Juggling Dynamite

“…if you look at eating out, dining, department stores, the consumer is pulling back – the evidence is there. It’s nice to see a positive number, we just need to sustain that.”

Kristin Bentz, executive director of the private equity firm PMG Venture Group, admits she did expect the February results to be a little worse given the consumer headwinds. However, she says she thinks we will see that pullback with the effects of the sequestration start to trickle in.”

Here is a direct link to the video interview.

This clip makes some very valid points against spending government money to prop up sugar prices. But while we are at it, same arguments decry government-backed-Central Banks from spending trillions to prop up banks and stock markets too.

“In an effort to prop up sugar prices, which have fallen 18% since October, the USDA is considering buying 400,000 tons of sugar — or enough to make 142 billion Hersey’s Kisses — The WSJ reports.

Of course, there’s nothing new about government support for the sugar industry: The government has been lending money to sugar producers since the 1934 Sugar Act.

But reports of this latest bailout are particularly galling considering the backdrop of a debate in Washington over how to address the nation’s long-term deficit and the ongoing “War on Obesity” being waged by policymakers…”

Here is a direct link to the video report.

“Debunking Economics” author and Economist Steve Keen tells The Daily Ticker the U.S. stock market is in a giant debt-fueled bubble. And that years from now we will look back and say “why didn’t people see that?” He explains a couple of key indicators that support this view being the present 22 reading on the Shiller price to earnings ratio (historical average is 14) and the excessive levels of margin debt presently being used by stock holders (now back at levels seen at the market peaks in 2000 and 2007).  When margin use peaks the market traditionally breaks.  See the video clip here.

Here is a margin balance chart that supports his point.

And here is the present Shiller PE in perspective chart.