MoneyBob

Are we on the verge of total economic collapse?

Don't laugh. The french firm Societe Generale thinks so.

The brokerage firm has put the fear of God in clients recently by predicting that developed economies and markets are going to collapse under a monster debt load and that gold is going to soar to $6,000 an ounce.

Fortunately, not everyone feels that way.

Many on Wall Street, in fact, have suddenly gotten quite bullish after missing a lot of the extraordinary 65% rally we've had since the lows of M

The Dollar Index hit yet another 14-month low early Monday after a Chinese central bank official urged the PRC to diversify its reserves into more euro and yen. A stronger-than-expected GDP report in South Korea also put pressure on the greenback as traders expect other central banks to follow Australia's lead and raise rates while the Fed stands pat.

"The dollar is a significant concern," says Leo Tilman, president of L.M. Tilman & Co. and author of Financial Darwinism." You can envision all sorts of cris

The U.S. is an empire in decline, according to Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money.

"People have predicted the end of America in the past and been wrong," Ferguson concedes. "But let's face it: If you're trying to borrow $9 trillion to save your financial system...and already half your public debt held by foreigners, it's not really the conduct of rising empires, is it?"

Given its massive deficits and overseas military adventures, America today is similar to the Spanish Emp

The economy is still the pits yet stocks are on a tear. What's an investor to do in these confusing times?

John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors, admits the average investor doesn't "have as many good choices" as in the past.

Contrary to what "experts" have told the public for years, now is not the time for buy and hold, Mauldin says. "You can be a trader. You can ride the wave, I've got no problem with that but I don't think you want to buy something and hold it for five years."

That's be

Now that the worst of the recession is over, Americans are waking up to the fact that we're borrowing nearly $1.5 trillion per year. Instinctively, this worries us.

But why?

What's really so bad about piling on debt in excess of 10% of GDP every year?

Japan has been borrowing through the nose for years, and Japan, well... okay, maybe Japan's not a good example. Japan's economy has been in the tank for two decades.

Actually, Japan's a great example, says John Mauldin of Millennium Wave Advisors. What's h

The economic recovery currently underway is a statistical mirage, based on easy year-over-year comparisons and inventory rebuilding, John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Securities, tells Henry in the accompanying video.

The unemployment rate is closer to 12% when you include people who've been dropped from the survey and the "underemployment" rate - people working part-time vs. full time - is 17% to 18%, "and rising," Mauldin says. "That doesn't feel like recovery."

Mauldin, who writes the popular

The strength of the recovery in the housing market has surprised a lot of people, including Yale Professor Robert Shiller.

"This is historic," Shiller says of the recent snapback in the Case-Shiller Index. "It's V-shaped. We've never seen it before. That makes it hard to know from statistical basis what it portends."

Are we on track for a repeat of irrational exuberance?

With the stock market up more than 50% since March and the Standard & Poor's Case/Shiller Index on the rise for the last three months,

10 to 12 million U.S. Homes Could Ultimately Go Into Foreclosure

There's been a lot of talk lately about a recovery in the housing market – even reports of bubbles re-inflating in certain markets.

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, isn't buying it.

"We see things getting worse in the housing market," Warren says, citing the pernicious effects of foreclosures, which rose 5% in the third quarter to a total of 937,840, according to RealtyTrac.

"The long-term impact of high fore

Famed investor Jim Rogers is "quite sure gold will go over $2000 per ounce during this bull market."

Rogers' confidence gold will continue to rally stems from a view the U.S. dollar is on its way to losing status as the world's reserve currency.

"Is it going to happen? Yes," Rogers says. "I don't like saying it [and] I'm extremely worried about it but we have to deal with the facts. America is not getting better [and] the dollar is going to be replaced just like pound sterling [was]."

Rogers didn't offer

Given the Fed's extremely easy policies, runaway government spending and shortages of many commodities, inflation pressures are building and destined to get much worse, according to famed investor Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings.

"The Federal Reserve has laid the groundwork for some serious inflation down the road by printing all this money," Rogers says. "So have many other central banks."

Although "the U.S. government lies about inflation" in its official data, inflationary pressures are already evident i

Jim Rogers, famed investor and best-selling author, announced the start of a global commodities rally in 1999. It turned out to be a heck of call: Since then, commodities have dramatically outperformed stocks.

Just this year, gold has hit record highs above $1000 per ounce, copper has nearly doubled and oil has rallied sharply off its March lows. So does Robers still believe in the commodity boom?

You bet. "The story is not over, not for a while," he tells Tech Ticker in this video clip. "I don't see any

Stocks rallied to start the week thanks to a better-than-expected ISM services sector report and a Goldman Sachs upgrade of big banks, including Wells Fargo, Comerica and Capital One.

But all is not right in either the economy or the banking sector, according to Christopher Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics. In fact, Whalen says most observers are drawing the wrong economic conclusions from the stock market's robust rally.

"Why is liquidity going into the financial sector? It's bec

Stocks and commodities are on the rise today as the dollar falls. It's nothing new or surprising.

What is newsworthy is a report from the British newspaper The Independent claiming the dollar's days might be numbered in the oil trading pits.

The story says "secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars." The details on how and what would replace th

Goldman Sachs making headlines again. Today, it’s on two accounts.

First, Bloomberg is reporting Goldman could earn about $1 billion should the troubled lender CIT Group, enter bankruptcy or otherwise end a $3 billion financing agreement. I'm sure it's adding fuel to the fire for the "Government Sachs" conspiracy theorists, who probably see it as a repeat of what happened with the AIG bailout.

For those that don't remember, Goldman received $12.9 billion from AIG after the government rescued the world

After a two-week decline which brought the Dow down 3.5%, the bulls are reasserting themselves to start this week. Building on Monday's rally, global stocks were higher Tuesday amid renewed weakness in the dollar.

In recent trading, the Dow was up 1.1% the S&P by 1.3% and the Nasdaq by 1.5%. Commodities rallied sharply, led by gold, as the dollar weakened anew after Australia's surprise rate hike heightened interest rate differentials and improved the appeal of the carry trade (whereby fund managers borrow

The gold bugs are finally enjoying their moment in the sun. After 20 horrible years, in which gold dropped from $800 to $250 an ounce, the sometimes-precious metal is now roaring to all-time highs.

Some folks, moreover, think this is only the beginning. Peter Schiff recently told Tech Ticker gold is headed to $5,000 an ounce.

But that doesn't mean it's a great investment!

In fact, says our guest Jon Najarian of OptionMonster, even with the run over the past five years, gold is still trading at about half

Unlike the "legitimate bull markets" of many foreign markets, Peter Schiff believes the U.S. is merely experiencing a "rally in a bear market," and is lagging the rest of the world "for a reason."

The worst is not over, according to Euro Pacific Capital's Schiff, who predicts the Dow will fall another 90% from current levels when measured against gold.

A longtime dollar bear and gold bull, he foresees gold hitting $5000 per ounce "in the next couple of years," and predicts the Dow and gold will trade on a

The Fed upgraded its view of the economy Wednesday, declaring: "Economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn."

But forget all the talk about recovery, V-shaped or otherwise. The economy is actually worse today vs. during the depths of the recession, according to Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0.

"Ben Bernanke is keeping his record of perfection intact of never getting anything right. Once again he's gotten it wrong," Schiff says. "If the Fed re

"The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society," Marc Faber writes in the September issue of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

A statement like that pretty much speaks for itself, but it's a bit more complicated than appears on first blush.

Faber has been bullish -- especially on commodities and emerging market stocks -- for some time now and believes the c

Marc Faber, editor of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report is, by his own account, "ultra-bearish" on the long-term fundamentals of the U.S. market. (Discussed in detail in this clip.)

However, in the near term, Faber sees plenty of money-making opportunities in stocks. Sure, prices aren't as cheap as they were in March, yet he's confident, "in this environment cash will become worthless." As a result, he says investors are, "better off being in equities," for the next two to three years.

Faber is most bullis