Blogs

" "The One" radio will appear about the size of an iPod ..." Read more »

In my previous 2 blogs I noted that author Charles R. Morris is the first writer out of the starting gate to tackle the issue of the "debt meltdown" in a head-on manner.

Here now is what Mr. Morris has to say about the current situation we face…

...the late 1990's saw the emergence of the "quants" on Wall Street – people with advanced degrees from Ivy League schools who practiced a very different brand of calculus, who could carve up old fashioned asset classes into new exciting creations.

...when these new creations were combined with the newly created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac organizations the "pass through" mortgage was created. The concept of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMO's) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) soon followed. Read more »

In my previous blog I noted that author Charles R. Morris is the first writer out of the starting gate to tackle the issue of the "debt meltdown" in a head-on manner.

In this blog I offer you a glimpse of what he has to say about the 1980's and 1990's.

...the truth is that monetarisn (with its premise that money supply was the answer to all things) did not break inflation, Volcker did by using every possible weapon at his disposal including verbal jawboning.

... The demonstration of what America would do to protect its currency changed the world's impression of US economic management. Read more »

In a blog posted to this site on April 27, 2008 ( scroll down about 5 pages and read it), I referenced a man called Avner Mandelman. Mr. Mandelman often writes in the Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail. In late April he was cautioning about the severe impact even marginally higher interest rates could have on the murky world of derivatives and credit swaps.

Now he is warning about the rapidly escalating situation in Iran. And sure enough, when I did a Google search on "mass graves Tehran" I found a story in the Asia Times online edition. Here is a snippet from that article…

This past weekend, a senior Iranian general, Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh, said his country was digging 320,000 graves for American soldiers scheduled to fight in Iran. "In implementation of the Geneva Conventions, the necessary measures are being taken to provide for the burial of enemy soldiers. We have plans to dig 15,000 to 20,000 graves for each of the border provinces, or a total of 320,000," he said, pointing out that some of them would be mass graves, if necessary. This was "to reduce the suffering of the families of the fallen in any attack against, and prevent the repetition of the long and bitter experience of the Vietnam War".

These may sound like big words - similar to those barked by Saddam Hussein and his information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf in 2003 - but they carry real impact on the psychology of American troops. Iraq - with its weak army and corrupted regime - was impossible to chew for the Americans. Nobody can imagine how difficult a war would be against 65 million Iranians, with a well-trained, well-armed military indoctrinated with Shi'ite Islam and a strong sense of purpose against the "great Satan". Read more »

Author Charles R. Morris is the first writer out of the starting gate to tackle the issue of the "debt meltdown" in a head-on manner in his new book The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.

I have now finished reading this book and I can tell you that I was so engrossed in what Mr. Morris had to say I read the entire 169 pages in one afternoon, stopping only periodically to refresh my Gin & Tonic so I could continue facing the harsh reality of what Mr. Morris had to say.

In this blog (and the next few to come) I will try to give you taste of what Mr. Morris has to say by quoting excerpts from his book. Bottom line – this book is a must read. Go to your local bookseller in Canada or the USA and get it…today !! Read more »

Will Hinton interviews U.S. Congressman Hank Johnson in a broad ranging conversation covering the current energy crisis, real estate foreclosures, the War on Terror, and Barack Obama. Part 1 covers the current energy crisis and peak oil. Read more »

Campaign 2008 has come to Canada. While we cannot vote in this Presidential election, it looks like we are going to have seats on the 50 yard line and see the action up close.

One of the plays expected from the Obama team is a policy move to bring in a low carbon fuel standard. This policy will effectively see refiners and gasoline marketers who use Canadian oil sands crude penalized because this crude oil emits "bad stuff" into the atmosphere when processed. In a recent article in the Globe and Mail, journalist Shawn McCarthy references a chart that compares the various types of oil. Oil from the North Sea (Brent Crude) emits 494 kg of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) per barrel of Oil processed, Arab Light Crude 517 kgs, Nigerian Crude 541 kgs, Mexican Crude 557 kgs, Canadian Tar Sands Crude 568 kgs and Venezuelan Crude 579 kgs. The important observation here is that Canadian Tar Sands Crude emits only 10% more "stuff" than Arab Light Crude. These data tell me that Tar Sands Crude is hardly worthy of being further maligned by a carbon fuel standard policy. Read more »

(EMAILWIRE.COM, June 27, 2008 ) Houston, TX – EmailWire.Com most active stocks are Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (NASDAQ: QQQQ), and PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (RIMM).

Most Gainers are AmericanWest Bancorporation (NASDAQ: AWBC), Andersons, Inc. (The) (NASDAQ: ANDE), Celebrate Express, Inc. (NASDAQ: BDAY) and QC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: QCCO).

On the OTCBB, Israel Growth Partners Acquisition Corp (OTCBB: IGPAZ) is the most active gainer. Founded in 2005, Israel Growth Partners Acquisition Corp will serve “as a vehicle to effect a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, or other similar business combination with an operating business, which primarily has operations or facilities located in Israel.” Read more »

I have been sitting here watching the action on the US Dollar in the wake of Ben Bernanke's decision to keep the key interest rates at 2%.

With this decision, the US now joins the rest of the world in getting aboard the inflation fighting bandwagon. The past number of years have seen spectacular growth stories. Manufacturing has boomed in Asian and even here in the US growth was most evident in the housing market.

But growth has consequences and inflation is perhaps the greatest consequence. Now Central Bankers are on a mission to beat back the savage beast of inflation. Problem is, many Central Bankers started their mission against inflation many months back. Read more »

(EMAILWIRE.COM, June 24, 2008 ) Houston, TX – The Automotive industry composite index declined by 0.98% to 864.9. Top performers in this industry are SORL AUTO PARTS INC (Nasdaq: SORL), GEN MOTORS (NYSE: GM), HONDA MOTOR CO ADR (NYSE: HMC), FORD MOTOR CO (NYSE: F).

CNN recently ran a story on how congress wants to bring down the price of oil. Being that this is an election year and congress is polling at all time lows, it is understandable that they feel they need to do something. I mean, who wants to get fired from there job. But the big issue is if any of these new regulations will actually bring down the price of oil or will they make the matters that much worse Read more »

The recent controversy during the Democratic campaign battle between Senators Obama and Clinton has now brought renewed focus to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Sadly, this focus has revealed the dark side of NAFTA and a movement in Canada is now growing to have NAFTA re-examined.

At issue is the portion of NAFTA pertaining to energy. Article 605 of NAFTA prohibits Canada from lowering its share of natural gas exports to the USA relative to the most recent 3 year period. No problem you say? Canada has lots of natural gas you say? Think again. The Province of Alberta has only 8 years of proven gas reserves left. Canada as a whole according to the Oil and Gas Journal has proven reserves of 57.9 trillion cubic feet left – enough for 9 years. True, the experts do say that Canada has the potential to unlock many more reserves from the depths of the earth, but the proof of that is in the pudding as they say. Plus, even if these new reserves can be found, getting them to market may prove tricky given the recent squabbles with First Nations groups over the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline to cite just one example. Read more »

I say….a reason for everything and for everything a reason. Now it looks like this cliché can be applied to the ongoing situation in Afghanistan. I have long suspected that there was a stronger underlying motive for the so called war in Afghanistan. This week a headline piece in the Globe and Mail by journalist Shawn McCarthy blew the lid off this concealed underlying motive.

Turns out Afghanistan and three of its neighboring countries have agreed to build a $7.6 billion pipeline to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The proposed pipeline route, it turns out, will pass right through – yes you guessed it - Kandahar Province, a hotspot of military action. And of course the men of influence in Washington also have their fingers in the cookie jar. It seems this pipeline project if completed on time will block a competing pipeline that the Iranians would like to build. This Afghani pipeline would also serve to challenge the dominance of Russia in the area. If construction can get underway by 2010, gas should be flowing through the pipeline in 2015. Read more »

Watch interest rates around the world. We have come to the tipping point, the moment of reckoning where the savage beast inflation must be beaten into submission.

A meeting of finance types this past weekend in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia concluded that the savage forces of inflation could derail the "Cinderalla-like" growth story that has charmed Asia for the past number of years. For example, inflation in Vietnam is running at a torrid 25%. Other Asian nations have now lifted subsidies on petrol, sending prices (and de facto, inflation) at the pump up 40% in some cases.

I can recall a speaker at a dinner event I attended back in 2005 making the bold statement that all would be well until such time as the Beijing Olympics were finished and then everything would come off the rails in Asia. Wow!! – he might just be right. As interest rates rise and bank lending tightens, the economy will slow notably in many of these Asian nations. And it is not just Asia. Look at what is happening in Iceland as it totters on the brink. Jean Claude Trichet in the Eurozone is now hinting strongly that maybe rates will start to ratchet higher. Even in Canada, finance officials are openly suggesting that the banking system should stop giving out mortgages amortized over 40 years and that there should be a ban on people borrowing their down-payment for a house purchase. Read more »

My travels this past week-end took me to Vancouver, Canada to the Cambridge House Gold, PGM and Diamond Resource Show. I came armed with my usual over-supply of marketing materials for the Canadian gold company that I consult to (GLR Resources TSX:GRS). But surprise, surprise…..nobody seemed to care about gold at this show. Even with the shiny yellow stuff holding around $900/ounce and even with the forces of inflation running rampant in the wake of an ever increasing fiat money supply, nobody cared. As I wandered about the show, I could not help but commiserate with all the other people representing various other gold companies for they too were sitting at their display booths looking forlorn and dejected. Read more »

Goldman Sachs has been touting $200 Oil for several weeks now, but this week they were upstaged by the Russian folks at Gazprom who stated that Oil could hit $250.

Is this just bravado? Well it turns out maybe not. Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA) is now saying that non-OPEC oil supplies will only rise by an incremental 770,000 barrels per day in 2008. Russia plays a role in this less than positive figure as it has failed to continue raising its output of Oil. The steady rise of Russian output over the past several years has helped fuel China's meteoric economic rise. But now it looks like Russia may have hit its peak at some 9.5-10 million barrels a day.

All in all, scary stuff. If Russia has in fact peaked out, where then does the world turn? Can you say PEAK OIL ? Read more »

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is now promising as president he will mandate greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the time 2020 rolls around and he will reduce emissions to 80% of these 1990 levels by 2050.

This week the Washington based scientific think tank Marshall Institute crunched the numbers and the end result is a scary one. Read more »

Resource sector investors – take note….

Keep your eye on the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is unique in that it is underlain by deposits of Potash. Now, Potash is a generic "catch-all" expression for the minerals Potassium Chloride, Potassium Oxide and also to a certain extent Magnesium Chloride. Potash is vitally important as it is instrumental in helping plants grow better. As developing nations spend more money on eating better and eating more protein, there is a tremendous push to extract more productivity out of global agriculture. The only way to squeeze more productivity out of agriculture is to add fertilizer to the soil. Saskatchewan has seen a quite a rush of late as companies both private and public have flocked in to lay claim to vast tracts of land and the associated potash mineral rights. In fact, even Chinese investment firms have found their way to Saskatchewan to lay claim to potash land claims.

One company that made its debut in the past week is Potash North (TSXv:PON). The stock started trading at 35 cents quickly exploded higher. Potash North has laid claim to a substantial block of property near the town of Esterhazy, Saskatchewan. Esterhazy is already home to a potash mine operated by Mosaic ( NYSE: MOS). This opens the door to the old adage – what better place to explore than right beside an existing mine.

Potash North finished trading this week at C$3.22. The only way to play this stock is to trade. Buy the dips and sell the rallies. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I say this because it takes 7-8 years to build a potash mine so you do not want to hold these upstart potash plays as a classic investment in your portfolio. There are a number of other potash plays in Saskatchewan to also take a look at. In the weeks to come I shall be profiling these at www.themarkettraders.com. Stay tuned…. Read more »