The official start of the fall season is upon us. Music is still played over loud speakers and the politicians plan for their rallies and agendas. Over the wires, we read about Chairman Bernanke’s hypothetical plans to start buying equities for the Fed’s portfolio. We...

Our commentary last Monday August 30th outlined the present circumstances surrounding China. Our September newsletter discussed the facts that may lead to a Chinese collapse. This commentary discusses, the day after the collapse and the still significant role that...

In 1979, a movie came out starring Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda, and Michael Douglas. The title of the movie was The China Syndrome. The movie – in the spirit of those days- desired to expose the consequences of a nuclear reactor going bad. It also dealt with the cover-ups...

Over the course of the last few days we have been hearing renewed concerns in the real estate sector. We would like to take this opportunity to outline a few thoughts regarding those concerns, as well as continue with our thoughts about taking measures to waterproof a...

Cicero is famous for several things, among which is the “Dum Spiro Spero” quote, implying that hope dies last. For weeks now, my colleagues and I have been contemplating drafting an internal portfolio strategy-index. In the land of dismal growth where deflation knocks...

It seems that the economic slowdown is taking root. The consensus forecast for the Philly Index that portrays manufacturing activity for the Eastern part of the country was expected to rise from 5.1 to about 7. On the contrary it fell to negative 7.7. This is a big...

As readers of our publications, presentations, and commentaries could confirm, for quite some time now we have been talking about the dangers of over-collateralization, especially of collateralizing paper-assets a.k.a. financial instruments of various forms. Moreover,...

James Cain’s book The Postman Always Rings Twice is an allegory of greed, passion, judgment, and even divine intervention. Frank (the novel’s main character) got away with murder the first time. However, the second time around he was wrongly convicted for murder. Here...

In our June newsletter, we announced that in a few months we will publish our research on what we believe to be a Chinese bubble. In that issue we showed how the Chinese coincidental and leading indicators point to a slowdown in China. Since then, the numbers have...

The period from the mid 1980s to the middle of 2007 is known as the period of great moderation, when inflation was low and stable, unemployment also was low, utilized capacity pretty high, productivity growth rate very healthy, interest rates stable and declining,...