Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2009

FREE PDF download click here

Capacity Utilization

It’s a simple concept that’s hard to track. Capacity utilization measures what percent businesses are using existing capabilities. 100% marks an economy “firing on all cylinders,” as the corporate catchphrase goes. When consumer demand drops, so too does capacity utilization… and since 1970, it hasn’t picked up until the worst is over.

Yesterday, capacity utilization in the U.S. found a record low of 68.3%. The Federal Reserve said utilization fell another 0.7 percentage points from April to May, to the lowest score since at least 1967, when they started keeping track. Factory output is down 13.4% over the last year, the biggest drop since 1946.

U.S. Home Prices to Fall 14% More

June 16 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. home prices may fall another 14 percent, led by the New York and Orange County, California, metropolitan areas, before reaching a bottom as an increase in unemployment offsets lower prices, Deutsche Bank AG said.
“Affordability is no longer the driving issue in the housing market, and we believe prices still have a ways to fall in many areas before home prices reach their trough,” Deutsche Bank analysts led by Karen Weaver, wrote in a report yesterday. “The bottom is getting closer, but we are not there yet.”
Home prices are forecast to fall 41.7 percent from their peak, Weaver said. That’s higher than a forecast she released in March and reflects “the actual declines to date and the expected future impact on home prices from rising foreclosure inventory and unemployment.” (more)

U.S. likely to lose AAA rating: Prechter

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technical analyst Robert Prechter on Monday said he sees the United States losing its top AAA credit rating by the end of 2010, as he stuck by a deeply bearish outlook on the U.S. economy and stock market.

Prechter, known for predicting the 1987 stock market crash, joins a growing coterie of market heavyweights in forecasting the United States will lose its top credit rating as the government issues trillions of dollars in debt to fund efforts to bail out the economy. (more)

Is Bottom In Gold & Silver Near?

In my previous essay I wrote the following:

(...) once you consider details, the outlook becomes rather bearish in the short term. The point here is that volume has been declining while gold has been rising and it rose along with declining gold price. Volume usually confirms the direction in which the market is headed, and this time it points to lower prices in coming days. Naturally, a day or two of pause are possible (and also quite likely), as gold is currently just at its support level, but still - it is likely that gold will move lower in the short term.

This is exactly what took place during the rest of the week - we had slightly higher prices of gold, silver and mining stocks in the middle of the week, but they closed lower on Friday. Of course the key question here are: "Is the bottom already in?" and "Is it safe to get back on the long side of the market?" In short, it seems that we are going a little lower before we will reach a local bottom. (more)

Act II of the Food Crisis?

06/15/09 Gaithersburg, Maryland Inflation – rising prices, or a drop in the purchasing power of the dollar – will soon rise to the very top of economic concerns. I can’t understand why there are pundits who insist we can’t have inflation while the economy is weak. There are plenty of examples of weak economies with high inflation. After all, I don’t think they are hitting on all cylinders in Zimbabwe, where inflation is thousands of percent. (more)

Peak Soil Investment: This Quiet Land Grab is Just Beginning

According to the Economist, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and China have been “quietly” buying up more than $20 billion of this asset.

It’s not oil or natural gas assets though. And it’s not the molybdenum they need to build thousands of miles of new pipelines. They’re buying up one of my favorite long-term investments, farmland.

The way things are shaping up, investors who follow their lead now will do exceptionally well in the short-term and long-term. Let me explain. (more)