Rick Ackerman
Rick Ackerman Articles
Think you could make it in business with a trillion dollar subsidy? That’s a very conservative estimate of what banks can borrow each year at almost no cost, courtesy of Fed easing. Returning the favor, the banks plow the funny money into...
A bad dream jolted me awake one morning last week: the economy had crashed, the banks were shuttered, commerce had ceased, the stores were stripped bare and rioting was everywhere. This bleak vision is not unusual for anyone who has...
Despite the poor start to 2014, there is still room to debate whether U.S. stocks have entered a bear market. My own forecast, made several months ago, calls for a final Dow run-up to 17622. I’d need to revisit that scenario, however, if...
Well, that’s two straight Tuesdays that U.S. stocks have fallen. Has Wall Street finally noticed that the real estate sector – the only big winner in American’s sham “recovery” besides the stock market itself – is starting to deteriorate...
[Our correspondent and occasional guest essayist Erich Simon has been talking up gold for as long as he can remember. Recently, however, after working some comparison numbers based on grocery bills we would have paid 40 years ago, he...
I promised to share with you some of the terrific letters I’ve received in response to my query about whether we should be worried about restrictions on gold ownership. The question was inspired by a reader who asked whether it might be...
Like politics, all recessions are local.
They take root in auto showrooms and appliance stores, then slowly steal into the malls, choking off jewelry stores, stereo dealers, restaurants, clothiers and ski shops before creeping right up to...
TRADING NOTES: Anthrax murmurs swept from New York into the heartland on Friday, disrupting the Englewood, CO, post office that processes out-of-state mail eventually delivered to my neighborhood, among others. There are still no...
Having overestimated the psychological impact of President Bush's speech, I am obliged to focus even more resolutely on purely empirical indicators. Unfortunately, my most reliable tool -- the "hidden" pivot -- still paints a menacing...
It is clear that stocks are not attracting much buying interest unless allowed to freefall for a scary hour or two. So, do the specialists go for broke by pulling their bids on the opening today (Friday), allowing the DJIA to plummet to...
