If you think about geopolitics at all, you know North Korea poses many problems for its neighbors. And for the United States. And for the whole world. If we take attack North Korea militarily, over a million South Koreans will die. Along with a lot of Americans on ships and on land over there. Nobody wants that. It might come to that, but nobody wants it. Now, North Korea has ICBMs that can drop a nuke on Alaska.

The world is even more fragile than it was in 2007. The big banks are bigger. Aggregate bank assets are concentrated in fewer hands. The bank derivatives books are much larger. Market liquidity is worse. —James Rickards, The Daily Reckoning Well, ain’t that just dandy? And it’s undeniably true. We were told that the 2008 financial meltdown was caused by entities that had grown too large: banks, insurance companies, corporations, derivitives.

The horror in Aurora, Colorado, gave President Obama a little cover last Friday. That’s because the Labor Department announced that unemployment rose in 27 states. President Obama promised to hold unemployment under eight percent if Congress passed the stimulus package in 2009. Congress did, but Obama failed. Remember all those green jobs? They’re gone. **The problem isn’t Barack Obama; the problem is liberalism. ** Liberals believe that only experts can make intelligent decisions.

Originally posted February 15, 2009 I know this is a little late, but I was waiting for Congress to spend another trillion dollars or so before committing my prediction to the public. Here goes: GDP and unemployment will flatten and even improve a bit in first half of 2009 for a couple of reasons: First, people will begin to look for excuses to spend money. This includes businesses.

For months I’ve been echoing the warnings of Peter Schiff and others: when China stops buying American debt, we’re in deep, deep trouble. The possibility for hyperflation, prices rise by double-digits on daily or weekly measures, becomes palpably high. Even though this article from IHT failed to suprised me, I have a sick, frightened gnawing in my stomach: China has bought more than $1 trillion in American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home - a shift that could pose some challenges to the U.