The dollar remains under pressure; there is a debate as to the root causes of recent dollar weakness May auto sales will be the only US data release today; protests in the US are further denting Trump’s re-elections prospects, at least according to betting odds The G7 meeting planned at Camp David this month was postponed after German Chancellor Merkel declined his invitation Press reports suggest a possible compromise in the UK-EU trade negotiations; oil futures...
Read More »In Gold We Trust, 2020 – The Dawning of a Golden Decade
The New In Gold We Trust Report is Here! The In Gold We Trust 2020 report by our good friends Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek was released last week. It is the biggest and most comprehensive gold research report in the world. As always it contains a wealth of new material, as well as the traditional wide-ranging collection of charts and data that makes it such a valuable reference work for everything of interest to gold investors or indeed for anyone interested in...
Read More »Davos aims to coax elite out of isolation in January
The Swiss town of Davos, awaiting the arrival of the 2020 WEF. (Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller) The World Economic Forum has vowed to hold its annual meeting in Davos in January, testing the willingness of a globetrotting elite to resume the high-powered networking that has been frozen by the coronavirus pandemic. Such events have been cancelled around the world since the pandemic began, with many chief executives expressing doubt that they will return to the conference...
Read More »FX Daily, June 2: Greenback’s Slide Continues
Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.60% to 1.076 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 2(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Liquidity trumps everything else. US equities shrugged off the national guard being called into action in nearly a third of US states, and the S&P 500 closed yesterday at nearly three-month highs. Asia Pacific markets followed suit. Most markets in the region rose by more than 1%. The...
Read More »“Wenn die Notenbank den Staat finanziert (When the Central Bank Finances the State),” FAS, 2020
FAS, 31 May 2020. PDF. Monetary deficit financing is the norm—after all, central banks distribute their profits. Monetary financing occurs in the context of regular open market operations and QE and, hyper charged, with helicopter drops. The question is not whether monetary policy should finance the government, but why it does so, and to what extent. Fiscal and monetary policy are inherently connected; what constitutes monetary policy is defined by objectives....
Read More »June Monthly
The investment climate in June will be shaped by forces that emerged in May. Many countries began relaxing lockdowns and various activity-based alternative data, like traffic pattern, Open Table Reservations showed improvement on the margins. Sentiment surveys, while mostly still depressed, were better than April readings. The long slog back has begun. There was also optimism over several different vaccines that had been initiated or soon will begin human tests. The...
Read More »We’re Living the Founding Fathers’ Nightmare: America Is Corrupt to the Core
Our ruling elites, devoid of leadership, are little more than the scum of self-interested, greedy grifters who rose to the top of America’s foul-smelling stew of corruption. The Founding Fathers were wary of institutional threats to liberty and the citizenry’s sovereignty, which included centralized concentrations of power (monarchy, central banks, federal agencies, etc.) and the tyranny of corruption unleashed by small-minded, self-interested, greedy grifters who...
Read More »There’s No End in Sight to the Zombie Economy
The United States was waiting for the zombie apocalypse. The country was given a coronapocalypse instead. But could the two events merge and provide the nation with a dangerous economic trend? Corporate America’s worst-kept secret had been the swelling number of zombies kept on life support and hidden away during the boom phase of the business cycle. Now that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fault lines underneath the economy, the zombification may accelerate...
Read More »Michael Flynn, Lori Loughlin, and the Permanent Culture of Prosecutorial Abuse
When US attorney general William Barr recently announced that the Department of Justice was reversing course and dropping all charges against former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, the response from Democrats, the mainstream news media, and Never-Trump Republicans such as David French was thermonuclear, to put it mildly. The New York Times, which many times has editorialized against prosecutorial tactics that drive people to plead guilty instead of going to trial,...
Read More »FX Daily, June 1: US Dollar Losses are Extended, but Momentum Stalls in the European Morning
Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% to 1.0689 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, June 1(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: US stocks extended their gains ahead of the weekend after President Trump shied away from specific actions against China-Hong Kong, and today Hong Kong shares recovered smartly from last week’s 3.6% slide. The Hang Seng rose 3.3% today, and the Shanghai Composite gained over 2%. All the...
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