat , Headline News , Ages
Yeah, that?ll solve everything
2008-02-05 15:13:00 What happens when one of the major bond rating agencies gets in hot water for rating packages of subprime mortgages as AAA paper in exchange for payments from the people issuing said paper? Why, change the rating system of course: Moody’s moved on on Monday to respond to its critics by proposing a new rating system for complex debt ... More About: Headline News , Yeah
A trillion here, a trillion there?
2008-02-04 17:06:00 This is the real state of the union: The president that brought us the first $2 trillion federal budget is now bringing us the first $3 trillion federal budget. And the people complaining the loudest are those who say it's not enough! President Bush is sending Congress a $3 trillion spending blueprint that would provide a big ... More About: Headline News
U.S. reimports inflation
2008-02-01 16:53:00 The establishment media is waking up to something the Mogambo Guru warned us about months ago: The inflation that the United States has been exporting to China is now coming back home: Soaring energy and raw material costs, a falling dollar and new business rules here are forcing Chinese factories to increase the prices of their exports, ... More About: Inflation , Headline News
The real danger behind China?s big winter storm
2008-01-31 18:44:00 The headlines scream about a big snowstorm in China , but most Americans' awareness is limited to what's on either Drudge or Headline News. Check in with the BBC, however, and the scope becomes breathtaking — up to and including the prospect of months-long food shortages: China is struggling to cope with its worst snowfall in decades, ... More About: Winter , Storm , Danger , Real
Just in: Another 50bps
2008-01-30 20:24:00 The Fed fulfilled expectations and just cut rates another .5%. What a lot of sensible people were forecasting just a few weeks ago — a fall in the Fed funds rate to 3% over the next 12 months — has taken place in the space of ten days. Yowza. And it still probably won't avert a ... More About: Headline News
Revisiting the iPhone Index
2008-01-30 17:38:00 While we're on the subject of recession indicators today, it's time to return to one of my favorites — my non-scientific, completely anecdotal, but nonetheless revealing iPhone Index . According the The Street, Apple's goal is to sell 10 million of them this year. Since the iPhone's launch in June, Apple has sold about 4 million devices, ... More About: Iphone , Headline News
Can we just declare the recession underway and get it over with?
2008-01-30 16:22:00 Latest GDP figures — 0.6% for Q4, and for all of 2007, a paltry 2.2%. Considering the GDP deflator is so obviously rigged, because PPI and CPI numbers are so obviously rigged, it's safe to say we're in recession now. It might be mild, it might be severe, who knows? (The IMF is predicting ... More About: Headline News , Recession
Relevant numbers
2008-01-29 16:14:00 Countrywide's Q4 loss: $422 million. Amount of severance package Angelo Mozilo is giving up: $38 million. You could have made a ton of money last year with put options on CFC and other financials. The lucky few who've had a chance to beta-test Dan Amoss's Strategic Short Report have pulled in 80% returns to date with puts ... More About: Numbers , Relevant , Headline News
Did Bush pressure Bernanke?
2008-01-28 19:48:00 Take this for whatever it's worth, from the insider-Washington website Swoop: White House officials have told us that President Bush intervened forcibly to convince an initially reluctant Federal reserve to reduce interest rates. "There were some telephone calls from the White House to the Fed in which some very crude language was used." Did a guy known ... More About: Headline News , Bernanke
Putting a price tag on empire ? $1 trillion
2008-01-28 16:28:00 In Friday's DR, Bill Bonner revisited the "5 E's" that he saw shaping our world in the years ahead. About the fifth E, Empire , he wrote: Yes, dear reader…if you have to borrow from your competitors to pay for it, your empire won't last very long. The United States Empire began in the late 19th century, when America ... More About: Price , Putting , Headline News
Edging closer to reality?
2008-01-28 15:11:00 Is my prophecy of six months ago slowly coming to pass? More About: Reality , Headline News , Closer
Contrarian indicator?
2008-01-28 15:07:00 On the theory that mainstream media sources are reliable contrarian indicators, I pass along the following without comment: Investors are shifting their bets towards oil prices weakening in the near future as the slowdown in US economic activity damps energy demand growth, traders in London and New York said. The recent changes in trading positions could signal that ... More About: Indicator , Headline News , Cato
Shell calls Peak Oil by 2015? sort of
2008-01-25 17:36:00 First it was Jim Mulva from ConocoPhillips. Now the head of Royal Dutch Shell is also seeing, if not Peak Oil , certainly a fundamental supply-demand imbalance: World demand for oil and gas will outstrip supply within seven years, according to Royal Dutch Shell. The oil multinational is predicting that conventional supplies will not keep pace with soaring population ... More About: Calls , Sort , Headline News
Ron Paul?s economic plan
2008-01-25 16:58:00 So Ron Paul is out with an economic plan. What? You thought he’d had an economic plan for the last 30 years, right? Well, yes, but this is a plan that appears carefully tailored to current economic and political realities. Indeed, a good chunk of it could pass for the economic plan of an old-fashioned conservative Republican candidate… and ... More About: Economic , Plan , Headline News
You?ve got to be kidding
2008-01-24 16:44:00 So, the outlines of the vaunted "stimulus package" (don't you love how DC Beltway lingo finds its way into everyday journalism?) are starting to become clear. As was the case in 2001, it's looking like tax rebates of $300 per person, $600 per couple, just like 2001 — although this time, families with kids could ... More About: Kidding , Headline News
Kuwaitis falling into a value trap?
2008-01-24 15:59:00 Maybe it's time we face up to the fact that these sovereign wealth funds aren't as savvy as they're cracked up to be. Check out the latest news from the Global Gathering of Important and Serious People, otherwise known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: Kuwait's investment authority sees the current credit crisis as ... More About: Trap , Headline News
No doubt now?
2008-01-23 16:14:00 Now I know we're in a recession. But I don't need a tanking stock market, an emergency 75 bps rate cut, a $150 billion "stimulus package," or any other conventional signs of panic to tell me that. I don't even need Nouriel Roubini, hanging crepe with the Davos crowd this week, to tell me. No, ... More About: No Doubt , Doubt , Headline News
Economic ignoramus threatens to starve population
2008-01-21 15:28:00 Well, that's what the headline on this story ought to read, anyway: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened to nationalise farms, in an effort to tackle food shortages. Government controls keep food prices low in shops to help even the poorest Venezuelans feed themselves. But some farmers prefer to sell their produce in neighbouring countries where prices are ... More About: Economic , Headline News , Pula
Why is France building a base in the Gulf?
2008-01-15 16:11:00 Lost in the shuffle of the U.S. primary election, the new season of American Idol, the ten-year anniversary of the Monica Scandal, and other assorted irrelevancies, we see this curious news… France and the UAE have signed a deal allowing France to set up a permanent military base, the first in the Gulf for a Western power other ... More About: Building , Headline News , Base
When $100/bbl. oil is ?pretty cheap?
2008-01-14 16:06:00 As oil prices stay within record territory, Peak Oil guru Matt Simmons says $100 oil looks "pretty cheap" in light of relentless demand and limited supply. And he doesn't buy in to the notion that a recession in the U.S. will bring oil back to $70/bbl. "Demand is far more durable than anyone ever thought," ... More About: Pretty , Cheap , Headline News
National ID card very much alive
2008-01-11 16:17:00 OK, here's Ron Paul's "signature issue" — handed to him on a silver platter by the Department of Fatherland Security. The department is planning a dog-and-pony-show news conference today to take the wraps off the national ID card . Of course, that's not what they're calling it. Rather, it's the final regulations to implement the ... More About: National , Card , Headline News , Alive , ID Card
Cavuto panelist calls BS on Cavuto
2008-01-11 16:00:00 I forgot to pass this along yesterday. But if you missed it, it's not too late to savor. On Wednesday, Neil Cavuto's daily program on Fox News Channel, which is ostensibly about business news but seldom actually reports it, deigned to tackle the stock market's messy start to the new year. Understand, this is something painful for ... More About: Calls , Headline News
The Bhutto bandwagon
2008-01-10 16:00:00 It's been two weeks since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. But it was only a matter of days before all manner of pundits crawled out of the woodwork in a rather unseemly way to talk about their personal relationship with her; she was Harvard-educated and circulated freely and comfortably among the world's ... More About: Headline News , Hutto
Scenes from a rapidly deteriorating economy
2008-01-10 15:27:00 Looks as if Citi and Merrill need yet more foreign cash to keep the lights on: Citigroup Inc. rose in Germany and Japan after the Wall Street Journal reported that the biggest U.S. bank is seeking as much as $10 billion from foreign investors as mortgage-related losses deepen. Merrill Lynch & Co., the largest brokerage, also is in talks with ... More About: Economy , Headline News , Scenes
After New Hampshire? A radical proposal
2008-01-09 16:46:00 …And dark clouds began to gather over Paul Nation. Look, when John McCain, Mr. 100 Years in Iraq, beats Ron Paul among voters who "strongly disapprove" of the war in Iraq, something is really out of whack. I'll pick apart the exit polling shortly. In the meantime, reaction is pouring in to the not-even-double-digits performance Ron Paul ... More About: Proposal , New Hampshire , Hampshire , Headline News , Radical
The ?Sick Man of the Americas?
2008-01-08 16:49:00 Regular consumers of DR-related writings know how we like to find parallels between 21st-Century America and the empires of years gone by; Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin even devoted the better part of a book to it. So when the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson comes along with a new reflection on America’s imperial role, we sit up ... More About: Americas , Sick , Headline News , The Americas , Icas
Merrill Lynch calls recession; U.S. media mute
2008-01-08 15:43:00 If one of the Big Five U.S. investment banks declares we're in a recession now, isn't that sort of a big financial news story? The feared recession in the US economy has already arrived, according to a report from Merrill Lynch . It said that Friday's employment report, which sent shares tumbling worldwide, confirmed that the US is in ... More About: Media , Calls , Headline News , Recession
It?s not just mortgages
2008-01-07 16:48:00 Lost in the shuffle of a diving Dow, soaring gold, and $100 oil last week was this unsettling news: Late payments on a cluster of consumer loans, including those for autos, home improvement and certain home equity loans, climbed in the summer to their highest point since the country's last recession in 2001. The American Bankers Association reported Thursday that the ... More About: Mortgages , Headline News , Mort , Ages
About Iraqi oil production?
More articles from this author:2008-01-07 16:20:00 2007 ended with all sorts of claims about how things are going just swimmingly in Iraq. But in the first full week of 2008, one of those claims — that oil production is returning to pre-war levels — is already looking shaky. Only last week, Iraq's oil ministry claimed average daily production in November of ... More About: Production , Iraqi , Headline News 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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