Tag Archives: newsletter

Gold, in my worldview, can be a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. If it goes up, that’s fear. Nothing good. If it goes down, that’s collateral. In many ways, worse. Either way, it is only bad, right? Not always. There are times when rising gold signals inflation, more properly reflation perceptions. Determining which is which is the real challenge. Corroboration and consistency are paramount. Gold had been...

We have a postscript to last week’s article. We said that rising prices today are not due to the dollar going down. It’s not that the dollar buys less. It’s that producers are forced to include more and more ingredients, which are not only useless to the consumer. But even invisible to the consumer. For example, dairy producers must provide ADA-compliant bathrooms to their employees. The producer may give you less milk...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.15% at 1.1447 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 23(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Financial centers that have been closed for the extended holiday have re-opened, but the news stream is light and market participants are digesting developments and positioning for this week’s central bank meetings and the first look at Q1...

Soon to be history, at least at events in Geneva Starting in 2020, the city of Geneva will prohibit the sale of disposable plastics at events as well as at sales points on public property – a year ahead of a similar EU ban. The new law will apply to kiosks, terraces, vending vans and ice cream parlours, as well as to all city-approved events held on public property. Banned products include plastic straws, cutlery, cups...

There is a name for this institutionalized, commoditized fraud: moral decay. Moral decay is an interesting phenomenon: we spot it easily in our partisan-politics opponents and BAU (business as usual) government/private-sector dealings (are those $3,000 Pentagon hammers now $5,000 each or $10,000 each? It’s hard to keep current…), and we’re suitably indignant when non-partisan corruption is discovered in supposed...

[embedded content] I joined CNBC Asia’s Amanda Drury and Sri Jegarajah via Skype earlier today as the new week was beginning in Asia. In this three minute clip, we discuss the outlook for the BOJ and sterling. Most of the rise in Japan’s inflation is due to food and energy prices. Despite an aggressive balance-sheet expansion effort, the BOJ has missed its target by a long shot. It appears to have all but given up on...

Swiss Franc The Euro has risen by 0.16% at 1.1424 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 22(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: With many centers closed for the extended holiday, the calm in the global capital markets has been punctuated by reports that the US is considering ending its exemption for eight countries to have bought Iranian oil over the past six...

Well, here’s some encouraging news… Efforts in Washington State to impose sales taxes on gold and silver were SHUT DOWN today thanks to intense efforts by the Sound Money Defense League, a group of in-state coin dealers led by Dan Duncan, the Association of Washington Businesses, and a large number of vocal grassroots supporters. Here’s the backstory… Since last month, a few misguided Washington State senators and...

The divergence thesis that drives our constructive outlook for the dollar received more support last week than we expected. A few hours after investors learned that Japan’s flash PMI remained below the 50 boom/bust level, Europe reported disappointing PMI data as well. And a few hours after that the US reported that retail sales surged in March by the most in a year and a half (1.6%). This coupled with the new cyclical...

The forced flight from unaffordable and dysfunctional urban regions is as yet a trickle, but watch what happens when a recession causes widespread layoffs in high-wage sectors. For hundreds of years, rural poverty has driven people to urban areas: cities offer paying work and abundant opportunities to get ahead, and these financial incentives have transformed the human populace from largely rural to largely urban in the...