by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Relentless, Systematic Tear-Down Of The Dollar Hegemony
How long before the dollar surrenders its status as world reserve currency and number-one payment currency to the Chinese yuan and to that other currency everyone loathes?
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Smart Money Quietly Abandons The Housing Market
National averages paper over gritty details on the ground and are a crummy indicator as to what is happening in specific metro areas. But even with this caveat, a national average suddenly sounded an alarm for the housing market: the smart money is bailing out.
by Oilprice.com • • Comments Off on Big Oil’s Favorite Subsidy, The Federal Liability Cap for Oil Spills
Why are most of the damages of an oil spill, such as the BP Deepwater Horizon, picked up by taxpayers? A federal liability cap of a ludicrous $75 million, that’s why. Big oil loves that subsidy and thwarts efforts to raise it to realistic levels.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on California Housing Bubble: Now Even Teachers Can No Longer Afford To Buy A Home
Teachers are a symbol of the middle class. In California, they earn on average $69,300 annually, fifth highest in the country. Not exactly a pittance. But it is a ludicrous pittance if they’re trying to buy a home.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Walmart International: Lousy Economies ‘Everywhere We Operate’
With over 6,400 stores in 26 countries outside the US, Walmart International has smacked into the same problems Walmart has encountered in the US: it’s tough out there.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Without Them, The Housing ‘Recovery’ Remains A Sham
First-time buyers, a powerful economic energy, create real demand and make the housing market grow. We’ve been praying for their arrival like we’ve been praying for rain in parched California. But the more we pray, the fewer there are.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on What A Hard Landing In China Might Look Like (If They’re Lucky) Via A Boeing 767
China’s enormous, strenuously obfuscated credit bubble has led to flagrant misallocation of capital and spectacular malinvestments eternalized in vast ghost cities. That this will end is clear. How it will, is not. But here is a hold-your-breath version (1-min video).
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Corporate Colonialism: Winners and Losers of Global ‘Free’ Trade
By Don Quijones: The new trade agreements have little to do with promoting free trade. They’re about extending the power and control of the world’s largest corporations.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on “Serious Dysfunctionality” On Wall Street: Facebook-WhatsApp And The Deals That “Marked The Top” Of The Last Two Bubbles
Every bubble has its ultimate, craziest, mostest, farthest-outest deal. Its craziness can no longer be exceeded. Buyers simply vanish. Sellers get desperate. Newfangled theories and metrics sink into a morass of ridicule. And lots of money goes up in smoke.
by Oilprice.com • • Comments Off on Rosy Dreams? Conundrum for American LNG Exporters
Natural gas prices in the US hovered between $2 and $4 per million btu for years, while reaching $19 in Japan. The industry is pushing for permits to export LNG, hoping for an easy arbitrage opportunity. But the markets may bite back.
