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Kyle Bass Puts A Timeframe On His Infamous Prediction Of A Japanese Collapse Julia La RocheJanuary 18, 2013CNBC screengrab Texan hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, the founder of Hayman Capital Management, was on CNBC from the floor of the NYSE talking Japan, housing and the Fed moments ago. Bass, who if famously bearish on Japan, has timestamped his trading saying that the turn will come 18 to 24 months from now, NetNet's John Carney pointed out on Twitter. He's been predicting a debt collapse for a long time, but with nothing to show for it.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The House of Representatives will vote next week to authorize a three-month increase in the debt ceiling, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Friday. "Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget,"

According to the US Census Bureau, the poverty rate in the USA soared to 15% by the end of 2011. Poverty, of course, is linked to unemployment and partial employment. Here is a chart of US poverty compared to the U6 measure of unemployment. Perhaps when the Census Bureau updates their poverty survey for 2012, it will have improved. Of course, the poverty numbers suffer from the infamous “devil is in the details” problem. The Heritage Foundation, for example, digs deeper in the causes and measurement of poverty. Poverty can include Section 8 housing, big screen televisions, food stamps and...

LAS VEGAS — The United States appears to be experiencing a rec­ord run on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and some kinds of ammunition as buyers deluge stores in search of guns and bullets they fear will be banned by the Obama administration, according to firearms industry executives and market analysts. Even allowing for spikes in gun sales that follow every mass killing in the United States and attendant political debates about gun control, industry executives said the surge seems unprecedented. And it has emptied shelves of the kind of semiautomatic rifle that was used to kill 20 children and...

GOLDMAN: Gold Is Going To $1200 Matthew BoeslerJanuary 17, 2013The bank's central thesis is that the U.S. economic recovery finally takes off in 2013, and Goldman expects that to drive a selloff in the gold market as investors rotate away from traditional "safe-haven" investments. At the time, the analysts wrote, "We lower our 3-, 6- and 12-mo gold price forecasts to $1,825/toz, $1,805/toz and $1,800/toz and introduce a $1,750/toz 2014 forecast. While we see potential for higher gold prices in early 2013, we see growing downside risks." Now, Goldman has decided to up the ante a bit. Yesterday, its commodity...

Gun stocks rose Wednesday, even as President Obama called on Congress to pass an assault weapon ban. The stock prices for Smith & Wesson Holding Co. (SWHC) and Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) rose about 4%. The stock for Sturm, Ruger has risen 13% in the month since the shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left 20 children and six educators dead. Retailers that specialize in guns have also done well. The stock price for Cabela's (CAB) surged 6% on Wednesday and has gained 20% over the last month. Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) notched up slightly, and has...

Economists may not agree on much, but we all agree that economic output is a function of capital and labor. Ask a Keynesian, a Marxist, an Austrian, a monetarist, or any economist, and they’ll all agree that living standards are determined by the quality and quantity of these two factors of production. So it should be very worrisome that there has been a big drop in the share of the population that is employed. Here’s a chart produced from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, showing labor force participation during the 21st Century.There was a big drop during the recession. That’s...

What is the trigger for a revolution? Sometimes it a brutal act of repression. Sometimes it a lost war, or a natural catastrophe, that exposes the failings of a regime. But more often than not, it is soaring food prices. The easiest prediction to make for 2013 is that everything we eat will once again rise sharply in price. So where will the revolutions start this year? Keep an eye on Algeria and Greece — and if you want to feel very nervous, Russia and China. And if you are smart, keep your money out of those countries as well....

The nation's largest pharmacy benefits manager is cutting its payroll. St. Louis-based Express Scripts Holding Co. announced its laying off 332 employees nationwide, including 103 workers at the former Medco Health Solutions site in Franklin Lakes and 12 at its facility in Willingboro. The layoffs are the latest in a series that followed the company's $29.1 billion acquisition of Medco in April...

50 Shocking Questions That You Should Ask To Anyone That Is Not A Prepper Yet By Michael Snyder January 16th, 2013 Share this list of shocking questions with everyone you know that needs to wake up. Sometimes asking good questions is the best way to get someone that you care about to understand something. When I attended law school, I became very familiar with something called "the Socratic method". It is a method that has been traditionally used in law schools all over the United States. Law professors will bombard their students with questions, and the goal is to stimulate...

From the mid-17th century to the late 20th century, the American economy grew roughly 3.5% a year. That growth rate has since declined significantly. When the final figures are in for 2012, the annual rate of real output growth for the first dozen years of this century is likely to be about 1.81%. What accounts for the slowdown? An important part of the answer is simple: Americans aren't working as much today. And this trend reflects more than the recession and sluggish economy of the past few years. The national income accounts suggest that about 70% of U.S. output is...

10 Countries Hoarding Enormous Stockpiles Of Gold Mamta BadkarJanuary 16,2013AP Photo/Newmont Mining Germany is reportedly repatriating gold it has stashed with the New York Fed and the Bank of France, and some policymakers want to bring back all their gold in case the financial crisis worsens. People continue to debate whether gold is or should be considered money. However, this hasn't kept the world's central banks from increasing their gold reserves. The World Gold Council estimates that central banks have purchased 500 tons of gold in 2012, up from 465 tons last year. Analysts attribute some of the support in...

The Secular Bear Market Will End And The World Will Be On A Sustainable Path By The End Of The DecadeJohn Mauldin, Thoughts From The FrontlineJanuary 16, 2013, 12:09 AM“There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." – Jean Monnet "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." –Herbert Stein As we begin a new year, we again indulge ourselves in the annual (if somewhat futile) rite of forecasting the...

One month after the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama attributed the recent surge of weapons sales to efforts by gun control foes to arouse fears that the federal government would seize firearms. Obama said he would unveil details of his "sensible, common-sense" program for tighter gun controls later this week. The president, responding to questions at a White House news conference Monday, said those steps would include "an assault weapons ban that is meaningful," stronger background checks and measures to keep high-capacity magazine clips "out of the hands of folks who shouldn't have them." Asked at his news...

We have once again reached the debt limit and most legislators want to blast right through as usual. Obama says he doesn’t even want to discuss it. Those who want some spending cuts are threatening to block continued spending unless there are real cuts. That brings us to two ploys that are being considered by the big spenders. First, some are saying the President doesn’t need Congress for spending authority. They say the 14th Amendment would allow Obama to spend without regard to the limit, even though the constitutions says all spending must be authorized by Congress. Second, some say...

Near-shoring refers to the practice of attracting global businesses to Detroit whose growth and expansion is otherwise hindered by restrictive U.S. immigration laws. American businesses, particularly in industries critical to the new economy, have faced significant hurdles to engaging the world’s most talented workers because of restrictive U.S. immigration laws. Since the H-1B skilled worker visa cap was rolled back to 65,000, the demand by U.S. firms for these visas has far exceeded the supply, usually surpassing the cap only days after the application period is opened. As a result, U.S. firms have been forced to locate facilities in other...

We believe that being welcoming is the right thing to do, but that’s not the whole story. Michigan is the only state that lost population between 2000 and 2010. Considering how high unemployment in Michigan has been, some might say that’s a good thing — fewer people to compete for the jobs we do have. In 2008, the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Skillman Foundation commissioned former State Representative Steve Tobocman to explore the idea of immigration as a potential strategy for reinventing the economy of that region. Fewer people to...

Chemical producers abandoned the U.S. in droves. Cheap natural gas is luring them back. People predicting a manufacturing renaissance in the United States usually imagine whirring robots or advanced factories turning out wind turbines and solar panels. The real American edge might be in something entirely more mundane: cheap starting materials for plastic bottles and plastic bags. The plummeting price of natural gas, which can be used to make a vast number of products, including tires, carpet, antifreeze, lubricants, cloth, and many types of plastic, is luring key industries to the United States. Just five years ago, natural gas prices...

A US Default Would Be The Financial Equivalent Of This Painting Of Hell Brett LoGiuratoJanuary 14, 2013 Earlier today, President Barack Obama almost dared Republicans to not increase the nation's borrowing limit in a White House press conference. "If Congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks, veterans benefits will be delayed," Obama said. "... Investors around the world will ask if the United States of America is in fact a safe bet. Markets could go haywire. Interest rates would spike for anyone who borrowed money." One analyst — Michael Feroli, the chief economist at JP...

Two Of The Biggest Problems In The Financial System Will Hit In 2013 Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2013Jan 14, 2013 - 03:11 AM By: Graham Summers This week is options expiration week: the week in which various call and put positions will expire. Wall Street is notorious for using these weeks to gun the markets this way and that in order to insure that the greatest number of puts and calls expire worthless. So expect the market to be even more volatile than usual this week. Outside of this, the investment world is slowly emerging from its Central Bank policy...