Demand for higher risk assets and a bullish outlook for the economy helped drive U.S. equity prices higher on Monday. Stocks opened higher and held on to gains after getting a boost from better than expected ISM Non-Manufacturing data and an unexpected positive change in pending home sales.

The picture below is worth a thousand words. And $50 trillion.

Financial Assets held by households - Chart

This was just released by the Bank of Japan as part of their new "flow of funds" reporting. Basically, it outlines the composition of Japanese household assets versus counterpart households in America.

Shrugging off some lingering reminders of the credit crisis and recession, investors last week marked the one-year anniversary of the bear market low by pushing many benchmark equity indices to cycle highs.

As East Africa recovers from the worst drought in decades, an innovative program just
launched will use a low-cost, mobile phone payment and data system, and automated, solar
powered weather stations, to offer thousands of farmers in parts of Western and Central
Kenya affordable, "pay as you plant" insurance to protect their investments in desperately

Michael Pento talks about the false perception of safety in the USD.

As investors vacillated about the impact of developments in Greece, together with the uncertainty of strong fourth-quarter economic data possibly not carrying over to the first quarter, stock markets experienced two sharp sell-offs and two rebound rallies, limping to small gains on Friday but ending the week modestly down.

Last month, I explained in an article how and why the world is approaching a worldwide peak in oil production sometime in the next decade. Although there are large implications throughout the economy, I want to say upfront that I do not think this will bring on Armageddon.