HT Mark Thoma

First, full disclosure.  I am talking my book.  I own a lot of gold.  Since I have a large position, I am biased.  Always consider the position of the proponent when assessing the validity of the argument, me included.

As regular readers of Running of the Bulls know, I'm pretty lazy.  That's why I am just now getting around to posting on a report published by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada (CGA) a few weeks ago on Canadian household debt entitled Where Is the Money Now: The State of Canadian Household Debt as Conditions for Economic Emerge.  And that debt is growi

At least in some cities.

From The Financial Times.

We here at Running of the Bulls pay some attention to analysts' forecasts for company earnings, but not a whole lot because forecasting is less of an exact science than handicapping football games and predicting the weather.  Via Paul Kedrosky, the green line is analysts' forecasts of future earnings while the blue line is actual earnings.

I never understood the arguments of those who said the dollar was going to "collapse."  Collapse against what?  The euro?  The yen?  The pound?  The yuan?

I have no idea what caused the collapse intra-day today, whether it was a bad trade or the withdrawal of liquidity by the machines or what.  What I do know is that it was amazing to watch.  At one point, the Dow was down nearly 1,000 points.  I have never seen anything like it.

I got lucky.  On Monday near the close, I hedged out all my equities positions to net flat.  I had also been buying gold calls the past week and have been long the dollar since the beginning of April.  So my book since Monday's close has been long gold, long the dollar.  

Who wouldn't be?  From the FT.

In a week in which Goldman Sachs executives were hauled over the coals for allegedly structuring a deal that they expected to fail, angry members of a US senate committee invoked a city that had little to do with the bank but everything to do with negative public attitudes towards Wall Street.