Ideas and analysis on money, markets and the world around us.
Last Monday night, before the US markets opened after President’s Day, bailout terms for Greece were announced. The detail is secondary to assessing whether or not it will work, or whether only a little time has been…
Read the articleIn the past, insurance companies and pension funds have been keen to advertise the benefit of compounding arithmetic for savings. Over the last 30 or 40 years the rate has been lifted by inflation, but to understand the…
Read the articleMainstream economists seem to have a problem understanding prices. They might draw supply and demand curves and talk about elasticity. They are sure to have been taught the quantity theory of money. These are merely…
Read the articleEvery once in a while a bubble forms in a market. Bubbles can occur in any market, whether stocks, commodities, real estate or as we know from history, even tulip bulbs. Market bubbles are, as the name implies,…
Read the articleThe consolidation of gold’s bull phase from October 2008 to the peak last September was a classic three-leg correction: an initial slide, rally, and final sell-off. Silver followed a similar but more violent pattern.…
Read the articleThe Fed in its press release announced that it expected interest rates to “warrant exceptionally low levels for the Federal Funds Rate at least through late 2014.” The fact that the central banks governing the two most…
Read the articleI consider gold and silver to be the bedrock asset of an investment portfolio. In other words, it is the foundation stone upon which the rest of a portfolio is built. Given this important role in which I hold the…
Read the articleUS unemployment figures came in better than expected last week at 8.5%. While noting that the figures underrepresent actual unemployment, does this improvement mark the beginning of an American economic recovery? If so,…
Read the articleThis phrase has suddenly started appearing in economic research, and will probably do so more frequently in the coming months. Its origin is a Bank for International Settlements working paper co-authored by Carmen…
Read the articleGold has done it again. For the eleventh year in a row, the gold price rose in terms of US dollars. Gold’s rate of exchange to the US dollar climbed 10.2% in 2011, so an arithmetic average of its annual rate of…
Read the article