Felix Zulauf on gold as the ultimate currency

Big money investors have realized that they need to hide in a currency that has no liabilities and can not be created out of thin-air just by pushing a button or writing a note, or whatever, by central banks.

Gold, I see, not as a commodity but as the ultimate currency, a currency that can not be increased without working hard and getting it out of the ground.

~ Felix Zulauf, King World News, May 28th, 2010

Fred Hickey on the media's attitude towards gold

The media remains outright hostile towards [gold]. Last month Fortune magazine titled a story, "The Coming Gold Bust." Time Magazine had its own version: "Is Gold About to Bust?" CNBC host Simon Hobbs foams at the mouth when he speaks about gold. Last month Hobbs asked a gold bull the following loaded question: "So Jerry, would you still be advising widows and orphans to join the great pyramid selling scheme to buy gold in the hopes that others will follow you and push the price still higher?" For good measure, Hobbs declared at the end of the segment that "Gold isn't a store of value, it's a nonsense!"

~ Fred Hickey, editor, The High-Tech Strategist, June 4, 2010

Fred Hickey on unsustainable living standards

Dr. Bernanke has unwittingly helped create a monster, an 'Abby Normal' world economy where excessive government interventions keep market forces from clearing the imbalances. Most of the developed world countries consume too much, produce too little, retire too early and borrow too much in an attempt to sustain ultimately unsustainable standards of living. That's true in Greece, Spain and England, as well as in the United States.

~ Fred Hickey, editor, The High-Tech Strategist, June 4, 2010

Oppenheimer's Brian Belski on the fundamentals never having been better (to some degree)

There's a lot of headline risk right now because of what's going on in the Gulf and what's going on in Europe, people just don't feel very good about buying equities. One of the things that [Commerce] Secretary Locke talked about earlier was the fundamentals of our economy in corporate America almost, to some degree, have never been better.

Yes, the trajectory of employment is heading in the right direction, but we need to see more job gains.

~ Brian Belski, analyst, Oppenheimer & Co., "Market Breakdown", CNBC, June 7th, 2010

Marc Faber on a new model for financial analysis

It is no longer sufficient to analyze macroeconomic and microeconomic trends and individual companies and sectors; we now increasingly need the help of a political analyst who can warn us of what governments’ next regulatory ‘Schnapsideen’ (ideas developed while heavily intoxicated) are likely to be.

~ Marc Faber, editor, Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, The Daily Reckoning

Fran Lebowitz on war

The first step in having any successful war is getting people to fight it.

~ Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies, (1981)

Charlie Gasparino on Warren Buffett as a conflicted commentator on the financial markets

This is the problem with Warren Buffett: I'm sure he's a nice guy, I've known him for years, obviously he's a great investor, smart man; reporters tend to put him on a pedestal where they forget that this guy often talks his own book.

In defending the ratings agencies, and I've gotten a lot of calls from ratings agencies people today, their defenders, their flacks, they all say listen to what Buffett said. The reality is he's a conflict of interest, in and of himself. He owns a big piece of Moody's so of course he's going to defend it.

~Charles Gasparino, Fox Business News, June 2nd, 2010