By Emily Spence

At present, numerous environmental researchers are warning of future resource shortages. The list of them is large and includes water, oil, a variety of minerals and metals, as well as other materials.

Yet, most people carry on as if they do not hear the message at all. They refuse to cut back in their dreams of continuing economic growth.

In relation, part of the problem with them is perhaps an inability to make connections. For the most part, they seem to have little or no idea about the collective consequences of their individual behaviors.

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By Numerian

Wall Street cannot see that a regime change has come to the markets, one in which corporations will be increasingly on the defensive, hounded by governments everywhere looking to raise tax revenue, and assaulted by a permanent buyers strike from consumers adjusting to their own drop in living standards. Image

The financial press likes to talk up those occasions when the Dow presses on above 10,000. Such talk lately has become desultory, since it seems every other week the Dow lurches below 10,000 and then manages to climb its way back up. The market has been in this funk since February of this year, when the Dow began its most recent push from below 10,000, all the way to a peak around 11,200, only to fall three times below the 10,000 level since and recover with less and less conviction.

Is the market creating a topping pattern, or is this merely a consolidation period to be followed by new highs for the year? This is the perennial question whenever the market trades sideways, allowing the bulls and bears to thrash out the economic arguments, and ultimately allowing real world conditions to resolve whether the market will break out on the upside or downside.

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By Numerian posted by Michael Collins

Unprecedented relationships are beginning to form in the global bond markets. For as long as anyone can remember, the US government has enjoyed the lowest cost of borrowing whatever the maturity of the bond, because the US has been deemed the safest credit anywhere in the world. The prospect of default of the United States has been considered so low that academics describe the US Treasury bond as the risk-free bond., from which all other credit instruments are priced.

This relationship seems to be breaking down, for the first time in living history. This past week Berkshire Hathaway was able to raise funds at an interest rate lower than that of the US Treasury. Headlines in the financial press stated: “Obama Pays More Than Warren Buffett For Money.” The bonds of DuPont and other stalwart corporate names also yielded less than equivalent maturity Treasuries.

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