Just when bank executives appear near the peak of this mountain of populist rage, another landslide sends them tumbling back down again. This week has produced several setbacks, and it’s still

It’s becoming common knowledge that commodity-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have some basic design flaws that not only affect their performance but also have an impact on the very futures

The present contains all possible futures. But not all futures are good ones. Some can be quite cruel. The one we actually get is dictated by the choices we make. For the last few months I’ve b

1. Banks Go for Broke......and They're Almost ThereA game of chicken. That's really what it's come down to for banks. Listening in on the Pulte Homes (PHM) conference call this morning, Richard J. Du

1. The Worst is Behind UsIn the 1974 film Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, the title characters spend an hour and a half eluding a small-town country sheriff in a helicopter with a 1968 Dodge Charger before

I got asked on Twitter whether I think VXX is a buy.Short answer? No.Long answer? More complicated.VXX tracks a perpetual 30-day VIX future. I'm not 100% certain how they create VXX, but my presumpti

Peggy Noonan, maybe the most gifted essayist of our time, wrote a few weeks ago about the vague concern that many of us have that the looming monster has the potential (my interpretation) not only to

Surprise, surprise, surprise -- not: The oil-hype story as discussed in Ten Reasons to Ignore the Hype Over Secret Oil Meetings has blown sky high already, just hours after I wrote it.Russia Denies T

As the credit crisis commenced in 2007, paradoxically, nobody actually defaulted. Outside of sub-prime delinquencies, corporate defaults were at a record low. Instead, investors in high-quality (AAA-

This week we continue to look at what powers the forces of deflation. As I continue to stress, getting the fundamental question answered correctly is the most important issue we face going forward. A