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MUST READS Angry Bart Takes His Parting Shot – Bloomberg Abe Draws Anger With Visit to Japan War Shrine – Bloomberg McDonald’s removes worker site after fast food flap – CNBC First-class stamps to cost 49 cents as of Jan. 26 – USA Today Six market surprises to look for in 2014 – MarketWatch Five… Continue Reading Thursday Morning Links

MUST READS Surprise tactics sweep central banking – Reuters Yellen to get quizzed as taper-timing debate rages – MarketWatch Race to Bottom Resumes as Central Bankers Ease Anew – Businessweek The problem with the Fed’s QE – Banks just aren’t lending – CNBC Reports of the eurozone’s survival may have been exaggerated – Telegraph Fresh… Continue Reading Monday Morning Links

From this commentary by Liam Halligan at the U.K. Telegraph comes a good summary of what the Federal Reserve faces in the months ahead as they restart the “taper talk” that ended so badly over the summer while a new round of debate begins in Washington over the nation’s budget woes and… Continue Reading Making the Unconventional Conventional

MUST READS Bank of America liable for Countrywide mortgages fraud – Reuters Countrywide defrauded Fannie and Freddie, jury rules – CNN/Money Central Banks Drop Tightening Talk as Easy Money Goes On – Bloomberg Debt Ceiling Deal: DC Wins, Americans Lose – Ron Paul, Freedom Foundation Hot Water: German Foreign Minister Summons US Ambassador – Spiegel… Continue Reading Thursday Morning Links

MUST READS Is the Fed an Enabler? – Cumberland Advisors Bernanke flunked it – and we will all suffer – Telegraph China Manufacturing Gauge Rises to Six-Month High – Bloomberg World From Berlin: Triumph Confirms ‘Era of Merkelism’ – Spiegel Bailed-Out Nations Get Another Four Years of Merkel – Bloomberg Shutdown Showdown: Another Game of… Continue Reading Monday Morning Links

Bill Fleckenstein was in rare form in this interview with Eric King over the weekend (partial transcript is here) as he lamented the mess that the Federal Reserve has gotten us all into and the ongoing charade that everything is going to turn out just fine. … the Fed has overdone it. Now,… Continue Reading Fleck Not Happy

Via GoldChartsRUs.com comes this chart indicating how dramatically net gold imports from Hong Kong to China have increased over the years. Note that the 2013 total is through May, which, if extrapolated over the full year would be nearly double the record total of last year. Of course, none of this seems… Continue Reading A Record Pace for China Gold Imports

Apparently, a strong housing market doesn’t really depend on people having good jobs in order to come up with a down payment and service a mortgage. Whether that strong housing market is healthy or not is another matter as detailed in this special report at Reuters. The once-beleaguered Las Vegas housing market has been… Continue Reading Cheap Money and the Housing Rebound

More evidence that U.S. economists are particularly ill-suited to run the U.S. economy comes via the fascinating exchange in recent days between St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard and a small army of bloggers with PhDs in economics, nearly all of the latter ganging up on Bullard after he… Continue Reading When Models Trump Common Sense

I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a week or two now (ever since the ninth or tenth escalation – I’ve lost track – of the Greek debt crisis began last month), but, since Reuters was kind enough to provide the photo below in this story from earlier today, it seemed… Continue Reading It Would Help if This Guy Wasn’t So Fat