As with expos and other events such as the Olympics, World Cup, etc., the big promise from promoters and organizers is that winning the bid will bring in floods of tourists, billions in revenue and create jobs. In practice, however, the projects are plagued with massive cost overruns, rampant corruption and promises of fueling surrounding businesses and economies that fail...

The Forecast: Despite public rhetoric, bankism will grow in 2015 because the financial system is unstable and quantitative easing is not over. For solvency and reputational reasons, both central and private banks need, and will collaborate on, low rates for liquidity and to inflate asset prices. This will keep bond and stock prices propped up for the first half of...

While the Institute does not give financial advice, for those so inclined cash remains the one financial possession that Main Street should be holding — outside of the banking system — to maintain individual financial security. Indeed, the second half of the year in bankism is that private banks are going to be gunning for your cash. In April, Citigroup...

The Forecast: The formula is a simple one: Too much product is flooding the global marketplace, and there’s a chronic shortage of people with enough money to buy those products. Price wars will mark a new age of retail marketing. Who will be the winners and losers? And even as commodity prices decline in many sectors, the cost of living...

Absent a war and/or wild-card event, as long as the global economy remains tepid, price wars on both raw material and finished goods will continue. In nations where economics stagnate or weaken, central banks will continue to use deflation as an excuse to keep interest rates low. 

The Forecast: What we are experiencing is not a repeat of the past. The ability or, rather, audacity of the US government to manipulate the major financial markets is new. Can this trend continue?  Governments and economists take their hats off to free markets. Yet, the markets are rigged, not free. How long can stocks stay up in a lackluster...

We are frequently asked: When will the global market bubble — pumped up with tens of trillions in quantitative easing, low-interest-rate policy and overtly manipulated by governments and central banks — finally burst? There is no firm timetable. In this era of the Grand Manipulation, in which there is no correlation among sound investment principles, free markets and price-discovery mechanism in...

» Some chains, especially those like New Media Investment Group with the cash to buy, will show healthy returns in the next few years — as long as they can acquire “fat” properties and consolidate/absorb operations into their corporate machinery to slash spending. But the failure to produce genuine news-driven strategies will be their eventual undoing. At some point, with...