Against Income Disparity

Nothing much from the markets yesterday. The Dow fell 72 points. Gold went down $5. Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement goes on in America. And 70,000 Greeks “clash with police,” say the news headlines. People are upset. They know something is wrong. But they don’t know what. The real explanation is too complicated. They won’t sit still for it. So, they look for scapegoats — the rich…the banks…the Chinese. There’s a joke making its way around the Internet. Goldman Sachs has decided to try to profit from the OWS protests. They’ve set up a “Rage Fund” that will invest in companies that make police batons, pepper spray, bandages, and glass windows. It’s a joke. But it may turn out to be a good investment strategy. We’ve made a number of big predictions here in The Daily ...

(Reuters) - Brent crude dipped on Thursday in Asian trade after five straight days of gains, slipping below $122 a barrel on concern that rising prices will hurt demand from the United States and China, the world's two largest oil consumers. Unrest in the oil exporting region in North Africa and the Middle East continues to support prices. Brent crude fell 52 cents to $121.78 a barrel at 0421 GMT after rising to a 2-1/2-year high above $123 on Wednesday. U.S. crude futures declined 45 cents to $108.38 a barrel, after touching $109.15 on Wednesday, the highest since September 2008. High crude prices are pushing up retail fuel prices worldwide, adding to the inflationary pressure governments already face from the rising cost of food and raw materials. "Current price levels should have a ...

To the barricades! Today, we continue to explore our new idea. Alert readers have already figured out that it is not a completely new idea. The ancient Greeks toyed with it too. Really new ideas are extremely rare. In our modern version, it might be called the General Theory of Decadence…or the Cycles of Growth and Decline, or more playfully, the Unified Zombie Theory. Life goes on. Material progress accumulates. The story of human life on earth grows longer, and more interesting. We see no end to it. But each component part comes to an end. Each life, each economy, each company, each society and each civilization still shrivels, corrodes, and exterminates itself. The past must become history so that the future may become the present. It takes many downsides to make upside progress. ...

The Weekly Bottom Line HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK United States * Today's employment report showed 95,000 jobs were shed from U.S. payrolls and that the U.S. unemployment rate in September remained unchanged at 9.6%. * Given the Fed's increased attention to their dual mandate of price stability and full employment, this poor showing increases the likelihood that the Fed will join the Bank of Japan in undergoing further quantitative easing (QE) to revive economic growth. * Quantitative easing will not be without side-effects and will put further downward pressure on the U.S. dollar. * The turn to additional stimulus measures around the world has led market participants to wonder about the implication of competitive currency devaluations Canada * The Canadian dollar has ...