Inflation or Idiot

My patience for utter stupidity and incompetency is growing slimmer with each passing day.  I’ve gotten extremely sour and impatient with the morons that love to hear their own voices and have others think of them as capable of independent thought.  The problem is that I’m completely surrounded by it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s local media, main stream financial media, a friend of the family, or the janitor at work.

For those who do like to discuss these things with me, or while I’m within earshot, they’ve probably noticed my disdain by the tones of my voice or simply my…

Are International Equities Out of the Woods Yet?

International equities have been among the hardest hit during the market’s recent downturn.

I don’t know that I will be jumping on board anytime soon, but Citigroup (C) notes that at 10.3 times trailing earnings, world-wide stock valuations have tanked to levels worse than that of an 11.4 average for the 1970s.

To an extent, forward P/E ratios have lost some of their predictive value. After we have seen a slew of downward revisions by companies reporting their third-quarter earnings, these ratios have become moving targets.

A Downward Spiral

Country-focused ETFs have experienced quite the slide in 2008. The iShares MSCI United Kingdom Index…

A Healthy Stew that Looks Like Hell

As a child, there were times when your mama served you up something for dinner that you weren’t so fond of.  It sort of gave you an ill feeling just looking at it – even if you knew it was healthy.  The last thing you wanted to do was sit there and dig in.

Something like what we’re going through these days with the stock market: the nausea, the dizziness, the desire to feed it to the dog and just go up to your bedroom to sleep.

If not for your father’s booming, “You’ll eat everything on that plate, and you’ll like…

The Best and Worst a Dollar Will Buy

I am going to use this edition of Charts of the Week to accomplish a series of tasks that has gone undone for too long.  Forthwith:

1. To answer a brainless dolt called James West, whose name appears with some regularity on the otherwise respectable Kitco website.  This “writer” [oh, if only he could string a few words together without obfuscating] produced this gem just a week ago:

“Right now, the dollar is looking strong because of the massive repatriation of U.S. dollars now underway as a result of global U.S. denominated asset de-leveraging. So it looks [the “writer’s” emphasis] like the dollar is strengthening. This…

Three Strikes and the Idiots They Created

$700 Billion.

Massive commercial paper purchase agreements.

½ percent rate cut.

Well, looks like we went swimming with those band-aids on, and now they’re floating in the pool. Following bailouts and bailout proposals, buyouts and rate cuts, investors themselves have decided to bail out. The S&P is down 42% from its high exactly one year ago yesterday.

You know how sad things are? I didn’t have to elaborate on any of the first three fragmented sentences of this article. You knew exactly what I was talking about in each case. The government has thrown everything it’s got (and some things it hasn’t) at…