economy
Jim Grant and the GOP Joining Forces to Bring Back the Gold Standard
With two GOP presidential candidates saying they'd add legendary Wall Street pundit Jim Grant to their administrations, bringing back the gold standard clearly has moved up on the Republican agenda.
Ron Paul, for whom returning to the gold standard has been a decades-long crusade, has said he would name Grant chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. In his case, that would be a compromise – Paul has often called for the Fed to be abolished altogether.
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich has promised to appoint Jim Grant to head a commission to study the possibility of going back to the gold standard.
Grant, who publishes Grant's Interest Rate Observer, is a well-known gold bug and critic of the Fed.
His ideas have attracted increasing favor in a party that blames the Fed's easy money policy for the country's economic problems.
Grant calls the current system of fiat currency an "anachronism" and questioned the "command and control, top-down system of having a handful of people at the Fed dictate interest rates."
He's worried that the Fed's quantitative easing policies have created a bubble in Treasury bonds.
And make no mistake: If a Republican president gives him the opportunity, Grant already has a plan, starting with making a public case for the gold standard.
"I would then lay out a timeline for the conversion to a constitutional dollar, a dollar as envisaged by the Founding Fathers," Grant told MarketWatch.
Grant said he believes a dollar should be fixed "like a foot, or a pound."
Such a policy would arrest the steep decline in value the dollar has suffered since the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971 – a point Paul often raises on the campaign trail.
"Since 1971, since we lost our link to gold, the dollar has lost 85%," Paul recently told NPR. "So if you were a saver and wanted to take care of your kid's education, even if you made a little interest, you're going to lose money."
Middle-class worries like that have helped make a return to the gold standard a major issue in the 2012 Republican primary battle.
The other two remaining GOP contenders, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, are believed to be against a return to the gold standard, though both refrain from talking about it.
Of course, Republican proponents of the gold standard may not need Paul or Gingrich to win the nomination to move the issue forward.
The Hunt for Higher Yield: Investors Pour into Emerging Market Debt
The never-ending hunt for higher yield is leading investors to bet record amounts on emerging market debt.
In just the first two weeks of 2012, governments of undeveloped economies from Asia to Africa sold more than $30.6 billion in dollar-denominated bonds according to Bloomberg News.
That's up from roughly $19.9 billion in the same period last year and the most since 1999, when Bloomberg began collecting data.
Typically, investors shun emerging market bonds during times of uncertainty in favor of "safer" assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries.
But that has started to change.
The Big Move Into Emerging Market Debt
In fact, investor demand is overwhelming supplies as orders have outstripped the amount of bonds being sold.
During a recent auction, the Philippines received $12.5 billion of orders for $1.5 billion of 25-year bonds, pushing the yield down to a record-low 5%. Indonesia sold 30-year bonds at a record-low yield of 5.375% and Colombia sold $1.5 billion of 29-year bonds at 4.964%.
Analysts say the debt crisis in Europe, along with record low yields on U.S Treasuries, has investors on the hunt.
They are now buying the debt of undeveloped nations like Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, even though credit-rating firms rank them as more risky than their European counterparts
"What we're seeing is a re-evaluation of sovereign-credit risk, increasingly being driven more by fundamentals than by classifications," Eric Stein, a portfolio manager at Eaton Vance Corp. (NYSE: EV) told The Wall Street Journal.
According to the J.P. Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index, investment-grade sovereign emerging-market bonds are yielding an average of 4.7%.
By contrast, Italian 30-year debt yields 7%, while Spanish 30-year debt yields 6.1%.
One reason emerging market bonds are attracting interest is…
State of the Union Excerpts Outline Speech Focused on Income Inequality, Job Creation
Tags: Economic Growth, economy, Election 2012, Jobs, Obama SOTU, SOTU, SOTU topics, State of the Union, State of the Union excerptsstate of the uniion 2012
Downward Mobility is Crushing the American Dream
Forget about getting ahead. For many in the middle class these days it's more about not sliding backwards.
It's called downward mobility and it's crushing the American Dream.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts, nearly one out of three U.S. citizens born into middle class households in the 1960s have lost their economic status.
And because the study used data from 2004 to 2006 – before the Great Recession – the numbers today could be even worse.
"Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you'll have that same status as an adult," Erin Currier, project manager at Pew's Economic Mobility Project, told CNNMoney. "With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there's good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe."
Pew used three different criteria to assess the economic status of the study subjects. According to two criteria, 28% dropped out of the middle class; a third measure showed downward mobility for 19%.
Pew defines the middle class as those falling between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income.
It compared the households of the target group in 1979, when middle class meant incomes between $32,900 and $64,000, to their income in 2004-2006, when middle class meant making between $53,900 and $110,000.
Any middle class workers hit by the current recession will have a long road back.
In another Pew study, half of people who lost 25% or more of their income during better times in 1994 were still making less money four years later. One third of the group had not recovered even after 10 years.
With the unemployment rate still at 8.5% and so many people working at jobs making less than they once did, it will take years for the middle class to recover – if it ever does.
No Longer the Land of Opportunity
Once envied as the land of opportunity, the United States is no longer the best place to climb the economic ladder – far from it.
Gasoline Price Outlook: An Epitaph For Sam the Service Station Man
[Editor's Note: In today's essay, Dr. Kent Moors - a frequent Money Morning contributor and a consultant to some of the world's largest oil-producing nations - relates a personal anecdote that provides some real insight into his gasoline price outlook. Dr. Moors' story certainly explains why he expects gasoline prices to head even higher.]
I am a great believer in the American entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, the U.S. economy stands or falls on our ability to provide enough space to allow small folks to have big-time dreams.
However, when times get difficult, some little folks end up under the bus – along with their dreams.
To understand what I mean, let's take a look at my friend Sam.
Many of you may remember Sam, the proprietor of an out-of-the-way rural service station situated outside of Pittsburgh. I introduced him to Money Morning readers last summer in an essay: Gasoline-Price Forecasting: What Sam the Gas Station Owner Knows That We Don't.
I've known Sam for years.
So I was stunned to discover that he's throwing in the towel.
To understand what this means for gasoline prices, please click here…
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