McAlvany Weekly Commentary, July 28,2010

End of the Party: An Interview with Don McAlvany

Posted on 28 July 2010.

Don McAlvany is Chairman of McAlvany Wealth Management and also founder of International Collectors Associates (ICA), a precious metals brokerage and consultation firm serving clients in over 20 countries since 1972. He has been a featured speaker at political, monetary, and investment conferences in Western Europe, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Hong Kong, and Singapore, as well as all over the North American continent and Latin America. Don is also the founder and President for the Asian Pacific Children’s Fund (APCF). APCF is a non-profit organization that’s mission is to find well-run, largely unknown Asian children’s homes – homes that are on no one’s radar screen – and to help them to raise funding and bring in resources which they need to survive and prosper. www.mcalvany.com

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Jim Rogers: Another Recession to Hit by 2012

By: Frank McGuire

Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, thinks another recession will hit around 2012 but central banks will not be able to throw cash at it anymore.

"We do have inflation in the world … most central banks should resign," Rogers told CNBC.

There has always been a recession every four to six years in the United States "since the beginning of time," and that would mean another one is due around 2012, according to Rogers, a hedge fund pioneer who started the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1970.

"When the next one comes the world is going to be in worse shape because the world has shot all its bullets," he said.

"Is Mr. (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke going to print more money than he already has? No, the world would run out of trees," Rogers added. (more)

Evolving Global Financial Crisis: The Dollar Should Head Down Again

by Bob Chapman

As we long ago predicted, 2005 was the beginning of the collapse of the housing bubble. The result was financial chaos and a credit crisis that enveloped the US, Europe and eventually the world. Some would like us to believe that materialism and selfishness were the reasons for bubbles, but the causes go far deeper than that. US, UK and European central banks, due to their greed for power, and a desire for world government, allowed debt to get totally out of control.

America’s monetary problems began on August 15, 1971, when the country left the gold standard, although GATT, which became WTO in 1986, began the cycle of destruction in the early 1960s. The presidency of Ronald Reagan opened and initiated the floodgates of debt after cutting taxes far too much and then destroying upper income taxpayers with the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which thrust 8 million millionaires into bankruptcy. Reagan’s failure to cut spending set a precedent, which lives with us to this day. During his time in office debt doubled. The result was the economy came unglued in 1989 and didn’t recover until the beginning of 1994. His successors had the opportunity to purge the system of debt and malinvestment, but they and the Fed passed up that opportunity to again cover up the mess they created. A boom in the stock market followed in the late 1990s and economic failure by 2007. (more)

More than 40M gallons of oil MIA

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — For more than three months, Gulf Coast residents and federal officials have asked where the oil spill was headed and how much damage it would deliver.

Now, a new, equally baffling question looms: Where has the oil gone?

The amount of surface oil that has bubbled up from the leaking well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon rig sinking has rapidly shrunk in size since the well was capped 11 days ago, according to the Coast Guard.

Recent flyovers of the spill area spotted only one sizeable oil deposit in the region, down considerably from the large pools of thick, reddish oil that washed into Louisiana's coastal marshes and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico.

"What we're trying to figure out is: Where is all the oil at?" said retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, the oil response's federal overseer. "There's still a lot of oil that's unaccounted for." (more)

BNN: Top Picks

Michael Sprung, president, Sprung & Company Investment Counsel, shares his top picks.

click here for video

Dry Bulkers Pull Back As BDI Extends Rally

Indie Research,

Dry bulk shipping stocks took a breather on Wednesday, but there was no slowing the Baltic Dry Index. The sector's pricing benchmark pushed higher for its ninth straight session after plummeting from late-May through mid-July. At the end of that run, Deutsche Bank analyst Justin Yagerman called a bottom for dry bulk shares after the BDI's first session in positive territory following those more than 30 trading days in the red. Earlier this week Bloomberg suggested that the shipping sector is bottoming as Chinese steel prices signal iron ore demand.

As a whole, the Dry Bulk Shipping Stocks Index is off by -1% on the day as the S&P 500 widens its monthly lead on the sector. OceanFreight (NASDAQ: OCNF - News), DryShips (NASDAQ: DRYS - News), and Diana Shipping (NYSE: DSX - News) are all among top performers for the period, gaining more than 8%.

DryShips will report its second-quarter results after the bell today, and Diana is reporting next Thursday. The stocks were both among Pro-favorites in the dry bulk sector at the end of the first quarter, with four 13F-filing asset managers counting shares among their top-15 U.S.-listed equity holdings respectively. (more)

Buy, Sell, or Hold Research In Motion?

Eric Jhonsa, Motley Fool

Right now, you can't go through a list of news articles for Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM - News) without seeing gloomy headlines such as "Why RIM is a Risky Investment" (TheStreet.com) and "BlackBerry's Era May Be Ending" (The New York Times). Fears of market share declines because of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL - News) iPhone and Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) Android platform clearly have investors on edge -- and an underwhelming earnings report last quarter didn't do much to calm their nerves.

But the tech sector's history features many companies that thrived long after predictions were made of their imminent doom. Is RIM one of those names, or are Apple and Google on the verge of deep-sixing the Canadian giant? Here's a list of reasons to either buy, sell, or hold onto RIM's shares: (more)