Financial Sense Blog

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.

The Athens International Airport is closed today … not because of weather, or terrorist threats, but rather, because Air-traffic controllers walked off the job, as part of nationwide protests against the government‟s austerity package … specifically … wage cuts.

Good morning. It appears the bears blew another opportunity to get something going to the downside on Thursday. They had Wednesday's chart weakness, a lousy bond auction in Spain, and a surprisingly bad earnings report out of FedEx. But as can happen at this time of year, the bulls managed to turn the attention to the better-than-expected data (among other things), and by the end of the day anyone owning stocks was able to head out to the mall with a smile.

This chart clearly illustrates how significant the recent move of silver has been compared to its historical price action. From a monthly perspective we can clearly see the parabolic spike action. This is much harder to see from the close up daily chart.

Illustrating how tight the global grain markets are becoming, and the concern of governments over higher grain prices, yesterday Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he had signed two governmental resolutions to start supplying grain from the state intervention fund to Russian regions affected by this year's abnormal heat and drought.

Around the time of World War II, Marshal of the Soviet Union Y. N. Shaposhnikov explained, "Mobilization is war, in our minds there is no other meaning for it." Having recalled many of its people from Russia and China, it appears that some kind of mobilization has been underway in North Korea. Small moves, like placing artillery units in north-facing caves and increasing the number of divisions on the border with South Korea, indicates something more than the usual bluster.

Trailers For Sale Or Rent, Rooms To Let...50 Cents...It has been a good long time since I’ve checked in on residential vacancy rates in the US, but it's time for that now. Important why? The dynamics of vacancy rates are suggesting that headline CPI may indeed be heading higher as we move into 2011, Fed QE or no QE. I'll roll through this quickly and show you what I’m referring to. First, a quick update of total US rental vacancy rates, the homeowner vacancy rate specifically, and the overall homeownership rate.

Once again gold has made fresh highs as the Fed prepares its second or is it the third round of quantitative easing (a.k.a. money printing) which involves buying assets (a.k.a debt) to drive down yields and hopefully stimulate more borrowing and spending. Two years after the Lehman collapse and implosion of the housing sector, the financial system is still on life support.

In the prior 14 editions of the Amphora Report this year we have covered nearly 30 topics, many of which overlap in some way. What binds them all into a coherent set is our view that the economic policies being implemented in nearly all major countries are not just unsustainable but in some cases outright reckless. These countries include the US, the issuer of the world’s reserve currency. By implication, the dollar is likely to lose its pre-eminent reserve currency status in the coming years.