The Room

What a world I have returned to from my cloistered retreat at the beautiful Vivenda Miranda, scenically situated on a cliff outside of the quaint port town of Lagos, Portugal. Everything has changed. Everything is changing. The storm we have so long tried to help you prepare for is upon us. At this point, I can only hope you have your sails rigged for the storm now breaking, because time is running out. The violent volatility I warned of when last I wrote has arrived, with towering waves now rising up and smashing into the economy - and as an unavoidable consequence, our personal portfolios -- from all sides. Overnight the holders of my mortgage, WaMu, failed, the largest bank failure in history. This week, the golf course that I usually play on was taken over by the government... last week it belonged to AIG. As you don't need me to tell you, that same government now wants to spend over a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street and to shore up the money market mutual funds - which have so far flown under the radar screen despite portfolios stuffed to the brim with bad paper. While no one was paying attention, U.S. automakers used their election year leverage to win approval for $25 billion in low-interest loans....

In today's "special" edition of the Room, I want to go somewhat beyond the latest news and observations on same. Instead, I want to discuss the big picture as it relates to the U.S. and global economy. I do so because it is growing more important with each passing day to get a solid fix on where things stand and, more importantly, where they are going next and how you can protect yourself. It's hard to overstate just how unpredictable and dangerous the economic and investment environment has become. While these are topics we'll be covering in today's online event, Casey's Crisis & Opportunity Update, the situation at this point is moving so fast, and is so highly charged, that it is time to pay very, very close attention to things. As you should expect, we have been furiously fingering the tea leaves in an attempt to make actionable sense out of the big moves now in motion. While there is much that we know about the unfolding events, there is also much that is unknowable – for instance, how much longer the long-suffering foreign holders of U.S. dollars will be patient....

Summer weather, at least that of the preferable sort, has finally returned to the corner of the globe where your correspondent sits listening, too loudly, to Michael Franti's Yell Fire!. For those of you unfamiliar with Franti and his band Spearhead, his genre is what might be termed "Revolution Rock"... as in taking it to "the man." While I don't agree with many of his lyrics, which skew far left, I do like the music and his thematic focus on peace and, paradoxically, burning things down. Regrettably, in his view the rebuilding would be of a socialist paradise. It is, of course, deeply ingrained in human nature to want everything wrapped up in a nice utopian package. Problems arise, however, because one person's idea of utopia is another's idea of hell. And, inevitably, even utopia's champions awaken one morning in full agreement that their vision was hell... just ask Robespierre or Trotsky. In the end, no one gets their utopia because the entire notion is merely a dangerous fiction that, in the attempt, leads only to the disenfranchisement of one group or groups in favor of another. And, in time, of everyone....

A steadily growing drumbeat is sounding throughout financial mediadom; a major commodities blowout is in the cards. The most widely quoted reason is a U.S. recession that will sympathetically pop the commodity bubble. It seems to me that these views are intertwined with a changed perception of how the economy works. A new paradigm if you will. People used to pay homage to the notion of a business cycle, a somewhat predictable and even stately progression of economic growth leading to excess, followed by a corrective recession. After which the cycle would begin anew....

by David Galland Casey Research- International Speculator The current "battle" in the gold market is around the $900 level, a fairly steep retrenchment from the recent highs of $1,011. Some investors, their hopes dashed that $1,000 would be...

Written: April 18 2008 Dear Readers, I am running quite late this sunny New England morning. But I have a good excuse: my wife has left me. Well, it's not all that dramatic... it is just that she has hived off for Europe for a ten-day gallivant with...

Dear Readers, This week finds me writing from Room 2218 of the infamous Jekyll Island Club. The hotel's adjective comes from a secret meeting held here in 1910 involving some of America's most powerful men. Here's an official history of that...