11.15.19- Just in case the Fed ignites the atmosphere…
Simon Black

In early 1940s as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, the most powerful person in the world was NOT Adolf Hitler. Nor Franklin Roosevelt. Nor Winston Churchill. Nor Josef Stalin.

Not even close.

The most powerful person in the world was a Nobel Prize winning physicist named Arthur Compton. Read More

11.15.19- Just in case the Fed ignites the atmosphere…
Simon Black

In early 1940s as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, the most powerful person in the world was NOT Adolf Hitler. Nor Franklin Roosevelt. Nor Winston Churchill. Nor Josef Stalin.

Not even close.

The most powerful person in the world was a Nobel Prize winning physicist named Arthur Compton. Read More

11.14.19- The Fools Are Rushing in Again
Brian Maher

As a bad penny returns to its sender, or a dog returns to its vomit… investors are returning to the stock market.

“All in” these gentlemen and ladies are going (or at least the computer algorithms that set market pace).

Lance Roberts of Real Inves‌tment Advice:

With cash levels at the lowest level since 1997 and equity allocations near the highest levels since 1999 and 2007, it suggests investors are now functionally “all in.”  Read More

11.13.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Death Throes of a Party
James Howard Kunstler

Is it possible that Rep. Adam Schiff was hung out to dry by the devious Ms. Pelosi, feeding his vanity to be a one-man impeachment wrecking crew, knowing that the congressman from Hollywood would utterly blow it? Hmmmmm. Begins to look that way as Mr. Schiff’s House Intel Committee goes public this Wednesday with its soviet-style format on full display.

Well, first, why? Why allow this nitwit to stage an ersatz impeachment only to see it fail? The House Speaker must sniff the odor of failure in the wind. Joe Biden, smiling cretinously, blunders through the primary venues with a big red “L” plastered on his forehead. Everybody over twelve in this land knows that his kid Hunter was on the grift in Ukraine, and that Joe assisted in the operation. Color him toast. Read More

11.12.19- Fed Interference Hinders Americans’ Happiness
Bill Bonner

PARIS, FRANCE – “A noiseless course,” is what Thomas Jefferson proposed to the nation in 1802, “not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness.”

Two hundred and sixteen winters have come and gone since that sage advice was offered. As we approach the next one, it might be time to wonder: Huh? Read More

11.11.19- The Fed's Artificial Fourth Quarter Stock Market Boom
Nathan McDonald

Quantitative easing in the United States is alive and well. The marketsknow this, and they are surging higher in the fourth quarter as a result, creating an artificial move higher in the S&P 500.

This steady tick upwards comes in spite of the fact that the global economy—including within the United States—is actually beginning to slow down, as the stress of the ongoing trade wars continues to weigh heavily on the system. Read More

11.09.19- The Fed's Dilemma Is Our Problem!
Dennis Miller

Pundit Bill Bonner predicts:

“Most likely, the stock market will crash sometime before the 2020 election. We can’t know when.

…. The end of the stock market boom, too, is unpredictable. But each passing day brings us a day closer to when it will crash and burn.”

Bonner’s prediction is in line with our 2017 article, “An Economic Showdown Is Looming”. I suggested the Fed, part of the deep state, was setting up President Trump to be another Herbert Hoover. The deep state wants the market to crash so they can crush capitalism and further consolidate federal government control. Read More

11.08.19- The World Has Gone Mad and
the System Is Broken
Ray Dalio

I say these things because:

• Money is free for those who are creditworthy because the investors who are giving it to them are willing to get back less than they give. More specifically investors lending to those who are creditworthy will accept very low or negative interest rates and won’t require having their principal paid back for the foreseeable future. Read More

11.07.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 5 Ways the Hunger Games Dystopia Happened in Real Life
Jen Maffessanti

Dystopian stories are popular for sure, but you don’t have to turn to fiction to find them.

It’s no secret that young-adult dystopian fiction had a very real moment recently with franchises like Divergent and Maze Runner making it to the big screen. But the most wildly successful has to be the Hunger Gamesseries by Suzanne Collins. The movie versions featured Hollywood darling Jennifer Lawrence among other big-name actors like Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymore Hoffman, Liam Hemsworth, and Elizabeth Banks. Read More

11.06.19- Gold and The Lender of Last Resort
Gary Christianson

Breaking news: The S&P500 Index hit another all-time high at 3,067 on November 1, 2019. The NASDAQ confirmed new highs while other indexes did not.

Investopedia says, “In the United States, the Federal Reserve acts as the lender of last resort to institutions that do not have any other means of borrowing, and whose failure to obtain credit would dramatically affect the economy.”

The Fed has created $billions in the past six weeks (more on the way) and fed those billions into troubled banks, hedge funds, foreign banks and others. Lack of Fed transparency forces us to guess which institutions the Fed helped with $billions of nearly free currency units. Read More

11.05.19- What if rates go up?
Bill Holter

The world is awash in debt while interest rates are extremely low and at unprecedented levels. Interest rates have been engineered lower by central banks out of necessity. This “necessity” is not so much to spur the real economies on (as they say), rather, rates have been crushed to facilitate the payment of debt service. Bluntly, there would be no financial markets left if rates were at a historical norm of say 7%. The danger of course is that rates do go higher …! What if interest rates do go up? This is a question no one even asks anymore. Read More

11.04.19- And Now, foe Something Entirely Different: The Deep State Already Runs the Country
Bill Bonner

PARIS, FRANCE – In Part 5 of the Persecution and (political) Assassination of Donald J. Trump, as performed by the mental defectives, jackasses, and turpitudinous con artists of the Deep State, we finally answer the question: How come they’re out to get Donald Trump?

The answer: It’s complicated.

Epic Battle

We saw last week how the epic battle for the soul and future of America is over. The Deep State won. Read More

11.02.19- Fed Repos Signal End of Fiat Federal Reserve Notes
Wayne Jett

For weeks, financial observers have been agitated by astonishingly high sums of Federal Reserve Notes (“hundreds of billions of dollars”) moving from the Federal Reserve to borrowers under lending instruments known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.” On September 17, e.g., the Fed created and loaned $53 billion to unnamed parties and, on September 18, an additional $75 billion. Those two days are the mere tip of the iceberg. Who are the borrowers and why is the Fed providing them so much money?   Read More

11.01.19- When recession comes, expect central banks to rewrite the rules
Nouriel Roubini

Any new downturn will spawn unconventional responses, from helicopter money to ‘bail-ins’ and huge deficits 

‘Helicopter money’ originally described central banks directly handing cash to people to stimulate spending. Photograph: HO/Reuters 

Acloud of gloom hovered over the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting this month. With the global economy experiencing a synchronised slowdown, any number of tail risks could bring on a recession.  Read More

10.31.19- What In The World Is The Federal Reserve Thinking???
Michael Snyder

You don’t use up all of your ammunition before the battle even begins.  The U.S. economy has not even officially entered recession territory yet, although many experts are definitely anticipating one in 2020.  When that recession arrives, the Federal Reserve is going to want as much ammunition to fight it as possible.  So I was horrified to learn that the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that interest rates are being slashed once again.  We have now had three interest rate cuts in 2019 as the Federal Reserve desperately attempts to revive the stalling U.S. economy.  But what are they going to do during the next recession when they have already pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and they can’t push them any lower? Read More

10.30.19- Investors Should be Scared
Kerry McDonald

Investors should be scared!

No! Investors should be terrified!!!!

Several years ago, I published a website entitled Trading to Armageddon. It dealt with how to invest/trade in advance of an economic collapse. I abandoned the website for several reasons, one of which was the amazing market recovery after the 2008 crash. The approach presented was profitable, but hardly competitive with the out-sized percentage returns from a simple buy-hold strategy. Read More

10.29.19- Begun, The Repo War Has
Karl Denninger

There's been much strum and furor over the Repo transaction lockups that have occurred, and the insane amount of monetary injection that The Fed has taken on in response -- adding to its balance sheet at a torrid pace not seen since the days of QE.

They of course claim they're "not" committing QE.

They're lying.

But more to the point is why has the Repo market gone insane?

Nobody claims to know.  Read More

10.28.19- Financial System is Rotten
Egon Von Greyerz

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark the world (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet).

In a world that cannot survive without incessant deficit spending, money printing and negative interest rates, there is clearly something very rotten. It is not only rotten but it stinks! Yes it stinks of lies, deceit and moral decadence.

So why doesn’t anyone stand up to tell the world where we are heading. Well, for the simple reason that no politician can tell the truth. Because if they did, they wouldn’t be elected. The principal purpose of any politician is to buy votes and to get votes you can never speak the truth. Read More

10.26.19- How to Prepare as the Fed
Scorches the Earth
MN Gordon

The hillsides are always brown in the land of fruits and nuts come autumn.  After baking away all summer long in the hot sun, the dense sage and chaparral covering the coastal hillsides and canyons are dry and toasty.  Though, before conditions get better, they must first get worse.

High pressure systems form over the high-elevation deserts of the Great Basin, between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, each fall like clockwork.  The pressure builds and forces the air to the south.  The warm, dry winds of Santa Ana then race towards Southern California where they scorch the earth.  Read More

10.25.19- The Fed Must Offer More Repo Credit as More People Take It
Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Our dreary mission here at the Diary is to follow the money. Over hill, over dale, and along the dusty trail… but mostly into the gutter.

And last night, the Federal Reserve let out word that… surprise!… there’s more money on the way.  Read More

10.24.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Re-Elected. These Five Powerful Members of Congress Have Figured It All Out
Adam Andrzejewsk

How is 97 percent of Congress able to get re-elected each year even though only 17 percent of the American people believe our representatives are doing a good job?

It’s called an incumbent protection system. Taxpayers have a right to know how it works.

Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, mashed up the federal checkbook with the congressional campaign donor database (source: OpenSecrets.org). We found powerful members of Congress soliciting campaign donations from federal contractors.  Read More

10.23.19- Quick Recap of the Fed’s Foundering Follies and Our Descent into Economic Madness
David Haggith

As September rolled into October, the US central bank’s monetary madness blew all over us like a fountain of foam in a windstorm. First, the Fed burst into $75 billion in overnight funding operations due to obvious shortages all over the map in bank reserves. Then the surge spread beyond that into longer-term temporary funding of $30 billion twice a week because the overnight loans were not up to the needs. That still not being enough to end the troubles, the Fed’s rapidly expanded the overnight operations to $100 billion and doubled the term operations to $60 billion. Read More

10.22.19- Decoding the Fed
John Mauldin

You may have noticed strange events in Washington, DC—strange even by today’s standards—and I don’t mean the White House or Capitol Hill. I’m talking about Federal Reserve policy.

In less than 12 months we have seen the Fed raise rates, cut rates, shrink its balance sheet, expand its balance sheet, inject liquidity, withdraw liquidity, and do who knows what else behind the scenes. Either Fed officials are confused or we are at some kind of economic turning point. Or possibly both—there is no playbook. At a minimum, I think we are at a turning point and the Fed is having to improvise policy as events dictate. Read More

10.21.19- There Are Cycles In The World, We Are Now At The Stage Where Society Is Waking Up:
Charles Hugh Smith

View Video

10.19.19- The Fed Is Lying To Us
Chris Martenson

"When it becomes serious, you have to lie"

The recent statements from the Federal Reserve and the other major world central banks (the ECB, BoJ, BoE and PBoC) are alarming because their actions are completely out of alignment with what they’re telling us.

Their words seek to soothe us that “everything’s fine” and the global economy is doing quite well. But their behavior reflects a desperate anxiety.

Put more frankly; we’re being lied to. Read More

10.18.19- The Fed’s Money Printing Escalates
Dave Kranzler

Last week the Fed announced that it was going to start buying $60 billion in T-Bills per month at least into Q2 2020.  The Fed will also rollover the proceeds as the T-Bill’s mature. The rationale was to address the decline in the “non-reserve” liabilities of the Fed.  So what are “non-reserve” liabilities?  Federal Reserve Notes.

The directive as written was “Fed Speak” which means that the Fed would print $60 billion per month for the next 4-6 to months cumulatively.  If it’s only 4 months, it means that the Fed will be printing at least a quarter trillion dollars which apparently will be become permanently part of the Fed’s balance sheet. Read More

10.17.19- The END Of The US Dollar & Stories We're Not AllowedTo Talk About with G. Edward Griffin
Josh Sigurdson

It’s the fall of the US dollar as the economy realizes the prolonged recession it entered in 2008, papered over for a decade…

Josh Sigurdson talks with the always insightful G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jekyll Island about a various degree of subjects including the fall of the US dollar as the economy realizes the prolonged recession it entered in 2008, papered over for a decade. Read More

10.16.19- Fed Repos Siginal End
Of Fiat Federal Reserve Notes
Wayne Jett

For weeks, financial observers have been agitated by astonishingly high sums of Federal Reserve Notes (“hundreds of billions of dollars”) moving from the Federal Reserve to borrowers under lending instruments known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.” On September 17, e.g., the Fed created and loaned $53 billion to unnamed parties and, on September 18, an additional $75 billion. Those two days are the mere tip of the iceberg. Who are the borrowers and why is the Fed providing them so much money?  Read More

10.15.19- Fed QE Not QE Starts at $80 Billion Monthly, Plus TOMO- The System Is Burning Down
Lee Adler

Fed QE will start at $80 billion per month including $20 billion in rollovers of existing maturing holdings. It will add $60 billion per month in new T-Bill purchases at least into the second quarter off 2020.

The Fed made this shocking announcement today.

Fed QE to Total $80 Billion Per Month To Start

Emphasis added to highligh key points. Read More

10.14.19- In Memoriam: Reality
James Howard Kunstler

The Golden Golem of Greatness shifted into mad bull overdrive for last night’s Minneapolis fan rally, cussing and bellowing at the picadors of the Left who have been sticking lances in his neck for three years. Decorum is not Mr. Trump’s strong suit, but then the bull is not sent into the ring to negotiate politely for his life. The narrative of the bullring is certain death. The bull must do what he can within his nature to dispute it. Read More

10.12.19- Fed’s Latest Intervention Feels Like 2008
Dan Denning

Is it just me, or is 2019 beginning to feel a lot like 2007?

Remember when then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the subprime “crisis” was contained?

Stocks had made a new high in July. But growth had slowed. The Fed cut rates in September. The market made a new high in October. It was too late. The bull was over.

The signs had begun appearing earlier in the summer, even as the market made new highs. Read More

10.11.19- Fed Chair Powell's Inescapable Contradiction
MN Gordon

“This feels very sustainable.” – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, October 8, 2019

Under the Influence

Conflict and contradiction.  These were two of the main themes reverberating around the world of centralized monetary planning this week. Read More

10.10.19- The Day When Repo Rates Blew Out: Fed Recounts a Fiasco that Occurred as the FOMC Was Meeting, and How it Reacted
Wolf Richter

I wish I could have sat in that meeting, watching the bewildered faces of Fed officials as they got hourly updates on repo rates blowing out.

The FOMC meeting minutes released this afternoon – instead of being stuffed with mind-numbing language – were spiked with a practically riveting account of the repo fiasco as it was unfolding over September 17 and 18 while the FOMC was meeting. Read More

10.09.19- Welcome To NOT Wednesday NOT 9 NOT October NOT 2019, After The Fed Started NOT-QE4
Michael Every

It’s not really a surprise the Fed are doing this. After all, the ECB have already shifted back to doing EUR20bn of QE a month, which is supposed to do the trick after EUR80bn a month previously failed. Why? Because this time the pledge is it won’t stop, which is NOT called “monetization” because Germany has enough to worry about already. Likewise, the BOJ have never stopped doing QQE (plus YYC) and are edging closer to doing even more of it: and it’s proving just as ineffective there. China doesn’t openly do QE, of course: it just has a combined fiscal deficit of around 13% of GDP and a central bank that supports the whole pyramid scheme by repo-ing those assets as needed: and it is about to do a whole lot more too. Read More

10.08.19- A Hard Rain
James Howard Kunstler

A lot of readers (some of them former readers now) have been angrily twanging me by email for writing about the three-year Resistance effort to un-do the 2016 election. I did not vote for Mr. Trump (or Mrs. Clinton) but I resent the coup mounted to overthrow him. I object to the bad faith and dishonesty of the Resistance. I object to the criminal misconduct among the federal bureaucracy, and the mendacity of its partners in the news media, and the hysteria they continue to generate — at the expense of other matters that concern our future. Read More

10.07.19- What's Holding Up the Market?
Charles Hugh Smith

The Fed's nearly free money for financiers policies in support of the Super-Rich do not exist in a vacuum--the disastrous consequences are already baked in.

What's holding up the U.S. stock market? The facile answer is the Federal Reserve ("the Fed has our back," "don't fight the Fed," etc.) but this doesn't actually describe the mechanisms in play or the consequences of a market that levitates ever higher on the promise of more Fed money-for-nothing injected into the diseased veins of the financial system. Read More

10.05.19- The Beginning of the End: Great Recession 2.0 is Obscured but Here!
David Haggith

The Great Recession never ended. I say that because the deep economic flaws that caused it were never corrected. All recovery efforts since merely clouded our eyes to the problems growing larger around us, even making them worse, and now we are going back into the belly of the Great Recession.

The recovery was all a prop, which is why I call it a fake recovery. In September, we entered the second part that I’ve long said would hit when the props were removed. (To be clear, I don’t mean predicted to happen in every year I’ve been writing on economics, but that I have said throughout those years would come when the Fed unwound its recovery efforts. Well, the Fed did, and we’re here!) Read More

10.04.19- War, Economic Ruin, and Liberty Destruction Will Never End Until the Federal Reserve is Abolished
Gary D. Barnett

“Sneaky and underhanded, the Federal Reserve has been sucking the life blood out of the United States since 1913. Like a black widow spider, it weaves a web of corruption and deceit. Unknown to its prey, the FED’s bite is poisonous, deep, long-lasting and brings financial upheaval and misery to Americans.” 
~ Jim McCarthy, The Money Spiders, the Ruin-NATION of the United States by the Federal Reserve Read More

10.03.19- An Unavoidable Global Debt Implosion
Dave Kranzler

“[Whatever] the repo failure involved, it is likely to prove a watershed moment, causing US bankers to more widely consider their exposure to counterparty risk and risky loans, particularly leveraged loans and their collateralised form in CLOs. a new banking crisis is not only in the making, for which the repo problem serves as an early warning, but it could escalate quite rapidly.” Alasdair Macleod, “The Ghost of Failed Bank Returns” Read More

10.02.19- The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates
Ellen Brown

President Trump wants negative interest rates, but they would be disastrous for the U.S. economy, and his objectives can be better achieved by other means.

The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on Aug. 30:

The Euro is dropping against the Dollar “like crazy,” giving them a big export and manufacturing advantage… And the Fed does NOTHING! Read More

09.01.19- Something Is Wrong: The Fed Is Offering $100 Billion A Day In Loans To Unnamed Banks
Mac Slavo

The Federal Reserve is once again secretly shelling out trillions of dollars in the dark, while Congress willingly looks the other way.  In other words, the central bank has initiated a replay of the 2007-2010 financial crisis.

You can call it QE4 if you want, or don’t call it QE4.  What it’s labeled isn’t as important as what it’s doing. Arguing semantics is not going to change the outcome.  The central bank is injecting $100 billion per day into the financial markets.  Any label on that cannot hide the fact that if this economy was doing well or was “robust” than there wouldn’t be a need for any of this. Read More

09.30.19- Central Bank "Stimulus" is Really a Huge Redistribution Scheme
Alasdair Macleod

When an economy turns from expansion to contraction there is an order of events. The first signs are an unexpected increase in inventories of unsold goods, both accompanied with and followed by business surveys indicating a general softening in demand. For monetarists, this is often confirmed by an inverting yield curve, which tells them that at the margin the short-term rates set by the central bank are becoming too high for business conditions. Read More

09.28.19- 3 Charts Showing Just How
Boxed-in the Fed Is
Robert P. Murphy

The Fed met market expectations by cutting its target for the fed funds rate by 25 basis points, down to the range of 1.75 - 2.00 percent. In this post I want to demonstrate just how boxed in the Fed has now become, with the help of 3 charts.

First, let's review just how low interest rates have been (and still are), in a long-term historical context: Read More

09.27.19- These bank stocks could be crushed if the Fed keeps lowering interest rates
Philip van Doorn

KBW paints a dire scenario for 20 U.S. financial-services companies

Under a scenario with long-term interest rates in the U.S. falling below zero, KBW’s 2021 earnings estimate for Charles Schwab would drop by 61%.

The Federal Reserve’s looser monetary policy doesn’t bode well for bank profits. And a new report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Frederick Cannon paints a far uglier scenario if the U.S. moves closer to the negative-rate environment of other developed economies. Read More

09.26.19- Second Term Repo Oversubscribed As Funding Shortage Keeps Getting Worse And Nobody Knows Why
Tyler Durden

Overnight, we cited two icons in rates/repo business, both of whom confirmed that contrary to what so-called self-professed twitter "experts" claimed, what is going on in the repo market is bad and getting worse, and more problematic is that nobody knows what is causing it.

The first one was BMO's rates guru, Ian Lyngen who had this to say: Read More

09.26.19- A Clueless New York Fed Is Examining Why Banks With Excess Cash Failed To Halt Repo Panic
Tyler Durden

When it comes to occasional (or chronic) dollar shortages, and the plumbing of the overnight lending market, which as everyone knows suffered a spectacular heart attack early this week when the overnight repo rate soared to 10%, the New York Fed and its open markets desk, is the authority on any potential plumbing blockages. Yet it now appears that the most important regional Fed when it comes to maintaining market stability, is just as clueless as the rest of us as to why the repo market froze up. sending funding rates to never before seen highs. Read More

09.24.19- Fed Loses Control of its Benchmark Interest: Repo Rates through the Roof!
David Haggith

Well, that didn’t take long! Four days ago, I stated the following in an article titled “Why are Bonds Going for Broke?“: 

Central banks are losing control, and are admitting they don’t even understand what is happening.

I quoted St. Louis Reserve Bank president, James Bullard, who commented: Read More

09.23.19- Repo Rumpus Foreshadows a Short Squeeze on the Dollar
Rick Ackerman

The Fed’s so-far $128 billion intervention in the repo market slipped off the Wall Street Journal‘s front page Thursday evening, hardly a concern. Don’t be surprised if, years from now, the squeeze on short-term borrowers that caused this flurry of excitement is recalled as an early warning sign of the banking system’s coming collapse. On Tuesday, there simply weren’t enough dollars to keep short-term loans rolling.  This implies that the dollar short-squeeze I first wrote about in Barron’s and the San Francisco Examiner more than two decades ago may have begun. Read More

09.21.19- Negative Interest Rates Are The Price We Pay For De-Civilization
Jeff Diest

Do central bankers really think negative interest rates are rational?

Do central bankers really think negative interest rates are rational?

“Calculation Error,” which Bloomberg terminals sometimes display, is an apt metaphor for the current state of central bank policy. Both Europe and Asia are now awash in $13 trillion worth of negative-yielding sovereign and corporate bonds, and Alan Greenspan suggests negative interest rates soon will arrive in the US. Despite claims by both Mr. Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell concerning the health of the American economy, the Fed’s Open Market Committee moved closer to negative territory today — with another quarter-point cut in the Fed Funds rate, below even a measly 2%. Read More

09.20.19- The Fed & The Stability/Instability Paradox
Lance Roberts

Only those that risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

Well, this certainly seems to be the path that the Federal Reserve, and global Central Banks, have decided take.

Yesterday, the Fed lowered interest rates by a quarter-point and maintained their “dovish” stance but suggested they are open to “allowing the balance sheet to grow.” While this isn’t anything more than just stopping Q.T. entirely, the markets took this as a sign that Q.E. is just around the corner.  Read More

09.19.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Very Book The Government Does Not Want You To Read Just Went #1 In The World
Arjun Walia

George Orwell’s 1984 is a classic book depicting a populace ruled by a political regime that persecutes individualism and independent critical thinking as “thoughtcrimes” that must be enforced by the “thought police.” This party seeks power above all, and, through the propagandist Ministry of Truth, presents the people with their version of truth and casts away all other information and opinion. Sound familiar? Read More

09.18.19- The Four Dynamics of Bubbles
Charles Hugh Smith

Financial bubbles manifest three dynamics: The one we’re most familiar with is simple human greed, the desire to exploit a windfall and catch a work-free ride to riches.

The second dynamic gets much less attention. Financial manias arise when there is no other more productive, profitable use for capital. And these periods occur when there is an abundance of credit available to inflate the bubbles.

Humans respond to the incentives the system presents: If dealing illegal drugs can net $20,000 a month compared with $2,000 a month from a regular job, a percentage of the workforce is going to deal drugs. Read More

09.17.19- "Nobody Knows What's Going On": Repo Market Freezes As Overnight Rate
Hits All Time High Of 10%
Tyler Durden

Back in the summer of 2013, China's banking system was on the verge of collapse when its overnight repo rates briefly soared to the mid-20% range, prompting the central bank to take emergency intervention to avoid a funding freeze.

As of this morning, the US is halfway there.

After we reported yesterday that "something snapped" as chaos hit the report market, and the overnight repo rate exploded as high as 7% for a variety of reasons including: Read More

09.16.19-Trump Calls for 'Big' Rate Cut: Fed Officials 'Don't Have a Clue' 
Peter Reagan

President Donald Trump once again demanded that the Federal Reserve slash interest rates in the wake of an attack in Saudi Arabia over the weekend led to a major crude oil disruption.

In a pair of tweets Monday, the president questioned whether the Fed would “ever get into the game” and said the central bank and its chairman, Jerome Powell, “don’t have a clue.” He again badgered the Fed to lower the interest rate, citing a strong dollar’s harmful effect on U.S. exporters. Read More

09.14.19- Weekend Rant: The Story of A Judge Who Was Poisoned After Ruling Bank Foreclosure Is Illegal and All Mortgages Are Null and Void
Stacy Flanagan

Judge Martin Mahoney wrote the following about a case he ruled over, The First National Bank of Montgomery v. Jerome Daly, December 7, 1968: (See 17 Am. Jur. 85, 215, and 1 Mer. Jur. 2nd on Actions, Section 550)

"There is no lawful consideration for these Federal Reserve Notes to circulate as money. The banks actually obtained these notes for the cost of printing. A lawful consideration must exist for a note...  Read More

09.13.19- Veteran Investor: Buy Gold Now, Thank Central Banks Later
Birch Gold Group

This well-known financial commentator — known as the “Pied Piper of emerging markets” — usually talks about hot new investment opportunities around the globe. But now, he can’t stop talking about gold. 

Recently on CNBC’s Street Signs, veteran investor Mark Mobius, founding partner of Mobius Capital Partners, boldly proclaimed “gold is the way to go.” “Physical gold is the way to go, in my view, because of the incredible increase in money supply,” said Mobius. “All the central banks are trying to get interest rates down, they are pumping money into the system. Then, you have the cryptocurrencies coming in, so nobody really knows how much currency is out there.” Read More

09.12.19- "No One Comes Back From This Uninjured" - Fiat Currency Endgame Looms
Lior Gantz

No One Comes Back From This Uninjured. In one word, the devaluation is set to ESCALATE.

In fact, I term it Competitive Devaluation. There are several countries that will be the pioneers of it, but it will eventually reach the United States of America. In Europe and in Japan, we are closer to seeing it happening; in the next 2-5 years, you’ll hear about governments’ first official plans to do this. Read More

09.11.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 9/11 Conspiracy Fake Cellphone Calls, Operation Northwoods Secret Docs Released
Capt. Dave Bertrand, Ret.

Friends and Associates:

This is the week for Americans sitting on the fence about what actually happened on 9/11, to do the necessary research and consider the overwhelming evidence versus the government’s on-going propaganda “official report” as nothing more than a cover for the Bush Administration and all those involved with the most dangerous false flag attack in the history of the United States. Read More

09.10.19- Is the Fed Preparing to Topple US Dollar?
F. William Engdahl

Unusual remarks and actions by the outgoing head of the Bank of England and other central banking insiders strongly suggest that there is a very ugly scenario in the works to end the role of the US dollar as world reserve currency. In the process, this would involve that the Fed deliberately triggers a dramatic economic depression. If this scenario is actually deployed in coming months, Donald Trump will go down in history books as the second Hebert Hoover, and the world economy will be pushed into the worst collapse since the 1930s. Here are some elements worth considering.  Read More

09.09.19- Fed’s Constraint of the POTUS and 2020 Election – Global Financial Crisis Looming
Trader Stef

It appears that within the Fed’s circle of influence and its former officials, they have chosen to go on the offense…

“I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me”

 “The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me. But I will kill it”

 “You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out”

 – President Andrew Jackson  Read More

09.07.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The China Silver Wildcard & What’s Next For The Silver Price
Steve St Angelo

China may turn out to be a major wildcard for the silver market and price in the future.  There are two parts of the equation in regards to the Chinese silver market that are explained in my newest video update.  Also, after the silver price shot up to $19.75 rather quickly, what’s next for the shiny metal?

Some analysts are suggesting that the silver price is overbought on a weekly basis and may experience a significant correction. Read More

09.06.19- Blackrock CIO: The Endgame Is Coming And Central Banks Will Debase Everything To Spark Inflation
Tyler Durden

The major global central banks continue to draw bigger guns in their battle against deflation, yet in some places, it appears to be of no avail. The fact is that the share of sovereign yields that are in negative territory keeps increasing and the average level of these interest rates becomes ever more negative. Further, quantitative easing (QE) purchases of sovereign debt have transitioned to purchases of corporate debt, and in some places equities; with inflation still elusive and improved growth prospects in question. That all leads one to wonder where (and how) these policies end? What is today’s monetary policy endgame? Read More

09.05.19- Will Fed Actions Create Dow Index 40,000…And Triple Gold Prices?
Daniel R. Amerman, CFA

The fears of imminent recession have been multiplying, and this has led to 1) plunging long term bond yields; 2) yield curve inversions and near inversions; and 3) a fearful Federal Reserve going into "dovish" mode in the attempt to prevent such a recession.

We've been here before, or at least we have with regard to those three particular components in combination. And the result was a tripling of already elevated stock market values in a little more than two years. With that tripling then being followed by a historic tripling of inflation-adjusted gold prices over the next decade. Read More

09.04.19- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: The Train Is Leaving The Station!
Bill Holter

I have written and spoken of the Gold to Silver ratio many times in the past. It currently stands at just under 82-1, a little more than a month ago it peaked out just over 92-1 which is close to an all time high (low price for silver vs. gold). For perspective, the natural gold to silver ratio is just under 10-1 as that is the ratio the two metals exist and are mined from the Earth’s crust.

For hundreds of years, the GSR was 16-1 and in fact this ratio was pegged by our founding fathers at just under 16-1. The discount from 10-1 to 16 came about simply due to “weight”. If one carried wealth (metal) with them, silver was more cumbersome. To compensate for the inconvenience of additional weight, silver was discounted to the 16-1 level. Read More

09.03.19- Study Discovers That If The Debt Machine Was Turned Off, The U.S. Would Immediately Plunge Into A Horrifying Depression
Michael Snyder

A new study has discovered that we are far more dependent on America’s great debt creation machine than most of us would have ever dared to imagine.  Today, debt is involved in most of our major transactions.  In order to purchase a home, most of us go into debt.  The same thing is true when most of us buy a vehicle.  Total credit card debt is well over a trillion dollars, and total student loan debt is now over a trillion and a half dollars.  Corporate debt has more than doubled since the last financial crisis, state and local governments are absolutely drowning in debt and unfunded pension liabilities, and the federal government is 22 trillion dollars in debt.  Read More

09.02.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Falling From Grace...
The Decline Of The US Empire
Jeff Thomas

Years ago, Doug Casey mentioned in a correspondence to me, “Empires fall from grace with alarming speed.”

Every now and then, you receive a comment that, although it may have been stated casually, has a lasting effect, as it offers uncommon insight. For me, this was one of those and it’s one that I’ve kept handy at my desk since that time, as a reminder.

I’m from a British family, one that left the UK just as the British Empire was about to begin its decline. They expatriated to the “New World” to seek promise for the future. Read More

08.31.19- Check-Mate For Central Banks:
Negative Rates & Gold
Alasdair Macleod

The reason for persistent strength in the price of gold can be found in the changing relationship between time preference for monetary gold, and a new round of interest rate suppression for the dollar. Evidence mounts that the forthcoming recession is likely to be significant, even turning into a deep slump. Bullion bank traders are waking up to the possibility that dollar interest rates are going to zero and that pressure is likely to be put on the Fed to introduce negative rates. The laws of time preference tell us bullion banks must urgently cover their short bullion positions in anticipation of a dollar rate-induced permanent backwardation for gold, silver and across all commodities. Read More

08.30.19- How Central Banks Lost Control Of The Market, In One Chart
Tyler Durden

The topic of this year's Jackson Hole was, in not so many words, the fading power of central banks which for the past decade, had been the only game in town. However, with interest rates back to record lows, and the ECB (and soon Fed) set to restart QE, the outcome will be even worse than last time, sending the world into Albert Edwards' infamous deflationary ice age.

But one didn't have to go all the way to Wyoming to observe the waning power of central banks. A quick look at the following chart from Bank of America would have sufficed. Read More

08.29.19- "That A Member Of The Elite Like Bill Dudley Could Open This Can Of Worms
Is Quite Staggering"
Michael Every

Stranger Things 3 and 4

Want to see something some strange things? Look at the yield curve. This morning in Asia US 30-year Treasuries are at 1.90%, the lowest ever seen; US 10s are 1.47%; US 2s at 1.51% (so, yes, 2s-10s is inverted again); and US 3-month yields are at 1.94%, meaning that the 3M-10Y spread is a staggering -47bp. This is neither healthy nor normal. Indeed, one could argue we are one bad data point away from the US 10-year testing the low of 1.36% last seen in 2016. Read More

08.28.19- Bill Dudley Shocker: Ex-NY Fed President Urges Fed's Powell To Prevent Trump Re-election
Tyler Durden

At the start of August, we explained how - by scapegoating the global economy for the Fed's July 31 rate cut - the central bank had now trapped itself, having certified before the world that any further escalations in Trump's trade war are effectively a justification for more rate cuts. Whether this was Powell's intention is unclear, although as we said at the time, "it certainly means that Trump is now de facto in charge of the Fed's monetary policy by way of US foreign policy, and it also means that as BofA wrote, "the Fed is unintentionally underwriting the trade war." Read More

08.27.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Bowling Alone...How Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society
and Family Life
Sam Jacobs

Church attendance in the United States is at an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll released in April 2019. This decline has not been a steady one. Indeed, over the last 20 years, church attendance has fallen by 20 percent. This might not sound like cause for concern off the bat. And if you’re not a person of faith, you might rightly wonder why you would care about such a thing. Read More

08.26.19- 'And whether pigs have wings'
Part One: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Johnny Silver Bear

(Editor's Note: One of the perks of editing "the Bear" is getting to repost my own rants.In an ongoing attempt to "turn the lights back on" I chose to start out the year (2012) with a three part piece, entitled; "And Whether Pigs Have Wings" The point of this series is an attempt to wake up those of you that are not exactly sure what I mean when I bring up the "Dumbing Down" of America. This will be Part one, through which I will try to enlighten you to a far larger, and much more insidious conspiracy that is intended to take absolute control over you, everything you have, and every thing you do. We have to take this journey one step at a time so as to keep it from becoming "overwhelming". In this part I will try and exhibit the fact that some of the things you are absolutely sure of are absolutely wrong.- JSB) Read More

08.24.19- Our costly dalliance with Lord Keynes
Alasdair Macleod

In “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, Keynes virtually created macroeconomics. But Keynes was a mathematician, not an economist, and did not fully understand free markets, so he was hardly qualified to emerge as the most influential economist of the last century. His misconceptions still inform the establishment, comprising governments and their regulated financial sectors. Given that there is dawning acknowledgement that these policies are propelling leading nations into a common financial and economic crisis, a forensic dissection of Keynes’s errors and motivations is overdue. This essay is a brief attempt to rectify this omission. Read More

08.23.19- Minsky Moment
Trey Reik

After spending three years in a $250 trading range (between $1,121 and $1,375), spot gold has erupted since late May and is up 18.01% YTD as of last Friday's (8/15) close at $1,523.34. At the same time, gold mining equities, as measured by Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM) are up 39.52% YTD.

To us, the operative questions are:

1) What factors ignited gold’s breakout from a three-year consolidation?

2) Are these fundamentals likely to persist in future periods?Read More

08.22.19- PIMCO Starts Dumping Bonds, Fears "Helicopter Money" Around The Corner
Tyler Durden

Amid a collapse in global bond yields (to record lows) and soaring aggregate volumes of central-bank-created negative-yielding debt, at least one big bond shop is dumping sovereigns.

“We’re a lot more defensive,” warned PIMCO's Daniel Ivascyn, group CIO at the massive bond manager, noting that after the best year-to-date performance since 2003, the fund is paring its positions in government debt on fears that a breakthrough in US-China trade talks could trigger a violent sell-off. Read More

08.21.19- The Real Reasons Why The Media Is Suddenly Admitting To The Recession Threat
Brandon Smith

One thing that is important to understand about the mainstream media is that they do tell the truth on occasion. However, the truths they admit to are almost always wrapped in lies or told to the public far too late to make the information useful.   Dissecting mainstream media information and sifting out the truth from the propaganda is really the bulk of what the alternative media does (or should be doing).  In the past couple of weeks I have received a rush of emails asking about the sudden flood of recession and economic crash talk in the media.  Does this abrupt 180 degree turn by the MSM (and global banks) on the economy warrant concern?  Yes, it does. Read More

08.20.19- Are Recessions Inevitable?
Dr. Ron Paul

Stocks fell last week following news that the yield curve on Treasury notes had inverted. This means that a short-term Treasury note was paying higher interest rates than long-term Treasury note. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a sign of an impending recession.

Some economic commentators reacted to the inverted yield curve by parroting the Keynesian propaganda that recessions are an inevitable feature of a free-market economy, whose negative effects can only be mitigated by the Federal Reserve. Like much of the conventional economic wisdom, the idea that recessions are caused by the free market and cured by the Federal Reserve is the opposite of the truth. Read More

08.19.19- Lost Within the Rate Cut: The Fed’s Drive to Establish a New Payment System
Steven Guinness

Part way through delivering a press conference following the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut since December 2008, chairman Jerome Powell let it be known that the central bank was ‘looking carefully‘ at developing a new faster payments system. Unsurprisingly, his words on the subject proved the equivalent of screaming into the face of a force ten gale. Besides a handful of financial outlets, nobody heard him. All that analysts and observers were really interested in was the Fed’s stance on interest rates. Read More

08.17.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Is White Genocide in Our Future?
Paul Craig Roberts

“The perception that mass shootings are a “white man’s problem” lingers around the country because white mass shooters tend to get more publicity. And, the twisted young male who goes on a public shooting spree fits a certain kind of media narrative.But when we actually study the mass shootings that took place in 2019, it’s clear that Patrick Crusius and Connor Betts are not the norm, but aberrations.

“Mass shooters have no particular ideology. Crusius and Betts were opposites ideologically. (Though both cared deeply about the environment.) Nor are mass shooters a white problem or a black problem. Over the same bloody weekend, William Patrick Williams, who is African-American, appeared in court after being arrested by the FBI for planning to shoot up a Texas hotel with an AK-47 rifle. Read More

08.16.19- Whalen To The Fed: "Stand Down,
Do Nothing" Or Else
Christopher Whalen

Is the U.S. economy headed for another recession? The short answer is no.

After a decade of aggressive market manipulation by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, most of the indicators we use to assess economic growth and job creation have been distorted beyond recognition.

The good news is that the economy has recovered from the depression of 2008 despite the actions taken by the Fed, Congress, and Washington agencies. The bad news is that it may not survive the after-effects of some of these actions. Read More

08.15.19- Italy was the world’s superpower TWICE. They screwed it up both times
Simon Black

In 750 BC, according to ancient legend, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus founded a tiny hilltop settlement in central Italy.

Romulus slew his brother for violating a magical superstition, and then named their new city after himself: Rome.

And for the first several centuries of its existence, Rome was nothing special. It was one of many minor kingdoms on a peninsula controlled by the Etruscan civilization… and existed at a time when Greek city-states like Athens and Sparta were the dominant superpowers. Read More

08.14.19- Endgame For The Fed?
Dr. Ron Paul

The Federal Reserve, responding to concerns about the economy and the stock market, and perhaps to criticisms by President Trump, recently changed course on interest rates by cutting its “benchmark” rate from 2.25 percent to two percent. President Trump responded to the cut in already historically-low rates by attacking the Fed for not committing to future rate cuts. Read More

08.13.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Epstein Mystery
Paul Craig Roberts

I appreiate my readers’ confidence in me.  However, I cannot clear up the Epstein matter for you.  Perhaps I can help you to think about it in a careful way.

First of all, many jail “suicides” are murders.  In 1995 Jesse Trentadue’s brother, Kenneth,  was mistakenly identified as the possible “missing man” who was thought to be involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and beaten to death in a federal prison by federal agents.  The prison claimed Kenneth hung himself in his cell.  The state coroner refused to confirm the suicide verdict and only much later after much pressure ceased his resistance to the coverup.  The prison wanted to cremate the body rather than return the body to family for burial.  But Jesse, a Salt Lake City attorney was suspicious.  Read More

08.12.19- Getting To A Special State Of Ugly
MN Gordon

There are certain phrases – like “trust me” or “I got this” – that should immediately provoke one’s suspicion.  When your slippery contractor tells you, “trust me, your kitchen renovation will be done before Christmas,” you should be wary.  There’s no way it’ll be done until late spring.

Or when your incompetent client says, “I won’t be needing your services at this time, I got this.”  You should expect a panicked phone call at 5pm on Friday.  “This is way more than I can handle,” your client will say, “take care of it.” Read More

Central Planning Always Fails:
The Fed Will Self-Destruct
Dr. Ron Paul

View Video

08.09.19- This Is The Same Pattern The Fed Followed Before The Great Depression
Brandon Smith

There is immense confusion surrounding July’s Federal Reserve meeting and the rather insane aftermath that has been spurred on in the trade war. The Fed’s latest rate decision of a mere .25 bps cut was seen as “disappointing”, this was then followed by Jerome Powell’s public statements making it clear that this was only a mid-year “adjustment”, and that it was not the beginning of a rate cutting cycle and certainly not the beginning of renewed QE. This shocked the investment world, which was expecting far more accommodation from the Fed after 7 months of built up expectations that the central bank was about to unleash the stimulus punch bowl again.  Read More

08.08.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Help Me Understand the Logic of This

Read More

08.07.19- The Fed and Congress Blew It
Karl Denninger

It's coming folks.

I know, I know, have a happy face.  There are even those who think we should be "nice" to China, and more than a few who think that Russia wanted China to dump treasuries in 2008 and blow us up.  Incidentally, if they had done it, it wouldn't have blown us up - it would have blown THEM up.  How many Treasuries did The Fed buy during that time to drive down rates on purpose through QE?  Another trillion would have done nothing.  The threat was always toothless; if you're scared of a shark with no teeth, well, that's on you.  However, had they done it their own debt-stoked bubble would have suffered a crippling dislocation and odds are it would have taken down all of their banks.  Read More

08.06.19- We Should let the Banks Burn Down
Bob Moriarty

In late 2008 during what is now referred to as the Great Financial Crisis, government and financial managers had an opportunity to reset a badly out of balance dysfunctional banking system. It would have required pain from bank bondholders, shareholders and taxpayers in general. Everyone recognized the banks were burning down, seemingly out of control.

We should have let them burn down.  Read More

08.05.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer
Michael Snyder

Whenever a tragic act of violence makes national headlines, the calls to give up more of our freedoms and liberties in exchange for the promise of increased security become deafening.  But if we take another step toward becoming an authoritarian society every time something horrible happens, eventually we won’t have any of the basic liberties and freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought so hard to secure for us.  Unfortunately, voices like mine are becoming increasingly rare, and the American people seem to want a society that will shelter them from anything that could possibly go wrong.  Of course there has never been such a society in all of human history, and we won’t be able to create one either.  Read More

08.03.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: No Easy Way Out of This
Donald Jeffries

The recent decision, last week, by a typically corrupt judge, to dismiss the first lawsuit filed by slandered Kentucky teen Nicholas Sandman, hammered home again just how absolutely corrupt America 2.0 has become. The idea that any judge could look at the nature of the biased, inflammatory, and inaccurate coverage of the teen’s actions and character by the Washington Post, and then basically give it a stamp of approval, should stun any of the few remaining civil libertarians out there.  Read More

08.02.19- Gold the Ultimate Asset as Fed Joins Race to the Bottom in Global Rates
Ronan Manly

The US Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) today announced a 0.25% cut in the influential US federal funds rate from a target range of 2.25% – 2.50% to a target range of  2.00% – 2.25%, a move which was closely watched and widely signaled, but which was the first such fed funds rate cut in over 10 years.

As an official interest rate which affects all other US interest rates including bank-to-bank overnight loans, the US Federal Reserve uses changes in its fed funds rate to manipulate US economic growth, but its impact is even more far-reaching, influencing as it does the relative strength of the US dollar versus other currencies, and the interest rate decisions of the world’s other major central banks.   Read More

08.01.19- “The Stock Market Started
To Fall In July…”
Michael Snyder

Will we look back on the month of July as a critical turning point for the stock market?  During the first half of 2019, stock prices soared to record high after record high even though we just kept getting one number after another that indicated that a new economic slowdown was starting.  Because of the disappointing performance of the U.S. economy, it was believed that we would see a rate cut from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, and that is precisely what happened.  But instead of rejoicing, investors started to panic a bit, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day down 333 points.  Read More

07.31.19- The Fed’s Unnecessary Rate Cut
Michael Every

If there is something that is evident is that the United States does not need a rate cut.

With the economy growing at 2.1%, unemployment at 3.6%, creating 170,000 jobs per month, and estimated underlying core inflation of 2%, no objective data justifies cutting rates that are already artificially low.  Wages are rising by 3% and credit growth for companies and families is solid. Read More

07.30.19- If The Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates Now, It Will Be An Admission That A Recession Is Coming
Michael Snyder

So there is a lot of buzz that the Federal Reserve is about to cut interest rates – and it might actually happen.  We’ll see.  But if it does happen, it will directly contradict the carefully crafted narrative about the economy that the Federal Reserve has been perpetuating all this time.  Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. economy is in great shape even when there has been a tremendous amount of evidence indicating otherwise.  And of course President Trump has been repeatedly telling us that this is “the greatest economy in the history of our country”, but now he is loudly calling for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as well.  Something doesn’t seem to add up here. Read More

07.29.19- The Fed Should Hike Interest Rates,
Not Cut Them
Scott Minerd

In the runup to the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meetings on July 30 and July 31, policy makers are debating the value of what would normally be considered unorthodox policy actions. The consequences of the Fed’s actions in the next week - the U.S. central bank is expected to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point - could be with us for much longer than we think, culminating in the next recession and increasing the risk to financial stability. Read More

07.27.19- The Death of Capitalism, Redux for 2019
J. Kim

What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad” — Morpheus

About 10 years ago, I wrote an article about the death of capitalism. Given that many politicians today don’t seem to realize that free market capitalism has long since been dead and are still using a platform of the "failure of free market capitalism" to garner support for the campaigns in upcoming elections, it's a solid time to bring back that article from the dead, dust it off, and update it for the present day. Read More

07.26.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: It's Not Just the News That's Fake... Everything's Fake
Chaeles Hugh Smith

That we fall for the fakes and cons is understandable, given that’s all we have left in the public sphere.

What do we mean when we say corporate media is fake? We mean it’s a carefully crafted con, a set of narratives, cherry-picked data and heavily massaged statistics (the unemployment rate, etc.) designed to instill the reader’s confidence in a narrative that serves the interests not of the citizenry but of a select few pillaging the citizenry. Read More

07.25.19- We’ve Arrived At The End Of The Road
Adam Taggart

When Richard Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, fully severing the US dollar from its gold standard, the Federal Reserve and other world central banks found themselves liberated. No longer was their ability to provide liquidity constrained by the physical limitations of the gold supply.

The Fed started intervening more and more during times of slowing growth to goose the economy back to vigor. Cheered and further egged on by politicians happy for easy solutions and desperate to avoid having to make tough calls, central banks have been increasingly willing to provide liquidity in good times and bad. Read More

07.24.19- "She Has A Flair For Darkness" - Meet The Woman Tasked With Predicting How The Fed Will Blow Up The World
Tyler Durden

Central bankers have two key roles: the first, and more trivial one, is to set the price of money by adjusting short-term interest rates, something they have been doing since the advent of central banking; the second and far more important role (especially in recent asset bubble-bust history) is to preserve the public's confidence in a financial system that is effectively a ponzi scheme, reliant on both the constant creation of money in the form of new debt and society's willingness to spend and not save said money, by propping up asset prices or vowing to do everything in their power to avoid another Lehman-type financial catastrophe. Here one need only recall the immortal warning of Mario Draghi to support the artificial European currency at its moments of greatest despair, "whatever it takes." Read More

07.23.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Our Ruling Elites Have No Idea How Much We Want to See Them All in Prison Jumpsuits
Charles Hugh Smith

Even the most distracted, fragmented tribe of the peasantry eventually notices that they're not in the top 1%, or the top 0.1%. 

Let's posit that America will confront a Great Crisis in the next decade. This is the presumption of The Fourth Turning, a 4-generational cycle of 80 years that correlates rather neatly with the Great Crises of the past: 1781 (Revolutionary War, constitutional crisis); 1861 (Civil War) and 1941 (World War II, global war). Read More

07.22.19- We Will Have To Reboot Our Standard of Living To Survive As a Nation
Tom Chatham

In 1940 you could buy a nice cape cod style home for around $2,500. Someone entering the job market likely started out at $25 a week. A 1940 Buick with a straight 8 would run you $895 and up. 

Why this stroll down memory lane? Because it is meant to show how much inflation has changed the price of things. When we still used money that was based on gold and silver, inflation was kept in check to some degree. Fractional reserve banking and excessive credit creation have distorted the value of things we depend on for life and we are coming to the end of that failed experiment. All of our recent prosperity has been paid for with our ability to print dollars out of thin air. Read More

07.20.19- The Most Dangerous Game
Sven Henrich

How can I not talk about the Fed? How can I not talk about the daily jawboning? It is all around us. Every. Single. Day.

And it keeps working.

I feel like I’m being reduced to a loon conspiracy theorist documenting the very reality of it.  But I’m not. From my perch I’m doing a public service doing it, because the background motivation for why it is being done reveals a deeper and disturbing truth: They are scared, they are worried and they are desperate to keep the balls in the air. Read More

07.19.19- Oxygen Tank Empty:
Even Gold Won’t Help You!
Lior Gantz

This is the most brutally-honest publication I’ve ever written and it might cause you to have goose bumps, just as it did to me, as I realized the situation, in its entirety. I didn’t sugarcoat anything, nor have I done the opposite by exaggerating and provoking undue fear, since reality is weird enough.

The reason that gold won’t save most people from what’s coming is because the ones that need financial stability the most are the ones that CAN’T AFFORD to own sufficient amounts of it to put them out of risk.

I have already converted 24 months’ worth of my family unit’s living expenses into gold eagles, and will be adding an additional 12 months’ worth in silver eagles by the end of this week. Read More

07.18.19- What Would Happen If the Federal Reserve Did Nothing?
Bill Bonner

The FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] has been navigating between the shoals of overheating and premature tightening with only a hazy view of what seem to be shifting navigational guides…

– Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – The Fed has a less than “hazy” view of its “navigational guides.” It is lost at sea. It has no idea what is north or south… up or down… right or left. Read More

07.17.19- Global Central Banks "Are Trapped By Their Own Inflation Targets"
Tyler Durden

Negative Rates Would Lead To #Chaos

Central bankers attending the G-7 meeting are sounding remarkably coordinated in their message. The global economy is growing but inflation isn’t. And that, along with the oft-cited global headwinds, means they’re ready and able to add more liquidity to the system. In the case of the U.S. they have virtually promised that it’s underway. They can assure markets that they’re “ready.” But the far more important assertion is driving home that they’re still “able.” Read More

07.16.19- A Long Shadow Creeps Over The Economy This Summer
David Haggith

It’s time to turn around and see the darkness that the Fed sees looming over you. Earnings season is already extending signs of recession with the first corporate reports coming in far darker than expectations that were already twilight dim in FactSet’s estimations, which pegged earnings as likely to show a 2% contraction.

Even the Fed sees problems ahead. Jerome Powell’s speech to congress has been called “one of the most dovish Fed speeches ever!” While that quickened the heart of a sugar-hungry stock market, what does it really tell you about how soon or likely the Fed sees recession looming for the economy or sees trouble for the stock market? Why else would Father Fed suddenly become the “most dovish … ever?” Does the Fed become its “most dovish … ever” when the economy and the stock market are doing great? Read More

07.15.19- The Hidden Reason Why Fed Chairman Powell and "Systemically Important" Banks Oppose a Gold Standard
Mike Gleason

Chairman Powell’s testimony this week was closely scrutinized not just for its economic implications but also for its political overtones. Powell cited “trade tensions” as cause for concern about the strength of the global economy. He clearly seemed to be blaming President Trump’s tariffs.

But if the tariffs are what ultimately move the Fed to cut rates, Trump will have finally gotten what he wants out of Powell. In recent weeks, Trump has stepped up his attacks on the central bank, calling it the biggest problem facing the economy, floating the idea of firing Powell, and suggesting his administration would match China’s and Europe’s "currency manipulation game." Read More

07.13.19- How Much U.S. Currency is Held Overseas?
JP Koning

What is the U.S.’s greatest export? Banknotes. There is probably no other product for which the balance of trade is so tilted in the U.S.’s favour. No foreign bills circulate in the U.S., but U.S. bills are eagerly used all over the world.

According to the Federal Reserve, there are currently $1.74 trillion paper dollars in circulation. How many of these notes circulate in the U.S. and how many are used overseas? Read More

07.12.19- Ray Dalio: There Is As Little As One Year Of Fed Stimulus Left In The Bottle
Tyler Durden

At the end of May, the world's largest bond manager, Pimco, whose bread and butter depends entirely on the future of the price of bonds and by implication, interest rates (and being able to correctly predict where they go) and thus, on the Fed's continued control of the market, made an ominous warning. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, the CIO of core strategies at PIMCO, Scott Mather, said that "we have probably the riskiest credit market that we have ever had" in terms of size, duration, quality and lack of liquidity" adding that the current situation compares to mid-2000s, just before the global financial crisis. Read More

07.11.19- Cavalier Attitudes
Michael Every

The combination of surprisingly dovish comments from Fed Chair Powell and the tone of the June FOMC minutes reassured the market about the prospect of some policy stimulus at the end of the month.  In response to questions from Congress men and women, Powell clarified that the stronger than expected US June Labor Report did not shift the Fed’s policy outlook.  Instead he stated that uncertainties about global growth and trade continue to weigh on the outlook. Read More

07.10.19- Are Investors Grossly Underestimating The Fed?
Michael Lebowitz

If you think the Fed may only lower rates by .50 or even .75, you may be grossly underestimating them.

Currently, the December 2019 Fed Funds futures contract implies that the Fed will reduce the Fed Funds rate by nearly 75 basis points (0.75%) by the end of the year. While 75 basis points may seem aggressive, if the Fed does embark on a rate-cutting policy and history proves reliable, we should prepare ourselves for much more. Read More

07.09.19- The New Hysteria: Rate-Cut Rationalizing
Jeffrey Snider

Even though it was everywhere, one of the primary things that struck me about the peak period for Reflation #3 was how ridiculous it got. If you have a strong argument, there’s no need for so much hyperbole. But it wasn’t just that, it had become openly ridiculous.

Interest rates had nowhere to go but up, “they” said. Fine, it was always possible. But inflation, we were repeatedly told, was the only outcome, the definite product of skillful monetary handling leading to a biblically tight labor market. And to prove it, there would be no data just the strongest possible wording? Read More

07.08.19- Key Events This Week: All Eyes On Powell Again
Tyler Durden

Just in case you had an urgent craving of even more Fed talk, the US central bank will once again be under the spotlight this week with Powell due to testify before Congress on the US economy and monetary policy while a busy schedule of Fedspeakers is also scattered throughout the week. We’ll also get the latest FOMC meeting minutes and US CPI and PPI data. And days after a blistering payrolls report which slammed near-term rate cut odds, inflation data is also due to be out in Europe and China while the UK PM voting process begins. Read More

07.06.19- Bizarro World: The Herd Has
Truly Gone Mad
Adam Taggart

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

~ Charles Mackay (1841)

Like me, you may often feel gobsmacked when looking at the world around you.

How did things get so screwed up?

The simple summary is: the world has gone mad. Read More

07.05.19- How Monetary Policy Leads To Destruction Of The Middle Class And Rise Of Populism
Alexey Yeremenko, PhD

Austrian bonds with maturity in 2017 were placed at sub 1.2% yield to maturity at the time when European swaps market started assigning a significant probability of further rate cuts by the ECB after Mario Draghi’s dovish comments at the ECB forum in Sintra. Dr. Draghi’s main argument was an absence of inflation in Eurozone.

As a consumer living in a Eurozone country, I don’t feel like that inflation is hovering around an official 1% estimate. Fair enough, my consumption basket might be different from the one, which is considered to be an average. Still, there are plenty of people living in the Eurozone that share exactly the same sentiments. Read More

07.04.19- America's Concealed Crisis: Fifty Years of Economic Decline, 1969 to 2019
Charles Hugh Smith

If we consider the long term, it's clear America's economy and society have been declining for the average household for 50 years.

What if the "prosperity" of the past 50 years is mostly a statistical mirage for the bottom 80% of households? What if whatever real gains (adjusted for real-world loss of purchasing power) accrued only to the top of the wealth-power pyramid, those closest to financial and political power? What if the U.S. economy and society shifted from "everybody wins" to "winner takes all" or at best, :winner take most"? Read More

07.03.19- Three Steps to Save America from Collapse
George Gilder

Our monetary system is broken. It’s given us low growth, a shrinking job force, inequality beyond what a healthy economy would produce, inefficiency, and the unnatural growth of finance as a portion of the economy. 

Our aging Federal Reserve System starves both small businesses and Silicon Valley of the capital needed to grow jobs and wages.

Fed policy translates into zero-interest-rate loans for the government and its cronies, and little or nothing for savers or small businesses. And it has transformed Wall Street from an engine of innovation into a servant of government power. Read More

07.02.19- How the Fed Wrecks the Economy Over and Over Again
Michael Maharrey

When people talk about the economy, they generally focus on government policies such as taxation and regulation. For instance, Republicans credit President Trump’s tax cuts for the seemingly booming economy and surging stock markets. Meanwhile, Democrats blame “deregulation” for the 2008 financial crisis. While government policies do have an impact on the direction of the economy, this analysis completely ignores the biggest player on the stage – the Federal Reserve.

You simply cannot grasp the economic big-picture without understanding how Federal Reserve monetary policy drives the boom-bust cycle. The effects of all other government policies work within the Fed’s monetary framework. Money-printing and interest rate manipulations fuel booms and the inevitable attempt to return to “normalcy” precipitates busts. Read More

07.01.19- The Pain Of This New Economic Downturn Is Starting To Show Up All Over The Country
Michael Snyder

It is going to take a miracle for the U.S. economy to pull out of this tailspin, because the economic numbers are really starting to deteriorate very rapidly now.  On Tuesday we got some more new numbers, and they were just as bad as we thought they might be.  But even before today’s numbers all of the data were telling us the exact same thing.  The New York Fed’s Empire State manufacturing index just suffered the worst one month decline in U.S. history, Morgan Stanley’s Business Conditions Index just suffered the largest one month decline that we have ever seen, global trade numbers are the worst they have been since the last recession, and just last week I detailed the complete and utter “bloodbath” that we are witnessing in the U.S. trucking industry right now. Read More

06.29.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why Boeing and Its Executives Should be Prosecuted for Manslaughter
Russell Mokhiber

Type the word “manslaughter” into any news search engine and up will come a series of stories of ordinary Americans charged with killing others through criminal negligence or recklessness.

One such case that came up this month involved a Pennsylvania man who plead guilty to manslaughter. The man was accused of texting while driving and as a result killed a 12-year old girl walking on the side of the road. The driver obviously didn’t intend to kill the 12-year old girl. But due to his recklessness, he did. And he will now spend time in jail. Read More

06.28.19- The Real Reason Why The Fed Isn't Cutting Interest Rates
Brandon Smith

In an article published in September 2015 titled 'The Real Reason Why The Fed Will Raise Interest Rates' I outlined a kind of economic war game, a predictive theory in which the Federal Reserve would hike rates into clear economic weakness in order to deliberately cause the implosion of the vast financial bubble they had created through several years of quantitative easing. At that time this theory received a lot of opposition. Nearly everyone in the mainstream and in the alternative media argued that the Fed was going to shift to NIRP (negative interest rates), in order to continue propping up the system. The idea that the Fed would actually raise rates and cause an engineered crash after propping up the system for so long was treated as outlandish. Read More

96.27.19- Inflation Has Pushed Households And Small Businesses To The Edge
Charles Hugh Smith

Local Government Is an Engine of Inflation

Insolvency isn’t restricted to private enterprise; governments go broke, too.

One reason the economy is so much more precarious than advertised is inflation has pushed households and small businesses to the edge–and one engine of that inflation is local government. This is not to dump on local government, which is facing essentially unlimited demands from the public for more services while mandated cost increases in government union employee wages and benefits ratchet higher. Read More

06.26.19- Powell Folded Like a Deck of Cards
Danielle DiMartino Booth

Read More

06.25.19- America’s Fake Money Will Get Fakier
Bill Bonner

Money is one of the primary measures of value in any society, perhaps the primary one, the principal repository of value. As such, money is a central source of stability, continuity, and coherence in any community. Hence to tamper with the basic money supply is to tamper with a community’s sense of value. By making money worthless, inflation threatens to undermine and dissolve all sense of value in a society. – Paul A. Cantor Read More

06.24.19- Square Minus Zero
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

I intentionally start writing this mere minutes away from Fed chair Jay Powell’s latest comments. Intentionally, because the importance ascribed to those comments only means we have gotten so far removed from what capitalism and free markets are supposed to be about, that it’s pathetic. The comments mean something for rich socialists, but nothing for the man in the street. Or, rather, they mean that the man in the street will get screwed worse for longer.

And it’s not just the Fed, all central banks have it and do it. They play around with rates and definitions and semantics until the cows can never come home again. And they have such levels of control over their respective societies and economies that the mere use of the word “markets” should result in loud and unending ridicule. There are no markets, because there is no price discovery, the Fed and ECB and BOJ got it all covered. Any downside risks, that is. Read More

06.22.19- Is the Fed Dead?
David Haggith

The US deficit this year is already over three-quarters of a trillion dollars, putting the first eight months of the fiscal year almost equal with the entire past fiscal year. It is also $200 billion above the previous record for this portion of the year, and this May’s deficit alone was 40% higher than last May’s. 

The previous deficit record was set in the middle of the last recession, which means the government is already spending more than it did to try to pull us out of the last financial crisis. In spite of all of this fiscal stimulus, the economy appears to be receding on many fronts.  Read More

06.21.19- Dollar bear market called as Gundlach sees moment of truth
Susanne Barton

The dollar is poised to slide into a “modest bear market” as Treasury yields collapse on the back of the Federal Reserve’s dovish pivot.

That’s the view of Amundi Pioneer Asset Management’s Paresh Upadhyaya, who says Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s U.S. Dollar Index may drop 5 per cent to 10 per cent from current levels as American short-term interest rates fall closer to yields in the rest of the world. The gauge’s decline to its 200-day average price signals a “moment of truth,” tweeted Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer at DoubleLine Capital. Read More

06.20.19- Rejoice. The end of Banking is nigh
Simon Black

On January 3, 2009, about six months before I launched Sovereign Man more than a decade ago, the Bitcoin blockchain came into existence. 

50 bitcoins were mined by the network’s creator in that very first transaction. And within a few days, the first open-source Bitcoin software was released. 

Few people noticed. By October of 2009, the value of a single Bitcoin was still just $0.0009 (9/100th of a penny). Read More

06.19.19- Chairman Powell – You're Fired
Michael Lebowitz

Since President Trump first discussed firing Jerome Powell, out of a sense of frustration that his Fed Chair pick was not dovish enough, he has regularly expressed his displeasure at Powell’s lack of willingness to do whatever it takes to keep the economy booming beyond its potential. Strong economic growth serves Trump well as it boosts the odds of winning a second term.

This thought of firing the Fed Chair took an interesting turn yesterday when Mario Draghi, Jerome Powell’s counter-part in the ECB, commented that he was open to lowering interest rates and expanding quantitative easing measures if economic growth in the E.U. didn’t start to pick up soon. Read More

06.18.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Celebrating 10 years from the oldest hotel in the world
Simon Black

In the year 705 AD, a Japanese entrepreneur named Fujiwara Mahito opened a small inn at the foot of the Akaishi mountains in central Honshu.

At the time, few people probably thought the inn would last very long. 

Fujiwara didn’t know anything about being an innkeeper… he had been groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps and serve the emperor as a bureaucrat. Read More

06.17.19- Inflation: The Soviet Tool for
Destroying Money
Chris Calton

In March 1919, the Communist Party headed by Vladimir Lenin stated in its newly drafted program that among the party objectives was the complete abolition of money. The State Bank of Russia would be “abolished and turned into the central bookkeeping office of the Communist society.” In theory, the ruling party could have simply decreed money out of existence, but this would fail to eliminate the circulation of currency throughout a vast country that the Bolsheviks did not fully control in 1919.

Instead, their strategy was to resort to the printing press. The banks were among the first institutions the Bolsheviks seized, and control over the money supply allowed them to pay salaries to the recently formed secret police and Red Army that were used to consolidate Bolshevik control following the 1917 revolution. Read More

06.15.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Midwest Flooding Will Cause Shortages Of These Foods
Cat Ellis

Floods are dangerous natural disasters. People and animals can be swept away and easily drown. Floods can carry bacteria and pollutants great distances. Floods can bust through levees and tear down bridges. Floods can also lead to food shortages when they destroy farms, like the recent floods in the Midwest have. Smart preppers will take measures to beef up their food storage now.

By now, most US-based preppers have either heard about (or experienced) the massive, damaging floods in the Midwest since this past March. To make matters worse, the potential for more floods in key agricultural states looms in front of us as more rain is predicted for the rest of this spring. Read More

06.14.19- Fed Chair Powell’s Plan to Pickle the Economy
MN Gordon

The Dow Jones Industrial Average made another concerted run at the elusive 27,000 milestone over the last several weeks.  But, as of this writing, the index has stalled out short of this psychosomatic barrier.  By our estimation, this is for the best.

While not always apparent, the stock market generally maintains a loose connection to the underlying economy.  Over long multi-decade periods, as measured by the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, it will undulate between stages where it’s cheap and stages where it’s dear.  Eventually, however, the stock market reverts towards its mean P/E ratio. Read More

06.13.19- Warning: Some of the Market's Vast Liquidity Is a Mirage
Mohamed A. El-Erian

A star fund manager’s stumble over liquidity is just a beginning. Far more will fail the test when there’s a downturn.

Beware of learning too few lessons from the difficulties facing Neil Woodford’s equity fund in the U.K. The takeaway is not simply to watch out for other open-ended funds with lots of inherently illiquid holdings. The case is also a warning to look seriously at the market as a whole – elements of which have grown too comfortable and too complacent operating in the ample liquidity pumped in by years of unconventional central bank policies. An economic downturn or a financial shock could create liquidity-induced dislocations that would heighten investor insecurity and complicate companies’ access to capital. Read More

06.12.19- The Fed Stops Pretending
Peter Schiff

Well, it didn’t take much and it didn’t take long. After years of delays, a tentative start, many cautious pauses along the way, and a top speed that never really hit cruising velocity, the Fed has taken the first available off-ramp on the road towards policy “normalization.” In a speech on Tuesday this week in Chicago, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell delighted Wall Street by signaling that the Fed may soon deliver the gift that investors had been hoping for…the first interest rate cut in almost a decade. Read More

06.11.19- Central banks set to flood market with cheap loans as trade war threatens to plunge global economy into recession
Enoch Yiu

• Analysts expect central banks in the US, India, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia to ensure ample liquidity if their economies show signs of weakening
  
  
• Traders expect a 70 per cent chance of a US rate cut in July; Hong Kong’s Linked Exchange Rate System to ensure HKMA moves lockstep with the Federal Reserve Read More

06.10.19- Here’s My Prediction: If the Fed Doesn’t Cut Rates 3 or 4 Times by Dec 11,
Markets Are Going to Crap
Wolf Richter

Stock market and corporate bond market are in la-la-land, pricing in an economic boom. They’re not seeing a rate-cut economy. So why would the Fed?

Granted, Wall Street always wants rate cuts, no matter what. But this is getting funny. The probability of three and even four rate cuts by December 11 are suddenly gaining the most favor in how the market are betting on 30-day Fed Fund futures. Read More

06.08.19- Lower Income Americans Are Begging The Fed For Less Inflation
Tyler Durden

While the Fed may be surprised that low income workers aren't as enthused about inflation as they are, we are not. A recent Bloomberg report looked at the stark disconnect between Fed policy and well, everybody else but banks and the 1%.

While the Fed sees low inflation as "one of the major challenges of our time," Shawn Smith, who trains some of the nation’s most vulnerable, low-income workers stated the obvious: people don't want higher prices.  Smith is the director of workforce development at Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia. Read More

06.07.19- Forget velocity of money circulation
Alasdair Macleod

If there is one concept that illustrates the difference between a top-down macro-economic approach and the reality of everyday life it is the velocity of circulation of money. Compare the following statements:

“The collapse in velocity is testament to the substantial misallocation of capital brought about by the easy money regimes of the past 20 years.” Broker’s research note; and

“The mathematical economists refuse to start from the various individuals’ demand for and supply of money. They introduce instead the spurious notion of velocity of circulation according to the pattern of mechanics.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. Read More

06.06,19- The US Economy's Dirty Big Secret
Todd Buchholz

There is a dirty little secret in economics today: the United States has benefited – and continues to benefit – from the global slump.

The US economy is humming along, even while protesters in the United Kingdom hurl milkshakes at Brexiteers, French President Emmanuel Macron confronts nihilist yellow-vested marchers, and Chinese tech firms such as Huawei fear being frozen out of foreign markets. Read More

06.05.19- Nothing to see here even if the charts come from the St. Louis Fed themselves
Bill Holter

Read More

06.04.19- From Gold To Nothing: How 1971 Changed Everything In The Economy
Duino Schiappapietra

The monetary system is a major component of the whole economic system. Despite that, today we take it for granted and don’t even ask ourselves how it works and if it is the best solution available or the correct way to manage things.

Even though it appears to be stable, history shows that monetary systems changed periodically in the last century (20–30 years on average).

The main difference between our current monetary system and previous monetary system is that today it is entirely based on FIAT Currency, in contrast to older monetary systems that were backed by gold. Read More

06.03.19- Interest rates, time-preference and gold
Alasdair Macleod

The interest rate fallacy

There is a widespread assumption that interest rates represent the cost of borrowing money. In the narrow sense that it is a rate paid by a borrower, this is true. Monetary policy planners enquire no further. Central bankers then posit that if you reduce the cost of borrowing, that is to say the interest rate, demand for credit increases, and the deployment of that credit in the economy naturally leads to an increase in GDP. Every central planner dreams of consistent growth in GDP and they seek to achieve it by lowering the cost of borrowing money. Read More

06.01.19- One-Two Trade War and Fed Policy Punch May Trigger Correction
Birch Gold Group

Maybe you’ve seen this scenario before: A boxer gets back up after violently being knocked down, only to get knocked out shortly after.

At the end of last year the Dow Jones suffered a severe correction from October 3 to December 24 (see both red arrows below):

After recovering, the Dow now seems to be struggling to “stay up” since the end of April. Could this mean we are headed towards another major correction? Read More

05.31.19-And Now, for Something Entirely Different: New York City trying to “liberate” teachers from their “whiteness”
Simon Black

Happy Friday everyone. Here’s our weekly roll-up of some of the most bizarre (and occasionally happy) stories from around the world that we’re following:

NYC schools training teachers to discriminate against white students

A new mandatory, $23 million “anti-bias” program is training New York City school teachers to discriminate against white children, no matter what. Read More

05.30.19- An Essay On The History Of Banking
stack.jones

In 1913, the U.S. Congress passed a bill called the Federal Reserve Act. This bill allowed an independent, non-government group to privatize, and take control of America’s monetary system. The Federal Reserve Bank’s name was chosen by this group so as to deceive the American people into believing that the Federal Reserve was a branch of the U.S. government. This privately held monopoly continues even today to give enormous power to a handful of international bankers, non-Americans, to issue America’s money, to set interest rates, to finance endless wars, and to enslave the American citizens, and the other nations of the world in a state of perpetual debt. This debt based monetary system is what has destroyed the American economy, and has brought with it depressions, and recessions for several generations.  Read More

05.29.19- Regime hange For the Fed — Honest Rates
James Grant

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a blemish on the age that so many of us know the name of the Federal Reserve chairman. In a better world, that government functionary would be as obscure as what’s-his-name, the home plate umpire who got no arguments calling balls and strikes at Yankee Stadium the other night.

Who elected the Greenspans, Bernankes, and Powells to be the arbiters of interest rates, asset prices, the rate of inflation and who knows what else? It wasn’t Alexander Hamilton. Nor was it the Fed’s own founders. If the authors of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act could return to earth to inspect their handiwork, the shock might kill them all over again. Read More

05.28.19- Financial Markets To Federal Reserve: Time To Start Cutting Rates
John Rubino

In late 2018 the US stock market tanked, in effect holding a gun to its own head and threatening to pull the trigger unless the Fed stopped raising interest rates. The Fed, painfully aware that an equities bull market is an existential threat in today’s hyper-leveraged world, quickly caved, promising no more rate increases if the market would just put down the gun.

This worked for a little while. Stocks jumped to new record highs and unicorn tech IPOs started pouring out of Silicon Valley. Normal, which is to say booming, markets were back. Read More

05.27.19- Hints of gold returning as sound money as Trump readies new Gold Standard Fed Governor while Congressman submits bill to audit gold supply
Ken Schortgen

With two of President Trump's primary picks to fill vacant slots on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors having dropped out in recent weeks, rumors of his newest pick could very well send shockwaves through the central bank.  And that is because according to Mish Shedlock in an article published on May 12, Trump appears to be readying Gold Standard advocate Judy Shelton as his next nominee. Read More

05.25.10- Corporations Leverage Fed’s Rate Pause to Lock-in Lower Rates on Junk Debt
Birch Gold Group

“Too Big to Fail” corporations searching for an opportunity to refinance high-risk debt have been given a gift. But this gift comes with risks.

Fed Chairman Powell decided back in January to pause any rate hikes after evaluating multiple risk factors, according to USA Today:

In an interview with the CBS news program “60 Minutes,” Powell said that the Fed decided to pause its rate hikes in January, after increasing rates four times in 2018, because the global economy was slowing and other risks to the U.S. economy were rising.Read More

05.24.19- The Fed Is Caught Behind The Curve
Avi Gilburt

I have written many times about how the Fed follows the market and does not lead it.  And, we are about to see yet another example of history’s lessons.

For those that followed our work over the years, you would know that we called for a top to the bond market on June 27, 2016, with the market striking its multi-year highs within a week of our call.  Since that call, TLT dropped 22%, until we saw the bottoming structure develop in late 2018. Read More

05.23.19- Jim Grant Says It’s Time
to Abolish the Fed
Rick Ackerman

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a blemish on the age that so many of us know the name of the Federal Reserve chairman. In a better world, that government functionary would be as obscure as what’s-his-name, the home plate umpire who got no arguments calling balls and strikes at Yankee Stadium the other night. Who elected the Greenspans, Bernankes, and Powells to be the arbiters of interest rates, asset prices, the rate of inflation and who knows what else? It wasn’t Alexander Hamilton. Nor was it the Fed’s own founders. If the authors of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act could return to earth to inspect their handiwork, the shock might kill them again. Read More

05.22.19- How To Earn More On
Your Savings Deposits
Tekoa Da Silva

Thank you for your interest in this Paper. It is intended to help you earn more money on your savings (while taking less risk), and to give you the ability to discern whether or not you are getting a ‘good deal’ on savings & deposit products, relative to a low-risk product category called: U.S. Treasuries.

In this paper we’ll discuss:

1. Short-Term U.S. Treasuries and why they may be superior to bank deposit or certificate products.
2. How to buy U.S. Treasuries.
3. Short-Term interest rates in the U.S. (as of 2019) Read More

05.21.19- The Fed's Tragic Plan For Long Term Rates Revealed
Mike Maloney

View Video

05.20.19- Humpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall, Caused By The Federal Reserve
Bill Sardi

Shhh… Don’t forward this posting to widows who placed a $100,000 in their savings account over a decade ago and who think they really have $100,000 of purchasing power stashed in their bank account, or we might have a bank run on our hands.

Oh, the banks would close and even more severe limits on withdrawals would be invoked than are currently in place should a widespread run on the banks ever occur.  There is no way a run on the banks will ever be allowed to happen again, like in the Great Depression when the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and anxious depositors withdrew their savings, forcing banks to liquidate (call in) loans, which led to many bank failures.Read More

05.18.19- The Income Tax is Destroying the World Economy
Martin Armstrong

(Editor's Note: Although the Internal Revenue Service is considered to be a Bureau of the Department of Treasury, like the Federal Reserve, they are not part of the Federal Government, and in fact were incorporated in Delaware in 1933. It is pointed out that all official Federal Government mail is sent postage-free because of the franking privilege, however, the IRS has to pay their own postage, which indicates that they are not a government entity. They are in fact a collection agency for the Federal Reserve, because they do not collect any taxes for the U.S. Treasury. All funds collected are turned over to the Federal Reserve. If you have ever sent a check to the IRS, you will find that it was endorsed over to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve, in turn, deposits the money with the IMF of the United Nations, where it is filtered down to the International Development Association (see Treasury Delegation Order No. 91), which is part of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, commonly known as the World Bank. Therefore, it is now clear, that the American people are unknowingly contributing to the financing of a World Government in-the-making. Read More

05.17.19- Can the Fed Keep This Long Cycle Going?
Brendan Brown

There have already been three completed growth cycles in this super-long business cycle. Can the Fed keep it going?

Our current super-long economic cycle is a monetary curse. Under sound money it would not exist, and under the pre-1914 gold standard, it never occurred. The present business cycle expansion in the US — the longest ever — comes in the wake of three recent super-cycle expansions: 1991-2000, 1982-90, and 1961-69. Arguably, the first super-long cycle was in the early years of the Federal Reserve, from 1921-9. Read More

05.16.19- Fed Launches ‘Rate Peg Instead of QE’ Trial Balloon for Next Crisis
Wolf Richter

Wall Street hype artists and assorted QE mongers would be deeply disappointed.

This came packaged into the middle of a speech by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard, on “How Does Monetary Policy Affect Your Community?” It was under the subheading, “Some Issues to Explore.” And it would be a huge shift in how the next crisis will be handled. Read More

05.15.19- Gold & Silver: Why I'm Buying
THE Safe-Haven Assets, Right Now.
Mike Maloney

View Video

05.14.19- Judy Shelton, Trump's Next Fed Choice, Favors A Gold Standard And Free Trade
Mike Shedlock

Economist Judy Shelton, a Trump economic advisor and a gold standard advocate is rumored to be Trump's next Fed pick.

Bloomberg reports White House Considers Economist Judy Shelton for Fed Board

The White House is considering conservative economist Judy Shelton to fill one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that President Donald Trump has struggled to fill. Read More

05.13.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Seeking Arrangement Might Just Burst the College Bubble
Aaron Carey

There are THREE WARNINGS for this article. 

1.  This article contains links and discussion about porn and pornographic sites. You have been warned.

2.  This article is also written from a cold, clinical, empiricist economic viewpoint absent of any human emotion which you will find more insulting.  You have also been warned.

3.  This article is about a solid 45 minute read.  It's not for those of you with the attention span of goldfish or millennials.  Be careful reading it.  Your intellect might be stimulated  Read More

05.11.19- And Now, foe Something Entirely Different: 3 Things Everyone Should Do Before They Die
Nilus Mattive

The average life expectancy for those born in 2018 in the United States is 76 for males and 81 for females. 

Compare these figures to almost 80 years ago, where males born in 1940 lived until age 61 and females age 65, and there’s no question we are living longer. 

But eventually we’re all going to die. And as morbid as that sounds, there are some things you need to consider before your time is up. Read More

05.10.19- The Three Stages of
Modern Monetary Theory
MN Gordon

Stage One: Yielding to Dreamers

Some ideas are so bad they’re best ignored.  Like resentments – or stray cats – if you don’t feed them, they’ll go away.  Before long, they’re forgotten altogether.

That has been our approach to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  The idea’s so obviously foolish, reckless, and outright suicidal.  Why feed this dorkus maximus of economic thought? Read More

05.09.19- When Deutsche Bank’s Crisis Becomes Our Crisis
Christopher Whalen

Our friends in Europe seem totally incapable of addressing their failing financial sector. And that's not good for anyone.

Americans generally think of Europe first as a wonderful place to visit. They rarely ponder the economic and financial ties between the United States and European Union, but in fact these ties are extensive and significant to the stability of both economies.Read More

95.08.10- The "Muzzle" On Inflation
Tyler Durden

The "muzzle" on reported inflation has policymakers and analysts perplexed. Numerous economic explanations and theories have been offered, and policymakers are considering making changes to their operating price-targeting framework.

Yet, before any decisions are made policymakers should consider all of the factors that could be keeping a "muzzle" on published inflation.

I am going to discuss two. Read More

05.07.19- The Real Reason for Income Inequality? The Fed
Josh Hammer and Todd J. Stein

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The Fed's quantitative easing over the last decade is responsible for income inequality, not low taxes.

Income inequality in America has worsened in recent decades. Many on the left, buttressed by a not-insignificant number of those on the right, have argued for an increasingly progressive income tax code to tackle this problem. Read More

05.06.19- The Fed Is Stuck Between
A Rock And A Hard Place
Frank Suess

On the one hand, the need to normalize its policies is urgent, lest it has no tools left to fight the next recession, and on the other hand…

As discussed in the latest Digger, despite all the tightening and rate hike talk by the Fed during the past year, it seems that reality has now finally caught up with it. With the markets being dangerously addicted to its accommodative policies, the Fed (as well as the ECB and the BOJ) has backed itself into a corner with no moves left. Read More

05.04.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: White People Will Be Rubbed Out Along With Their History
Paul Craig Roberts

Recently I wrote of the failure of white liberals to realize the consequences of their good intentions toward preferred minorities.

The cost of this miscalculation rises by the day. Now white people in America are to be stripped of their history, because white history traumatizes preferred minorities.  At George Washington High School in northern California an historic mural depicting the school’s namesake has been declared offensive.  Read More

05.03.19- The Fed Has Lost Control Of Rates As 'Technical Tweak' Fails
Tyler Durden

While the rest of the world is distracted by the plummeting unemployment rates and trade deal hype, a funny (well not so funny) thing happened in the short-term funding markets in the world's reserve currency.

As we noted previously, something unexpected has been going on in overnight funding markets: ever since March 20, the Effective Fed Funds rate has been trading above the IOER. This is not supposed to happen. Read More

05.02.19- Returning to currencies
with hard anchors?
William Coats

After years of discretionary management of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, there is a strong case for re-fixing our fiat currency system to a hard anchor. Though the dollar was far more stable under the gold and gold exchange standard era than after it’s delinking from gold in 1971, those systems came with significant weaknesses that contributed to their ultimate abandonment. To avoid these, three key elements of the Fed’s operation should be modified. These are: 1. The monetary policy rules determining how currency fixed to a hard anchor is issued and redeemed; 2. The monetary anchor itself; and 3. What the currency is issued or redeemed for. Read More

05.01.19- The Fed’s Dangerous Inflation Game
Jim Rickards

By now you’ve heard that the U.S. economy expanded at an annualized rate of 3.2% in the first quarter of 2019. That was reported by the Commerce Department last Friday morning.

That strong growth coming on top of 4.2% in Q2 2018 and 3.4% in Q3 2018 means that in the past twelve months, the U.S. economy has expanded at about a 3.25% annualized rate. That’s a full point higher than the average growth rate since June 2009 when the expansion began and it’s in line with the 3.22% growth rate of the average expansion since 1980. Read More

04.30.19- World's Monetary Reserves and
the End of an Era
Hugo Salinas Price

We had been observing the evolution of the total of Central Bank Monetary Reserves for several years, and noted a peak on August 2, 2014, when these Reserves reached a maximum of the equivalent of $12.032 Trillion dollars, according to Bloomberg.

As of April, 2019, a review of Central Bank Monetary Reserves, according to Bloomberg, yields some interesting information. Read More

04.29.19- Not Modern, Not About Money, and not Much of a Theory
Charles Gave

Ronald Reagan used to say that there are two kinds of economists. The first, usually disliked by politicians, believe like Milton Friedman that there is no such thing as a free of lunch. The second, very much liked by politicians, believe that if only the government were to spend more, growth would accelerate for the greater good of all. Reagan would then go on to say that the first kind tend to believe in God, and the second kind believe in Santa Claus. Unfortunately, Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Read More

04.27.19- Weekend Rant: Washington Has Destroyed Western Liberty
The Era of Tyranny Has Begun
Dr Paul Craig Roberts

A fish rots from the head. In the Western world rot is accelerating. The rot in Washington is swiftly spreading to state and local governments and abroad to the Empire’s vassal governments.

Washington’s attack on journalism represented by the illegal arrest of Julian Assange has now spread to France. The US government’s policy of sanctions against sovereign countries that do not follow Washington’s orders has spread to the state of New York, where the governor has threatened sanctions against financial institutions that do business with the National Rifle Association. Read More

04.26.19- Central Banks Have Broken Capitalism
Alberto Gallo

While many agree that current monetary policies are not sustainable, few have offered realistic alternatives. Here are three.

It has been a decade since the Federal Reserve and other central banks began cutting interest rates to zero — or even below — and injecting unprecedented amounts of cash into the global financial system via quantitative easing. And while global stocks are at or near record highs, central banks around the world are increasingly abandoning their hopes of normalizing policy with economic growth slowing. On top of that, public and private debt levels are higher than ever. Read More

04.25.19- We Give Up! Part 6: Federal Reserve “Resigned” To Blowing Bubbles
John Rubino

After raising interest rates and getting slapped around by the markets last year, the Fed now appears to accept that future monetary policy can only be easy, even at the cost of ever larger and more destabilizing financial bubbles. On one hand this is a truly epochal change. On the other hand it’s just a recognition of the new normal in which central banks have already lost control. 

From Bloomberg: 

Fed Seems Resigned to Bubble Risk in Effort to Extend Expansion Read More

04.24.19- The Fed’s key interest rate keeps climbing, and that could become a problem
Jeff Cox

The Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate has inched up to its highest level in 11 years even though the central bank has sent a clear message that it is done tightening policy indefinitely.

In recent days, the effective fed funds rate, which targets the overnight level that banks charge each other for loans, has moved up to 2.44%. That’s the highest since March 2008 and is just 6 basis points from the top of the target range and the closest to the top since December, when the Fed last raised rates. Read More

04.23.19- Will Powell’s Dovish Turn Support Gold?
Arkadiusz Sieroń

It was a big surprise. The dovish surprise. In March, Powell doubled down on its accommodative stance. Does he know something we are not aware of?  We invite you to read our today’s article about the recent Fed’s U-turn and find out whether it will support the gold prices.

Three months can make a big difference! In December 2018, the Fed raised the federal funds rate and signaled another two hikes in 2019 and further one in 2020. Powell also reaffirmed that the Fed would continue to unwind its balance sheet, by up to $50 billion per month, and he sounded very hawkish. But just six weeks later, at the FOMC meeting at the end of January, he sounded much softer, announcing that the Fed would pause its balance sheet normalization this year. Read More

04.22.19- Waxing philosophically
Johnny Silver Bear

I was, again, fortunate this past week when I found myself in a lively debate about the differences between truth and reality. I say "fortunate" because the subject has, at least to me, grown a great deal in relevance over the last sixteen years, as my inuring tenure as your editor has transpired.

I fancy myself Jeffersonian Constitutionalist, a champion of liberty, and a seeker of the truth. The combination of these three dutiful involvements provides me meaning and satisfaction, and coalesce into a condition that I consider wholesome, fulfilling, and one that I aspire to continue to achieve. There are too few truth seekers, although the attraction to the truth seems to be spreading in the face of an overtly devolving social condition. Read More

04.20.19- The S&P Index at 2900: The Biggest Wall Street/Fed Whopper Ever Told
Christopher Gisiger

Once upon a time, the stock market reflected the state of the main street economy and the level of business profits. In the present age of Keynesian central banking, not so much.

To wit, since the first quarter of 2012, the S&P 500 has risen from 1300 to 2900 or by nearly 125%. At the same time, pre-tax corporate profits of $2.20 trillion (annualized rate) in Q1 2012 have gone nowhere at all – actually posting a tad lower at $2.18 trillion in Q4 2018; and that dismal number, in turn, was down by nearly 6% from the peak $2.32 trillion level posted in Q3 2014. Read More

04.19.19- The Fat Lady Is Clearing Her Throat - Dancing Towards the Abyss
Jesse's Café Américain

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.  Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. 

These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry. Read More

04.18.19- How U.S. Government Debt May Impact Social Security
Birch Gold Group

Fiscal year 2018 wasn’t a good one for U.S. Government net-worth. While that may hardly be surprising, it’s possible we’re reaching a “tipping point.”

From an official report released by the U.S. Treasury, Sovereign Man pulled out a few key highlights:

• In 2018, the government’s total net loss was $1.16 TRILLION.
  
• … they spent over $4.5 trillion.
  
• … nearly HALF went to Social Security and Medicare.
  
• … spent a record $523 billion just on interest payments on the national debt! Read More

04.17.19- Central Banks Soften Us Up
For Higher Inflation
John Rubino

There was a time when “price stability” – that is, money that buys the same amount of stuff every year – was considered a good thing. But as debts began to pile up around the world, it became clear to policymakers that managing that debt required money that got a little less valuable over time, say 2%, to allow debtors to pay interest in cheaper currency and employers to placate workers with “cost of living” raises. 

This delayed the reckoning on the old debt but at the cost of soaring new debt, as pretty much everyone figured out that it’s smart to borrow depreciating currency. Read More

04.16.19- Counterfeiting Money Is a Crime —
Whether Done by the Fed or A Private Individual
Patrick Barron

A few years ago, shortly after the 2008 subprime lending disaster, the Fed sent a public relations team around the country to conduct supposedly "educational sessions" about how the Fed works and the wonderful things it does. The public was invited, and there was a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. One such session was held in Des Moines, Iowa. At the time I was teaching a course in Austrian economics at the University of Iowa, so I lusted at the prospect of hearing complete nonsense and having a shot at asking a question. I was not disappointed. Read More

04.15.19- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: Julian Assange Is Guilty Of Only One Thing: Revealing The Evil Soul Of US Imperialism
Federico Pieraccini

Julian Assange was bundled away by British police after Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, gave the green light for the expulsion of the Wikileaks publisher from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange's arrest represents an abuse of power, highlighting not only how true journalism has now been banished in the West, but also how politicians, journalists, news agencies and think-tanks collude with each other to silence people like Julian Assange and his Wikileaks foundation who are a nuisance to US imperialism. Read More

04.13.19- Unsolicited Advice to Fed Chair Powell
MN Gordon

American businesses over the past decade have taken a most unsettling turn.  According to research from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, as of November 2018, non-financial corporate debt has grown to more than $9.1 trillion.

[ed note: this number refers to securitized debt and business loans, other corporate liabilities would add an additional $11 trillion for a total of $20.5 trillion] Read More

04.12.19- My Fancy-Schmancy “Fed Hawk-o-Meter”
Jumps 18%,
Wolf Richter

What’s the Fed Trying to Say?

My fancy-schmancy Fed Hawk-o-Meter jumped 18% from 22 to 26, after having been on a downtrend for four Fed meetings in a row. Something’s up.

The Fed Hawk-o-Meter checks the minutes of the FOMC meetings for signs that the Fed sees the economy as strong and that rates should rise; or that the economy is OK but not strong enough to raise rates further; or that the economy is spiraling down to where rates need to be cut. It quantifies and visualizes what the Fed wishes to communicate to the markets by counting how often “strong,” “strongly,” and “stronger” appear in the minutes to describe the economy. In the minutes of the March 19-20 meeting, released this afternoon, those words appear 26 times, up 18% from 22 times in the prior minutes: Read More

04.11.19- Hey, Ray Dalio, It's The Fed, Stupid!
David Stockman

If you want to know had badly Keynesian central banking has corrupted the financial discourse, just check into the current PC sensation of the week.

We are referring to Ray Dalio’s punking of the very capitalism under which his $160 billion hedge funds has become the largest in the world and his net worth has soared to a tidy $18 billion. Yet Sunday night he told millions of “60 Minutes” viewers that the American Dream is dead, capitalism is in desperate need of reform and that wealth, income and opportunity maldistribution in the US is so severe that the President should call an national emergency. Read More

04.10.19- Trump Is Right To Blow Up The Fed"
Christopher Whalen

The Federal Reserve is out of control, acting in ways and with powers that were never explicitly granted by Congress...

Last week, President Donald Trump set the economics community aflame by suggesting that he will appoint businessman and presidential aspirant Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board. Even more than political economist Stephen Moore, the critics maintain, Cain represents a threat to the cabal that has controlled the central bank for decades. Why? Because Cain is a successful executive who founded a real business, took risks, and created jobs, things most academic economists will never ever do. Read More

04.09.19- The Price Of Inflation
Atle Willems

Summary

The three previous financial crises in the U.S. had their own distinctive characteristics, individual stories, and villains attached to them.

Yet, the underlying reason for all three was one and the same.

After a near decade-long bull market, the mother of all financial bubbles has created catalysts for the next financial crisis that are ripe and ready to drop. Read More

04.08.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why and How Capitalism
Needs to Be Reformed (Part 1)
Ray Dalio

Summary

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a middle-class family by parents who took good care of me, to go to good public schools, and to come into a job market that offered me equal opportunity. I was raised with the belief that having equal opportunity to have basic care, good education, and employment is what is fair and best for our collective well-being. To have these things and use them to build a great life is what was meant by living the American Dream. Read More

04.06.19- The Economics Profession
Needs New Models
Jim Rickards

The list of policy and predictive failures by mainstream economists is longer than the typical 9-year-old’s Christmas list. They failed to foresee the 2007 mortgage bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. They cheered “green shoots” in 2009 when that was a complete illusion. They welcomed the “recovery summer” in 2010, which was nothing but more of the same punk growth.

They spent six years pursuing QE and seven years with zero interest rates and had nothing to show for it except an inflated balance sheet, inflated asset values and $4 trillion of lost wealth through below-trend growth. The latest failure was proclaiming “synchronized global growth” in 2017 when there was nothing of the sort. Major economies are now slipping into recession. Read More

04.05.19- Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks?
Ellen Brown

“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,

“And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.” — Mary Poppins, 1964

When Mary Poppins was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. Banks were then paying more than 5%  on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years. Read More

04.04.19- Fed’s Interest Rate U-Turn
Highly Bullish for Gold
Birch Gold Group

This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest news involving precious metals and the overall economy. Stories include: Why the Fed’s policy shift is good for gold, Russia is dumping U.S. dollars in favor of gold, and how silver often takes first place for both collectors and investors.

The Fed’s Policy U-Turn is Decidedly Good for Gold

Last week, the Federal Reserve announced that it will probably not hike interest rates at all this year and downgraded its growth forecast for 2019. According to a recent article on Kitco, the announcement shot down market expectations that 2019 would see a minimum of two rate hikes. Perhaps more importantly, the dovish sentiment by Fed officials stood out in stark contrast to the hawkish rhetoric of 2018. Read More

04.03.19- Here’s why the Federal Reserve rejected the safest bank in America
Simon Black

In the spring of 1692, an energetic young Scotsman named John Campbell started a new business in central London.

Campbell was a goldsmith, and his business sold jewelry and other crafted metals like plates and silverware.

But Campbell’s new company had another business line as well: banking. And the company he started eventually became Coutts & Co., a bank that still exists today in the UK. Read More

04.02.19- The Fed Corrupts Society: Is It Intentional, Or Out of Ignorance?
Dr. Ron Paul

View Video

04.01.19- Hyperinflation History May Provide Valuable Lessons for Fed’s “Target”
Birch Gold Group

In April of 1980 inflation peaked at a staggering 14.76%. That same year, the Fed triggered a rise in interest rates to near 20% around the same time, employing the controversial “Volcker Rule.”

Paul Solman explained in a 2009 PBS Newshour:

If by “interest rates” you mean the rate set by the Fed — the Fed funds rate — it rose to TWENTY PERCENT in 1980. But no, it was not inaction but just the opposite: a deliberate rise in rates triggered by inflation. Read More

03.30.19- The Fed Broke This Economic Cycle;
It is a Game Changer for Investors
Paul Ebeling

Here is a quote from my friend Peter Boockvar that has drawn an enormous amount of interest: “We no longer have business cycles, we have credit cycles.”

Let’s cut that small but meaty sound bite into pieces. What do we mean by “business cycle,” exactly? Well, it looks something like this.

A growing economy peaks, contracts to a trough (what we call “recession”), recovers to enter prosperity, and hits a higher peak. Then the process repeats. Read More

03.29.19- Our Flawed Monetary System
& Why It's Doomed
Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: You mentioned that Rome had no national debt and no central bank. Exactly how did it function for 1,000 years?

ANSWER: In addition to not having a national debt or a central bank, Rome had no police force or agency charged with enforcing the law. There were specific crimes against the state that would be prosecuted such as arson and treason. But the prosecution of a murder would be carried out by the family. The responsibility for enforcing the law thereby fell on the kin, tribe, gens and patron of the offended individual. Read More

03.28.19- The Federal Reserve's Controlled Demolition Of The Economy
Is Almost Complete
Brandon Smith

The Federal Reserve is an often misunderstood entity, not only in the mainstream, but also in alternative economic circles. There is this ever pervasive fantasy on both sides of the divide that the central bank actually “cares” about forever protecting the US economy, or at least propping up the US economy in an endless game of “kick the can”. While this might be true at times, it is not true ALL the time. Things change, agendas change, and sometimes the Fed's goal is not to maintain the economy, but to destroy it. Read More

03.27.19- Why is the Fed Preparing the Public for NIRP, Permanent QE, and Worse?
Silver Bullion

The next crisis will soon hit the financial system.

If you don’t believe me, I have to ask… if this statement is false, why is the Fed desperately attempting to lay the groundwork for the next round of monetary easing at a time when the stock market is within 5% of its all time highs?

This has included:

1)   The Fed stating it is DONE with rate hikes in 2019 when just three months ago it was talking about raising rates 3-4 times this year. Read More

03.26.19- Why Modern Monetary Theory
Will Destroy Money…
Doug Casey

MMT centers around the notion that the economy in general, and money in particular, should be the creatures of the State.

It’s not a new idea – the meme has been around in one form or another since at least the days of Marx.

MMT basically posits that the wise and incorruptible solons in government should create as much currency as they think is needed, spend it in areas they like, and solve any problems that occur with more laws and regulations.

It’s nothing new. Just a more radical version of the economic fascism that’s dominated the U.S. since at least the days of the New Deal. It’s just another name for an old, and very stupid, set of economic ideas. By stupid I mean, “showing an inability to predict the indirect and delayed consequences of actions.” Read More

03.25.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Year The World Falls Apart
Doug Casey

It’s “Totally Incorrect” week here at Casey Research...

We’ve shared Doug Casey’s uncensored insights – on topics ranging from the climate change hoax to the next 9/11-type event.

But today’s essay may be the most controversial one yet…

Doug says a disaster of historic proportions is on the menu for 2019.

And it’s critical to understand what’s happening. Read More

03.23.19- Three Props for the Dollar's 2018 Rally Seen Reversing This Year
Chris Anstey

Three key dynamics that drove the dollar higher last year look set to reverse in 2019, arguing for the U.S. currency’s depreciation, according to Morgan Stanley.

“A cyclical slowdown in the rest of the world, rising risks of protectionism and a loose fiscal, tight monetary policy mix in the U.S.” propelled the greenback last year, Morgan Stanley strategists led by Hans Redeker in London wrote in a note Thursday. “2019 is looking like a reversal of 2018.” Read More

03.22.19- Central Banks Are
Messing with Your Head
Thorsten Polleit

Human action and the interest rate

People value present goods more highly than future goods. For instance, an apple available today is considered more valuable than the same apple available in, say, one month. This is expressive of time preference — which is an undeniable fact, a category of human action.

The sentence “Humans act” is a logically irrefutable truth. It cannot be denied without causing a logical contradiction. By saying “Humans can not act”, you act and thus contradict your very statement.  Read More

03.21.19- Paul Volcker Can’t Save Us This Time…
Bill Bonner

Still no visible crack in the stock market. But the economy may be breaking down.

First, there is growing recognition that the Obama/Trump recovery has been a flop.

A headline at Yahoo Finance:

Jamie Dimon: The U.S. economy should have grown 40% in the last decade, not 20%

Hardly a week has gone by since the White House proposed its new budget, counting on 3% growth. Now, it too is already admitting that it won’t work. The New York Times:  Read More

03.20.19- Today Is International Happiness Day, And It's All Up To Powell
Michal Every

Happy Happiness Day!

Today is International Happiness Day. But are you feeling happy? A large part of your answer might well depend on the Fed, which of course meets today. We know no rate move will happen, of course, which is cheering for some (and deeply depressing for others). But what will their updated dot-plot and press conference show us? Is there still an expectation for all this lack of action just being a pause? If so that will be depressing for some (and deeply cheering for others). Either way we are expecting a US recession in 2020 and only some markets are priced that way, not others, with the economy the S&P just shy of its all-time high.  Read More

03.19.19- The Bank Is Being Robbed
Jeff Thomas

In 1903, the desperado in the image to the right appeared in an early film about a robbery. He was the classic guy in a black hat and, of course, he was eventually foiled by the guys in the white hats.

That was a simpler time.

Today, law enforcement is assisted so much by modern technology that the guys in the black hats rarely try to rob a bank, as they’ll almost surely be caught. Read More

03.18.19- Chairman Powell’s “Wait and See” Approach May Let Price Inflation “Run Hot”
Peter Reagan

Once you heat up a pan on a stove top, the pan will stay hot as long as the stove top continues to provide heat, even if you ignore the stove top.

Right now, CPI inflation since 2011 is providing “heat” like a stove top. Future rate hikes are the “pan,” and it seems like Chairman Powell wants to ignore the stove top.

Just look at the FRED chart below… Read More

03.16.19- Weekend Rant: Your Opinion Is Of No Concern To Me… Unless It Can Be
Supported By Fact
Neal Ross

Can anyone tell me why we, as Americans, hold these events called elections every couple of years? Now I know that some of y’all are probably going to say something like, “So that we can choose from a field of candidates the most qualified and deserving one to hold political office.” While that isn’t altogether incorrect, it isn’t quite the answer I was hoping for. Maybe if I rephrase the question it might help, “Why are we, as Americans, the ones who get to choose who will fill the various seats of power within our government?” There, does that make it clearer the kind of answer I was looking for? Read More

03.15.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Cavemen Capitalist... how wealth was created from nothing
Joe Jarvis

The natural state of human existence is abject poverty. That’s the starting point–naked, hungry, and homeless.

Any effort towards survival is the most basic form of wealth creation.

Labor is a key element in creating any wealth. Even cupping your hands together to draw water from a stream is labor. And it is required to survive. That is a rudimentary form of wealth trickling down your throat.

But wealth also requires property. In order to drink that life-sustaining water, you must hold exclusive rights over that water. Read More

03.14.19- The Fed’s Failures Are Mounting
Danielle DiMartino-Booth

In the decade between “60 Minutes” interviews, the central bank has sparked a recovery without inflation but not much else

Friday marks the 10-year anniversary of the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s groundbreaking “60 Minutes” interview. To listen to current Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on the same show a decade later, the central bank’s best laid plans since then would seem to have played out according to script with one glaring exception: the Fed’s balance sheet. Read More

03.13.19- Central Banks Suppress Price To Buy More Cheap Gold Ahead Of
The March 29th Re-Monetization
Chris Powell

Mainstream financial news organizations are finally beginning to point out the central bank deceptions regarding the gold market…

Financial analysis published two weeks ago by a major Italian newspaper, Il Sole / 24 Ore (The Sun / 24 Hours), asserted frankly that central banks have been using gold futures and derivatives to suppress the monetary metal’s price so they can obtain more of the metal less expensively in advance of its remonetization under new rules promulgated by the Bank for International Settlements to take effect March 29. Read More

03.12.19- Ides and Tides
James Howard Kunstler

Just as presidents are expected to act presidentially, Federal Reserve chairpersons are expected to act oracularly — as semi-supernatural beings who emerge now and again from some cave of mathematical secrets to offer reassuringly cryptic utterances on mysteries of the economy.

And so was Jerome Powell wheeled out on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday night, like a cigar store Indian at an antique fair, so vividly sculpted and colorfully adorned you could almost imagine him saying something. Read More

03.11.19- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different: Damascus To Become A “Ruinous Heap”?: Syria Threatens To Attack The Golan Heights And Israel Prepares For War
Michael Snyder

The winds of war are blowing once again, and it isn’t going to take much to spark a major conflict in the Middle East.  This week is the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the civil war in Syria, and after the nightmare that the people of Syria have been through, you would think that the Assad regime would be eager for peace.  But instead, Assad appears to be ready to go for broke.  If Syria can spark a Middle East war that results in the complete destruction of Israel, Assad would be remembered as a hero in the Islamic world forever. Read More

03.09.19- Fake Money's Face Value Deceit
MN Gordon

Shane Anthony Mele stumbled off the straight and narrow path many years ago.  One bad decision here.  Another there.  And he was neck deep in the smelly stuff.

These missteps compounded over the years and also magnified his natural shortcomings.  Namely, that he’s a thief and – to be polite – a moron.  Recently the confluence of these two failings came together like a sewage spill to a river draining through the center of town. Read More

03.08.19- The Fed Is Playing A Dangerous Game
John Mauldin

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to read the Federal Reserve’s rabbit entrails to discern the economy. But Since the Fed exists in the real world, and its decisions matter, we have to pay attention.

Just so new and perhaps even old readers know my views on the Fed: I believe we need it to handle the practical matters of the banking system plus interact with other international central banks (we live in a complicated world) and, in the midst of crisis, act as a lender of last resort and liquidity provider. I agree with Walter Bagehot’s (pronounced badget) very important pronouncement (often called "Bagehot's Dictum") that “in times of financial crisis central banks should lend freely to solvent depository institutions, yet only against sound collateral and at interest rates high enough to dissuade those borrowers that are not genuinely in need.” That rule or dictum remains wise. Read More

03.07.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Will Artificial Intelligence be Used for Total Economic Control?
Brandon Smith

I have recently been exploring the deeper issues surrounding Artificial Intelligence and the implications of its use by the establishment, and what I have found is an ever increasing propaganda drive to acclimate the masses to the notion that AI influence in every aspect of our lives is “inevitable”. That is to say, whether it is good or bad, whether we like it or not, it’s going to happen. The tech-headed swooning over AI is embarrassing and often naive. In their minds, AI can and should do everything, and will supposedly do it better than human beings ever could. Read More

03.06.19- The Fed Chair Just Admitted On Record That The US is Heading For a Debt Crisis
Graham Summers

Yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell made a starling admission,

 “The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path,”Powell told the Senate Banking Committee, noting that “debt as a percentage of GDP is growing, and now growing sharply... And that is unsustainable by definition.”

Source: Yahoo! Finance

What Powell said has been obvious to anyone with a functioning brain for years. However, we have to remember one key item… Read More

03.05.19- The Magic Money Tree
Gary Christenson

Our Current Financial Circumstances:

• The U.S. is $22 trillion in debt and burdened with $100 – $200 trillion more in unfunded liabilities. Just to pay the interest the U.S. must borrow. Debt is rapidly rising and cannot be paid unless “they” default or hyper-inflate the dollar.

• Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable path.” Even the Fed admits what everyone should realize. Read More

03.04.19- Before King Dollar loses his throne, inflation will take off
Wolf Richter

Predictions of doom for the US dollar are not new and have so far come to nothing. Yet while it might not happen tomorrow, the risk warnings are there, says John Stepek – here’s how to get your portfolio ready.

Ever since the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, the US dollar has been the acknowledged top dog of global currencies – the reserve currency. And for almost as long, people have been predicting that it would be toppled from that position. As yet, of course, it hasn’t happened. But with Donald Trump running the public finances as imprudently as he managed his own, and his opponents talking about printing money to fund pet projects, could it be different this time? Read More

03.02.19- The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy
James Grant

William McChesney Martin, top left, the Fed’s boss in the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties, probably wouldn’t have liked the policies of the central bank’s current chairman, Jerome Powell, bottom right. 

Last Monday, the Federal Reserve embarked on a yearlong listening tour to discover the concerns of the American people. The whole shebang of modern monetary methods - manipulated interest rates, levitated asset values, the supposed necessity of a 2% inflation rate - is on the table for constructive criticism.

But you know how it is with constructive criticism. The friend who asks to hear it really doesn’t want any. So it is with Richard H. Clarida, the Columbia University economist turned vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Read More

03.01.19- The Approaching Winter:
The Super-Cycle Has Turned
Charles Hugh Smith

How would you describe the social mood of the nation and world?

Would anti-Establishment, anti-status quo, and anti-globalization be a good start? How about choking on fast-rising debt? Would stagnant growth, stagnant wages be a fair description? Or how about rising wealth/income inequality? Wouldn’t rising disunity and political polarization be accurate?

These are all characteristics of the long-wave social-economic cycle that is entering the disintegrative (winter) phase. Souring social mood, loss of purchasing power, stagnating wages, rising inequality, devaluing currencies, rising debt, political polarization and elite disunity are all manifestations of this phase. Read More

02.28.19- The Fed’s positive feedback loop
David P. Goldman

An eerie calm on Wall Street yesterday and today is a strong sign that the Fed has done all it can to revive the stock market

The Fed responds to the market, and the market responds to the Fed, until both are so attuned to each other that neither does anything. Today’s much-anticipated release of minutes from the January Federal Open Market Committee meeting revealed that the Federal Reserve would do… nothing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday morning prior to the release of the minutes, the US stock market did… nothing. And after the release of the minutes, the US stock market did… nothing. Read More

02.27.19- The Doomsday Scenario for the Stock and Housing Bubbles
Charles Hugh Smith

It was always folly to believe that inflating asset bubbles could solve the structural problems of a post-industrial economy.

The Doomsday Scenario for the stock and housing bubbles is simple: the Fed's magic fails. When dropping interest rates to zero and flooding the financial sector with loose money fail to ignite the economy and reflate the deflating bubbles, punters will realize the Fed's magic only worked the first three times: three bubbles and the game is over. Read More

02.26.19- If Central Banks Are the Only Game in Town, We’ve Lost
Satyajit Das

Relying on monetary policy to prop up asset prices and smooth out global volatility is a recipe for disaster. 

Just since December 2018, central banks have collectively injected as much as $500 billion of liquidity to stabilize economic conditions. The U.S. Federal Reserve has put interest rate increases on hold and is contemplating a halt to its balance-sheet reduction plan. Other central banks have taken similar actions, fueling a new phase of the “everything bubble” as markets careen from December’s indiscriminate selling to January’s indiscriminate buying. Read More

02.25.19- Fed Tightening And Crumbling Fundamentals Expose The Recovery Lie
Brandon Smith

It is hard to say exactly when it started – in 2008 in the midst of the credit crisis, in the early 2000's when the Federal Reserve initiated artificially low interest rates which helped to create the vast US mortgage bubble, or maybe the root goes all the way back to 1913 when the Federal Reserve was founded, but somewhere along the line America entered severe economic decay. One certainty is that signals in the fundamentals become visible every time the Fed inflates a financial bubble to stall a crash and then tightens policy without waiting for the economy to show true alignment. Read More

02.12.18- Some Holes In the Fed’s Story
Chris Marcus

While many in the financial markets often take what the Federal Reserve says as gospel, given everything that’s occurred over the past decade, it’s worth considering a few unanswered questions that the central bank has yet to explain.

Perhaps the most important of which is that if we are now a decade after the last financial crisis, and the economy is really as strong as the president and Federal Reserve continue to assert, exactly when will it be time to finally undo the unprecedented monetary easing? Read More

02.22.19- America: 52nd in Freedom
Bill Bonner

GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – Let’s see, Dear Reader, what were we talking about?

We are on a walkabout… looking at others in order to see ourselves.

And, oh yes… the gist of the last few days’ conversation was that you should be more generous… and more open-minded.

You should be ready to give your money, your freedom… and maybe even your life… for “our” benefit.  Read More

02.21.19- Get Used to the “Powell Put”
Nomi Prins

In the land of the Federal Reserve and its market-manipulating mechanisms, there’s now an unofficial market term called the “Powell Put” or the “Powell Pivot.”

It is in direct reference to Fed chairman Jerome Powell. Before he became chairman, Wall Street referred to prior heads’ policies with terms like the “Greenspan Put” the “Bernanke Put” and the “Yellen Put.”

In layman’s terms, what the term means is that if the markets fall by too much, the Fed will swoop in and try to save the day, the month, or the year. A “put” in options terminology is insurance against a drop in prices. Nowadays, the “Powell Put” is the market’s insurance that the Fed will act to stimulate the markets if necessary. Read More

02.20.19- The "Powell Call": What Do We Need To See For The Fed To Hike Again
Tyler Durden

There was significant shock two months ago when Powell made public the Fed's dramatic dovish reversal, effectively ending the Fed's rate hiking trajectory and at the same time unleashing a dramatic market rally. But why? Perhaps it has to do with the popular view that the Fed has an advantage in forecasting and in some cases has "inside information". In fact, as BofA notes, the Fed's forecasting accuracy is on par with that of market consensus, in other words rather dismal, and swayed more by the market than underlying fundamentals. Read More

02.19.19- Jay Powell's Gift to Markets
James Rickards

Fed Chair Jay Powell did not deliver any early Christmas presents to the markets last month, but he did pop the cork on a bottle of Champagne as a belated New Year’s gift on Friday, Jan. 4.

With just a few words, Powell sent the most powerful signal from the Fed since March 2015. Investors who understand and properly interpret that signal stand to avoid losses and reap huge gains in the weeks ahead.

First, let’s focus on Powell’s comments. Then we’ll explain what they actually meant. Read More

02.18.19- The Birth of a Monster
David Howden

The Federal Reserve’s doors have been open for “business” for one hundred years. In explaining the creation of this money-making machine (pun intended — the Fed remits nearly $100 bn. in profits each year to Congress) most people fall into one of two camps.

Those inclined to view the Fed as a helpful institution, fostering financial stability in a world of error-prone capitalists, explain the creation of the Fed as a natural and healthy outgrowth of the troubled National Banking System. How helpful the Fed has been is questionable at best, and in a recent book edited by Joe Salerno and me — The Fed at One Hundred — various contributors outline many (though by no means all) of the Fed’s shortcomings over the past century. Read More

02.16.19- Fed Tightening Is Over: Markets Now Expect Cuts In 2019
John Rubino

People who assumed the Fed, along with the rest of the government, would cave the minute the financial markets got a little choppy turned out to be right. A couple of bad months and the “normalization” of both interest rates and the Fed’s balance sheet have stopped cold. Now the markets expect falling rates and (apparently) rising asset purchases.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Debt Investors Embrace ‘Upside Down’ World After Fed Shift

Signs that the Federal Reserve may be done with its yearslong campaign to raise interest rates are sending ripples through markets.  Read More

02.15.19- What Happens When More QE Fails to Reverse the Recession?
Charles Hugh Smith

The smart money is liquidating assets, paying off debt and moving capital into collateral that isn't impaired by debt or speculative valuations.

The Federal Reserve's sudden return to "accommodative" dovishness in response to the stock market's swoon telegraphs its intent to fire up QE once the recession kicks into gear. QE (quantitative easing) are monetary policies designed to ease borrowing and the issuance of credit, and to prop up assets such as stocks and real estate. Read More

02.14.19- Fed Warns Dollar "Might Not Retain Its Dominance Forever"
Tyler Durden

When the TBAC published the minutes to its quarterly refunding decision two weeks ago, the most interesting part of the discussion was the "unique challenges" faced by the Treasury over the medium term, especially the possibility of significant financing gap over next 10 years amounting to over $12 trillion and the potential need for more domestic investor participation if foreign reserve growth slows.

Here, among other things (which potentially include the Green New Deal, with its $6+ trillion cost) the TBAC cautioned that the Treasury’s financing needs are expected to increase significantly even without factoring in recession possibilities over the next decade. Read More

02.13.19- As The Fed Reflates The Stock Bubble The Economy Crumbles
Dave Kranzler

I get a kick out of these billionaires and centimillionaires, like Kyle Bass yesterday, who appear on financial television to look the viewer in the eye and tell them that economy is booming.  Kyle Bass doesn’t expect a mild recession until mid-2020. Hmmm – explain that rationale to the 78%+ households who are living paycheck to paycheck, bloated with a record level of debt and barely enough savings to cover a small emergency.

After dining on a lunch fit for Elizabethan royalty with Trump, Jerome Powell decided it was a good idea to make an attempt at reflating the stock bubble. After going vertical starting December 26th, the Dow had been moving sideways since January 18th, possibly getting ready to tip over. Read More

02.12.19- Debt Trifecta at All-Time Highs – Billionaires Panic
Birch Gold Group

The “trifecta” of national, corporate, and consumer debt has reached all-time highs, and could prove to be catastrophic if a recession hits.

Let’s start by quickly bringing each part of this debt trifecta up to date as much as possible…

U.S. National Debt

The national debt, ever on the rise, currently sits at around $22 trillion: Read More

02.11.19- Fed Crumples - and Seals
the Dollar's Fate
Clive Maund

The Fed didn’t just fold on Wednesday, it crumpled, capitulated. A long time ago we had figured out that when push came to shove, this is what it would do. However, we thought that it would take a market crash to force it to change course, in order that it could use that as solid justification for a U-turn, instead of which it only took a crashlet, or the start of a crash.

The Fed’s “Prime Directive” is to serve the interests of their Masters, the fabled 1% who control society, and they have done an admirable job of it over the past 10 years since the market crash, with their QE and ZIRP policies, which have funneled the wealth of the lower and middle classes up to the top of the pyramid, to the 1%, whose wealth has increased enormously as a result, while the common man has lost. Read More

02.09.19- Why Monetary Easing Will Fail
Alasdair Macleod

The major economies have slowed suddenly in the last two or three months, prompting a change of tack in the monetary policies of central banks. The same old tired, failing inflationist responses are being lined up, despite the evidence that monetary easing has never stopped a credit crisis developing. This article demonstrates why monetary policy is doomed by citing three reasons. There is the empirical evidence of money and credit continuing to grow regardless of interest rate changes, the evidence of Gibson’s paradox, and widespread ignorance in macroeconomic circles of the role of time preference. Read More

02.08.19- The Real Elephant in the Room... Debt
Nell Sloane

We decided to wait till the FOMC meeting to release this week’s letter so that we could capture the most important event of the week. It’s not that we didn’t expect a few of the tech giant earnings would be painted with bullishness, but we felt maybe the earnings didn’t really matter. Maybe all that mattered was the “Powell Put” which was made quite obvious by the monotonous speech he gave after the FOMC decision. It’s amazing how quickly the FED has caved to the pressure laid out by both the bond market and #POTUS himself. Here are the bullet points as laid out from Zhedge: Read More

02.07.19- The Categorical Insanity of
Central Banking
MN Gordon

Currency debasement.  Asset price inflation.  Booms, bubbles, and busts.  Yes, folks, central bankers have succeeded at making full hash of the world at large.  This goes for the Federal Reserve too.

Tracing back recent financial disasters we find the mortgage meltdown coincided with the Fed’s interest rate raising cycle.  The Fed had dropped rates following the dot com bust and, in return, puffed up a massive housing bubble.  So they raised rates to let some air out and – pop! – the bubble exploded. Read More

02.06.19- Will Government Shutdown Return As The Trade War Expands?
Brandon Smith

The mainstream economic community has a notoriously short attention span and a lack of long-term perspective. After the longest government shutdown in American history subsided, the mainstream proclaimed the fight well and over – in other words, nothing to see here, Trump “folded” and all is well. Of course, what they consistently seem to ignore is the fact that the shutdown was only placed on a three week hiatus. This is hardly any assurance of a return to “normalcy”.

As I write this, the Trump Administration has yet to make its State Of The Union Address, and it is possible we will know more afterwards on the shutdown issue. Read More

02.05.19- A Survival Guide For 2019
Adam Taggart

As the first month of the year concludes, it's becoming clear that 2019 will be a very different kind of year.

The near-decade of 'recovery' following the Great Financial Crisis enjoyed a stability and tranquility that suddenly evaporated at the end of 2018.

Here in 2019, instability reigns.

The world's central banks are absolutely panicking. After last year's bursting of the Everything Bubble, their coordinated plans for Quantitative Tightening have been summarily thrown out the window. Suddenly, no chairman can prove himself too dovish. Read More

02.04.19- Powell Put Sends Stocks Soaring, Recession Must be Near
David Haggith

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell placed his put in stocks while saying there is none. When he doubled down today on a more dovish approach to the economy, Powell claimed the Fed is not designing interest rates to keep the market climbing. If that is true, recession must be near:

Fed delivers a “double-barrel dovish blast”

The Fed sees recession dead ahead. You have only that choice in how to interpret this because the Fed made a major course correction in late December, which instantly saved the crashing market, and today it announced it fully intends to stay the new course while stating that had nothing to do with the market. After all, Read More

02.02.19- Here’s the ‘most contrarian trade’ on Wall Street — and investors can thank the Fed, Bank of America says
Mark DeCambre

Remember that time when the Federal Reserve was busily dialing up benchmark interest rates to normalize crisis-era monetary policy? Well, Wall Street doesn’t either, after a 180-degree pivot on Wednesday by Powell & Co. that sent expectations for future rate increases to rock-bottom levels — at least for the moment.

Bank of America research analysts on Friday described wagers for interest-rate hikes in 2019 as the “most contrarian” investment bet in the world, in a popular “flow show” research report titled “Long risk, long leverage, short vol.” Read More

02.01.19- The Plan to Ditch King Dollar
Jim Rickards

When critics point to Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio of over 200%, Japan’s defenders are quick to say that most of the Japanese debt is owned by the Japanese themselves in insurance companies, banks, pension plans and personal portfolios, not to mention the Bank of Japan.

There’s truth in this. Japan has a highly homogenous culture.

The Japanese are all in the same lifeboat rowing in the same direction. As long as no one rocks the boat, the debts can keep piling up.

But it’s not the same for the US. Read More

01.31.19- The Stock Market Would Crash Without Central Bank Support
Dave Kranzler

The mis-pricing of money and credit has also driven a terrible misallocation of capital and kept unproductive zombie debtors alive for too long. Saxo Bank, “Beware The Global Policy Panic”

“Mis-pricing of money and credit” refers to the ability of the Fed to control interest rates and money supply.  Humans with character flaws and conflicting motivations performing a role that is best left to a free market.   After the market’s attempt in December to re-introduce two-way price discovery to the stock stock market, the Fed appears ready to fold on its “interest rate and balance sheet normalization” policy, whatever “normalization is supposed to mean. Read More

01.30.19- Screwed
Sven Henrich

James Madison: “We are free today substantially but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few.” 

The tax cut has now been shown the very scam I outlined it to be in 2017. Debt is soaring and so are debt financing obligations. The CBO estimated that the US will have to add $12 trillion in debt over the next 10 years. As growth estimates for GDP keep being revised downward into 2019 and 2020 there is zero evidence that the tax cut has added anything but a 2 quarter temporary bump to GDP, but the financial consequences will linger for years to come. The promises of resulting investments were lies: Read More

01.29.19- The Fed Sends Market Big, Fat Gift
Brian Maher

The clouds part, and a crack of sunshine scatters the gloom…

Markets learned today the Federal Reserve may soon declare victory… and mothball its ambitious balance sheet reduction plans.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Federal Reserve officials are close to deciding they will maintain a larger portfolio of Treasury securities than they’d expected when they began shrinking those holdings two years ago, putting an end to the central bank’s portfolio wind-down closer into sight.

Does the Journal speculate to simply draw itself a crowd? Read More

01.28.19- U.S. Debt Worries Fed Chairman Powell – Fears May Be Confirmed in March
Birch Gold Group

As we enter 2019, the U.S. national debt continues to grow, approaching $22 trillion with global Government debt sitting at $72 trillion.

It seems like the 21st century is hitting the U.S. with a debt “haymaker,” according to CNBC (emphasis ours):

U.S. debt began accelerating at the turn of the 21st century. The total jumped 85 percent to $10.6 trillion during former President George W. Bush’s two terms, another 88 percent to $19.9 trillion under President Barack Obama and has risen 10 percentduring the first two years of President Donald Trump’s term. Read More

01.26.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: When Science Isn't Science
Jason Morgan

The Earth’s climate is extraordinarily complex. Unlike dinosaur fossils or organic chemistry or primate behavior, climate is always in flux, with countless factors influencing one another in an endless unfolding of diachronic stochastics. Given this complexity, one might presume that scientists who study planetary climate would be endowed with exceptional patience, scholarly integrity, and intellectual humility. After all, it takes a long time to learn even a little bit about such an intricate system, so part of the job description of climate scientist would seem to be acknowledging that there is only so much that is known about the 1.09 x 1044 or so molecules swirling about in the atmosphere.Read More

01.25.19- The Magic's Gone - Central Bankers Will Be "Surprised" & "Shocked"
Jeffrey Snider

For the magic trick to work, it has to be credible. The audience has to be given something concrete upon which they will suspend their disbelief. Quantitative Easing was just such a trick, though only the public held onto any basis for success. You still hear it all the time, how QE was “money printing.” That was the trick.

It doesn’t work if there is the slightest doubt. We know as late as 2013 even policymakers had them, the Dallas Fed President’s hushed “monetary head fake.” That actually makes it sound better than it was, that officials were doing the faking rather than being in the group who fell for it. Read More

01.24.19- Fire The Fed?
Ron Paul

By firing Powell, President Trump would once and for all dispel the myth that the Federal Reserve is free from political interference…

President Trump’s frustration with the Federal Reserve’s (minuscule) interest rate increases that he blames for the downturn in the stock market has reportedly led him to inquire if he has the authority to remove Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Chairman Powell has stated that he would not comply with a presidential request for his resignation, meaning President Trump would have to fire Powell if Trump was serious about removing him. Read More

01.23.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Cost of the Government Shutdown
Financial Sense Staff

Ryan Sweet, Director of Real-Time Economics for Moody’s Analytics spoke with Financial Sense’s Jim Puplava on the impact of the government shutdown on U.S. GDP and how it’s not only affecting thousands of American families but is beginning to trickle into areas of the economy like housing and small business. Sweet tells us when he predicts the shutdown will end and what happens if it continues into the coming months. Read More

01.22.19- Warning: This Market Rig
is Going to End BADLY
Graham Summers

The market rally has devolved into a complete farce.

The latest reason stocks rallied? An article from the Wall Street Journalclaiming that  the Trump admin was considering cutting tariffs on China (implying a trade deal is close). 

The story was debunked as 100% FAKE NEWS within an hour.

This kind of ridiculous intervention ALWAYS ends terribly. We saw the same thing in 2008, right before the meltdown hit. I’m beginning to suspect the same situation is about to play out.  Read More

01.21.19- "Modern Monetary Theory" Is a Joke That's Not Funny
Michael Strain

Yes, a government that issues its own currency can pay its bills. But piling up debt for no urgent reason is lunacy...

If you follow the debates over U.S. economic policy, you had probably heard of modern monetary theory well before freshman Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke favorably about it earlier this month.

If you thought from the start that the whole idea sounded like lunacy, you were right, even if it’s possible to admit some sliver of sympathy for it. So why is MMT, as it is known for short, generating such intense interest now? Read More

01.19.19- Federal Reserve Confesses Sole Responsibility for All Recessions
David Haggith

In a surprisingly candid admission, two former Federal Reserve chairs have stated that the Federal Reserve alone is responsible for creating all recessions in the United States.

First, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said that

Expansions don’t die of old age. They get murdered. - MarketWatch

To clarify this statement, former Chair Janet Yellen placed the murder weapon in the Fed’s hands:

Two things usually end them…. One is financial imbalances, and the other is the Fed.  Read More

01.18.19- Trillion-Dollar Deficits From Here to Eternity
Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – We are on our way to the future. Not that we know what will happen, but we’ve been looking at the broad patterns of history. Most likely, they will repeat themselves… and surprise everyone.

Over the last few days, we’ve looked at three of them.

First, stocks go up and down in a cycle that seems to last 30-40 years, peak to peak. Stocks have been falling since October.

Movers and shakers can move and shake the stock market. Most investors are hoping they can keep prices moving up forever. But it’s never happened. Every boom is followed by a bust. Read More

01.17.19- Volatility Holds the Key to Markets in 2019
Nomi Prims

Over the last two weeks, after making good on the four-rate interest hike of 2018, Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, became more dovish to start 2019.

His change in tone is worth considering because of his historical stance on reducing the amount of artificial stimulus coming from the Fed. Last week, after the required five-year holding period for Fed transcripts were up, we got a glimpse into Powell’s thoughts from 2013, before he was Chairman.

Powell tried to persuade then-Chairman, Ben Bernanke, to reduce the Fed’s stimulus, even though it would lead to greater near-term market volatility. The Fed was purchasing an estimated $85 billion per month mix of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Read More

01.16.19- 2018-2019 Pop Goes The Bubble
Darryl Robert Schoon

Fiat paper money: Once gold and silver derivatives 

Today, instruments of debt issued by central banks 

Afer the 2008 financial crisis, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke invoked Milton Friedman’s theory that a helicopter drop of money could prevent a collapsing credit bubble from becoming a Great Depression.

When credit bubbles burst, defaulting debt and disappearing demand cause the velocity of money to plunge; and, in 2008, Bernanke resorted to Friedman’s untested theory hoping to prevent the US economy from collapsing as it did in the 1930s. Read More

01.15.19- Can You Time Peak Crazy?
Mike Krieger

You don’t need me to tell you how completely crazy and distorted the financial markets have become over the last decade. Anyone reading this already knows that, which is partly why I stopped writing on the topic several years ago. I came to the conclusion there was no point in constantly screaming at the top of my lungs about what a farce the global financial system was. Instead, I decided to step back, let things play out to their predictably tragic end, and then play closer attention as the curtains started to come down. As has been made clear in my recent commentary, I think we’re now reaching that point.

I’ve begun reflecting a little more about the lessons I’ve learned over the past several years of status quo stupidity, and one particular conversation I had a while ago with a friend who was a portfolio manager at a major hedge fund came to mind. Read More

01.14.19- The Fed Dilemma
Valentin Schmid

For the most part in 2017 and 2018, only academics and easy-money cranks scolded the Federal Reserve for raising rates. After all, the stock market was bubbling up and the economy was strong.

The economy is still strong, but the stock market has ended its record 10-year bull-market run with a bang. The 20-percent drop in the S&P 500 during one of the worst quarters in market history classifies as a bear market, although prices rebounded at the end of 2018 and in early 2019.

Now everybody from traders to retirees as well as President Donald Trump is scolding Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for his relentless path to higher interest rates and a reduction in the Fed’s balance sheet. Read More

01.12.19- The Crash Of The “Everything Bubble” Started In 2018 - Here’s What Comes Next In 2019
Brandon Smith

In 2018, a very significant economic change occurred which sealed the fate of the U.S. economy as well as numerous other economies around the globe. This change was the reversal of central bank policy. The era of stimulus and artificial support of various markets, including stocks, is beginning to fade away as the Federal Reserve pursues policy tightening, including higher interest rates and larger cuts to its balance sheet.

I warned of this change under new Chairman Jerome Powell at the beginning of 2018 in my article ‘New Fed Chairman Will Trigger Stock Market Crash In 2018’.  Read More

01.11.19- At Taxpayers’ Expense, Fed Paid Banks $38.5 Billion in Interest on “Reserves” in 2018. Here’s How
Wolf Richter

Normally, this would be ironic: The Fed doesn’t need to borrow; it creates money when it needs some. So it wouldn’t pay interest. But these are not normal times.

The Fed reported its preliminary results this morning for the year 2018. The headline is that it sent $65.4 billion of its profits to the US Treasury Department in 2018, and that this amount had plunged by 18.5% from the remittances, as they’re called, in 2017, and by 44.1% from the peak of $117 billion in 2015.  Read More

01.10.19- The Powell Helium Pump
Dave Kranzler

The stock market has gone “Roman Candle” since Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, gave a speech that was interpreted as a precursor to the Fed softening its stance on monetary policy.  Not that intermittent quarter-point Fed Funds rate nudges higher or a barely negligible decline in the Fed’s balance sheet should be considered “tight” money policy.

Credible measures of price inflation, like the John Williams Shadowstats.com Alternative measure, which shows the rate of inflation using the methodology in place in 1990, show inflation at 6%.  The Chapwood Index measures inflation using the cost of  500 items on which most Americans spend their after-tax income.  The index is calculated for major metro areas and has inflation averaging 10% (The John Williams measure which uses 1980 Government methodology also shows the current inflation at 10%). Read More

01.09.19- The Fed IS the Ugly Truth
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

This Fed thing just keeps going on, and it needs to stop. There is nothing in the discussion about the Federal Reserve these days that has any value other than it provides even more proof that the Fed has killed off the most essential elements of what once made the US economy function. All markets, stocks, bonds, housing markets, all price discovery, all murdered. No heartbeat. Pining for the fjords.

And instead of addressing that, and I’m not even talking about addressing fixing what is wrong, all I see is neverending stuff about Jay Powell using, or not using, terms such as “patient” or “accommodative”. Like any of it means anything coming from him and his ilk. Other than for making ‘investors’ a quick buck. Like a quick buck could ever trump the survival of entire market systems. Read More

01.08.19- The Fed Is Ignoring the Biggest Lesson of 2008
David Shipley

Banks should be raising capital while they still can.

The 2008 financial crisis showed what happens when the banking system lacks an adequate foundation of loss-absorbing equity capital. Unable to raise what they needed from wary investors, banks were forced to slash lending at precisely the worst time for the economy. Ultimately, only the full faith and credit of the U.S. government — and a direct infusion of more than 200 billion taxpayer dollars — could prop them up.

The lesson seems clear enough: Banks should raise capital while they can, and before they have to. The Federal Reserve apparently hasn’t learned it. Read More

01.07.19- Perhaps The Fed Is Not Clueless
Zoltan Ban

There has been quite a bit of criticism of current Federal Reserve policy in media and certain political circles lately. I have to admit that this article has been inspired by Mr. Cramer's semi-populist rhetoric in regards to the Federal Reserve's policy of raising interest rates, as well as President Trump's criticism in this regard. This critical rhetoric is easy to embrace, especially among the investment community, which has been somewhat rattled by the market activity we saw in the past few months. I cannot say that I am necessarily happy about it myself, given that I have gone from having six out of seven stocks in my portfolio being up, to only three being up, as I write this. Read More

01.05.19- The Economic Tsunami IS COMING and Can't be Stopped!!
HighImpactFlix

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01.04.19- Markets Are in a Tizzy.
So What Will the Fed Do?
Wolf Richter

Investors are waking up after years of somnolent money-making.

Markets are in a tizzy. They’re finally reacting to the Fed’s rate-hike cycle, the slowest rate-hike cycle in history. It took three years to nudge up the effective federal funds rate from near zero to 2.40% now. Throughout, the Fed has communicated its goals of “removing accommodation” from the “financial conditions” in the markets — thus tightening “financial conditions” that had become loosey-goosey during years of zero-interest-rate policy and QE. Read More

01.03.19- 2019: The Beginning Of The End
Adam Taggart

For ten long years, the world’s central banks have dragged everyone along for one last attempt at scaling Mount Credit.

At several points along the way, in 2011, in 2013 and then again in 2016 it seemed all but certain that the wrong route had been picked and all was lost.  We warned people then about the risks, but to no avail. They found a way to navigate even higher from there.

And here we are again in 2018, warning everyone of the same risks. Starting back in August of 2018 we were questioning whether “it” had arrived and then were declaring that it had throughout October and November. Read More

01.02.19- "QE Has Done Something Much More Damaging Than The Fed Could Have Imagined"
Lindsay Politi

"I think of the markets like an ecosystem," the fund manager told me.

"The environment causes some strategies to flourish and multiply, while others die off. The abnormally long, QE-fueled bull market killed off anything that wasn't, at its core, a short volatility strategy. Now, whether it's risky credit, levered equities, or risk parity, almost all strategies are taking similar risks. QE has done something much more damaging than the Fed could have imagined. It changed the very nature of the market, destroying the diversity of the market ecosystem, and making it incredibly vulnerable to the smallest change in the macro environment." Read More

01.01.19- A Debt Based System Can't Succeed Without Population Growth
Chris Hamilton

Last week, I highlighted that since '00, when the Federal Reserve has ceased adding to its balance sheet or begun "normalizing" (via rolling off assets), equity markets have swooned (detailed HERE).

A simple idea today... that the end of population growth (where it matters) has long been upon us (detailed below).  Absent population growth among the nations that do nearly all the consuming, a debt based economic and financial system (to coerce ever higher levels of debt fueled consumption) can't ultimately succeed.  That is, without population growth, assets generally don't appreciate, homes are just shelter rather than "investments", and debt is generally only a drag on future spending.  Likewise, without population growth, total global energy consumption is on the precipice of secular decline. Read More

12.31.18- The Recline and Flail of Western Civilization and Other 2019 Predictions
MN Gordon

Darts in a Blizzard

Today, as we prepare to close out the old, we offer a vast array of tidings.  We  bring words of doom and despair.  We bring words of contemplation and reflection.  And we also bring words of hope and sunshine.

After all, the New Year’s nearly here.  What better time than now to turn over a new leaf?  New dreams, new directions, and new delusions, are all before us like a patch of ripe strawberries.  Today’s the day to make a double-fisted grab for all of them – and more. Read More

12.29.18- Where to Put Your Money in 2019
Dan Denning

As Dan shows below, the “new permanent portfolio” could be your best strategy to protect and grow your wealth in 2019 and beyond.

Diversification and asset allocation can help you reduce your risk as an investor.

For your kids and grandkids, a depression could be just the tonic they need. In a world where real wage growth is stagnant and the robots are taking all of our jobs, your best chance to build a fortune is to buy assets when they’re cheap. You can only get them at that price after a crash.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that famed investor and economist Benjamin Graham wrote his investment classic, Security Analysis, in 1934, just five years after the Great Crash of 1929?  Read More

12.28.18- The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda
Brandon Smith

Central bankers are sociopathic in nature and sociopathic people tend to behave like robots. When one understands the motivations of central bankers, or at the very least what their goals are, their actions become rather predictable. The question is, what truly motivates these people?

I believe according to the evidence that the central banks are motivated by ideological zealotry with the core purpose of total global centralization of economic and political power into the hands of a select group of elitists. This agenda is really just a modern “reboot” of feudalism or totalitarianism. They sometimes refer to the plan in public as the “new world order,” or the “global economic reset.” I often refer to the ideology as “globalism” for the sake of expediency. Read More

12.27.18- Fed Med is Dead: How We Went from Fake Recovery to Freefall
David Haggith

Until you got to this tax and spending deal a year ago, it was one of the most hated bull markets. The markets steadily climbed one wall of worry after another, and the problem was that the economic data did not confirm it. - Bloomberg

That’s right. The market was not rising for the past ten years due to a healthy underlying economy. On the contrary, the market was rising due to the Federal Reserve pumping out stratospheric amounts of thin-air money, which needed somewhere to land. Read More

12.26.18- Are The Financial Markets
Rejecting The Fed?
Rudi Fronk

Last Wednesday, the Fed raised the Fed Funds rate by a quarter point as expected. The FOMC statement was suitably “dovish” by reducing the consensus forward guidance on future rate hikes from three to two. The Fed also signalled that its Quantitative Tightening program would continue on “autopilot” as planned. The response was not what the Fed expected. Stocks fell hard and bonds soared.

Financial markets are about to revisit some important questions.

First, does QE actually work? Does it boost the real economy or does it simply drive up valuations by speculation? We think the weakest economic recovery in two generations provides the answer. Read More

12.25.18- The Ghost of Christmas Past
Bill Bonner

Editor’s Note: Happy Holidays from Bonner & Partners!Today’s Diary, originally penned in 2000, will begin a special three-part Christmas series from Bill. 

Old Greenspan was not dead. Not dead as a doornail, nor dead as a door knocker. Not even as dead as a laptop computer after the power goes out – not even John Maynard Keynes is that dead.

Not even God himself… but that is another story.

Nothing is as dead as a computer without power. For even a nail continues to provide good service after the spark of life has gone out of it. Read More

12.24.18- In Defense Of Powell's Restoration Of Price Discovery
Charles Hugh Smith

Relying on fakery and addictive stimulus is the acme of fragility and vulnerability.

Having become addicted to the Federal Reserve's nearly free money for financiers and the infamous Fed Put stock market players are now weeping and thrashing about in the agony of withdrawal as Fed chair Jay Powell has instituted a cold-turkey withdrawal from the financial stimulus of the Bernanke-Yellen days.

12.22.18- Murky 2019 Could Be In Store for U.S. Economy Thanks to Fed’s Monetary Policy
Birch Gold Group

December 19 marks the day the Fed may have decided it’s going “all in” on the idea of a “strong U.S. economy.”