According to a study of presidential approval ratings by Ned Davis Research that looks back all the way to the days of President John F. Kennedy, when the president’s approval rating is below 35%, as it is now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index loses an average of 5.9% per year. When times are good and presidential approval ratings exceed 65%, the Dow rises at an annualized rate of 2.6%.

Instead of getting any closer to resolution, the conflict between the government and the Argentine farmers worsens with each passing day. The government does not seem to understand that the situation is more than simply a conflict with a particular sector, for Argentine society as a whole is against the current policy being waged by the government.

The India story is still good, largely due to the demographic dividend, with a young, well educated population who are free to pursue dreams. At a recent analyst meet of NIIT it was pointed out that India will have an addition of some 47 m. educated people in the 19-25 age group. The rest of the world (including China) will have a reduction of some 53 m. in this age group.

Nixon and his advisors thought inflation at 4% was serious enough to institute price controls. Headline inflation in the US is now 4.2%. What kind of economic policy should we pursue to bring inflation back into the Fed's comfort zone of 1-2%? Would it work and would it be worth the pain?

Oil prices have resumed their northward climb. And inflation has returned to the American lexicon for the first time in decades. For U.S. consumers, there’s no way to dodge the financial fallout of that economic one-two punch.

There’s a great wish for American finance to return to business-as-usual — raking in fantastic fees for innovating new modes of tradable paper, and engineering mergers and buy-outs that generate huge fees plus $100 million kiss-offs for corporate CEOs in the noble struggle to dismantle America’s productive capacity — but apparently events are still out of hand.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions have gone to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff from multi-level marketing (pyramid scheme) companies since 2003. It's no wonder that he spoke in favor of weakening the Utah law against pyramid schemes... and the politicians listened to him.

Combination of misfortune and inaptitude. He started off with a full fledged crisis in the dotcom crash, graduated to panic with 9/11, pulled the rug off under the economy with the Iraq war and he's signing off with a festering global mess in the housing and financial sectors...