Business

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

In 1906, American entrepreneur William T. Grant opened his very first “W.T. Grant Co 25 cent store” in a small town outside of Boston.

The store became popular and fairly profitable. So Grant opened another. And another.

Three decades later, Grant’s retail empire was generating $100 million in sales (an enormous sum back then). And by the time of Grant’s death in 1972, there were over 1,000 stores bearing his name.

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

The Grim Reaper has taken his scythe to the Venezuelan bolivar. The death of the bolivar is depicted in the following chart. A bolivar is worthless, and with its collapse, Venezuela is witnessing the world’s worst inflation. 

The Dow is now up 17% YTD - crushing bonds and bullion - NOTE everything changed when China’s central bank decided that it would remove a reserve requirement for financial institutions trading in FX forwards for clients by cutting it to zero from 20% currently..

But let's not spoil the party!

For months, we were wondering how much longer Goldman would ignore the relentless market meltup without revising its year-end S&P500 price target, which at 2,400 was not only among the lowest on Wall Street, but also some 150 points away from twhere the S&P currently is. Furthermore, as of this weekend, Goldman's 2018 and 2019 targets for the US equity index, were 2,500 and 2,600, implying there was only 50 points of upside for the next 26 months.

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

The New “Winners of the New World”

Do you remember Jim Cramer’s February 29th, 2000 speech, “Winners of the New World?