Obama knows there is about 0% chance of his proposals ever seeing the light of day. If he was serious about righting injustices in taxation and helping students, elderly, etc. he should have tried passing these feel good but cost a bundle ideas when Democrats controlled the House and Senate. This sounds both hollow and deceptive. Acting this way will just highlight his lame duck status even more.

Thanks for the data. It's nice to see people like you keeping track of insider activity.

Sadly this proves that the big lets hug each other and find ways for everyone to cheat the system and engage in QE and other absurd methods of making liquidity without a downside to the one making it doesn't work for everyone. In the end the Swiss win in that they are not tied to a sinking ship ready to engage in anti-capitalistic means like Japan and the US. There is good cause not to want to be part of it. QE has always proven to be a growing rock that prevents your country from growing, encourages banks to not loan money to keep it running and enrich themselves, destroys the basic concept of capitalism in that even the banks don't want anything but free money because they have to pay something for it which decreases to nothing, creates unsustainable bubbles, and eventually destroys you as it destroys capitalism itself. One also can argue that it encourages cronyism, fraud and abuse, instills unfairness into the system, and it not democratic in any sense of the word with no public controls.

The dollar should go up if the deficit the US generate keeps dropping and the economy doesn't contract. Given Republican wins the first is likely to happen, however the second is based on a belief that the extended economic cycle can be extended further by rejecting capitalism even more than has been done the last 10+ years. The longer you reject reality the worse it will be when you come to face it.

Agree about biofuels. It is funny that the US wants biofuels that cause food inflation, is bad for cars, gets worse mileage, and costs money. Even China has found a better solution, CNG that costs less naturally and doesn't need a subsidy, lowers emissions, and runs well with engines designed for it.

Does that mean China is more capitalistic than the US? Certainly, when it comes to housing prices and fuel. Still, it's a sad statement to make and is one of the reason's why the US is in the economic doldrums it has been for years.

Great end morals. Sadly that doesn't apply to banks that are rewarded or more aptly coerced by the Federal Reserve to make bets and won't turn tonto donkeys if you're a TBTF bank because taxpayers are the inevitable suckers who pay. In fact, for these companies it's foolish not to bet.

Very good article and may be straight to the heart of what is going on. Clearly commodity hoarding is not the way to go to insulate yourself from economic grief. Sadly the US and China have both done this with the US hoarding oil and China hoarding steel, copper, etc. This has led not to an oversupply but to massive over production that will have an even worse effect than low prices.

Likewise, the Swiss are loathe to get themselves caught in a currency aching to dive into the QE trap Japan and increasingly the US are caught up in. It zombifies your economy and so far, there is no way out. Even though people say there is an ugly way out, cutting it off completely which would be political and economic suicide, it is just speculation. No one has yet done it even when the effects of QE become as unsustainable and looks as ugly as it does in Japan.

Clearly, things must change now that the US in engaging in socialist planned economy ploys like QE and asset price manipulation. It is a sad day in capitalism.

Russia's actions alone are enough to cool the whole globe's economy. Compound that with the US artificially extended up cycle mainly staged by the central bank encouraging asset class speculation, overpricing, and commodity hoarding and China doing the same which is now willing to cut their already massive purchasing of steel, copper, and other resources and it is no surprise 2015 will be a tough year as I have stated a long while back.

Price manipulation has terrible ramifications even when done by central banks (or more specifically especially when done by governments and central banks) and the global risk factors of Russia have been tremendously underestimated.

It is also the bear that ate part of their country and started a war with the rest. It is also the bear that has gobbled other countries and can't be trusted while Putinesque leaders consider them to be pauper states of Russia.

It is fortunate half of winter is over and oil is cheap. The melt up in natural gas will result in a big comedown, especially since Russia will be desperate to sell their garbage to only China who is a shrewd negotiator what is displaced by Russian natural gas will then be dumped into an overcrowded market.

The food crisis is not anywhere as dire as one puts it. If it were obesity would not be as big of a problem as it is, especially in the US. The problem with agriculture right now is the growth of un-arable land thanks to water issues. As for the US, we will not have food problems for many lifetimes and have to take extraordinary measures to actually sell all the grain that rots in storage tanks to parts of the world that can't pay for it.

The best place to invest in agriculture is water which a few companies are trying to buy rights to and fertilizer especially potash.