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Peak Oil, Climate change and the Greater Depression will pose many challenges to our way of life but let’s get real, for a moment: Golden Hordes aren’t one of them. At least not now. Economic depression brings with it a host of serious problems, and I think you can say quite confidently, without being a chicken little, that most of the world is in a Greater Depression. But still, we’ve got a few years to go before we can say that the USA is no longer a viable culture, when no one wants to live in Paris or London, when...

Gold is on a tear this morning, just breaking $1,182. The dollar is losing serious ground against the Euro during early AM trading. Check out the Euro/Dollar spike in the second chart below.

The gems don't stop coming from SocGen, which has been advising clients how to play the end of the world, while predicting fresh lows in the market in 2010. And (duh) they love gold. Rolfe Winkler: Is gold going to $6,300? Dylan Grice, an analyst with Societe Generale, says it’s possible, given the decline in central bank credibility. But investors need to keep one thing in mind: Gold is merely a vehicle to protect the purchasing power of money. Gold is surging because investors see that the Federal Reserve — more concerned with deflation and unemployment than sound money —...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- AOL may lay off a third of its staff as part of a restructuring related to the company's upcoming spin-off from Time Warner Inc., the unit told regulators Thursday. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, AOL said it had informed employees of the layoffs, which are conditioned upon its successful spin-off from Time Warner (TWX 31.86, -0.96, -2.93%) . The transaction is slated for Dec. 9. AOL told employees it has announced a voluntary layoff program that starts Dec. 4 and goes through Dec. 11. The company is offering buyouts to as many as...

The Great Credit Crunch Is Deepening Minyanville Staff Nov 19, 2009 9:20 am Consumers will feel the effects in the form of tighter credit standards. Editor's Note: This article was written by Richard Suttmeier, chief market strategist at ValuEngine.com, which is a fundamentally-based quant research firm in Princeton, New Jersey, that covers more than 5,000 stocks every day. Within the proposed banking reform bill, the House Financial Services Committee wants banks and funds to make payments in advance for companies deemed “too-big-to-fail”. This fund will be capped at $200 billion, insuring that taxpayers won't wind up paying for a bailout...

The housing market dropped off a cliff in October, as the original Nov. 30th expiration date for the first-time home buyers tax credit approached, according to the Housing Market Monitor of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Add to that the 6.25% 60-day delinquency rate in the third quarter -- 58% above the level of one year ago -- and you've got a recipe for housing disaster: more foreclosures, slower sales and ultimately a greater decline in house prices. "With unemployment virtually certain to remain high well into next year, there is little prospect for any sizable drop in...

Housing starts fall back to lowest level in six months October data show starts down 10.6% and building permits off 4% By Greg Robb, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- In a blow to the optimism that had surrounded the U.S. housing sector in recent months, housing starts fell a sharp 10.6% in October, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. New construction on housing units dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000, the lowest level since April. The 10.6% drop was the biggest percentage decline for starts since January. Both single-family homes and multifamily units declined last month. Prior to the...

LANSING, Mich. — One frustrated client hurled a piece of concrete through the window of a welfare agency. Another threw her car keys at a welfare worker before being escorted away. At one point, a woman on public assistance even took a swing at a worker. As Michigan struggles with the highest-in-the-nation jobless rate, state workers who deal with unemployment, welfare and other aid programs say they have never been so overwhelmed — or so worried about their safety. Some clients have begun taking their anger out on the very people who are offering help. And caseworkers are seeking extra...

Roubini: The Worst Is Yet To Come! Joe WeisenthalNov. 15, 2009, 6:47 PM Roubini is back! After a summer of mixed messages, he's now firmly back to stark warnings, most recently sounding the alarm about a massive bubble due to the dollar carry trade. And today in the Daily News he has some bad news for the unemployed: the worst is yet to come. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses...

Synopsis: US consumers skitish (unexpectedly of course).

WASHINGTON — Fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits — but still too many to signal that the economy is close to gaining jobs. First-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 502,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest claims since the week ending Jan. 3, and below economists' estimates. Claims would have to fall to the high 400s to indicate the economy could soon produce even a slight gain in jobs, estimates Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. That level of claims could be reached by January, he said, and the economy should...

Economists in the latest Wall Street Journal survey, on average, expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates around September 2010, a politically sensitive time considering midterm elections will be right around the corner and unemployment is forecast to still be over 9.5%. The 52 surveyed economists—not all of whom answer every question—on average expect the unemployment rate to rise to 10.3% by the end of this year from its current 10.2%, and they expect it to stay above 9.5% through 2010. The respondents expect job growth to return over the next 12 months, but the forecast calls for an...

Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks the unemployment rate is going to at least 12 percent, maybe even 13 percent. Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers. If he is right, all political bets are off. I think the Democrats could lose the House and effective control of the Senate. I think you would also be talking about the rise of third party and perhaps a challenger to Obama in 2012. So here is...

Report: 10 States Face Looming Budget Disasters By JUDY LIN, Associated Press Wednesday, November 11, 2009SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In Arizona, the budget has grown so gloomy that lawmakers are considering mortgaging Capitol buildings. In Michigan, state officials dealing with the nation's highest unemployment rate are slashing spending on schools and health care. Drastic financial remedies are no longer limited to California, where a historic budget crisis earlier this year grew so bad that state agencies issued IOUs to pay bills. A study released Wednesday warned that at least nine other big states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the...

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the estimated 7,500 jobs lost in October, the trucking industry has lost more than 91,000 jobs since the end of 2008 – a decline of 6.8 percent. Job cuts since July 2008 – just before the current decline – total 141,400. The BLS numbers reflect...

In the current fiscal year alone, the U.S. Congress and the administration have created a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion — more than TRIPLE the size of America's largest deficit in history. Worse, they now admit that the cumulative deficits through 2019 will be at least $9 trillion, and that they have no plan in place to reduce this monster in our midst. This is the greatest threat to your financial future of all time. As experts like Warren Buffett have noted, the only way Washington politicians know how to solve the debt crisis is by creating inflation. They are...

I think we’ve all been broke before. Large men come and break your thumbs and threaten your family, and then you hide out in a dumpster until it all blows over. That’s all well and good for an individual, but what happens if our entire country goes broke? Robert J. Samuelson raised this concern in the Washington Post, and it got me worried, even though I didn’t quite understand it all (which perhaps actually increases the worry). We can’t just hide America in a dumpster (and even if we could, I bet that goody-two-shoes Canada would rat us out); we...

Synopsis: Over 66% will be dependent on government [for salary, pension or entitlement] by 2018. This is not sustainable .... no really.

Nov. 9, 2009, 10:52 a.m. EST Dollar reached 15-month low in wake of G20 meeting Euro presses back above $1.50 By Deborah Levine & William L. Watts, MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar weakened Monday, pushing an index of the greenback down more than 1% and to the lowest in 15 months, after a weekend meeting of Group of 20 policy makers offered no support for the U.S. unit. Traders also took heed of an International Monetary Fund report issued at the G20 meeting that said the dollar has moved closer to "medium-term equilibrium" but "still remains on the...

To hear President Obama tell it, he's been busy creating jobs since taking office. The $787 billion stimulus package, he said last winter, would "save or create 3.5 million jobs." The White House is touting reports from recipients of stimulus funds asserting that they have created or saved 640,000 jobs so far. Yet the national unemployment rate has now hit 10.2 percent, helping explain why Republicans won the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey last week, just a year after the party's 2008 drubbing. And Obama declared Friday that more action is needed. "History tells us that job growth...