Tag Archives: Featured

Dirty War DELRAY BEACH, Florida – The markets continue to dawdle. Not much conviction in either direction. We’ve already looked at the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. So let’s move on –  using our new lens to look at another of the feds’ fake wars. No war was ever officially declared against the markets. But for four decades the feds conducted covert operations – a dirty war in which they’ve...

There are still opportunities to not just earn a wage, but the overhead, profit and capital skimmed by global corporations. So how can someone earning $15 an hour as an employee get ahead? The short answer is: they can’t. One worker earning $15/hour will struggle to get ahead, which I define as building capital that generates an income stream. A family with four adults working full-time at $15 an hour with benefits can...

Summary: The yuan has weakened and Chinese shares have sold off, yet global capital markets are taking little notice. August 2015 and again in January 2016, markets seemed to be hypersensitive. Yuan’s decline has been modest, orderly, and not eliciting a negative response by policymakers, including US Treasury Dept. There were two dogs that did not bark this year. There are the Japanese yen, which despite...

A Companion Update to this Year’s “In Gold We Trust” Report Our good friends Ronnie Stoeferle and Mark Valek of Incrementum AG have just published a new chart book, which recaps and updates charts originally shown in this year’s 10th anniversary edition of the “In Gold We Trust” report and provides an overview of recent developments relevant to the gold market. The chart book can be downloaded in PDF form via the...

The monetary debate seems artificially limited. On one side is Federal Reserve policy based on discretion. On the other is policy based on rules. It’s Keynes vs. Friedman. It’s central planning of our economy based on the reactive whims of wise monetary planners vs. central planning of our economy based on the proactive rules written by … wise monetary planners. On the rules side, there is a sub-debate. Should we have...

Swiss Franc Sterling vs the Swiss Franc has remained close to its lowest level in history caused by the aftermath of the Brexit vote back in June and more recently the announcement that Article 50 will be triggered by March 2017. Confidence in Sterling exchange rates has plummeted recently and until we get some form of assurances as to how the talks may go with the European Union we could see Sterling fall even...

The pending Brexit has, not surprisingly, caused a shakeup in the investment world, particularly in the UK. Of particular note is that, recently, asset management firms in Britain began refusing their clients the right to cash out of their mutual funds. Of the 35 billion invested in such funds, just under £20 billion has been affected. For those readers who live in the UK, or are invested in UK mutual funds, this is...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Reassertion of Gravity Another week without much major price action, gold +$16 and silver +$0.12. At least if you look at the closing prices. However on Monday after New York market hours, there was quite a spike in silver. The close was $17.46. The price was up 10 cents by midnight in New York. By the morning before...

We are about to start a painful learning process about what is “impossible” and what is inevitable. Two charts illustrate Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: this chart of the S-Curve of financialization, leverage, debt, central planning, regulatory capture and globalization–that is, the engines of modern “growth”–depicts the inevitable stagnation and decline of these dynamics as overcapacity, debt...

Summary: Fitch cut Italy’s rating outlook to negative from stable, while DBRS left Portugal’s rating and outlook unchanged. Europe and Canada’s free trade negotiations broke down, but many seem to be making exaggerating the significance of the drama. Japan and Australia report inflation figures, and both are exceptions to the generalization that price pressures are rising in (most) high income countries....