Tag Archives: Featured

Thanks to central banks’ easy money policies, historically low interest rates and a desperate search for yield have created new danger zones for investors trying to stay out of trouble. Original Article: “Thanks to Central Banks, the Old Investment Rules Don’t Apply Anymore” Sixty percent equities, 40 percent bonds. What has been considered the golden rule of portfolio theory for decades is of less and less value to investors today. Because central banks have...

Why always round numbers? Monetary policy targets in the post-Volcker era are changed on even terms. Alan Greenspan had his quarter-point fed funds moves. Ben Bernanke faced with crisis would auction $25 billion via TAF. QE’s are done in even numbers, either total purchases or their monthly pace. This is a messy and dynamic environment, in which the economy operates out of seeming randomness at times. Yet, here we have something that is “quantitatively” determined...

Keystone / Urs Flueeler The Credit Suisse Group says it will shrink its investment bank and shift more resources to the wealth management unit. It is part of a restructuring plan intended to draw a line under a tumultuous year in which it was rocked by the Archegos Capital Management and Greensill scandals. The Zurich-based bank is exiting most of its prime services business after the implosion of Archegos and shifting about $3 billion of capital from the investment...

Most commentators label increases in the prices of goods and services over a period of time as inflation. Ludwig von Mises however, held that the popular definition of inflation is erroneous. He wrote in Economic Freedom and Interventionism (p. 99), Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today...

The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren’t so dire. Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: you can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the metaverse, or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy happy!) because the Fed. Neither distraction actually solves any real-world problems, a reality we can call the Revenge of the Real World We’ve entered a peculiar...

Gold and silver price actions have been the opposite of dramatic for months now, they have been boring. In the last 100 days, gold has moved sideways in the US$100 range between $1725 and $1825. Silver had a similar experience moving in a US$5 range between $21.50 and $26.50. These ranges are quite small when compared to exciting moves in Tesla shares and cryptocurrencies such as Shiba! Some people think that being boring this year means we should not own the...

Picture, if you can, a world in which gold circulates as the medium of exchange. People pay for everything, from groceries to rent, in gold. Employers pay wages in gold. Productive enterprises borrow gold to finance everything from food production to constructing apartment buildings. In other words, picture a world where there’s abundant opportunities to earn a yield on gold and finance productive businesses in gold. What Happened to Gold After the Gold Standard? It...

Lessons from the Fall of the Roman Empire – Part II of II Gold-backed civilization vs. the Welfare State Many rational economists and students of history have written countless analyses on the gold standard and the terrible impact that its end has had on the world economy. However, as the Fall of Rome clearly demonstrates, the implications of the introduction of the fiat money system and of the limitless manipulation of the currency by the State reach much further....

In previous installments, I introduced the Great Reset idea1 and treated it in terms of its economic2 and ideological3 components. In this, the sixth installment, I will discuss what the Great Reset entails in terms of governance and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4-IR), closing with remarks about the overall Great Reset project and its implications. According to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the 4-IR follows the...

Bring on the tantrum. Forget this prevaricating, we should want and expect interest rates to get on with normalizing. It’s been a long time, verging to the insanity of a decade and a half already that keeps trending more downward through time. What’s the holdup? You can’t blame COVID at the tail end for a woeful string which actually dates back farther than the last pandemic (H1N1). Emil Kalinowski has it absolutely right; what happened in 2013 in the Treasury...