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
A man in denial
2008-01-04 21:23:00 Bush just finished his meeting with the Plunge Protection Team and made his remarks to the media. And what slender reeds he has to grab onto: President Bush said Friday that while there is some uncertainty about slowing economic growth, the nation's "financial markets are strong and solid." "This economy of ours is on a solid foundation, ... More About: Headline News , Denial
Oooh, I can?t wait
2008-01-04 17:56:00 El Presidente meets today at 1 PM EST with the Plunge Protection Team, er, Working Group on Financial Markets. Supposedly he'll make a statement afterwards, and I'll try to chime in before day's end, but don't expect any specific proposals until the State of the Union address later this month, when it's likely we'll get ... More About: Headline News , Wait
On to New Hampshire
2008-01-04 16:09:00 So what now for Ron Paul supporters? Herewith, some thoughts on the results of the Iowa caucuses. Surely the most heartening thing is that the 10% Paul pulled down was rather higher than his 7.2% polling average in Iowa right before the caucuses. This bears out the theory that conventional opinion polling undersamples Paul's support ... More About: New Hampshire , Hampshire , Headline News
Another -15% housing prediction
2008-01-03 16:52:00 Looking for more evidence that housing prices have a long way to come down? U.S. house prices "likely would have to fall considerably" to return to a normal relationship with rents, says a study by one former and two current Federal Reserve economists. The study, which doesn't necessarily reflect the views of Fed policy makers, suggests prices would have ... More About: Housing , Headline News
International indicators
2008-01-03 16:44:00 Oil and gold are in record territory and the U.S. stock market swooned yesterday, but on the theory that anecdotal evidence is sometimes more revealing than the statistical variety, I offer up the following tidbits for your consumption today. First, we hear from India that if you want to visit the major tourist sites like the ... More About: International , Headline News , Cato
Breaking news: Key indicator screams ?recession?
2008-01-02 18:02:00 Constant readers of this blog know that I apply the term "breaking news" rather sparingly — assassinations of foreign leaders and whatnot. But even though the following story won't be the subject of flashing banners on CNN (and certainly not on Fox ) this is huge : Manufacturing activity across the US contracted in December after ... More About: News , Breaking News , Indicator , Breaking , Headline News
Home prices to fall 15%? Try 30%? or 43%
2008-01-02 16:15:00 Happy new year, and welcome to the week when every purported expert on every subject under the sun trots out his prognostications for the coming year. Today's New York Times tackles the prospects for recession and finds the following consensus on the glut of unsold housing: This assemblage of unsold properties will not be whittled down ... More About: Home , Headline News , Fall , Prices
Pakistan: The day after
2007-12-28 16:39:00 Markets appear to moving mostly sideways this morning after a selloff yesterday sparked in large part by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan . 24 hours after the fact, I'm a little less sanguine about the immediate future as regards Pakistan than I was in my morning and afternoon posts yesterday. No, Osama ... More About: Headline News
Bhutto assassination: Afternoon update
2007-12-27 22:05:00 The markets are reacting badly to the Bhutto assassination, although some lousy durable-goods orders and rising oil prices have something to do with it, too. At the close, the Dow and the S&P 500 are both down about 1.4%. The more news that comes in, the more obvious it becomes how badly Washington — and more ... More About: Update , Afternoon , Headline News , Assassination
The housing-income imbalance
2007-12-27 16:14:00 Key graf in the WSJ's story about the latest Case-Shiller housing numbers: …the recovery of the housing market is likely to be a gradual process. That's partly because the boom left prices so far out of whack with incomes. As measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller national index, home prices jumped 74% in the six years through 2006. During the ... More About: Income , Housing , Headline News
Breaking news: Benazir Bhutto assassinated
2007-12-27 15:32:00 Looks as if suicide bombers got to Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister seeking to stage a political comeback in elections next month. No indication yet who's to blame, so until some sort of clue emerges, you can expect to hear two themes hammered at relentlessly in establishment media coverage, neither of which has ... More About: News , Breaking News , Breaking , Headline News
Signs of the times
2007-12-26 16:10:00 Here's hoping those of you who celebrate Christmas had a happy one. On the day after, some interesting signs of the economic times are out there to be dissected. If the coverage on the big news/talk radio station here in Baltimore this morning is any indication, establishment media will be obsessed today with measurements of how ... More About: Signs , Times , The Times , Headline News
Where to begin?
2007-12-21 16:10:00 I have no idea who Megan McArdle is. But she seems to inspire a great deal of acrimony in the blogosphere, and, more to the point, she spent an inordinate amount of time and effort yesterday and the day before on her own blog trying to knock down Ron Paul's economics. Alas, I ... More About: Headline News
Mr. Zell?s newspaper
2007-12-20 23:48:00 So, Sam Zell has taken control of Tribune Company, taken it private, and set up trusted friends and confidants on the board. The Chicago Tribune was the paper my maternal grandfather read faithfully, probably because those were the days when Col. McCormick ran the show and, bless his soul, served as a perpetual thorn in ... More About: Headline News , Newspaper
Stunningly sensible
2007-12-20 16:41:00 I doubt that David Francis is schooled in Austrian economics. But the writer at Foreign Policy makes a heck of a lot of sense in a recent post at the magazine's Passport blog. In light of all the recent "cash infusions" and "liquidity injections" on the part of the Fed and other central banks, Francis says ... More About: Headline News
?Welcome to America ? Have you ever tried to commit suicide!??
2007-12-19 15:31:00 Regrettably, this could become an ongoing series here — the rough treatment foreign tourists appear to be getting routinely from the goons at Fatherland Security. The last time we reported on this, we got a boatload of comments, and perhaps you'll feel compelled to chime in on this newest victim too. Iceland's government has asked the ... More About: America , Suicide , Headline News , Trie
No limits
2007-12-18 16:45:00 Imagine for a moment reading a news story that began like this: "There is no limit to the amount of alcohol a human being can consume as long as the liver can absorb it, said the U.S. Surgeon General." Belaboring the obvious? Begging the question? No matter your reaction, brace yourself: There is no limit to the amount ... More About: Limits , Headline News
The real deficit
2007-12-18 16:16:00 Uncle Sam keeps two sets of books — the one the president and the media like to tout, and the one that tells the truth. And in the Treasury Department's latest "Financial Report of the United States Government," both sets of books are laid bare: The federal deficit for 2007 would have been 69.2% higher than the ... More About: Real , Headline News , Deficit
Crunch time
2007-12-17 17:15:00 Spontaneous order strikes again. $6 million for Ron Paul in one day, once again organized independently of the campaign. Not a lot of establishment media coverage this time, at least compared with the “money bomb” of November 5. I suspect the thinking goes something like this: “So they broke their own fundraising record again. Tell ... More About: Time , Headline News , Crunch
Ouch!
2007-12-14 15:11:00 CPI numbers are just out. With the caveat that CPI numbers are fudged beyond all reality, they're still huge: U.S. consumer prices rose more than forecast in November, driven by a jump in energy costs that may raise concern inflation hasn't been tamed. The consumer price index increased 0.8 percent, the most since September 2005, after a ... More About: Ouch , Headline News
Here comes your ?coordinated action?
2007-12-13 16:10:00 The major central banks of the world are joining hands to loosen up the credit markets — a great global liquidity injection. And so begins the "coordinated action" described in an Economist article we highlighted last week. As a rule, central banks cannot intervene to determine exchange rates, but as Morgan Stanley's Mr Jen suggests, some ... More About: Action , Headline News
Import prices rising ? duh
2007-12-12 15:58:00 Can someone please notify Ben Bernanke, Larry Kudlow, and everyone else who thinks a weak dollar means nothing to U.S. consumers of these numbers from the Labor Department this morning? Driven by a weaker dollar and much higher prices for petroleum and natural gas, import prices surged 2.7% in November, the largest monthly increase in 17 ... More About: Headline News , Import , Prices
Who is Paulson kidding?
2007-12-12 15:50:00 Is it any wonder America is so hated around the world? Just look at the news from the economic conference in China: China needs a stronger currency to fend off inflation, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Wednesday, drawing a cool response from Chinese officials already upset by Washington’s lecturing on food safety. The disagreements, aired ... More About: Kidding , Headline News
How wrong can one person be?
2007-12-11 16:32:00 You can't make this stuff up. The man who predicted Dow 36,000 at the height of the tech bubble is now going to be America's goodwill ambassador to the Muslim world. Yup, James K. Glassman is taking the job that Bush confidante Karen Hughes gave up recently after accomplishing precisely nothing in terms of burnishing the ... More About: Wrong , Person , Headline News
The right that precedes all others
2007-12-11 16:22:00 I spend so much of my time following what the government is doing to wreck the economy at home and make new enemies abroad that sometimes I lose track of what it's doing to our civil liberties — indeed, how it's threatening rights that date back in Anglo-American history all the way to the Magna ... More About: Headline News
Another factor behind tightening oil supplies
2007-12-10 16:39:00 It's good to see the New York Times latching on to another reason we've entered a new era of energy scarcity: The countries that export the most oil are using more and more oil domestically: Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means that several of the world's most important suppliers may need to start ... More About: Supplies , Headline News , Factor
Putin takes sides
2007-12-10 15:56:00 The headline from Russia is that president Vladimir Putin has named his preferred successor. But the real story is that he's finally taken sides in a long-standing power struggle centered within Russia's energy industry. By choosing of Dmitry Medvedev, Putin has sided with the factions controlling the Russian gas giant Gazprom, instead of those in charge ... More About: Sides , Headline News
A Big Oil CEO who gets it
2007-12-07 15:33:00 It's a little scary when Jim Cramer says something that makes sense. In making his case this week for ConocoPhillips, he said COP pretty much stands alone among the international oil companies in recognizing the supply-demand equilibrium starting to become unglued; that is, as we noted here last month, the next big oil shock will likely ... More About: Headline News
Russia resurgent ? sort of
2007-12-06 16:11:00 What on earth is a Russia n carrier group doing in the Mediterranean? Russia dispatched an 11-ship aircraft carrier group to the Mediterranean Sea, the defense minister said Wednesday — part of what he said was an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols on the world’s oceans. The announcement by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov is the latest ... More About: Sort , Headline News , Gent , Urge
War plans cancelled? Hold on.
More articles from this author:2007-12-05 16:41:00 Time to pick apart conventional wisdom about the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. Conventional wisdom is that any aggressive designs the Bush administration might have had about Iran have been decisively squelched, no matter the president's protestations that "What's to say (Iran) couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?" The president would have us ... More About: Plans , Headline News , Hold 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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