Goebbels: “Control the medium and you control the message”
It seems far more rational these days to quote Goebbels than Marshall McLuhan on this, as one can’t help but get the feeling we are being fed propaganda by the financial media. Plus, Goebbels said it first, and McLuhan plagiarized. To try to get to the bottom of the mess made of our economies, and our currencies, one must now seek alternate sources of news and analysis, which I have been doing for a while, but on a very ad-hoc basis. If you read the mainstream media, at least do so with a skeptics eye.
But keeping a score of tabs open in Firefox, and relying on the good old “Well, this is embarrassing, would you like to restore your session?” message to remember where I have been after billg crashes my machine yet again doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzy I seek. So here I am going to capture a bunch of the tabs I have open, so neither I nor Firefox forgets where I have found what appears like genuine, thoughtful analysis. I’ll get to details and rationale later. For now, here are some other angles on what is going on.
I need to be careful about confirmation bias (read the Black Swan by NNT)…
Let’s start with zerohedge: http://www.zerohedge.com/
Harvey’s daily gold http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/
http://www.capitalismgonewild.com/2009/02/electronic-run-on-banks-550-billion.html
All the ETFs I can trade in Canada:
http://etf.stock-encyclopedia.com/category/bond-etfs.html
http://watch.bnn.ca/
http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/market_alert/2010/10/15/The_Gold-Silver-ETF_Relationship.html
http://www.iie.com/realtime/?p=1760
http://www.consumerindexes.com/
http://themoneytrain1.blogspot.com/
http://www.stockresearchportalblog.com/
http://www.kitco.com/
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6932NR20101004
https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?articleid=201007070855STREETCMREALTIME_10799921&IMG=N&cat=default
http://www.gata.org/node/8466
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/credit/robo-signing-scandal-spreads-documents-show-citi-and-wells-also/19657686/
http://www.roadtoroota.com/public/190.cfm
And some random tabs I want to close and not lose track of:
http://www.uppercanyonminerals.com/
http://ricochet.com/
http://solari.com/archive/Precious_Metals_Puzzle_Palace/
http://www.wesdome.com/index.php
http://www.businessinsider.com/manal-mehta-branch-hill-capital-bac-2010-10#-3
http://greenlightresources.ca/news.php
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15807:competitive-devaluation-and-gold-or-gold-and-the-bond-bubbles&catid=48:gold-commentary&Itemid=131
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-aug-consumer-credit-down-33-bln-2010-10-07-150150?reflink=MW_news_stmp
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/metalmarkets032510_sherrod.html
Ok, there are all my currently open tabs relating to economics and finance. You begin to get a sense of my paranoia, eh?
Oh, there is another good backgrounder site on money etc:
http://www.galmarley.com/
Maybe that last one needs some links under “not-so-current events”. It feels like 300AD all over again…
It takes wealth to wage war. Wars are waged seeking wealth.
I’ll make some attempt to collate and cohere the above into some themes later. “Enjoy”.
ben
PS: Another: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/09/18/346406/can-an-etf-collapse/
http://stockcharts.com/charts/yieldcurve.html
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Archive.html (wow, check out Oct 30 2010, a Saturday)
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/wealthyboomer/archive/2009/09/21/three-ways-to-protect-fixed-income-investments-from-inflation.aspx
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2010-08-e.htm