Casey Research's Blog

The main problem is that the country is excessively indebted. We have got too much debt – public and private – relative to GDP, and an increasing portion of this debt is unproductive or even counterproductive, which means that we are not going to be able to generate income in the future to service the debt.

The first session of this 112th Congress was spent with Democrats and Republicans at loggerheads over the debt ceiling, taxes, spending cuts, the deficit super committee, appropriations bills and finally the extension of unemployment compensation and a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut.

Worldwide, an incredible tower of debt has been under construction since President Nixon's 1971 default on the gold obligations of the US government. His decree severed the redeemability of the dollar for gold and thus eliminated the extinguisher of debt. Debt has been growing exponentially everywhere since then.

Discussions around the US and EU embargoes on Iranian oil generally focus on one thing: the price of oil. Iran produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day and exports 2.5 million of those barrels, representing 3% of world supply. If the embargoes were to succeed in preventing half that oil from getting to market, oil prices would immediately jump 20 to 30%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Yesterday - just two days after our modern-day Evita got re-elected president of Argentina - Christina Fernandez Kirchner's government announced a change in rules for mineral exporters; they will be required to repatriate all sales revenue to Argentina. Apparently certain unpatriotic exporters didn't want to bring cash from abroad back home and convert them to rapidly inflating Argentinean pesos - how strange.

A new assessment by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has slashed the estimated volumes of recoverable natural gas resources in the now-famous Marcellus Shale Basin, putting yet another damper on the concept that America can fuel its future with domestic gas.

Global markets dragged themselves through July, slogging through one potential catastrophe after another. Greece's financial troubles, worries about Italy, Ireland, and Portugal, slowing manufacturing and persistently high unemployment in the United States, inflation in China.

Nuclear energy has taken a beating since the Fukushima crisis began in March, but we believe the arguments are strong that it’s not down for the count.

Recently, debate in Congress over the legalization of online poker has been heating up. The clamor is a direct result of April 15, 2011, dubbed "Black Friday" in the poker community.

In an attempt to stabilize global oil supplies and reduce energy prices in the face of Libya's missing production, the United States is leading an international effort to release 60 million barrels of crude reserves to world markets.