Thursday, October 8, 2009
McAlvany Weekly Commentary, Oct 7, 2009
GOLD: Breakout Alert - Powerful Uptrend Imminent - target and trajectory...
The impending gold breakout has been so long in the making that it has engendered a "we'll believe it when we see it" mentality amongst most market participants. What this means of course is that most will miss out on the big easy gains that will accrue during the dynamic phase of the next major uptrend and will turn up late at the party, as usual. We ourselves have had lingering doubts engendered in large part by the perceived risk of a dollar rally, but these doubts are now dissipating for reasons that will be set below. When you follow something on a day-to-day basis, or even an hour to hour basis, it is easy to slip into a situation where you "don't see the wood for the trees" and the best way to combat this natural tendency is to zoom out and look at long-term weekly or even monthly charts. So that is what we will do now. (more)
Fed Frets About Commercial Real Estate
Banks in the U.S. "are slow" to take losses on their commercial real-estate loans being battered by slumping property values and rental payments, according to a Federal Reserve presentation to banking regulators last month. The remarks suggest that banking regulators are girding for a rerun of the housing-related losses now slamming thousands of banks that failed to set aside enough capital during the boom to cushion themselves when the bubble burst. "Banks will be slow to recognize the severity of the loss -- just as they were in residential," according to the Fed presentation, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A Fed official confirmed the authenticity of the document, prepared by an Atlanta Fed real-estate expert who is part of the central bank's Rapid Response program to spread information about emerging problem areas to federal and state banking examiners throughout the U.S. (more)
A Hidden $34 Billion Bank Subsidy?
One of the key terms to come out of the nation’s economic meltdown has been “too big to fail.” The government has funneled billions of dollars to large financial firms by arguing that their collapse would deal an irreparable blow to economic recovery. A new study has calculated the tab of the “too big to fail” approach, and it amounts to a far larger taxpayer-funded subsidy than previously thought. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says the bailout has allowed “too big to fail” banks to pay significantly lower interest rates than those paid by smaller banks. According to one estimate, that’s meant a subsidy for the nation’s eighteen largest bank holding companies of $34.1 billion a year. That amount represents nearly half these companies’ combined annual profits. We speak to the study’s author, Dean Baker (more)

