irrational exuberance | The Daily Capitalist

Spiking the Housing Stock Football Before Crossing the Goal Line Represents Somewhat Irrational Exuberance

The stock market “knows”: housing is back. The old rule of thumb about housing stocks was that they should be bought at or below book value in a downturn and sold at twice book after a boom. Of course, when they peaked way back in summer 2005, some were at triple book. Citigroup’s housewares analyst [...]

Bernanke Explains Why Nothing The Fed Does Works, Without Knowing It

For those of you who have the patience to watch Ben Bernanke give a lecture at George Washington University on the origins of the Fed and the role of the Fed in “curing” the Great Depression and the lead up to the current crisis, here are the two lectures for your pleasure. We will be [...]

Dichotomy of the Day

In the news today are two enterprises whose fortunes have diverged so dramatically over the past decade that I wish to comment. I think that the Austrian economists Schumpeter and von Mises would also have been impressed.

On the one side is an ancient people whose government borrowed hundreds of billions of euros over about [...]

A Relationship Between European Austerity and Municipal Bonds

The European economic and financial situation is beginning to resemble the “Asian contagion” of the late 1990′s: a deflationary disaster for the countries involved, which in turn helps allow the (relatively) good times to continue in the “core” and to some degree even the U.S. News from Spain today is ugly:

Markit’s Purchasing Manager’s Survey [...]