Feature Articles

The 2008 financial crisis intially showed itself as cracks in the consumer credit market and in the complicated financial instruments employed by the shadow banking system which fostered that consumer credit. A shocked world learned a whole new vocabulary of acronyms such as SIV’s, ABCP’s, CDS’s, CDO’s and MBS/ABS’s. It was eerily remeniscent of the […]

It seems that Barron’s always signals tops and bottoms. Barron’s have proven to consistently be the ultimate contrarian indicator! As an example just as the recent Barron’s front page was published, the US economic GDP forecast was released and was a major disappointment. This was the first of many to come. A new report from […]

The ‘Fragile 5’ Taper Tantrum Turmoil, panic, retreat: it’s not been a pretty start to the year for emerging market currencies and stock markets. Here, in a few charts, is the key to understanding the story of 2014 so far. The Fragile 5 and other emerging countries have fleeing hot money problems, deficit current accounts […]

An In Depth Look at the US Labor Markets People love to talk about how statistics can be used to prove any point. I don’t entirely disagree with that claim, but it really depends on both the perspective – or time frame – and the source of the data set. My research typically involves trying […]

FIRST – HOW WE GOT HERE 1 – A TEXT BOOK LOG-PERIODIC CYCLE ENDS –  Right on Schedule The market rise from the 2008 lows has followed a very ordered pattern that was best modeled using the mathematician Dr. Didier Sornette’s Log-Periodic Cycle. We adopted it with the announcement of QE3. 2 -OUR NOVEMBER 25TH […]

Triffin’s Dilemma: the 2014 edition What does it mean to be the world’s reserve currency? Everbank’s Chuck Butler sums it up nicely in the following quote: “Remember, the country with the reserve currency gets to receive loans at discounted borrowing costs. Also, commodities are priced in the reserve currency, meaning central banks around the world […]

The $72 Trillion Global Shadow Banking System is now larger than the global regulated banking system according to the latest study by the Financial Stability Board (FSB). How could an unregulated and opaque industry, which is larger than the the entire world’s GDP operate with such little attention? Even the FSB is not a government […]