Tag Archives: Featured

The Fed has not only failed to fix what’s broken in the U.S. economy–it has actively mad those problems worse. The Federal Reserve claims its monetary interventions saved America from economic ruin in 2009, and have bolstered growth ever since. Don’t hurt yourself patting your own backs, Fed governors past and present: it’s bad enough that the Fed can’t fix the economy’s real problems–its policies actively make them...

Submitted by Koos Jansen of BullionStar In the Gold Survey 2016 report by GFMS that covers the global gold market for calendar year 2015 Chinese gold consumption was assessed at 867 tonnes. As Chinese wholesale demand, measured by withdrawals from Shanghai Gold Exchange designated vaults, accounted for 2,596 tonnes in 2015 the difference reached an extraordinary peak for the year. In an attempt to explain the 1,729...

The Arizona House of Representatives has convened an Ad Hoc Committee on Gold Bonds. The purpose is to explore if and how the state could sell a gold bond. This is an exciting development, as the issuance of a gold bond would be a major step towards a working gold standard. Yours truly is a member of the committee. At the first meeting, I gave a proposal for how a gold bond could work to the benefit of the state and...

Summary: Major central banks and many economists are calling for higher wages. However, they are reluctant to offer proposals to strengthen those institutions who’s goal is to boost labor’s share of national income. The advocates are more interested in boosting prices than in lifting aggregate demand or addressing the disparity of income and wealth. Charlie Chaplin All that is solid is melting. After...

Addiction and drug use are medical/mental health issues, not criminalization/ imprisonment issues. It’s difficult to pick the most destructive of America’s many senseless, futile and tragically needless wars, but the “War on Drugs” is near the top of the list.Prohibition of mind-altering substances has not just failed–it has failed spectacularly, and generated extremely destructive and counterproductive consequences....

A very insightful post from Bloomberg. We added some more explanations. We explained that the dollar is currently more overvalued than the Swiss Franc. Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan keeps saying the franc is “significantly overvalued.” And that’s despite the central bank’s record-low deposit rate and occasional currency market interventions. While the franc is typically a top choice for foreign...

Annual population and labour force growth in Japan Which country, the United States or Japan, have had the fastest GDP growth rate since the financial crisis? Due to Japan’s bad reputation as a stagnant, debt ridden, central bank dependent, demographic basket case the question appears superfluous. The answer seemed so obvious to us that we haven’t really bothered looking into it until one day we started thinking...

Summary: The Australian dollar’s technical condition has soured. Market sentiment may be changing as the MSCI World Index of developed equities posted a key reversal yesterday. It is not clear yet whether the Aussie is correcting lower or whether there has been a trend change. Since late July, I have been looking for the Australian dollar to turn lower. Instead, the Aussie has continued to climb.  It has risen...

(I write a monthly column for a Chinese paper.  Here is a draft of it) It is as if Hamlet, the confused prince of Denmark, has taken up residence in Beijing. The famed-prince wrestled with “seeming” and “being”. So are Chinese officials. They seem to be relaxing their control over financial markets but are they really?  Are they tolerating market forces because they approve what they are doing, such as driving interest...

The vulnerability of global food production to extremes of weather is a profound reality that few grasp. Given the current abundance of food globally, confidence in permanent food surpluses and low grain prices is high. Few worry that the present abundance of food could be temporary. But the global food supply is more fragile than we might think, despite historically low grain/agricultural commodity prices. Both corn...