Economy

Change in wages, productivity, energy costs & currency values are dramatically redrawing the map of global manufacturing cost competitiveness. The new map will surprise you.

The most recent S&P/Case-Shiller home price numbers...[show a] strong month-over-month basis, with 19 of 20 cities tracked posting gains. New York was the only city to see a month-over-month decline, while San Francisco posted the biggest gain at 3.04%. The composite 10-city and 20-city indices gained roughly 0.80% month-over-month, and they gained roughly 5% year-over-year.

Here's everything you need to know what's happening in the single most underestimated, misunderstood, and perpetually disrespected country on earth - China.

For a host of disparate reasons – ranging from geopolitical tensions and currency wars to gargantuan unpayable debt and other macro-economic fundamentals – we believe the entire interconnected global economic, financial and monetary systems to be extremely fragile. Check out this time-honored function of protecting wealth.

The majority of U.S. healthcare spending is not productive; it is a drag on productivity. As it stands now, U.S. healthcare will bankrupt the nation and doom it to permanent stagnation and recession as crystallized in these 3 charts.

The reason for China's massive gold accumulation is to destroy its enemies by attacking their economic base & that is exactly what China is doing to the USA.

The real estate sector in Canada is in a bubble that could burst at any time according to the IMF, Deutsch Bank, the Bank of Canada and The Economist.

In the financial world at this very moment, we have 8 different "weather systems" that are all developing in real time. If several of the more powerful components were to converge – and reinforce each other – then we could very rapidly reach the point of greatest financial instability that the world has seen since 2008.

The attempt to solve what was essentially a global debt crisis with mountains of more debt means we will have another global financial crisis – the question is when rather than if - and this will have an impact on our economic recovery and on asset prices and hence the importance of diversification in terms of geography and where and how they are owned.

The Federal Reserve lifts interest rates to slow economic growth and quell inflationary pressures. Currently, though, there's little evidence of inflationary pressures outside of financial asset prices, and economic growth is weak to say the least, so should we fear a Fed rate hike at this point? This article has the answer. Invest accordingly.