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Why Do Stocks Keep Rising?
This week has most certainly been a risk-off week. Money flowed into stocks and commodities and the speculative Bitcoin while flowing out of safe havens of gold and Treasuries. All the talk about AI, which I’m personally finding very interesting, is no doubt a momentum play that is sucking a lot of naive investors in toward the end of this long-term equity bull market. BofA’s Hartnett said, “It would be so ‘on-brand’ for stocks to melt-up into recession, suck them all in right before the hard landing.” If you are wondering why stocks continue to rise even as rates are…
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Picking Bullish Stocks in this Bear Market
Tavi Costa, Kevin Smith and Quinton Hennigh of Crescat Capital return. After many generations of Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies, the leading capitalist nation in the world is now heading toward bankruptcy. That’s not because capitalism has failed. Rather it’s because politicians following Keynesian economists have done their level best to destroy capitalism. While policy makers pass laws that generate votes from an uneducated populace and to line their own pockets, China and modern-day Russia have proven Marx wrong in thinking capitalism will inevitably give way to a socialist utopia. Both countries in some ways portray economic systems more akin…
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There Is No Moral Right to Strike
Americans are in a time of rising labor unrest and activism, including multiple unionization campaigns, regulatory and legal changes to make it easier for unionization efforts to succeed, the “Fight for $15” minimum wage agitation, and the Hollywood writer’s strike. However, such discussions and campaigns seldom approach the issues involved from a moral perspective, beyond the implicit presumption that trying to force others to give you a raise must be moral. That is why it is worth reconsidering Leonard Read’s bold argument that “There Is No Moral Right to Strike” in his The Coming Aristocracy (1969): “Rarely challenged is the…
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Wages Going Up for Good: Catch-Up and Blowback
Blowback has its own dynamics, as we’ll learn in the decade ahead. One of the most durable expectations in the financial sphere is that inflation will drop sharply in a recession and the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates back to near-zero. There is a good reason to doubt this: rising wages. Yes, we all hear about the millions of human workers who will shortly be replaced by AI–wonderful for corporate profits!–but few pundits bother looking at long cycles in interest rates and inflation, and even fewer pay any attention to the absurdly extreme asymmetry of labor and capital. As…
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The Bud Light Boycott and Clueless Corporate Executives
In perhaps one of the most unexpected and sudden shifts in consumer demand in recent years, sales of Bud Light have now fallen sizably for six weeks in a row, with no end in sight. The New York Post reported on Monday that “Sales of the US’s No. 1 beer were down 24.6% for the week ended May 13 compared to a year ago — slightly worse than the 23.6% dip they suffered a week earlier.” But it’s not just Bud Light. Sentiment has turned against Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch Inbev (AB Inbev) to the point that other brands at the…
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Did Tucker’s Last Major Guest Lead to His Firing?
Tucker Carlson has rankled the ruling elites for many years. But was his interview with Robert Kennedy Jr. a bridge too far? Original Article: “Did Tucker’s Last Major Guest Lead to His Firing?” Powered by WPeMatico
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Review: Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier
George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier is a book for which I kept hearing recommendations. I was told that it contained biting criticisms of socialism and was a valuable source of antiauthoritarian thought. What I found, instead, was a snobbish text that ineffectually denounces snobbery, an erudite-sounding text that lacks any philosophical or economic depth, and a persistent veil of ignorance over and presumption in favor of state intervention for any of the problems described, as well as the shortsighted implication that the solution is simply more of the same. The book was first published in 1937, which is…
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Green Energy Leading to Investment Opportunities
Eric Coffin, Gwen Preston and Michael Hudson return. Setting aside the question of whether climate change is largely a function of human activities or natural geological or solar changes, the political reality is that hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on an attempt to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. While Eric and Gwen may be best known for their analysis of junior gold and silver exploration companies, they also do deep dives into companies that explore for metals used in windmills and electric vehicles like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements. Solar panels require considerable amounts…
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The Dollar Buying Continues…
A Pfennig For Your Thoughts May 24, 2023 * currencies & metals get sold on Tuesday… * Isn’t there a shortage of Copper? Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! No problems in traveling yesterday, other than having to get up to go to the airport at zero dark thirty… Thanks to our friend, Lynn, for driving us to the airport at that ungodly time of the early morning… I said to Kathy, “one good thing about going this early, there’s no traffic!” I then realized that this was the time that I used to get up and go…
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The Woke Cartel and Twitter’s New CEO
On May 12, 2023, Elon Musk announced that Linda Yaccarino, the now former chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, would become the new CEO of Twitter. Musk’s appointment of Yaccarino followed an advertiser exodus that caused Twitter’s ad revenue to plummet by more than 60 percent from October 2022 through January 25, 2022, from around $127 million to just over $48 million. According to Pathmatics, by Sensor Tower, more than half of Twitter’s thousand advertisers pulled their ads from Twitter after Musk’s takeover of the social media company. The flight of advertisers was due to concerns about Twitter’s…
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The Duke Lacrosse Case: How a Lie Became Official Campus Policy
Every day, more and more Americans are awakening to the reality that the institutions in control of this nation are failing them. From violence in the streets, inflation in our stores, increasing tyranny and censorship, and absolute buffoonery on public display in halls of political power. The ruling class is getting richer while most of us suffer, and new generations are becoming increasingly warped by the dangerous ideologies of the left. Recorded at The Depot Craft Brewery & Distillery in Reno, Nevada on May 20th, 2023. Powered by WPeMatico
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Doubts Raised About Secretary Yellen’s June 1st Deadline
By: Connor O’Keeffe House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden have nine days left to reach a spending deal before the U.S. defaults on the debt and everything falls apart… or do they? Three weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the so-called X-date, when the U.S. would begin to default, would be Thursday, June 1st. As of last week, that projection was widely accepted. Speaker McCarthy told reporters he trusted Yellen: “Whatever Janet Yellen says is the date. I’m not going to argue about that.” But this week the tune has changed. Today a handful of Republicans voiced skepticism about…
