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This video has been popping up all over the place, Paul Allen of Bloomberg reporting from the empty New South China Mall in Dongguan, China, another sign of overbuilding in the Middle Kingdom that some, like short seller Jim Chanos, think will end badly. From Bloomberg: Allen tours the South China Mall,… Continue Reading An Empty Shopping Mall in China

There will be more on this tomorrow, but here’s the 60 Minutes interview with Fed Chief Ben Bernanke in which his eyes kind of light up when he talks about quantitative easing in excess of the already announced $600 billion. The complete transcript is over at the WSJ Economics blog. I’m just glad he… Continue Reading The Ben Bernank on 60 Minutes

Today’s data point of the day goes to Ireland via this story and graphic in the Washington Post in which the magnitude of the nation’s budget deficit (as a percent of GDP)  is learned. One day after requesting a bailout worth more than $100 billion, financially troubled Ireland plunged deeper into a political… Continue Reading Ireland Deficit Now 32% of GDP?

Another item from Dow Jones, this one offering a few thoughts by Allen Mattich on the subject of whether the stock market or the bond market is correctly forecasting the future. One thing is certain, they both can’t be right and, at some point in the not-too-distant future, stocks and bonds will… Continue Reading Is the Stock Market or Bond Market Right?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is almost shrill in his assessment of the choices now being faced by Fed Chief Ben Bernanke – a few vocal Fed hawks and a deficit-wary Congress on one side and, on the other, a slowing economy where the de-flation peril grows everyday. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is waging an epochal… Continue Reading Fed Balance Sheet to Rise to $5 Trillion?

Matt Simmons talks to Bloomberg’s Lori Rothman about how crude oil is leaking into the gulf at a rate even faster than the latest upwardly revised government estimate and he reiterates his view that detonating a small nuclear device in order to turn the seabed rock into glass is the… Continue Reading More Dire Warnings from Matt Simmons

For those of you who don’t know it (and I don’t know why you would), your humble scribe with the Italian last name is also half German, some great, great, … great grandparents having come to Pennsylvania Dutch country from Baden Baden sometime in the early 1800s, or so I’m… Continue Reading Germany Applies the “Debt Brake”

The Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that new home sales surged 27 percent in March as buyers rushed to get under contract in advance of the expiring homebuyer tax credit next week. As opposed to  yesterday’s report on existing home sales that reflect closings, new home sales figures reflect contracts signed, meaning that there may be… Continue Reading New Home Sales Rise – Don’t Get Too Excited

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, last week’s hearing by the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) on futures market trading for metals was a subject of someinterest to me, but the news flow since that time has been rather remarkable – if for no other reason that none of the… Continue Reading Gold, Silver, the CFTC & Conspiracy Theories

Following the remarkably high 60 percent back-end debt-to-income ratio for homeowners whose loans have been made “permanent” via the government’s HAMP program as noted here a couple days ago come more scary statistics on the nation’s housing market. From Diana Olick’s Loans Going Bad Faster Than the Fixes comes word of how long the… Continue Reading Scary Housing Statistics of the Last 24 Hours