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Reports that Atlantic City’s casino’s are in serious trouble don’t tell the half of it, according to our source. He reports as follows: “It's really a lot worse then the news stories would suggest. I have upper management contacts inside a few halls, and they've told me the published numbers are really the best face they could muster. In reality, Atlantic City is toast if this continues much longer. The Recession is keeping people near home in Pennsylvania, and with new slot-shops opening nearby, they won't be back. Atlantic City fumbled the ball badly. I blame the state and city government for allowing a few big operators to destroy the rest of the town. Now they're talking about how they need main street attractions to bring back the tourists, but most everyone closed or sold their family businesses and left long ago. Why would anyone come to this town ? It looks worse then it did in the 70's -- nothing but massage parlors, gold shops and cheap ethnic restaurants ( it looks like Tijuana in the 1960s ). And to top it all off, you can't even see the ocean from the Boardwalk anymore. They might as well have built everything back on the marshes."

From Macauley's World: For those still looking to write loans in volume, the only game in town is government-backed mortgages, mostly those guaranteed by the FHA. But unlike with subprime business, lenders in the FHA program are asked to follow agency rules requiring borrowers to document their income, put up a modest down payment and commit to live in the homes. "With the onslaught of FHA lending that's going on right now, they're bringing in lenders who are not familiar with FHA guidelines," said David Hail, a vice president of Allied Home Mortgage of Houston, one of the nation's largest FHA partners. He said the lenders are "under pressure from their builders or buyers to get these loans done. They're approving loans that they should not be." The Palm Hill Condominiums project near West Palm Beach, Fla., exemplifies the problem. The two-story stucco apartments built 28 years ago on former Everglades swampland were converted to condominiums three years ago. The complex had the same owner as an FHA-approved mortgage company Great Country Mortgage of Coral Gables, whose brokers pushed no-money-down, no-closing-cost loans to prospective buyers of the condos, according to Michael Tanner, who is identified on a company Web site as a senior loan officer. Many of the borrowers were first-time home buyers and were unable to keep up their payments. Tanner said he complained to his company that extending loans without any money down lured borrowers who either didn't understand or take seriously the payments they'd have to make. Great Country's owner, Hector Hernandez Jr., could not be reached for comment. Eighty percent of the Great Country loans at the project have defaulted, a dozen after no payment or one. With 64 percent of all its loans gone bad, Great Country has the highest default rate of any FHA

Paul A. Cleveland writes on Misus Daily: In last year's hit movie, The Dark Knight, there is a classic scene between Alfred and Bruce Wayne. A befuddled Bruce cannot figure out what the Joker is actually trying to gain, and he is sharing his consternation with Alfred. Alfred responds by telling Bruce that some men are just different and, in one of the great lines of the movie, states bluntly, "Some men just want to see the world burn." While it is quite early on in the new administration's term in office, it appears to be behaving in exactly this way. Obama is playing the part of the Joker to perfection, aided and abetted by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The only difference being that, instead of wearing a clown's face, he has chosen to look promising and speak lofty words of nothingness as he and the other Democratic leaders push the nation ever closer to economic collapse. Read the rest of the article.

An good primer on my proprietary Hidden Pivot Method and why it is such an effective forecasting tool.

Collected comments from one of the founding fathers on the subjects of money, politics, and banking. Well worth a read. Download the PDF.