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I have been reading on FR and other places a number of articles on the current state of the economy, and pontifications about where the market is going from here. Among the items I have read are that: 1) the economy is in a recovery 2) the economy is in a jobless recovery 3) the housing bubble is not done collapsing due to the banks not trying to claim foreclosures, so they can keep the loans and home values underlying the loan closer to constant. So the minute it looks like there is demand, EVERYONE will try to sell at...

Trashed Real Estate, Soaring Gold Bruce Vanderveen October 08, 2010 The prop wash from Ben Bernanke's helicopters has yet to spread dollars on the struggling U.S. real estate market. Gold, though, up over 30% in the last year, is a major beneficiary, Three years ago a typical Florida house (Tampa area) sold for $240,000 and gold was around $450/oz. Now the house value has been cut in half to $120,000 while Gold has tripled and is closing in on $1,350/oz. It took 535 ounces of gold to buy the house in 2006, today it only takes 90 ounces. Why such...

Markets Forget The Unemployment Data, Every Index Up Over 0.5% Gregory White Oct. 8, 2010, 3:06 PM Markets have forgotten this mornings' disappointing jobs report, and have moved positive as we head into the last hour of trading. The Dow is in line to close above 11,000, though only narrowly. Dow up 0.51% S&P 500 up 0.53% NASDAQ up 0.67% The real story today is not in equities, it's in commodities. Futures are surging across the market, with food commodities, precious metals, and energy all on board. From Finviz:[snip]

Gold Is Sliding Again, And Has Lost Nearly $40 In The Last 24 Hours Joe Weisenthal Oct. 8, 2010, 6:50 AM Hisssssssssss? As seen by the green line and the red line (which is yesterday) gold has lost about $40/oz in a little more than 24 hours. No doubt the gold bugs are praying for a weak jobs report that guarantees a monster QEII bazooka. [snip]

Forget $2000 An Ounce; Gold Set To Plummet Forget $2000 An Ounce; Gold Set To Plummet Jason Schwarz October 07, 2010 The gold bubble is preparing to burst. You can tell we’re near the end because of the confusion of rationale that seeks to explain the continued rise. Is gold reaching new highs because of the fear of a double dip? Is it because of quantitative easing? Is it because of the euro collapse? Is it because of the first dip? Is it because of future inflation? Is the current price movement being fueled by investor speculation or has there...

Rampant Inflation In 2011? The Monetary Base Is Exploding, Commodity Prices Are Skyrocketing And The Fed Wants To Print Lots More MoneyThe Economic Collapse BlogOctober 2, 2010 Are you ready for rampant inflation? Well, unfortunately it looks like it might be headed our way. The U.S. monetary base has absolutely exploded over the last couple of years, and all that money is starting to filter through into the hands of consumers. Commodity prices are absolutely skyrocketing, and it is inevitable that those price increases will show up in our stores at some point soon. The U.S. dollar has already been...

Gold Is Expected To Keep Rising This Week Vincent Fernando, CFA Sep. 26, 2010, 4:43 PMImage: Covilha via Flickr As gold hovers just below the $1,300 mark it broke last week, consensus expects the metal keep rising in the coming week. The bull is back: Bloomberg: Sixteen of 23 traders, investors and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, or 70 percent, said the metal will rise next week. Six forecast lower prices and one was neutral. Gold for December delivery was up 1.3 percent for this week at $1,293.60 an ounce at 11 a.m. yesterday on the Comex in New York. Futures...

Gold Bulls Needn't Fear Noise About Government Confiscating Gold by: Jonathan Bernstein September 23, 2010 Some influential commentators say that as the Government gets more desperate to shore up its finances, it will confiscate private gold holdings. Just like it did in 1933. After all, the argument runs, the Feds already did this, so there is precedent. And if Fort Knox really is running on empty (Ron Paul among others wants an audit to find out), the U.S. needs money even more badly than it is willing to admit. So, why wouldn’t the Feds go for the gold? First, I...

DEFLATION? Who Are They Kidding? Commodities Prices Are Going Through The Roof Henry Blodget Sep. 18, 2010, 11:55 AM A few weeks ago, everyone began to agree that the US was headed for a decade of Japan-style deflation. The banks weren't lending, consumers weren't borrowing, the Fed's desperate attempts to create inflation weren't working, the country was awash in excess manufacturing and labor capacity, and so on. And most of those things are true. In the United States. [snip] Several billion people in China and India and elsewhere have recently discovered the joys of capitalism, and, as a result, they're...

Why Ben Bernanke Should Completely Ignore The Commodity Inflation All Around Him Joe Weisenthal Sep. 18, 2010, 5:10 PM There's no doubt that commodity inflation is happening all around the world, as our colleague Henry Blodget noted earlier. Soft commodities, hard commodities, and precious metals have made impressive moves in recent months, helped in large part -- it's believed -- by ongoing robust demand in much of the semi-developed world (China, the rest of Asia, India, Brazil), and of course the "growth" in US and Europe. So when the FOMC meets in the coming week, it should take into account...

...Expect quite vociferous and rightly justifiable anger to soon arise from the livestock and poultry sectors aimed squarely at the idiotic ethanol boondoggle which has helped drive the price of a bushel of corn to a 2 year high with soybeans and wheat riding right alongside of the price spike. Some of this is demand based on increasing world populations plus reduced yields from this year’s crop but way too large a portion of the corn crop is being devoted to government subsidized ethanol production. We are fools burning our food in our damn gas tanks to salvage some guilt-ridden...

Gold Surges Overnight To A New Record -- Now Above $1280 Joe Weisenthal Sep. 17, 2010, 4:18 AM A new record for gold! It's now above $1280. Note that the euro and US futures also had a big up night, so obviously the dollar's getting hammered.[snip]

Rosenberg: The Latest Gold Spike Was A Huge Tell Of What's Moving The Metal Joe Weisenthal Sep. 15, 2010, 1:58 PM In his latest note, David Rosenberg draws a lesson from yesterday's gold surge to a record high: Well, at least we know we can use yesterday’s action as a microcosm to what is actually driving the gold price higher (up $22.55/oz, +1.8%, yesterday to $1,268 an ounce) — and it isn’t inflation. How do we know that? Because 10-year TIPS breakeven levels — the market proxy for inflation expectations — fell seven basis points. The correlation would seem to...

Today is a case of being careful what you wish for – the Fed has pulled out all the stops in an attempt to avoid a deflationary trap tied to the inception of the credit crisis that broke loose in the summer of 2008. Since then they have flooded the system with liquidity through a process dubiously referred to as Quantitative Easing. They have also loaded their balance sheet with worthless loan paper and shoved interest rates practically to zero. Not to be outdone, our illustrious administration has saddled us with enough debt at the federal level to last three...

Gold Just Went Straight Vertical To A New Record -- Stocks Tumble Joe Weisenthal Sep. 14, 2010, 9:47 AM Boom! Gold! Meanwhile, stocks are sliding.[snip]

Gold Breaks $1260 Joe Weisenthal Sep. 8, 2010, 8:32 AM The march continues.[snip]

The Dollar Is Dumped, As Gold And Yen Break Out To Brand New Highs Joe Weisenthal Sep. 7, 2010, 9:36 AM Hello risk aversion. We start with gold, which is perking straight up, and would be at a record high if it closed here. The other big one is dollar yen. The yen has hit a 15-year high.[snip]

Agri-Food Price Index Makes New High! Commodities / Agricultural Commodities Sep 04, 2010 - 05:16 AM By: Ned W Schmidt One road to wealth is to only own those assets for which the price is rising. That seems to be a rule that equity investors have forgotten. In any event, a great market technician once suggested only looking at those things with prices making new 52-week highs. His reasoning was that for the price of something to rise it must eventually make a new high. Well, based on the above chart, that technician would be all over Agri-Food commodities and...

Food Crisis Doomsday Scenario As Prices To Shoot Through The Roof Politics / Food Crisis Aug 31, 2010 - 08:52 AM By: Pravda The worst weather on record coupled with the practice of speculation in the commodities markets are set to send food prices skyrocketing, bringing misery and starvation to large swathes of the world’s population. Are we set to see food riots this winter? In the USA, Walmart has already announced a price hike of 5.8% on average for a 31-item basic basket for this Autumn. The long-term rise, however, is far more frightening, with the UNO predicting an...

A Horrible Drought And Embargo Fears, Have Made WHEAT The Hottest Commodity In The World The Macro Report Jul. 28, 2010, 1:25 PM Growing concern over the worst drought in a century in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have rocked the wheat markets in recent weeks, driving the CBOT contract to outperform Oil and Gold YTD (see chart). Projections for the shortfall of combined Russian, Kazakhstani and the Ukrainian wheat exports run as high as 8MT lower than USDA forecasts and rumors of an export embargo by both the Russian and Ukrainian governments have been published by Bloomberg and...