COMMENT: Martin, I trust you are doing well this weekend. I have been looking at the eight cycles of mini rallies and mini corrections we have had in the S&P 500 for the past year or so (eight cycles from 2012-11-16 through 2014-02-05).  I tallied up the total days (305) and was calculating the average days […]

Vladimir Putin invokes extremes of opinion in the West that oscillate between a disgusted rejection of his alleged despotic arbitrariness and fear of his imagined unpredictable violence that some believe can be latent and sometimes overt, and the other extreme fascination as well as admiration of his brilliant, unerring instinct power. Some see Putin as […]

History repeats not merely because human emotions never change, it seems we end up with the same decision process that leads to the same trends. People just love raining on the current parade as stocks rally when they missed the entire boat to begin with. The bearishness with the new highs in the S&P 500 […]

I have dealt with many governments in my life and I have come to understand you CANNOT and SHOULD NEVER put your opponent in a box publicly for his own political livelihood is then on the line and he MUST respond or be overthrown. This is simple common sense in international politics and I have […]

The care-taker leaders are the typical bureaucrats who will destroy Ukraine and everything the people have fought for. Oleksandr Vіktorovich Shlapak (Олександр Віталійович Шлапак) is the Ukrainian politician, bureaucrat, and the current Minister of Finance in Ukraine since February 27th. He offers NOTHING worthwhile for Ukraine and only thinks inside the BOX listening to economists with […]

The Swiss National Bank, one of the world’s biggest owners of gold, was forced to admit it took a loss of $17 billion on their gold holdings for 2013. This is by far the largest loss in gold anyone has ever seen. The gold loss forced the Swiss central bank to cancel dividends for the first […]

The Ukrainian Crisis is far from over and confrontation between the West and Russia seems to be inevitable, albeit after September. The Kyiv Post illustrates the ballot in Crimea where there is no actual spot to vote against joining Russia. Voters in Russian-occupied Crimea in the March 16 referendum have only two choices – join Russia immediately […]

I have warned that China’s exports were an illusion and that there was a huge carry trade borrowing dollars in Hong Kong at 1% and depositing the money in China getting 6%. But trade tracks money, not goods, so the illusion that China was still expanding was a good one – but still just an […]

Government Statistics When we look at the economics or government, we have to sort through the games to even get close to reality. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government accounts for about 8% of jobs in the United States. Here is their breakdown using numbers easily accessible on the BLS website going into the peak […]

  Putin visits Yanukovych and asks if it is infectious. The doctor says yes, and you have it too. The sad part, you can say the same about Obama.