U.S. Economy
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Why the S&P 500 is Actually Nowhere Near an All-Time High
Celebrations of the S&P 500's recent string of all-time high closes have been premature, as it turns out.
Yes, the Standard & Poor's 500 index set another nominal record today (Tuesday) with a close of 1,625.96.
But that doesn't account for inflation. If you apply Yale Professor Robert Shiller's CAPE ratio, the S&P 500's all-time high was somewhere north of 2,000 back in the year 2000 - some 24% below today's record close.
While that might sound like great news for Wall Street's bulls, Shiller's data - which has proven strikingly accurate at predicting long-term market trends - isn't nearly so optimistic about where the markets are headed over the next decade.
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Stock Market this Week: Will Dow Soar Past 15,000?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 15,000 Friday - so will the stock market this week see another new high?
Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald joined FOX Business' "Varney & Co." program Monday morning to discuss how much higher the market can go. Listen to Keith's take on what's ahead for investors.
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Q&A With Shah Gilani: How to Protect Yourself Against the Coming Meltdown
The month of April brought in more than 1,000 comments, questions, posts, shares, "likes," and emails from you and your fellow readers. That's an Insights & Indictments record. It shows that you're thinking, that you're mad as hell about what you see, and you want to do something about it.
You can.
First, please keep helping me get the word out about the crimes and lies being perpetrated by our "leaders." Forward these emails; share my articles online. Spread the word however you can. Together, we can make our voices heard. We can make this country better for our kids and grandkids.
Second, at your request, I'm working on something big. I believe this could be the vehicle for the change you all want to see. We're going after the "permanent political class" getting cozy in Washington in a brand-new way. And don't think Wall Street is safe. We're going after them, too. We're going to shake them both up and demand reform.
I saw some brilliant comments and questions from my last two articles - about Congressional term limits and breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks. For today's Q&A, I purposely didn't include those. I want to address them in a different way. You'll see what I mean.
Lots else to cover this month... so let's get to it.
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Bond Market Crash Will Strike By 2016, Expert Predicts
Not only is a bond market crash inevitable, but it will hit sooner than many think - by 2015 or 2016 at the latest, according to Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies.
"It's the most overpriced, over-owned, oversupplied market in the history of American economics," Pento said of the bond market in an interview with The Street.
Pento compared the current bond market, with its historically low interest rates and flood of U.S. Treasuries, to two of the most recent bubbles - the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble that burst in 2007.
A sudden bond market collapse isn't likely, Pento said, but his models tell him it will happen, one way or another, within the next three years. And investors will need to be prepared.
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Check Out Who's Hiding $32 Trillion in Offshore Accounts
More than two million emails that shed light on the biggest tax dodge in history - trillions of dollars hidden in offshore accounts - have been uncovered by the British newspaper The Guardian and the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Some $32 trillion has been hidden in small island banking hubs which host a bevy of trust funds, shell corporations and other tax havens, the Tax Justice Network estimates.
This money is to the financial world what the Higgs boson and dark matter are to particle physics: It's tough to prove it's there, but the universe doesn't make much sense without it. It's just a matter of connecting the money to the people hiding it.
That's been a tall order... until now.
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Has Sequestration Saved the U.S. Economy?
There's a Jamaican saying, "the higher the monkey climbs up the tree, the more his butt is exposed."
The point being that the more we rise, the more vulnerable we become.
That has truly come to pass for a pair of superstars of the dismal science. And it could have a big impact on how successfully (or unsuccessfully) we can get the U.S. economy back on the rails.
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Is "Dow 16,000" a Reachable Target?
We all saw it.
Barron's April 20 cover showed a cartoon bull on a pogo stock, with the exclamation "Dow 16,000!"
So what's the investor takeaway - are we all in to 16,000, or is it a contrarian signal to watch out for a looming market pullback?
Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald joined FOX Business Network's "Varney & Co." program to answer that question.
Watch the following interview with Fitz-Gerald to find out.
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Stock Market Today: S&P 500 Reaches Record Before May Sell Off Hits
The stock market today (Tuesday) paused after kicking off the week with strong, across-the-board gains that took the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to an all-time closing high.
The S&P rose 11.37 points Monday, or 0.7%, to close at 1,593.61, a hair above the index's April 11 record of 1,593.37. The Nasdaq tacked on 27.76 points, or 0.8%, to 3307.02, its highest close since 2000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 106.20 points, or 0.7%, to 14818.75, inching closer to the anticipated 15,000 milestone.
Shortly before noon Tuesday, stocks took a breather. The Dow dipped 32.62 points, or 0.22%, at 14,786.13. The S&P slipped 1.95, or 0.12%, at 1,591.66. The Nasdaq notched a gain of 5.2%, or 0.16%, at 3,312.
As markets march into May, trading is expected to slow. The old "sell in May and go away" adage has many preaching caution. Bespoke Investments reports two of the ten worst months of May in S&P's history have occurred during the current bull market (2010 and 2012).
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The Most Dangerous Man in the World
When it comes to spending or saving, it's always a contentious debate.
But the risks are rarely as high as they are now for the U.S. and most major industrial nations. Such fundamental economic decisions will move a country forward (or backward) for decades, not months, and can't be undone quickly.
So let's choose the "winner" and "loser" of this debate carefully.
Yahoo's Daily Ticker host Henry Blodget pronounced last week that Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Paul Krugman "won" the vicious argument fought between those who want to increase government spending as a means of rebuilding our economy, and those who want to cut spending and reduce deficits as a means of restoring confidence (and rebuilding our economy).
Really?
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A Simple, Scary Way to Neuter Goldman Sachs and Friends
TBTF is the acronym for "too big to fail."
It's the crazy notion that certain banks are so large and systematically important (which really means so threatening to financial systems) that they must be kept alive by the government, because their failure would wreak havoc on the economy.
How will they be saved from their own greed? And how will we be saved from their greed so we can kneel at their altars another day?
Central banks and governments, who are not as powerful as central banks, will backstop them with printed paper and taxpayer blood. That's how they'll be saved, grow bigger, and one day rule the world.
Oh, that already happened... never mind
