Financial Sense Blog

It is year-end and time to look ahead to where the economy is going. The path has already been largely charted for the coming year. Congress has passed an extension of the Bush tax cuts and also extended unemployment benefits. The budget cost of this de facto tax-stimulus package is estimated at $800 billion, not because of increased spending but because of its implications for reduced tax revenues.

While the US Congress is certainly an adept player at that game, I think the world champions at the present time have to be the political and economic leaders of Europe. Today we look at the extent of the problem and how it could affect every corner of the world, if not played to perfection. Everything must go mostly right or the recent credit crisis will look like a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris in April compared to what could ensue.

As we head into the final two trading weeks of the year, the U.S. Dollar Index has completed two of the three steps typically associated with a change in trend.

2010 will go down in history as the beginning of a new era in silver investing. This article takes a brief look back at a momentous year for silver, and makes the point that from the perspective of anyone long of this metal, the best is yet to come.

There is an old adage on Wall Street: no one rings a bell to signal a market top or bottom. Yet, I have found that bells do ring; it's just that few people know exactly what sound to listen for.

As the U.S. dollar takes a nosedive and precious metals gain more and more attention from individual investors, the number of questions and concerns is increasing as well. The following reader email addressed to Casey Research is representative of so many inquiries that we decided to provide an in-depth response that may prove instructional to others as well.

December is one of the best month's for market performance, is it Santa's handiwork?

Despite near-unanimous endorsement among mainstream advisors, the strategy of portfolio diversification has a huge, glaring flaw: Namely, when large sums of liquidity begin to flow into global investment markets, formerly disparate trends become strongly correlated. And markets that go up together ultimately go down together; in turn, the value of diversified portfolios goes down with them.

Life has a funny way of reminding a person that he is not really in control of what is going on around him. While he may be proficient in a few specific areas, his overall knowledge is limited. Last night my hot water heater decided to go on vacation and I thought I’d try to be a real man and fix it. I have a general knowledge of how a hot water heater works, but it dawned on me that knowing how it works and fixing it are two totally separate things.

Finding a bottom in a waterfall decline.