The West is in decline, but its values still prevail …The first ever non-European pope takes over at the Vatican, while Italy's economic ills and ungovernability foretell, it's argued, the wider decline of the West … This week, the British government will reportedly announce in its budget that Qatar is coming to the rescue of poverty-stricken, austerity-ridden Britain with a &p...Read More

Investors Beware: Market Risks Today Are Higher than Ever … It's time to start worrying about the bond market … After the shot across the bow in 2008, you might have expected that regulators and market participants would use the experience to change for the better, to become more prudent, and to reduce the sorts of risky behaviors that almost crashed the entire system … &ndas...Read More

Bernanke Saying He's Dispensable Suggests Tenure Ending … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he's "spoken to the president a bit" about his future and that he feels no personal responsibility to stay at the helm until the Fed winds down its unprecedented policies to stimulate the economy. "I don't think that I'm the only person in the world who can m...Read More

Forget Cyprus, Nobody Is Stealing from Depositors More than Bernanke … After the Federal Reserve reaffirmed its easy money policy Wednesday, Chairman Ben Bernanke was asked whether the U.S. would ever think of taxing bank depositors as Cyprus has done. He said that was very unlikely but Jim Rickards, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners, says the Fed already has its hands in...Read More

Infrastructure, a time for renewal … Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, Illinois, lifts up a decayed wooden tube and waves it for emphasis. Many of the city's water pipes are over 100 years old, he says. Some, it turned out when the Water Department got round to replacing them, are made of wood. No wonder the network sprang 3,800 leaks in 2011 alone. Yet at the pace of investment that preva...Read More

The West is in decline, but its values still prevail …The first ever non-European pope takes over at the Vatican, while Italy's economic ills and ungovernability foretell, it's argued, the wider decline of the West … This week, the British government will reportedly announce in its budget that Qatar is coming to the rescue of poverty-stricken, austerity-ridden Britain with a &p...Read More

Europe, Unemployment and Instability … The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system — Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the...Read More

How Globalization Went Pop and What It Means for Workers … How do you measure how fast the world economy has "globalized"? Borrow a concept from physics. Call it global economic entropy. Global trade is old — really, really old. But something new is happening to the world economy as software and container trade shrink the globe — the rate of "globalization" is...Read More

Daylight robbery in Cyprus will come to haunt EMU … One's first reflex is to gasp at the stupidity of the EU policy elites, but truth is that most EU officials handling the Cyprus crisis know perfectly well that their masters have just set the slow fuse on a powder keg – and they can only pray that it is slow. The decision to expropriate Cypriot savers – even the poorest &nda...Read More

Europe, Unemployment and Instability … The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system — Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the...Read More

How Globalization Went Pop and What It Means for Workers … How do you measure how fast the world economy has "globalized"? Borrow a concept from physics. Call it global economic entropy. Global trade is old — really, really old. But something new is happening to the world economy as software and container trade shrink the globe — the rate of "globalization" is...Read More

Daylight robbery in Cyprus will come to haunt EMU … One's first reflex is to gasp at the stupidity of the EU policy elites, but truth is that most EU officials handling the Cyprus crisis know perfectly well that their masters have just set the slow fuse on a powder keg – and they can only pray that it is slow. The decision to expropriate Cypriot savers – even the poorest &nda...Read More

Eric Coffin, Editor of HRA Advisories Newsletter, makes his case for the resource market at the 2013 Subscriber Investment Summit in Toronto before the PDAC.At HRA, we look for companies with the potential to at least double over one or two years based on asset growth and development of metals deposits for production or take over by larger companies.HRA also uncovers high risk/ high potential expl...Read More

The Power Behind Monetary Policy … As I watched Cyprus' financial minister discuss the seizure of bank deposits in his country, I realized that this situation is a great lesson on the value of independent Monetary policy and the raw power that central banks can wield … – Flourish Financial AnalysisDominant Social Theme: Central banks … caring, friendly, concerned.Free-M...Read More

The Cyprus precedent … Given that this policy was not merely rubber-stamped but engineered by Eurozone finance ministers and the IMF (indeed, the IMF wanted an even deeper cut of deposits), it sends a disquieting message to anyone with deposits in a euro area bank. Although the ministers were quick to insist that this is a one-off and is "exceptional", anyone even vaguely acquainte...Read More

Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle … The economy of Woonsocket was about to stir to life. Delivery trucks were moving down river roads, and stores were extending their hours. The bus company More was warning riders to anticipate "heavy traffic." A community bank, soon to experience a surge in deposits, was rolling a message across its electronic marque...Read More

Italian president seeks way out of political stalemate … Italy's political stalemate and the prospect of months of uncertainty has created alarm across Europe just as the standoff over bank deposits in Cyprus reawakened fears that the euro zone debt crisis could flare up again … However, there has been no sign that an accord is possible with either former Prime Minister Silvio Berl...Read More

Internet sites targeted by MPs for first time 'in chilling threat to free speech'… but could bloggers also face huge damages in Press crackdown? … The internet will be targeted for the first time as the 'chilling' Royal Charter attempts to curb free speech on the majority of websites and blogs, experts warned today. The draft version of the document suggests that foreig...Read More

The long, slow decline of alt-weeklies … Alternative weekly colossus Boston Phoenix cracked and fell yesterday, ceasing publication after 47 years. According to a Phoenix executive quoted in the obituary in today's Boston Globe, the alternative weekly was losing more than $1 million a year, and a format switch last fall from newsprint to glossy had failed to attract the sort of national...Read More

The Power Behind Monetary Policy … As I watched Cyprus' financial minister discuss the seizure of bank deposits in his country, I realized that this situation is a great lesson on the value of independent Monetary policy and the raw power that central banks can wield … – Flourish Financial AnalysisDominant Social Theme: Central banks … caring, friendly, concerned.Free-M...Read More