In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche
The logical conclusion we need to make here is that we are at the beginning of a long-term slump in gold. The combination of low interest rates and high stock market returns is taking all the luster out of the gold market, and it is not likely to return any time soon.
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To be fair, there are some signs Lending Club is starting to make money. According to its financials, Lending Club had $64.6 million in cash and short-term investments when it went public. Yet on March 31, 2015, Lending Club had $874.13 million in cash and short-term investments. That shows us that it is capable of generating a lot of cash in a very short period of time, but can it keep that up?
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The number of delinquent loan balances at BOFI doubled between June 30, 2014, and September 30, 2014, which indicates that the bank’s loan book could quickly melt down.
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The loss of Costco Canada is already hurting American Express, where revenue fell slightly between December 2014 and March 2015. AmEx reported a TTM revenue of $34.04 billion on March 31, down from $34.29 billion on December 31. The loss of Costco Canada hit American Express hard because the club store giant is huge in Canada, as anybody who visits the country knows.
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Something else that is also obvious is that PayPal would be an acquisition target; purchasing it would give a large bank, retailer or credit card company access to a vast financial network and tens of millions of potential customers.
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This could indicate that traditional banking might no longer be a viable business because of the alternatives available. Things could soon get worse because PayPal is about to get spun off from eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) and transformed into an independent financial services company that will compete directly with banks.
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• Abolish the payroll or withholding taxes, which take a percentage of a person’s salary. These hit the working poor heavily, and they do not raise enough money to cover the costs of programs like Social Security and Medicare.
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Americans now have less economic freedom than Danes, Chileans, Canadians, Swiss, New Zealanders, Australians and even Estonians, according to the Index. In fact, the level of economic freedom in the USA is only slightly higher than that in the United Kingdom, which American conservatives love to disparage as a bastion of socialism.
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The retail environment has changed dramatically because of the value shopper. Those investors that realize it and invest accordingly will profit.
Read MoreBasically, any company that offers high-quality merchandise or a high level of convenience at a good price is poised to profit in this economy. People want to save as much money as possible, but they don’t want to think of themselves as “poor”; income inequality, which makes people conscious of poverty, drives this trend.
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