We Are Now Entering The “Discovery” Phase Of Financial Collapse – B.B.
The Reason For The Coming Breakout In The Gold & Silver Market
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Items from Professor Preponomics:
U.S. News
Why Capitalists are Repeatedly Fooled by Business Cycles (Mises Institute) Spoiler Alert: “The only way to stop the menace of boom-bust cycles is for the central bank to stop the tampering with financial markets.”
Junk Bonds Finally Capitulate to Lower Oil Price Environment (Visual Capitalist) From the Article: “When low oil prices hit last year, many fringe oil and gas producers believed that it would be possible to wait out the market for better prices. Some of these companies even issued risky junk bonds to raise capital to sustain operations until better times.”
The History of Junk Bond Meltdowns Points to Trouble (Contra Corner) David Stockman asks an interesting question: “…is high-yield debt the canary in the credit mine?”
Junk Bonds Send Ominous Warning to the Market (Barrons) From the Article: “What we see is that junk bonds seem to flash a warning ahead of major incidents in stocks including the crash of 1987, the stealth bear market in 1994, and the end of the bull market in 2000.”
International News
Oil Prices Hit Lowest Since 2004 as Supply Balloons (Reuters via Yahoo News) From the Article: “OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, will stick with its year-old policy of compensating for lower prices with higher production, and shows no signs of wavering…”
Brazil’s Worrying Change of Finance Ministers (The Economist) From the Article: “That change is likely to make a terrible situation worse. It suggests that Mr Levy lost an argument within the government about whether austerity is the right cure for Brazil’s sickly economy, and that he lost it not because his economic remedy was wrong but because it was politically unpalatable.”
Personal Economics and Household Finance
7 Austerity Measures for Your Personal Budget (Investopedia) Commentary: This article encourages readers to attend to their health and wellness as a way to reduce the financial costs of illness over time – it’s a suggestion we don’t see often among the ideas for reducing household costs, but it’s an excellent reminder!