An alert Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent prevented a possible air disaster when he noticed the smell of alcohol on the breath of an American Eagle pilot. The pilot, who was already in the cockpit going through a preflight checklist, was forced by police to take a breath test for alcohol. After failing the test, […]
Alert TSA Agent Prevents Possible Air Disaster – Drunk Pilot Pulled Off AA Plane
January 5, 2013 Leave a Comment
Bond Fund Investor Quiz – If You Don’t Know The Answers, Sell Your Bond Funds
January 3, 2013 Leave a Comment
Many former bank savers, disgusted by the near zero rates offered on their savings by banks, have increasingly turned to bond funds as a means of harvesting interest income. Since 2008, when the Federal Reserve decided to force interest rates to unprecedented lows, investors have poured a staggering $1 trillion into bond funds. Will 2013 […]
The World’s Most Unusual Coin Is Made With An Element You Never Heard Of
December 29, 2012 Leave a Comment
One of the strangest and most unique coins I have ever come across is made of a chemical element that most people have never heard of. Unless you are a chemist or work in the specialty steel industry, figuring out what Niobium is would probably require a search on the internet. Despite the lack of […]
California State Employees Get Rich As State Goes Broke
December 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
The state of California continues to make headlines as one of the worst economic basket cases in the country. Despite crushing workers and businesses with a torrential onslaught of new taxes, California continues to go broke by increasing spending at a frenetic pace. California is going broke. Again. The state controller has estimated that the […]
Chinese Stock Market Collapses 67% Despite Massive Stimulus Programs
December 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
The debate over whether or not government stimulus spending (financed by borrowing) is effective in reviving post crash economies rages on in the U.S. Despite the anemic economic recovery, proponents of deficit spending postulate that things would have been much worse without it. Opponents of massive deficit spending insist that the problems are merely being […]
Starbucks’s Youngest Customer
December 9, 2012 Leave a Comment
Starbucks is more than a product. Before the American genius named Howard Schultz started the company, coffee drinking was generally an uninspired encounter with poorly roasted robusta beans. Starbucks revolutionized the coffee experience forever and in the process became one of America’s greatest success stories. Here’s a two year old fan of Starbucks enjoying a […]
The Ten Most Stunning Coins In The World Outshine The U.S. Mint
December 6, 2012 Leave a Comment
The U.S. Mint may produce the most coins in the world, but they aren’t winning any prizes for innovative coin design. A prestigious panel of coin experts recently announced ten categories for the Coin of the Year Awards and all of them were produced by foreign mints. It has to be pretty embarrassing when the […]
Investing In Bank Stocks Could Be A Winning Strategy In 2013
December 6, 2012 Leave a Comment
The financial crisis delivered painful blows to the portfolios of virtually every investor, but none may have suffered more than investors in banking stocks. From the highs of 2007 to the lows of early 2009, the average bank stock, as represented by the KBW Bank Index, dropped by almost 90%. The situation was even worse […]
Youth Unemployment In Europe Reaches Catastrophic Levels
December 4, 2012 Leave a Comment
The downward economic spiral in Europe continues to accelerate with no solutions in sight. Greece and Spain, two of the most crippled economies in the Eurozone, have now achieved the infamous distinction of 50% plus rates of youth unemployment as shown in the following graph from The Atlantic. Here’s what the graph does tell us: […]
Why The Yen Could Collapse – Japan On The Knife’s Edge
November 28, 2012 Leave a Comment
By Axel Merk Because of Japan’s massive public debt burden, pundits have called for the demise of the Japanese yen for years. Are the yen’s fortunes finally changing? Our analysis shows that the days of the yen being perceived as a safe haven may soon be over. Let us elaborate. So many foreign exchange (“FX”) […]