Tag Archives: Australia

In September 1986, The Economist weekly newspaper published its first-ever “Big Mac Index”. It was a light-hearted way for the paper to gauge whether foreign currencies are over- or under-valued by comparing the prices of Big Macs around the world. In theory, the price of a Big Mac in Rio de Janeiro should be the same as a Big Mac in Cairo or Toronto. After all, no matter where in the world you buy one, a Big Mac...

As if things were not already chaotic enough in the socialist utopia of Venezuela, following President Nicolas Maduro’s decision to follow Indian PM Modi’s playbook and announce that the nation’s largest denomination bill (100-Bolivars – worth around 3c) will be pulled from circulation in 72 hours, he has tonight closed the border to Colombia to crackdown on currency smuggling by so-called “mafias”. As AP reports,...

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com, It’s happening faster than we could have ever imagined. Every time we turn around, it seems, there’s another major assault in the War on Cash. India is the most notable recent example– the embarrassing debacle a few weeks ago in which the government, overnight, “demonetized” its two largest denominations of cash, leaving an entire nation in chaos. But there have been...

Submitted by Koos Jansen from BullionStar.com Withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, which can be used as a proxy for Chinese wholesale gold demand, reached 1,406 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2016. Supply that went through the central bourse consisted of at least 905 tonnes imported gold, roughly 335 tonnes of domestic mine output, and 166 tonnes in scrap supply and other flows recycled...

Today Credit Suisse released its latest annual global wealth report, which traditionally lays out what is perhaps the biggest reason for the recent “anti-establishment” revulsion: an unprecedented concentration of wealth among a handful of people, as shown in its infamous global wealth pyramid, an arrangement which as observed by the “shocking” political backlash of the past few months suggests that the lower ‘levels’...

Yesterday morning we noted why, in light of the ongoing global bond rout, all eyes would be on the BOJ, and specifically whether Kuroda would engage his "Yield control" operation to stabilize the steepness of the JGB yield curve and implicitly support global bond yields in what DB said would be "full blown helicopter money" where the "BoJ is flying the copter over the US and may be about to become the new US government’s best friend." And sure enough that is precisely what Kuroda did last...

Comment on Swiss Franc by George Dorgan My articles About meMy booksFollow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +YoutubeSeeking AlphaCFA SocietyLinkedINEconomicBlogs Swiss Franc EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc (see more posts on EUR/CHF, ). - Click to enlarge FX Rates The latest US political news before roiled thin pre-weekend markets, but cooler heads and more of them are prevailing today. Trump’s fortune in the polls...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An era of slowing growth, falling corporate profits, record debt levels, and currency debauchment has many investors buying gold as a bet against global central banks. Holding that gold outside the banking system, and for some, outside one’s own country, are increasingly popular options. Canada, Switzerland, and four other countries have particularly attractive characteristics.

Submitted by Nicole Foss via The Automatic Earth blog, Part 1 Here. History teaches us that central authorities dislike escape routes, at least for the majority, and are therefore prone to closing them, so that control of a limited money supply can remain in the hands of the very few. In the 1930s, gold was the escape route, so gold was confiscated. As Alan Greenspan wrote in 1966: In the absence of the gold...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]As momentum builds in the developing deflationary spiral, we are seeing increasingly desperate measures to keep the global credit ponzi scheme from its inevitable conclusion. Credit bubbles are dynamic — they must grow continually or implode — hence they require ever more money to be lent into existence.