Well, I'm back from vacation, five days of golf in the wilds of Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island. Okay, I wasn't exactly roughing it unless you count the number of my golf shots that veered out of the fairway but it isn't Miami. It was an opportunity to renew old friendships, develop some new ones and a much [...]
The Fed has indicated the willingness to buy securities from savers and investors until we get job growth. But what does this really mean? Can the Fed induce hiring from further quantitative easing? Bernanke to investors of capital: “take risks today, lend money to entrepreneurs so they can hire. Act now, because we are buying bonds and you should expect [...]
We are often very vocal about our concerns regarding the poor policies in this country. Here is a tidy little opinion piece from the Fellows at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. It is a good summary of the existing headwinds coming out of our political class. WSJ.com - Opinion: The Magnitude of the Mess We're In And for a little laugh [...]
When times get tough, there is a tendency to get territorial and nationalistic. This finger pointing and these attempts to stir up emotion in one's constituency are mostly detrimental to everyone. More politics in the form of economic warfare is a trend we don't want to see emerge. WSJ.com - Opinion: Importing Jobs From China WSJ.com - White House Files [...]
In 1935 Friedrich A. Hayek presented the following diagram of the productive stages of an economy's production. The insights drawn from this depiction of an efficiently allocated economy form the basis of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. A voluntary decrease in consumption and commensurate increase in savings lowers the slope of the hypotenuse, thus the real rate of [...]
There's Something Happenin' Here, What it is ain't exactly clear... "For What It's Worth" - Buffalo Springfield My friend Josh Brown (okay, he's linked to some of our stuff; maybe friend is a bit of an exaggeration) often quotes and links to videos of rap songs on his blog, The Reformed Broker. At the age of 50 (51 this month), [...]
From friend of Alhambra, Brian Cronin: The first rule in politics is that you never believe anything until it’s officially denied. “The euro is irreversible and is not in danger of collapsing” said ECB president Mario Draghi as the central bank left rates unchanged last week. He said they will come up with more measures over the coming weeks to [...]
There's an old saying on Wall Street that the market will always act in a way that frustrates the majority of market participants. If that is true, then it goes without saying that the majority must be bearish because this market has had ample opportunities to move lower and steadfastly refuses to do so. Coming into last week the conventional [...]
Some say that history repeats itself. Can Ben Bernanke draw some insight into policy by looking back at an 18th century financial crisis in Amsterdam? I would say, yes, I hope so, isn’t that his job. The FED also thinks this, or they wouldn’t be budgeting money for such studies which can be found on their websites. So it would [...]
Two central bankers this week, Mario Draghi and Ben Bernanke, started what I hope is a trend of placing blame for our economic troubles where it properly belongs - on the politicians who shirk their public responsibilities. Both bankers were expected to provide hints of future monetary policy accommodation and neither delivered the goods. At the press conference following the [...]
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