Once again, Black Friday has come and gone and the climax of American consumerism is upon us. The talking heads on CNBC and other mainstream financial outlets are talking about how shopping is strong and how shopping will save our economy. It’s been the same crap for several years now since the depression started.

We’ve been saying for months now to wait for Europe to continue it’s unraveling, and Ireland has finally decided to re-commence the decline in the European economy.  The European Union is completely unsustainable and it is only a matter of time before everything economically changes on that continent including the currency.
While Ireland has the headlines for now, there are strikes going on in Portugal over austerity measures and of course Spain is still in the batter’s box waiting to step up to the plate and finish off Europe once and …

Interesting article on a recent grad who has over $200k in student loan debt. Good luck paying off 200 large while working as a waitress.  Welcome to the new normal for higher education in America.  Tons of debt, mediocre degrees, no jobs.  Read the article here.

Talking to people about their business goals, financial goals and career goals will always land you a mixed bag of responses and viewpoints.  The way people discuss their career and outlook of career and financial state often can be enough to put them into one of three categories: job guy, career guy or entrepreneur.
Job Guy
Job guy works a job.  There’s little else to say.  He’s probably barely making ends meet or isn’t.  These guys typically have lots of debt, specifically consumer debt, because frankly, they don’t make enough money.  They …

There has been recent talk about the possibility of the mortgage interest tax deduction going away.  First, Obama made some brief comments about it, then his debt commission included it as a possible way to improve the fiscal situation of the Federal government.
First off, the deduction isn’t going anywhere.  We’ll talk about whether it should go away in a second, but you can be assured that even if it is the right move, your politicians don’t have the backbone to push that on the American people.
Secondly, it would definitely impact …

The powers that be are trying to restrain the rise in precious metals namely silver and gold.  The question here is why.  Are they worried that speculators will get hurt by betting too big?  Of course not, otherwise they’d raise margin requirements on equities also.  The reality is that there is an agenda here in play.  The rise in precious metals is essentially a vote of no-confidence in the Fed and its policies.  The tactics being implemented will only have temporary effects.  Buy silver/gold now while you have opportunities like …

Republicans are back in power at least with regards to the House.  The Obama-created debt commission has offered a range of solutions that would help cut the deficit and bring the Federal debt back under control.
Note that their recommendations are not intended to balance the budget, but to merely bring the deficit to a level of something like $400 billion annually.  So, we’re debating intensely on the ways to bring the deficit down to $400 billion a year, not to bring the deficit down to zero.  That should tell you …

It’s pretty interesting reading the various reactions and commentaries on the internet these days following the announcement of how the Fed will be implementing QE2 – I mean, how the Fed will be running the printing press, of course.  There is absolutely a larger and more harsh reaction to this round of quantitative easing than the previous one.
Interestingly, some big names in the financial world are even making noise about returning to a gold standard.  Coupled with this rhetoric in many cases are calls to end the US dollar as …