As we previewed yesterday ]when we showed that for 46 consecutive months industrial bellwether Caterpillar has failed to post a retail sales increase   it should probably not come as a surprise that moments ago CAT not only badly missed revenues, reporting $9.2 billion well below the $9.80 billion expected (courtesy of the usual non-GAAP fudging, CAT managed to "boost" its EPS enough to be... read more

Paul Volcker surfaces and what the elites are trying to foist on the unsuspecting public. Volcker Surfaces John Embry:  “Eric, the presidential campaign and debates have been so sophomoric as to be embarrassing to everyone connected to the whole process.  It’s so bad it triggered an article in the New York Times by two luminaries, Paul Volcker and Peter G. Peterson, titled Ignoring... read more

The best performing precious metal for the week was gold.  Gold was hammered down while Chinese markets were closed in the prior week, triggering a technical buy signal and possibly the best entry point in over a year to add to positions. After gold price discounts hit a record high of $100 an ounce in July, prices in India swung to a premium for the first time in nine months this week, repor... read more

The gold industry has firmly overcome so many obstacles in 2016, while at the same time reinventing itself, that there are no signs of the weakness some analysts talk about. This is the main takeaway from Haywood Securities latest Gold Producers Industry Report. The investment dealer remains constructive on the yellow metal sector by pointing to its relatively stable prices and producers�... read more

War, the Vietnamese dong, and the Eurasian Union The recent statement by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte regarding the countries relationship with the United States puts a fine point on the transition markers of the international monetary transformation.  This point should now be considered the counter pivot to Obama’s Asian pivot and the first moment when China has fundamentally geo... read more

With the Dow still above 18,000 and the dollar surging, is the world now headed into the next financial crisis? A portion of today’s note from Art Cashin:  Check Your Rabbit’s Foot – Here’s the opening of a Bloomberg column that’s getting passed around this morning:  Next year ends in a 7. If you’re superstitious or a little loose with statistics, that makes us due for anothe... read more

This indicator says the price of gold is now headed above $1,700. We are going to make this update short and simple.  Jason Goepfert of SentimenTrader pointed out that while small speculators have been puking up long gold positions in the paper market, the “smart money” has been buying Gold.Goepfert then pointed out that the median return for gold one year after a two week period of 20... read more

The interesting thing about working in alternative economics is that inevitably you will become the designated buzzkill. You may be presenting the facts on the ground and the reality behind the numbers, but most of what you have to report will not be pleasant. Alternative economists are doomed to be labeled “doom and gloomers.” And that’s okay… The truth is what it is, and sometimes... read more

With continued uncertainty in global markets, this is the shocking truth about how bad the economy really is in the United States. Across America, from established restaurant chains to upstarts, bankruptcies are rising, locations are closings and profit margins are shrinking… As noted in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “In just one recent week alone, three restaurant companies fi... read more