Hello from Paradise! I'm in the Dom Republic at WMI's Private Wealth Group and this place is beyond gorgeous. What's even more incredible than the scenery however are the WMI Members in attendance. Yes, our WMI family rocks...
The title...The Truth Resonates...comes from something that I saw VP Joe Biden say today. He said "we underestimated how bad the economy was". You think?

Trust me Joe, that's the kind of BS that does NOT resonate with people. Yes, we saw your year long forecast of 8% unemployment....of just five months ago. I'd say it's safe to say that they were just a BIT off, since unemployment is already at 9.5%. What I would love to know is exactly how much we are paying all of those Princeton economists in the Obama camp. Looks to me like these are the folks that should be unemployed....

Look, the bear market rally is over. I wished I would have officially recommended the short sells before I left, but even with a big drop on Thursday, and the sharply lower open that I ...

THE NEW NORMAL - WHY ANY RECOVERY WILL BE PAINFULLY SLOW

Think for a second about where our economic growth came from over the last 10 years or so. We know that consumers have been the primary drivers for the US economy. Because we now manufacture and export little of anything (and far less going forward with the implosion of the auto industry), the only reason our economy has been able to grow has been tied to consumerism....the things that we buy on a daily basis. In fact, government statistics tell us that over 70% of our gross domestic product (DGP) now comes from our own purchases. You don't have to be an economist to figure out that this is not a sustainable trend. A country that continues to produce smaller and smaller amounts of exportable products is doomed in the long run, and in the short run can only expect sluggish growth at best. On top of this, consumers are now turning into savers, something that is a big positive long term, but also something that the Obama people mus...

Wayne Allyn Root, WMI’s Senior Economic Advisor, the 2008 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential nominee, and a regular personality on FOX News and FOX Business, is declaring “W.A.R” on big government beginning June 6, when “W.A.R: The Wayne Allyn Root Show” debuts in the three largest U.S. radio markets.

Root hosts a star-studded lineup on these stations with the biggest names in conservative talk radio- Sean Hannity (KABC), Mark Levin (KABC), Michael Savage (WIND), Bill Bennett (WNYM), Dennis Miller (WNYM), Dennis Prager (WNYM), Michael Medved (WIND), Mike Gallagher (WNYM) and Joe Scarborough (KABC).

*Our very own CEO and Co-Founder, Kip Herriage, will be appearing as a featured guest on each show, so make sure to block your calendars each week and tune into your local radio station.*

The weekly, one-hour syndicated talk show will be broadcast on conservative political talk format radio stations on Saturdays. The program airs at noon on AM 970 The Apple WNYM in New Jersey/New York;...

Hello from New York, where I will be joining guest host Wayne Allyn Root on the Jerry Doyle radio show today. The show is nationally syndicated and is one of the highest rated radio talk shows in America with millions of listeners each day. The show runs from 3-6pm est, and I will be on at approximately 5 pm est.

Wayne has assembled a powerful lineup today....guests includeRon Paul, Mark Skousen,Rita Cosby...and of course me. I'll have lots to talk about with the big move up in gold and silver this week, along with the huge drop in the dollar and sharp increases in interest rates.

http://www.jerrydoyle.com/

When the FED chose the "nuclear option" otherwise known as quantitative easing, the die was cast with respect to inflation, interest rates, and precious metals. I'll also discuss the "Armageddon Trade" that we have in place in the VRA. I fully expect our profits from this trade to surpass 1000% in the next 5 years.

Kip...

April unemployment showed the U.S. losing 539,000 jobs, versus the 600,000 estimate, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.9%. U4, the unemployment rate that includes those that have stopped looking for work and those that are working just part time, now stands at 16%.

8.9% is the worst number in over 25 years, and the only good news is that the rate of decline in unemployment is declining...if only by a very small amount.

I guess its possible to spin this report into some kind of good news, but as far as I'm concerned this is just more terrible economic news. Not a day goes by that I don't see at least 5 market gurus come out and say that the recession is over, but what they don't say is exactly what the recovery is going to look like. Folks, this will not be a V shaped recovery, meaning that the economy will snap back just as quickly as it dropped. We've had those kinds of recessions in my lifetime, but this isn't going to be one of them. If we're lucky, this will be an L shaped re...

Before I get to the market forecast for the week, just a quick reminder that this IS a bear market rally, and once it ends:

"Too-big-to-fail" banks like Bank of America andCitigroup, and corporations like Chrysler and General Motors, WILL ultimately be allowed to fail; their shareholders will be essentially wiped out andtheir creditors will have massive losses.
In the stock market, the bear market rally we've seen will end; the financial stocks will give up all their gains and the broad averages will plunge to new lows.
Credit markets will freeze up again, the government's stimulus package will be overwhelmed, and any pause in the economic decline will be over.

Having said this, I have no clue whether the bear market rally has a week or six months left to go.

As you can see from the charts below the markets have been steadily moving higher. April's close completed the best back to back monthly performance in over six years. And, the streak continued on Friday with both the S...

Google's earnings report after the close of trading showed that while they beat the estimates pretty handily, growth is clearly showing due to a decrease in ad sales. Initially the stock traded over $20 higher to $400 + before ending at $388, up $9 on the day.
Many of the key financials closed lower, reversing earlier gains. Goldman, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America gave up all of their gains to close lower, and as you know, I believe that the stock market will only continue moving higher if the financials can keep leading the way. Personally, I think this group looks very tired, and a sharp pullback would not surprise me at all.

Earnings season continues, and all eyes will now be on GE and Citigroup, along with the scores of others reporting in the coming days. In thepast we've seen the best earningsreports announced first, which means thatwe may look back at this period and realize that Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Google, and a handful of othersrepresented the minority of companies th...

Meridith Whitney, another of the top ranked bank analysts, and one that has been dead right on the insolvency issues surrounding the industry over the last couple of years, came on CNBC to say that the first quarter earnings results should not be as bad as some have feared.

She went on to say that there was not a single stock in the bunch that she would own, and that the consumer debt problems (credit cards, mortgages, cars) would only get worse from here. In other words, while the bank stocks could rally a bit further from here throughe arnings reporting season, this will likely be the end of the bear market rally as it pertains to bank stocks. This makes the top 3 bank analysts very negative on the industry in the intermediate and long term. All agree that Citi will wind up being nationalized at some point, something that I have been saying since late last year.

So, here's the report card on the health of MAJOR corporate America. Our largest bank (Citi),at least two of our top au...

MARK TO MARKET ACCOUNTING CHANGES

Could the wheels be coming off of the bear market rally already? It’s certainly possible, but I think it’s more likely that either late Monday…or certainly sometime on Tuesday we will begin to see the markets head higher again. Here’s why:

MARK TO MARKET ACCOUNTING CHANGES!

The rally will be dependent on the financials ability to continue in their recovery. The BIG positive for the financials is the proposed change in the mark-to-market rules.

Banks are holding their breath that the mark-to-market rule changes proposed by FASB under Congressional mandate will be approved, and it looks like they won't have to wait long. The rule changes would suspend the mark-to-market rule for "assets in distressed markets" and widen the definition of "temporary impairments" of troubled assets. This would allow banks to write-up the value of bad assets and remove the additional capital requirements the TARP/TALF were created to solve. This could eliminate the ne...

Assuming that the market doesn’t fall apart today (down 120 points now but I think it may even close positive), today will mark the single best week we’ve had in the market since late December and for the first time in a long time I’m seeing some constructive market internals (new highs/lows, advances/declines and up volume/down volume). Maybe most importantly, the financials are looking better than they have in some time. Without a strong financial industry it is impossible for the stock market to move higher because it is impossible for the economy to recover. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley led the way out, and now others are falling in line behind them. Trust me, the worst is not over in the financials, or in the market, but for the first time since last September I see some signs that the worst case scenario may be off the table…at least for now.

Of all of the government programs, the one that seems to have the most merit is the TALF plan. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Lend...