A lot of confusion on gold going into backwardation. I wrote about this in October in this blog where a commentator got confused. Recent articles by Professor Fekete have spawned more confused comments, see Brad Zigler’s article for an example (and also my comments to it).
People get all confused about it because they aren’t thinking [...]

I have been analyzing real estate and construction since 1991. I can’t even say that our current real estate collapse is unprecedented, because to me it’s not – I went through the Asian Financial Crisis, and this is like that. As a matter of fact, the Hongkong real estate slump of 1994-95 was [...]

In standard consumer lingo, a recession is never good. By economic definition, it means a slowdown in spending, which leads to a slowdown in production, which leads to unemployment and so forth.
The United States has seen its share of recessions since its inception over two hundred years ago. A quick review of Wikipedia’s “List of [...]

I am bringing back an old thought that first occurred to me in 2001 after the collapse of Enron. Businesses exist to create real value for real people. Any business should be able to explain how the are adding value and for whom. Ideally, this should be a simple process; a sentence [...]

Good insights backed up by extensive research

There is no such thing as a free lunch, even when it is packaged as a stimulus plan

Can anyone think of a more value destroying transaction than foreclosing a home in a dead real estate market. There are more than 700 houses in Detroit listed for less than $3000. And there not selling. In this climate banks can’t possibly expect to recover much of anything from a foreclosed. [...]

The essential feature of a tit-for-tat strategy is reciprocity – rewarding cooperation and punishing defection. In his book, “Born to be Good”, Dacher Keltner claims that “tit-for-tat instantiates the principle of cost-benefit reversal”. He argues that a set of mechanisms that reverse the cost-benefit analysis of giving is built into the human organism. He suggests: [...]

Forbes has a fascinating article by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Edward Leamer, with fundamental thinking about banks.
They trace the problems of banks to the fundamental contradictions of having a highly leveraged financial firm, with assured returns and full liquidity for depositors, and opaque + illiquid assets. I agree with this gloomy prognosis. A more fleshed [...]

On 24 April 2009 I was a guest judge on Canada’s national business channel Business News Network’s show Stars & Dogs with host Andrew Bell and Boyd Erman and the exchange is available.  The company under discussion was Potash Corporation and I realize some may be wondering what potash is.
Potassium carbonate, or potash, has been used [...]