Bearish News

Mr. Schiff doin this thing on CNBC.

America’s funding crisis is drawing nearer. Sentiment is shifting from exhausted outrage to renewed-anger.

Ongoing and persistent efforts by Ron Paul, Zero Hedge, Karl Denninger, Charles Ferguson of Inside Job, and Bloomberg reporters Jonathan Weil and the late Mark Pittman, have been invaluable in educating the public about the scams going on around them. It is largely a thankless job, and tends to provoke the powers that be. Hence, the importance.

By the way, it never ceases to amaze me how uninformed and clueless the establishment looks defending themselves. Gordon Brown, for example, came off as a shill and idiot in his recent interview with Charlie Rose. Excellent job by Rose, challenging his interviewee on key points and all but scoffing at Brown’s more ridiculous viewpoints.

Gordon Brown was hilariously bad .

It seems that the Federal Reserve is unwinding faster than many, including myself, thought possible. Revulsion over QE2 is certainly stronger than I could have hoped for.

And after being repeatedly blocked from chairing various financial committees, Congressman Paul may finally get the chance to do something he’s been working towards for 40+ years: Call the Fed on their bullshit from a position of authority, and attempt to implement desperately-needed reform.

Lew Rockwell, long-time ally of Dr. Paul, explains:

Ron Paul won easy reelection in the 14th district of Texas with almost 77% of the vote. (His opponent, a police chief, had signs that said, “Tell Dr. No he has to go.” No one took up my suggestion for opposing signs: “Send the cop to the donut shop.”

If the Republicans weren’t dishonest, and entirely in the pocket of the big banks, Ron Paul would be taking Barney Frank’s place as chairman of the finance committee. Not satisfied with blocking him there, they have even kept him out of the chairmanship of the monetary policy subcommittee, as Barney has frequently remarked. The first time the Republicans erased Ron’s seniority; the second time, they imported a congressman from another committee to take the job; the third time, they temporarily abolished the subcommittee. This time, I think they would fear the backlash, so Ron will probably be chairman. If so, I can’t wait for his hearings on the QE2, the gold, the business cycle, and much else.

If Dr. Paul somehow does not get the nomination, the backlash will be substantial, as Mr. Rockwell states. I am starting to think banksters may lack the credibility necessary to fight such firestorms. (time to sell silver, so soon? my anxious side says).

I am not sure yet what this means for further QE efforts. My gut says the Fed will win, and continue printing, bullying other countries into acceptance. But their opposition has become rather strong, rather fast.

Since QE1, the dissenters have grown from a fringe group led by Dr. Paul, to include the majority of developed nations. Plus a growing percentage of domestic dissenters, most notably Fisher and Hoenig. The banks are still my favorite to win the flation-currency wars, but at least the match is getting interesting.

More:

Ron Paul: Bernanke’s Worst Nightmare – CNN

Josh Brown from The Reformed Broker has released his latest who’s who of the financial blogosphere, mapping the landscape out in witty fashion.

This time around it’s titled Financial Blog Wars. The list of sites makes for a fine RSS reading list, and is entertaining to boot — if you’re a finance and/or Star Wars geek, anyway.

Thanks to Josh for upgrading BN from “Goth Kids” in his high school analogy to the “Jedi Masters” and “Rebel Alliance” categories in this Lucasian go-round. It’s an honor to be mentioned alongside my favorite blogs, including Jesse’s Cafe Americain, The Big Picture, Zero Hedge, Financial Armageddon, and Calculated Risk.

Check out TRB, too, of course. Josh injects much-needed humor into the financial blogosphere, which at times seems tired, jaded, and pessimistic — even for my tastes. And he posts a lot of great original content, plus links to good stuff around the web. Also see the classic piece, the Periodic Table of Financial Bloggers.

P.S. – How about them metals?! As happy as I am (having been grossly overweight PMs for years), the speed and strength of this move does worry me a bit. It certainly does not foretell roses and sunshine ahead. If gold and silver prices are any indication of what’s to come, they are saying “Get your shit in order, icebergs and chaos: Dead ahead”.

If it is truly desirable to live in “interesting times”, we can count ourselves blessed many times over.

Next month I’ll be attending the Buttonwood Gathering in NYC. The Economist-sponsored event was very good last year, which was the 1st inaugural.

Last year the conference theme was “fixing finance”, and featured a nice mix of polarizing speakers such as Larry Summers, Elizabeth Warren, and Tim Geithner. Unfortunately Mrs. Warren won’t be there this year, but neither will Messrs Summers or Geithner. Bob Rubin will be there, however — and that should be interesting.

Speakers I look forward to seeing this year: Nassim Taleb, Arianna Huffington, Stephen Roach, Mohamed El-Erian, Jim Chanos, and Joseph Stiglitz. Official list of speakers here.

Here’s one of the more interesting panels from last year. It’s a debate on whether financial innovation is a net positive for the economy. Jeremy Grantham destroys the competition (skip to almost 1/3rd of the way thru to see Grantham’s part).