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By Jim Welsh, greenfaucet.com

In the short run, perception can trump longer term fundamentals. In late 1999, technology stocks were over valued, but the perception of the New Paradigm was enough to push them higher toward absurdity. If enough investors believe that inflation is coming soon, gold can run higher, even if I'm right that investors are wrong about how soon the increase in the money supply will lead to inflation. Over time inflation has been defined as too much money chasing too few goods. Our problem now is that there is too little money chasing too many goods anywhere in the world, and that dynamic isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Investors can short Gold in a number of ways, depending on risk ...

By Paul Baioicchi, greenfaucet.com

In Caracas on Tuesday, the groundwork was laid for the formation of a South American regional bank, which officials say could be operational by as early as May. While this is a positive development for a region which has a history of economic volatility and currency instability, concern must be expressed over the fact that Chavezuela, er Venezuela is leading the charge.

South America's past attempts at economic integration have largely been unsuccessful. The ANDEAN community, created in 1969 and lauded as the driver of South American economic independence at the time, failed to gain traction and following the withdrawal of Venezuela in 2006 only consisted of four members. The ...

By Roger Nusbaum, greenfaucet.com

China on Monday said it believes the IMF should create some sort of unit to serve as a world reserve currency to supplant the dollar and the other dominant currencies; the euro and the yen. Russia made similar comments recently but the China comments seems to be getting more attention, probably because they hold several zillion dollars worth of US debt.

As this Wall Street Journal article notes the political and logistical obstacles are extensive making the odds of this quite slim, keep in mind Euroland was of a like mind on creating the euro and it took many years to pull it all together.

That does not mean however that persistence on the issue can’t have an impact. ...

By Roger Nusbaum, greenfaucet.com

So there is big news out of Treasury, many people are crediting the big move up in stocks to the news and maybe that is right but from what I read there is still the question of how these assets will be priced. This new plan (I feel like I’m in one of those annoying Humana commercials “yep, this is one great plan”) will try to bring in private money with the government taking a lot of the risk and there is chatter about whether some of the toxic assets should be packed into mutual funds for individual investors to access.

You can read news accounts of the new plan from Kathy Lien and the NY Times and some analysis from Yves Smith and Tyler Durden (they don’t like it).
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