Ideas and analysis on money, markets and the world around us.
The price of gold fell last week to the $1,200 level. The lemming sentiment in capital markets is uniformly bearish, yet every price-drop brings forth hungry buyers for physical gold from all over the world. Even…
Read the articleWestern economic commentary on China and Russia is usually coloured by monetarist assumptions not necessarily shared in Moscow and Beijing. For this reason, Russian and Chinese fiscal and monetary policies are…
Read the articleAt the beginning of the year, I wrote: “The financial system has become so abnormal, the Fed has to keep inflating to prevent the system from literally going off the rails. But the irony is that eventually the financial…
Read the articleOver the past five years the global financial markets have become hostage to the Federal Reserve. Market pricing no longer has much to do with fundamentals and cash flow, but instead has become a guessing game to do…
Read the articleOver the last week-and-a-half we’ve had a very good example of why the Fed and other central banks have no practical alternative to continued money printing. The mere hint that the FOMC would start “tapering” its…
Read the articleMany people believe there is a significant risk that the Irving Fisher debt-deflation theory of great depressions is still an economic threat today. They overlook the fact that Fisher published his theory examining…
Read the articleIt is approximately a month since Japanese monetary policy makers destabilised their financial markets, and triggered instability everywhere else. Emerging-market currencies have been hammered, as have European and US…
Read the articleIt’s an exciting week for “Fedologists” – those successors to the Kremlinologists of the Cold War, who made a living out of analysing what Soviet central planners were up to. Today’s American central planners at the Fed…
Read the articleThe price of gold continues to oscillate between $1,370 and $1,400 per troy ounce, still unable to break higher, but also finding significant support a good 4% above the April minimum. Similarly silver seems to be…
Read the articleUp until the late 1960s, it was considered prudent for everyone to have some savings. By forgoing consumption, savings gave the ability to consume more at a later date through the accumulation of interest income. This…
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