Two stories that were played next to each other recently on the front page of The Wall Street Journal serve to illustrate the news media’s schizophrenic reportage on the economy.  On the one hand, there was this chirpy report on employment: “Job Offers Rising as Economy Warms Up”.  Never mind that some estimates put current joblessness at nearly 20%  – more than twice as high as the official figure – or that the statistics behind the headline were squishier than a mermaid’s bath sponge. But there was also this story, providing a very different picture of a U.S. economy that is likely to be burdened for years by the overly generous pension benefits promised to city employees across the nation: “Pensions Push Taxes Higher”. The bland headline did not begin to convey the seriousness of the problem.  Some acute examples from Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois were cited in the article.  In Upper Moreland, PA, for instance, annual pension contributions have risen from around $100,000 in 2005 to an estimated $1.1 million in 2011. Spread over a population of just 26,000, that’s quite a hit on taxpayers.  Like countless other municipalities, Upper Moreland had assumed that the juicy investment returns of just five years ago would continue indefinitely, lulling the town into underfunding pensions at a time when they should have been stepping up contributions.

…..read more HERE

Glenview’s Larry Robbins is one of the most optimistic hedge-fund managers around. He predicts P/E multiples will expand by 45% by the end of 2013. This means that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) will surpass the 20,000 level in three years, assuming earnings will grow by a modest 5% pe

The prevalence of crude is undeniable. You might dabble in green-think cultism or you might drive an obnoxious monolith of a Hummer (what I like to call an “overcompensation-mobile”), but neither philosophy of consumption dares to contradict that this world runs on oil. Petroleum is used in the manufacture or shipping of almost every industrial product on the planet, and even many agricultural goods. Therefore, it behooves the public to seriously consider the ramifications of oil price and its underlying effect on the entirety of our economy.

Even minor increases holding over an extended period of time cause economic reverberations that can be felt for years afterwards. Financial and social adjustments to commodity inflation can sometimes take decades if the event is historically unprecedented. Petroleum is a foundation ingredient, it is energy itself; the higher its cost, the greater the cost of every other product we use, and the worse off our financial structure is. Period. There is no scenario yet experienced by any nation in which oil inflation actually benefited the masses or the overall economy, even in countries that sell oil! Americans have had a small taste of the tensions involved in an oil crisis, during the 1979-1980 Iranian snafu, and the massive gas spike of 2008, but these events are nothing compared to the steamrolling inflation we are soon to see at the pump in the next couple of years. Let’s examine why…

….read more HERE

Steady tailwinds benefited the stock market for most of 2010, but Stansberry & Associates Investment Research Founder Porter Stansberry is bracing himself and his clients for a bumpy ride for equities in the new year, as well as unprecedented instability in muni bonds and Treasuries. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Porter, who’s been predicting the dire consequences of unbridled borrowing and continued quantitative easing for some time, recommends utmost caution and conservatism for investors in 201

http://seekingalpha.com/article/243759-10-bold-predictions-for-2011?source=hp_editors_picks