Tag Archives: Featured

Once upon a time, before banks and before even private lending, there was only one way to prepare for retirement. People had to hoard something durable. Every week, they would set aside part of their wages to buy salt (later, it was silver). Assuming it didn’t get wet, the salt accumulated until they couldn’t work any longer. Then, they would begin selling it off to buy groceries. This was the best they could do. By modern standards, it wasn’t a very good method. Stockpiling a commodity...

This year began with the U.S. stock market facing ever increasing headwinds that whipped up choppier waves with whiter crests and deeper troughs. These harsh winds have blown from the four points of the compass, namely the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the Euro/Greek crisis, the energy and commodity maelstroms, and now the icy chills out of China, all combining to stir up the treacherous currents of globally unstable economic weather patterns.When the market’s weather is sunny and breezy, the...

Just another Rube Goldberg Machine The Rube Goldman machines We normally like to keep things simple and do things the easy way, but we’re completely fascinated by Rube Goldberg machines. They require a level of skill and patience we doubt we’ll ever posses and they’re the ultimate expression of doing something just because you can.   Keep It Simple, Stupid or kiss goodbye to your money Investors sometimes are tempted to build convoluted Rube Goldberg-type contraptions to tell them when...

John Henry Smith of Grail Securities (Switzerland) specializes in the U.S. stock market and offers a unique and powerful advisory service to private investors, institutional investors, and SME asset managers, who are seeking to consistently beat the market. All our strengths are at your disposal to provide stock market research and recommendations with the only aim of growing wealth. To achieve this we develop with you a customized investment strategy in terms of your risk and return...

I have been writing about consumption of capital, using the example of a farmer who sells off his farm to buy groceries. It’s a striking story, because people don’t normally act like this. Of course, there are self-destructive people in every society, but, not many. Most people know not to spend themselves into poverty. To make people hurt themselves, we need to add the essential element: a perverse incentive. Consider a parlor game called Shubik’s Dollar Auction. You auction off a dollar...

Jackson Hole: Cherry Flavored Cyanide, or Strawberry The American Principles Project and the Atlas Network Sound Money Project, provided a much needed alternative in the Jackson Hole Summit. Move Over Entrepreneurs, Make Way for Speculation! The development of lending was a revolutionary breakthrough. Lending allowed the retiree to do business with the entrepreneur. The retiree has wealth, but no income. The entrepreneur is the opposite, with income but not wealth. The retiree lets...

Overview: Sight deposits are currently the by far most important means of financing for SNB currency purchases, for interventions. Sight deposits are assets for commercial banks, the Swiss confederation and other counterparties that deposit money at the SNB, but for the SNB they are liabilities, debt.Sight deposits are always denominated in CHF. The SNB finances itself with Swiss Francs. With a rising CHF the debt relative to assets gets bigger, because the assets lose their value. As...

Both Chinese PMI and the producer price index (PPI) are in deflation since 2012. This opens a lot of questions about the sustainability of Chinese economic growth, but also about the certain economic theories that consider deflation as a precursor of depression, as it did in the early 1930s. China’s speed of economic growth simply slows, recently to 7%, according to China statistics “China’s Economy Showed Moderate but Steady Growth“. Notice For the second year producer prices remain...

Many claim that China manipulates its economic data. We explain why the best way not to get caught is to lower the GDP deflator, as lower inflation helps to increase real GDP. Lombard Street Research assumes that Chinese officials followed that approach. Standard Chartered economist Stephen Green has said that China’s official GDP figures were boosted by government statisticians underestimating inflation, which results in an overestimate of actual growth. And the New York Times recently...

Marc Meyer argues that the Swiss National Bank must build up reserves, but this does not mean “foreign exchange reserves”, but “Swiss Franc reserves”. According to the constitution these reserves are owners’ equity denominated in Swiss Franc and some gold. Thomas Jordan’s famous paper “Does the SNB need equity” tries to overturn the constitution suggesting that the constitution accepts FX investments as “reserves”. Russia builds up foreign reserves with national resources, with equity, the...