Archive for November, 2009

• Gregor Weekly Macro Note: Saturday 28 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 28th, 2009 at 11:36 pm, Comments: 0

  On Thanksgiving Day I found myself thinking of Bear Stearns. The Dubai event makes for a kind of fearful symmetry with the February/March 2007 shock, in which the framing around Bear was that it had been caught up in “subprime.” As foretold by the problems with many mortgage brokers 6 months before, and then preceeding [...]

• Podcast Picks: Friday 27 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 27th, 2009 at 11:18 pm, Comments: 0

  Bob Dylan and America: Douglas Brinkley, WBUR On Point Radio.
  Interview with Bill Fleckenstein (money manager and macroeconomic observer), King World Radio.
  The State of Traffic in the US: Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic-Why We Drive the Way We Do, WAMU Dianne Rehm Show.
  Shortchanging the Planet (climate policy and developing nations): BBC World Service Documentaries.
  New Deal Reprise: [...]

• Gregor Weekly Model Portfolio Update: 25 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 25th, 2009 at 5:40 pm, Comments: 0

  Today I’ll respond to a query from a subscriber, who has wondered if the exposure to gold, silver, and gold mining equities in the model portfolio is perhaps too aggressive.
  Gregor,

  I really enjoy and learn from your writing and analysis but I was hoping you could shed a little more light into your approach to portfolio [...]

• Readings: Tuesday 24 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 24th, 2009 at 11:48 am, Comments: 0

  What Peak Oil Can Do for Climate Change: Chris Nelder, Get Realist.
  Capital Journal – California’s Budget is Going to Be Dreadful: George Skelton, The Los Angeles Times.
  Early Data Suggest Suicides are Rising: Murray and McKay, The Wall Street Journal.
  Shifting the World to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy by 2030 – Here Are The Numbers – Jacobson [...]

• Gregor Weekly Macro Note: Saturday 21 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 21st, 2009 at 9:39 pm, Comments: 0

  Starting in early September on my Sunday night MacroTwits broadcast I began to show pictures of large, stately homes in the finer suburbs of Boston and my question to the stream was as follows: where is the future wage growth that will support the inventory of American homes, that are now priced above 600K? What [...]

• Podcast Picks: Friday 20 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 20th, 2009 at 7:00 am, Comments: 0

  Why We Need Architecture: Paul Goldberger, WBUR On Point Radio.
  China, Coal, and Climate Change: Schell, Stokes and Lieberthal, The Dianne Rehm Show WAMU.
  Boston: James Howard Kunstler thinks Boston is one of the few, healthy, major cities left in the US,  KunstlerCast Radio .
  The Decline of World Oil Production and its Possible Impacts: Robert Hirsch, FSN [...]

• Gregor Weekly Model Portfolio Update: 18 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 18th, 2009 at 5:46 pm, Comments: 0

  Dollar down. Stocks down. USTreasury prices down. Gold and Silver up. Although we are seeing this in very light form once again today, this is the configuration to watch for as the next phase of the financial crisis gets underway. In short, the broken pieces of the largest debt and credit bubble ever have now [...]

• Readings: Tuesday 17 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 17th, 2009 at 2:07 pm, Comments: 0

  Zimbabwe – A Fresh Start: Alf Field, 321 Gold.
  Trash | Track – MIT Researchers Track Trash to Encourage Recycling: Brian X. Chen, WIRED Magazine.

  Is the IEA World Energy Outlook Politically Distorted?: Chris Nelder, Get Realist.
  Report from the Rail-Volution: Aaron Renn, Urbanophile.

  Hunger in US at 14 Year High: Jason DeParle, The New York Times.
  Searching [...]

• Gregor Weekly Macro Note: Saturday 14 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 14th, 2009 at 11:39 pm, Comments: 0

  As the decade prepares to end I am not able to find a single example of serious scholarship that effectively refutes both peak oil as a general concept, or, that refutes the assertion that world oil production is currently peaking. To be quite honest, the field of energy studies is poorer not richer as a [...]

• Podcast Picks: Friday 13 November 2009
  Gregor Macdonald, November 13th, 2009 at 7:49 pm, Comments: 0

  Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis: Richard Heinberg, Financial Sense Newshour.
  Seminars About Long-Term Thinking (SALT): Stewart Brand – Rethinking Green, The Long Now Foundation.
  Collapse Dynamics: an interview with Noah Raford,  Jason Bradford’s Reality Report.
  War, Inflation, Gold, and Collapse: interview with Marc Faber, Commodity Watch Radio (Frisby’s Bulls and Bears).
  Yalman and Joyce: on the [...]