Saturday, August 15, 2009

Rick’s Picks Weekend Edition

– Posted in: Free Rick's Picks

Is Wall Street Ready for Obama’s Fall? The stock market’s powerful bear rally, now five month’s old, has fed on false hopes and delusional thinking, but it is unlikely to survive the coming collapse of the Obama presidency. Mr. Obama’s once-overwhelming popularity, though ebbing, has so far survived the voters’ growing discontent with his policies. However, disapproval is mounting, even on the political left, and it’s going to reach critical mass once the president’s ill-conceived plan for a government takeover of the healthcare system has gone down in flames. He will become a lame-duck president after less than a year in office... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** ‘All Roads Lead to Deflation’ When we dropped out of the inflation/deflation debate a while ago, we asked the inflationists to wake us when the price of suburban homes reached a quadrillion dollars. Wouldn’t that be nice for the fifty million or so Americans who owe more on their homes than they’re worth! Anyway, the topic continues to percolate in the Rick’s Picks forum, including this recent, astute post from “Senor Cuidado”. Like us, the Senor doubts inflation is lurking around the bend: Tahoe Billy, you priced gold and eggs but you left out oil. Oil is key to the U.S. economy. With gold at $3,000, what is the oil price going to be? And how are Americans going to afford the new stratospheric oil price? You also left out any interest rate prognostication. My advice is to read bloggers Ackerman, Shedlock, Denninger et al. and get a handle on... Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** 2009 Promises to Get Tougher (Here’s the latest dispatch from our friend and colleague Larry Amernick, who thinks any stock-market corrections in the offing are going to be shallow.  If