Video: Michael Lewis on 'Financial Innovation'

Video: Niall Ferguson Interviews Peter Thiel

Video: Israeli Apartheid

As the U.S. contemplates joining Israel in a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities I wonder how many Americans are aware of or stop to think about Israeli apartheid?

The topic of Israeli apartheid in occupied Palestinian territories is a controversial subject which doesn't get much public attention in the U.S., but below are some excerpts of interviews with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's thoughts on the topic.

Video: Alex Salmond's LSE Talk on Scottish Independence

Below is the video, and the podcast can be heard here. Salmond makes a pretty persuasive case and I wouldn't be surprised if, given enough time to make it, we see an independent Scotland someday.

Speaker(s): Alex Salmond MSP
Chair: Professor Paul Kelly

Recorded on 15 February 2012 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Alex Salmond is the first minister of Scotland. He was born in Linlithgow in 1954. He attended Linlithgow Academy before studying at St Andrews University, where he graduated with a joint honours MA in Economics and History. He became the first ever SNP First Minister of Scotland in May 2007 and won the Aberdeenshire East constituency at the May 2011 election, when the SNP won a majority of seats of in the Scottish Parliament. MSPs re-elected him unopposed for a second term as First Minister on May 18 2011.

Video: Phase Three of the Global Crisis

This is from a year ago but still worthwhile if you haven't seen it.

Speaker: Paul Mason

This event was recorded on 31 January 2011 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

As countries adopt competitive exit strategies from the global crisis Paul Mason surveys the political economy of a flat recovery. He argues that mainstream economics have still refused to draw the lessons of asset price bubbles and situates the divergent recovery, east and west, within a long-wave explanation of the crisis. Paul Mason is the award-winning economics editor of BBC Newsnight, covering an agenda he describes as 'profit, people and planet' and author of the Idle Scrawl blog , which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2009. His first book, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. This event marks the publication of his latest book Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed.

Photo of the Week: Athens On Fire

Tonight Athens burns

The German flag is burned in Athens earlier in the week

h/t Zerohedge and Guardian

Buffet Badmouthing Gold is Like Geithner Talking Up U.S. Dollar

Lebron hasn't been taking financial advice from this guy, I hope? 

The fact that Warren Buffet is not a gold fan is old news.

I can't help but think about how, similar to the notion that it's never a positive sign for the currency when a finance minister feels compelled to publicly defend it, that perhaps it's a bullish signal for gold whenever Buffet feels the need to diss the yellow metal.

If you've studied Buffet you know that he chooses his words with extreme care. His financial empire is also so entrenched in the global economy that the only real risks he faces are existential ones. Such as the semi-quiet, steady run which has been taking place on the U.S. dollar since the turn of the century, when gold began its secular move upward.

Oh how it must just eat at the Oracle to know that a rock has been outperforming his precious equities for well over a decade!

Buffet was arguably the biggest single beneficiary from the 2008 government bailouts, a fact which hasn't received much airtime from Buffet-friendly business journalists (I'm talking about you, Becky). The steady devaluation of fiat currencies, like the U.S. dollar, against gold is something that this blog projects will continue. It is also something which clearly Warren would like to see slow down by badmouthing gold.

2012 Prediction #4: Romney Will Not Win the U.S. Presidency

It's looking like Romney has the Republican nomination, but I am very doubtful that he can carry the country in 2012 for a whole variety of reasons:

1. U.S. economic figures are showing signs of life, at just the right time.
2. Like Eichengreen, Dalio, and others, I think the next leg down in the ongoing financial crisis won't make landfall until 2013 at the earliest.
3. There is a decided lack of enthusiasm about Romney. He comes across as a Wall St. guy who, policy wise, isn't all that different from Obama. He also isn't well liked by the Republican base. In short, Romney seems positioned somewhere in political no-man's land.
4. There is a reasonable chance for a third party candidate to be a factor, and should that happen it will work against Romney more than Obama.
5. Even if Eurogeddon boils over the world's central banks have plenty of space to deploy more monetary artillery. Central banker hands won't begin to be tied until core inflation starts to increase significantly, and that's unlikely to happen over the next 10 months. Even though Bernanke was appointed originally by a Republican, he would probably prefer that Obama (who reappointed him) be reelected given Romney's and general Republican hostility towards the Fed.
6. An Iranian conflict (perhaps the biggest X-factor in 2012) likely favors the incumbent as it would provide Obama with an opportunity to exercise leadership and look presidential.

What could upset this prediction is any material economic deterioration or a geopolitical flub by Obama.

2012 Prediction #3: The Gold 'Bubble' Will Not Burst This Year

George Soros has called gold the "ultimate bubble".

It's getting more than a little far along into 2012 to still be making predictions, but let me just state clearly that 2012 will not witness a collapse in the price of gold.

Why not? I've written about this at length previously, most recently here.

Gold is already off to a decent start in 2012, up $150/oz YTD, so it's perhaps a little unfair for me to be making this call in February. I'm also not making a call on whether gold will finish the year higher or lower, although I suspect higher. However, I am confident that we won't see the bottom fall out of the price of gold this year, or next for that matter.

Overall, we're somewhere in the middle innings of the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and there is still way too much debt in the global financial system for the flight to gold to reverse.