Driving down the broad avenues of Cleveland, Ohio, was like flipping through the pages of a picture book about the rise and fall of our industrial empire. Where demolitions had not removed things — a lot was gone — stood the residue of a society so different from ours that you felt momentarily transported to another planet where a different race of beings had gone about their business.
Among the qualities most visible in the recent ruins of that lost society is the secure confidence expressed in its buildings. Even the most modest factory or business establishment built before the 20th century included decorations and motifs devised for no other reason but to be beautiful -- towers, swags, medallions, cartouches — as if to state we are joined proudly in a great enterprise to make good things happen in this world. This was true not just of Cleveland, of course, but the whole nation, for a while anyway.
Equally arresting are the changes visible in the collective demeanor from the mid-20th century, especially after the Second World War, when the adolescent panache of a rising economy had morphed into the grinding force of a place devoted to the production of anything. The memory of the Great Depression lingered like a metabolic disorder, and the spirit of the place was no longer caught up in the muscular exuberance of self-discovery but the sheer determination to stay powerful and alive. This phase didn’t last long.
By the 1970s, signs of a new illness were clear. Production was moving someplace else, incomes and household security with it. An existential pall settled over the city as ominous symptoms of waning vitality showed up in the organs of production. Steel-making and car-making staggered. Even the Cuyahoga river caught on fire, as if fate was a practical joke. Major retail was moving elsewhere — to the suburban outlands — where so many of the people who worked in the downtown towers had already fled. The population that remained in the city center was made of recently uprooted agricultural quasi-serfs who had only just come up to the city a generation before to make better livings in the factories that were all of a sudden shutting down. It seemed like a kind of swindle and they were understandably angry about…
World industrial production in the Great Depression and now:
Jesse here. This chart is a bit deceptive because it compares two periods of time based on the start of the crisis. It would be interesting to compare the two crises from the start of the Fed’s expansion of the monetary base. As I recall, the early 20th century Fed did not react this way until 1931 and did so in two stages. Ok, Ben was quick out of the starting gate, and in a big way. Score one for the Fed. They are quick on the draw.
And there is little hazard that Ben will tighten prematurely out of fear of inflationary forces, having learned at least that lesson which is obvious enough as well.
It would be unjust to not note that the 1930′s Fed suffered a bit under multiple chairmen, and the difficulties of an entirely different type of commercial banking structure and the restraints of a gold standard. The challenge instead in this era of fiat currency will be to avoid the ‘zombification’ of the economy, the appearance of vitality with none of the self-sustaining growth.
Before this Administration declares "Mission Accomplished" and high fives its victory, they may wish to consider that they have done the obvious quickly in one dimension, but have done very little to change the dynamics of what created the crisis in the first place, choosing instead to support the status quo to a fault.
There are three traits that make a nominal bounce in production fueled by a record expansion in the monetary base a success: sustainable growth without subsidy, sustainable growth without subsidy, and sustainable growth without subsidy.
Our forecast is that Ben and Team Obama are failing badly because they are fighting the last war, in the almost classic style of incompeteng generals who lost the early stages of the Second World War because they were using the game plan from the First.
Canada's oil sand mines will eventually produce up to 2 trillion barrels of oil and what that could mean for the environment has been debated for years. What's often overlooked though is a coke byproduct that results from refining the tar-like bit...
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Last week, Bill Gross did not mince his words when he said that he now "sees bubbles everywhere" and that "when that stops there will be repercussions" but for now Benny and the Inkjets, not to mention his band of merry statist men, who take from the poor and give to the wealthy, are playing the music on Max, and so one must dance and dance and dance. And after one legacy bond king, it was the turn of that other, ascendant one - Jeff Gundlach - to share his perspectives Bernanke's amazing bubble machine. His response, to nobody's surprise: "there is a bubble in central banking. We are drowning in central banking ...
Note from dshort: In response to a special request and in light of the strong market performance in the S&P 500 and meteoric rise in the Nikkei 225, I've updated my Mega-Bear weekly chart series through Friday's close.
It's time again for an update of our "Real" Mega-Bears, an inflation-adjusted overlay of three secular bear markets. It aligns the current S&P 500 from the top of the Tech Bubble in March 2000, the Dow in of 1929, and the Nikkei 225 from its 1989 bubble high.
The chart below is consistent with my preference for real (inflation-adjusted) analysis of long-term market behavior. The nominal all-time high in the index occurred in October 2007, but when we adjust for inflation, the "real" all-time high for the S&P 500 occurred in March 2000.
Global X, the New York-based ETF sponsor known for its unique lineup of commodities and emerging markets funds, announced six of its ETFs will be reverse split, including three gold mining-related funds.
The $29.4 million Global X Gold Explorers ETF (NYSE: GLDX) will undergo a 1-for-4 reverse split while the $2.78 million Global X Junior Miners ETF (NYSE: JUNR) will see a 1-for-3 reverse split. The Global X Pure Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: ...
It seems that every Tuesday in 2013 since January 8 has been positive on the Dow. And this past Tuesday was no exception. Now that sounds like a trend to put money on -- buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) at the close each Monday and close out the position late on Tuesday.
The Dow and S&P 500 both hit new all-time highs once again on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq hit its highest level since November 2000. The “risk on” allocation of new investment capital into cyclicals continues, although Wednesday saw leadership from defensive sectors Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Telecom, along with Financials. Nevertheless, ConvergEx reports that the average correlation of the ten S&P business sectors to the overall index averaged 82% last month. While that is below the 86% averag...
BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...
We are starting to see some very extreme readings on our monthly and weekly index charts since there has been no correction this year. I posted below first the monthly chart of the S&P 500 going back 15 years showing bollinger bands – rarely do we get above the upper one, and never have we been this far above. Then below that I posted (with 4 charts of 4 years each) the weekly data and you can see we are at a rare time we are above the weekly bollinger band as well. This non stop rally is getting very historical.
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Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(
