Re: Don't hold your breath waiting for Bernanke to raise rates - Eric Janszen

EJ, straighten me out on this. Are not housing prices fixed on the monthly ability to pay? (I'm foregoing actual construction cost in this question. Existing "previously owned" housing stock only, not developer's on-hand supply.) Then would not a raise in interest rates see an accommodating lowering of pricing to maintain the sell-able monthly amount? Do not near-ZIRPs help to keep housing prices artificially elevated? In an iTulip essay from a few years back that point was quite clearly made....

2010 Review and 2011 Forecast - Part I: Down the rabbit hole we go

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not understood.
- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

We are taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they are of equal value as happiness excitement and inspiration.
- Alanis Morissette (1974 - )

If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius.
- Larry Leissner

CI: Where...

Photo Credit: Glenn Cantor

• Stock market crash, right on schedule. Time to Short?
• Is the Yellen Fed doing a Roy Young?
• China's Great Wall of Money crumbles. Who will be America's IMF this time?
• Why do they call them Emerging Markets? Because it's hard to get your money out in an Emergency.
• Gold says, "I'm not dead yet!"
What? You thought it could go on forever? The asset bubbles and re-bubbles and re-re-bubbles? How many times...

Faith can overcome evidence but not forever.

Two trends will be with us for the next 20 years:
Inexorable Trend #1: Peak Cheap Credit
Inexorable Trend #2: Peak Cheap Oil

Within these two long term trends, the latest diversions

• Late gold investors on board since 2008 exit market as the USD again becomes GAGFO as Europe, Japan, and China falter
• Credit Bubble temporarily reflated
• Stock market temporarily levitated ...

One can recognize the charming killer smile of our president under the hood.
Chairman Bernanke is hidden in the cowhide....

One can recognize the charming killer smile of our president under the hood.
Chairman Bernanke is hidden in the cowhide....

One can recognize the charming killer smile of our president under the hood.Chairman Bernanke is hidden in the cowhide....

Election as Forcing Function - Part I: On Track for a Bond Market Panic

Railway behind Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, August 2012

• No QE3 but the Fed throws Bill Gross a bone
• The world's largest public housing project
• When is a bond not a bond? When it's money.
• Who just bought a pile of gold?

CI: Hope you enjoyed your summer.
EJ: I did, thanks. Hope did too and took my advice from June to rest up. I'm expecting...

A main road near iTulip offices the day after a once in 100 years October 2011 snowstorm
knocked down trees and cut power to homes for several weeks.

CE: After reading your Ka-Poom Theory update outline… oh, boy. Huge project. Okay, we eat this elephant one bite at a time. I want to start by getting the chronology down. Readers may be either new and they don’t know the history or they are old farts like me who can’t remember. Those of us who started to read your...

iTulip Select: The Investment Thesis for the Next Cycle™

Next we survey a panorama of potential outcomes of Five Critical Risk Factors for 2012. The results will be difficult to distinguish from randomness. In Part II we nonetheless identify scenarios that are more likely than others.

2012 Forecast: A strife of FIRE Economy interests masquerading as a contest of principles With January arrives a smorgasbord of annual forecasts on the economy...