Remembering Irwin Schiff

Today would have been my father, Irwin Schiff's 90th birthday. If you're not familiar with my father's story, and I'm sure most of the people who listen to this podcast are familiar with my father but if you're not go to schiffbooks.com and pick up a copy of "The Federal Mafia," which was one of only 2 books banned by the Federal Government.  We have a lot of books, "The Kingdom Moltz" a book that really shows off my father's sense of humor.  It's beautifully illustrated by an artist named Andy Ice.  I always liked that book as a kid. The book is very appropriate now, because it really explains inflation and where it comes from.  My dad's old website, paynoincometax.com is still up, which has an archive of his old radio shows that he did weekly from Las Vegas. If you listen to my Dad, you'll know what I'm coming from.  My dad talks a lot about economics.

Everything is Great!

But today, everything is great; Wall Street had a huge relief rally today; the Dow Jones was up almost 350 points, pretty much closing right on the highs of the day.  The NASDAQ had an even better day, by percentage, up 120 points.  The Dow was down on the week until today, but this big gain brought it up for the week.

Down Day in the Bond Market

I think the reason the market was so strong was we finally got a down day in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year treasury went back down. We closed at 2.871.  Remember, we got to 2.95, we almost got to 3% and now we're back down to 2.871 on the 30 year. We had gotten up to 3.22 a couple of days ago.  I think this took a lot of pressure off the stock market and people came in buying. "Everything is great; nothing to worry about!"

Commodities Strong Across the Board

The commodity market, though, was very strong across the board.  Look at the surprise strength in oil.  Everybody was talking about oil prices coming down - we're already back up to $63.50 and above. Almost back the the highs.  Oil prices are going a lot higher. It's not just oil prices that are going up; commodities in general.  I think we are in the early stages of another major boom in commodity prices.  We had a big boom that ended in 2008 with the financial crisis.  This is going to be a bigger boom, because it's not going to end in a financial crisis.  This is going to be a dollar crisis, which is music to the ears of the commodity markets because they're all priced in dollars.