Bullshit Artists

Not Your Father’s Stock Market Anymore

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where the majority of investors are granting far too much credit to the market data they are being fed. They are making decisions based on faulty premises. They often do not even understand the basics of monetary expansion and how that affects purchasing power. The most important issue, however, is that the powerful artificial forces affecting stock markets cannot hold free-market adjustments at bay forever. That is why it is important to select stocks based not just on 'mainstream' indicators of performance and industry leadership but also on the business cycle, apparent monetary stimulation and other outside forces." Continue reading →

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Fraud in the Financial Markets: Are You Vulnerable?

"It can be hard for investors to defend themselves, especially because we judge other professions similarly. You go to a doctor with a good reputation for helping patients; you don't assume that he was lucky. But in finance, someone with a good reputation might – believe or not – just be lucky, or worse yet, fraudulent. My advice for avoiding many problems is simple: don't focus on someone's net worth for your investment decisions. Instead, consider their ideas and pretend that you heard them from the intern just starting his first day on the job. Does the idea still sound like a logical and reasonable investment plan?" Continue reading →

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Has the bull market in stocks become ‘too big to fail’?

"Officially, the Federal Reserve isn't supposed to worry about keeping stock prices flying high. But when Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was asked about the market's outlook last week on Capitol Hill, he sounded like a lot of bullish Wall Street investment strategists. 'I don't see much evidence of an equity bubble,' he told the Senate Banking Committee in his semiannual testimony on Fed policy. Stocks 'don't appear overvalued given earnings and interest rates.' More important for the markets, Bernanke pledged to continue the Fed's policy of pumping colossal sums into the financial system to support the economic recovery." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingHas the bull market in stocks become ‘too big to fail’?

Treasury chief Jacob Lew not worried about financial bubble

"US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Thursday that he was not worried about a potential financial bubble forming as Wall Street stocks racked up record highs. 'The analysis that I’ve seen doesn’t give me reason to be worried right now,' Lew said in an interview on US business news channel CNBC. Lew nevertheless called for monitoring of the situation in order to avoid another crisis like the 2008 Wall Street crash that led to the Great Recession. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday closed at a record high for the eighth day in a row, though the US economy remains sluggish and massive government spending cuts kicked in on March 1." Continue reading →

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Which Fed Members Move the Market?

"[The chart] shows the sum of the absolute value of the impact on the ten-year Treasury yield of each member's public speeches. Chairman Bernanke tops the list with a total impact of 18 basis points. President Lockhart came in second place with an impact of 17 basis points, and President Fisher was third with about 16 basis points." Continue reading →

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Will Grigg: Put Not Your Trust In Federalized Sheriffs

"'I will not enforce an unconstitutional law against any citizen of Smith County,' insisted Sheriff Larry Smith. The sheriff wants his constituents to believe that he would refuse to participate in a federally mandated gun grab, or permit one to be carried out by federal officials within his jurisdiction. Yet ten days before Smith offered that assurance, his office had taken part in an early-morning SWAT rampage throughout East Texas in which 73 warrants were served as part of the federal government’s patently unconstitutional war on drugs. There isn’t a single county sheriff’s office in the country that hasn’t compromised itself by accepting federal funds." Continue reading →

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U.S. diplomat warns of global effort to curb Internet freedom

"A number of countries are aggressively trying to control the Internet, a top US diplomat cautioned Thursday, insisting Washington would give no ground when it comes to curbing freedoms on the Web. The fact that many countries appeared to be investing heavily, 'billions and billions of dollars', in next generation surveillance technologies was an indication of their intentions to clamp down on Internet freedoms, Ross warned. The clamp-down was coming amid a clear shift of power all over the world from governments and other state hierarchies towards citizens and networks of citizens, he said." Continue reading →

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Rand Paul’s Misplaced Celebration

"Neither Bush nor Obama have ever claimed the authority to assassinate innocent Americans. The authority they have always claimed has been to assassinate guilty Americans (and guilty foreigners)—that is, those people who are guilty of being terrorists. Well, guess who decides whether a person is a terrorist. You got it! The president makes that determination. And once he decides that a person is a terrorist in his global 'war on terrorism,' that’s the end of the discussion. Under our post-9/11 system of government, neither the president nor the military nor the CIA is required to explain, justify, or even acknowledge the assassination." Continue reading →

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