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06.19.19- Chairman Powell – You're Fired
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 |
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06.18.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Celebrating 10 years from the oldest hotel in the world
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 |
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06.17.19- Inflation: The Soviet Tool for
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 |
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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 |
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06.14.19- Fed Chair Powell’s Plan to Pickle the Economy
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 |
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06.13.19- Warning: Some of the Market's Vast Liquidity Is a Mirage
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06.12.19- The Fed Stops Pretending
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06.10.19- Here’s My Prediction: If the Fed Doesn’t Cut Rates 3 or 4 Times by Dec 11,
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06.08.19- Lower Income Americans Are Begging The Fed For Less Inflation
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 |
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06.07.19- Forget velocity of money circulation
“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 |
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06.06,19- The US Economy's Dirty Big Secret
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 |
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06.05.19- Nothing to see here even if the charts come from the St. Louis Fed themselves
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06.04.19- From Gold To Nothing: How 1971 Changed Everything In The Economy
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 |
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06.03.19- Interest rates, time-preference and gold
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 |
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06.01.19- One-Two Trade War and Fed Policy Punch May Trigger Correction
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 |
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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 |
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05.30.19- An Essay On The History Of Banking
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05.29.19- Regime hange For the Fed — Honest Rates
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 |
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05.28.19- Financial Markets To Federal Reserve: Time To Start Cutting Rates
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 |
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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
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05.25.10- Corporations Leverage Fed’s Rate Pause to Lock-in Lower Rates on Junk Debt
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 |
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05.24.19- The Fed Is Caught Behind The Curve
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 |
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05.23.19- Jim Grant Says It’s Time
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05.22.19- How To Earn More On
In this paper we’ll discuss:
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05.21.19- The Fed's Tragic Plan For Long Term Rates Revealed
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05.20.19- Humpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall, Caused By The Federal Reserve
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 |
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05.18.19- The Income Tax is Destroying the World Economy
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05.17.19- Can the Fed Keep This Long Cycle 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 |
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05.16.19- Fed Launches ‘Rate Peg Instead of QE’ Trial Balloon for Next Crisis
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 |
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05.15.19- Gold & Silver: Why I'm Buying
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05.14.19- Judy Shelton, Trump's Next Fed Choice, Favors A Gold Standard And Free Trade
Bloomberg reports White House Considers Economist Judy Shelton for Fed Board
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05.13.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Seeking Arrangement Might Just Burst the College Bubble
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 |
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05.11.19- And Now, foe Something Entirely Different: 3 Things Everyone Should Do Before They Die
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 |
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05.10.19- The Three Stages of
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 |
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05.09.19- When Deutsche Bank’s Crisis Becomes Our Crisis
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 |
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95.08.10- The "Muzzle" On Inflation
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 |
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05.07.19- The Real Reason for Income Inequality? The Fed
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 |
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05.06.19- The Fed Is Stuck Between
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 |
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05.04.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: White People Will Be Rubbed Out Along With Their History
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 |
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05.03.19- The Fed Has Lost Control Of Rates As 'Technical Tweak' Fails
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05.02.19- Returning to currencies
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05.01.19- The Fed’s Dangerous Inflation Game
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 |
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04.30.19- World's Monetary Reserves and
As of April, 2019, a review of Central Bank Monetary Reserves, according to Bloomberg, yields some interesting information. Read More |
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04.29.19- Not Modern, Not About Money, and not Much of a Theory
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04.27.19- Weekend Rant: Washington Has Destroyed Western Liberty
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 |
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04.26.19- Central Banks Have Broken Capitalism
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 |
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04.25.19- We Give Up! Part 6: Federal Reserve “Resigned” To Blowing Bubbles
From Bloomberg:
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04.24.19- The Fed’s key interest rate keeps climbing, and that could become a problem
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 |
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04.23.19- Will Powell’s Dovish Turn Support Gold?
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 |
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04.22.19- Waxing philosophically
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 |
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04.20.19- The S&P Index at 2900: The Biggest Wall Street/Fed Whopper Ever Told
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 |
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04.19.19- The Fat Lady Is Clearing Her Throat - Dancing Towards the Abyss
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04.18.19- How U.S. Government Debt May Impact Social Security
From an official report released by the U.S. Treasury, Sovereign Man pulled out a few key highlights:
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04.17.19- Central Banks Soften Us Up
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 |
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04.16.19- Counterfeiting Money Is a Crime —
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04.15.19- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: Julian Assange Is Guilty Of Only One Thing: Revealing The Evil Soul Of US Imperialism
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04.13.19- Unsolicited Advice to Fed Chair Powell
[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 |
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04.12.19- My Fancy-Schmancy “Fed Hawk-o-Meter”
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 |
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04.11.19- Hey, Ray Dalio, It's The Fed, Stupid!
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 |
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04.10.19- Trump Is Right To Blow Up The Fed"
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 |
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04.09.19- The Price Of Inflation
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 |
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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 |
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04.06.19- The Economics Profession
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 |
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04.05.19- Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks?
“And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands 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 |
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04.04.19- Fed’s Interest Rate U-Turn
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 |
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04.03.19- Here’s why the Federal Reserve rejected the safest bank in America
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 |
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04.02.19- The Fed Corrupts Society: Is It Intentional, Or Out of Ignorance?
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04.01.19- Hyperinflation History May Provide Valuable Lessons for Fed’s “Target”
Paul Solman explained in a 2009 PBS Newshour:
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03.30.19- The Fed Broke This Economic Cycle;
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 |
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03.29.19- Our Flawed Monetary System
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 |
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03.28.19- The Federal Reserve's Controlled Demolition Of The Economy
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03.27.19- Why is the Fed Preparing the Public for NIRP, Permanent QE, and Worse?
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:
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03.26.19- Why Modern Monetary Theory
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 |
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03.25.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Year The World Falls Apart
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 |
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03.23.19- Three Props for the Dollar's 2018 Rally Seen Reversing This Year
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03.22.19- Central Banks Are
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03.21.19- Paul Volcker Can’t Save Us This Time…
First, there is growing recognition that the Obama/Trump recovery has been a flop. A headline at Yahoo Finance:
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 |
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03.20.19- Today Is International Happiness Day, And It's All Up To Powell
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 |
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03.19.19- The Bank Is Being Robbed
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 |
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03.18.19- Chairman Powell’s “Wait and See” Approach May Let Price Inflation “Run Hot”
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 |
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03.16.19- Weekend Rant: Your Opinion Is Of No Concern To Me… Unless It Can Be
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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 |
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03.14.19- The Fed’s Failures Are Mounting
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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 |
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03.12.19- Ides and Tides
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03.09.19- Fake Money's Face Value Deceit
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 |
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03.08.19- The Fed Is Playing A Dangerous Game
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 |
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03.07.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Will Artificial Intelligence be Used for Total Economic Control?
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03.06.19- The Fed Chair Just Admitted On Record That The US is Heading For a Debt Crisis
What Powell said has been obvious to anyone with a functioning brain for years. However, we have to remember one key item… Read More |
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03.05.19- The Magic Money Tree
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03.04.19- Before King Dollar loses his throne, inflation will take off
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 |
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03.02.19- The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy
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 |
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03.01.19- The Approaching Winter:
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 |
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02.28.19- The Fed’s positive feedback loop
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 |
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02.27.19- The Doomsday Scenario for the Stock and Housing Bubbles
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 |
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02.26.19- If Central Banks Are the Only Game in Town, We’ve Lost
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 |
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02.25.19- Fed Tightening And Crumbling Fundamentals Expose The Recovery Lie
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02.12.18- Some Holes In the Fed’s Story
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 |
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02.22.19- America: 52nd in Freedom
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 |
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02.21.19- Get Used to the “Powell Put”
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 |
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02.20.19- The "Powell Call": What Do We Need To See For The Fed To Hike Again
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02.19.19- Jay Powell's Gift to Markets
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 |
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02.18.19- The Birth of a Monster
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 |
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02.16.19- Fed Tightening Is Over: Markets Now Expect Cuts In 2019
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 |
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02.15.19- What Happens When More QE Fails to Reverse the Recession?
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 |
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02.14.19- Fed Warns Dollar "Might Not Retain Its Dominance Forever"
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 |
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02.13.19- As The Fed Reflates The Stock Bubble The Economy Crumbles
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 |
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02.12.19- Debt Trifecta at All-Time Highs – Billionaires Panic
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 |
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02.11.19- Fed Crumples - and Seals
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 |
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02.09.19- Why Monetary Easing Will Fail
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02.08.19- The Real Elephant in the Room... Debt
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02.07.19- The Categorical Insanity of
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 |
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02.06.19- Will Government Shutdown Return As The Trade War Expands?
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 |
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02.05.19- A Survival Guide For 2019
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 |
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02.04.19- Powell Put Sends Stocks Soaring, 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 |
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02.02.19- Here’s the ‘most contrarian trade’ on Wall Street — and investors can thank the Fed, Bank of America says
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 |
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02.01.19- The Plan to Ditch King Dollar
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 |
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01.31.19- The Stock Market Would Crash Without Central Bank Support
“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 |
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01.30.19- Screwed
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 |
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01.29.19- The Fed Sends Market Big, Fat Gift
Markets learned today the Federal Reserve may soon declare victory… and mothball its ambitious balance sheet reduction plans. From today’s Wall Street Journal:
Does the Journal speculate to simply draw itself a crowd? Read More |
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01.28.19- U.S. Debt Worries Fed Chairman Powell – Fears May Be Confirmed in March
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 |
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01.26.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: When Science Isn't Science
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01.25.19- The Magic's Gone - Central Bankers Will Be "Surprised" & "Shocked"
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 |
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01.24.19- Fire The Fed?
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 |
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01.23.19- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Cost of the Government Shutdown
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01.22.19- Warning: This Market Rig
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 |
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01.21.19- "Modern Monetary Theory" Is a Joke That's Not Funny
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 |
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01.19.19- Federal Reserve Confesses Sole Responsibility for All Recessions
First, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said that
To clarify this statement, former Chair Janet Yellen placed the murder weapon in the Fed’s hands:
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01.18.19- Trillion-Dollar Deficits From Here to Eternity
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 |
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01.17.19- Volatility Holds the Key to Markets in 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 |
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01.16.19- 2018-2019 Pop Goes The Bubble
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 |
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01.15.19- Can You Time Peak Crazy?
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 |
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01.14.19- The Fed Dilemma
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01.12.19- The Crash Of The “Everything Bubble” Started In 2018 - Here’s What Comes Next In 2019
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 |
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01.11.19- At Taxpayers’ Expense, Fed Paid Banks $38.5 Billion in Interest on “Reserves” in 2018. Here’s How
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01.10.19- The Powell Helium Pump
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 |
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01.09.19- The Fed IS the Ugly Truth
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 |
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01.08.19- The Fed Is Ignoring the Biggest Lesson of 2008
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 |
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01.07.19- Perhaps The Fed Is Not Clueless
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01.05.19- The Economic Tsunami IS COMING and Can't be Stopped!!
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01.04.19- Markets Are in a Tizzy.
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 |
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01.03.19- 2019: The Beginning Of The End
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 |
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01.02.19- "QE Has Done Something Much More Damaging Than The Fed Could Have Imagined"
"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 |
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01.01.19- A Debt Based System Can't Succeed Without Population Growth
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 |
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12.31.18- The Recline and Flail of Western Civilization and Other 2019 Predictions
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 |
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12.29.18- Where to Put Your Money in 2019
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 |
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12.28.18- The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda
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 |
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12.27.18- Fed Med is Dead: How We Went from Fake Recovery to Freefall
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 |
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12.26.18- Are The Financial Markets
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 |
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12.25.18- The Ghost of Christmas Past
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 |
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12.24.18- In Defense Of Powell's Restoration Of Price Discovery
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. Let's be clear: the policies of nearly free money for financiers (QE) and the Fed Put were unmitigated disasters, as they distorted financial markets so severely that the markets' pricing mechanisms have been crippled. Read More |
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12.22.18- Murky 2019 Could Be In Store for U.S. Economy Thanks to Fed’s Monetary Policy
The Fed locked in an increase of the Federal Funds Rate from 2.25% to 2.40%, and it will increase the primary credit rate to a full 3.00%. These December increases were pretty much anticipated back in early November. The increases came in spite of commentary by Jeffrey Gundlach from Doubleline, who said the Fed shouldn’t have raised rates: Read More |
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12.21.18- Is this a joke?
We all (even the brain dead) know something has seriously changed in our financial markets. Emotional thought has morphed from buy the dip to sell the rip. In other words, fear is now in the process of replacing greed as the prevailing sentiment. But why? What has changed? Read More |
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12.20.18- Powell To Markets: "You're Wrong!"
At the same time, investors have grown accustomed to questioning the existence of rampant asset price inefficiencies. That has driven the growth of passive management, of course. But it has also made “what’s your investment edge?” the only question that matters when quizzing everyone from a junior hedge fund analyst to the most senior long-only manager. Read More |
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12.19.16- It’s Lose-Lose For The Fed And For Everyone
Eventually the Fed/Central Banks will print trillions more – 10x more than the last time around. If they don’t this thing collapses. It won’t matter if interest rates are zero or 10%. You can’t force economic activity if there’s no demand and you’ve devalued the currency by printing it until its worth next to nothing and people are toting around piles of cash in a wheelbarrow worth more than the mountain of $100 bills inside the wheelbarrow. Read More |
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12.18.18- Trump Slams Fed On Eve Of Rate Decision: "Incredible" Fed Hiking With
But instead of insinuating that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is trying to undermine the administration, the president ticked off a reasonable list of factors that should give a truly "data-dependent" Fed reason to reconsider. Read More |
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12.17.18- Wall Street, Banks, and Angry Citizens
As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping fashion? One obvious answer: the post-Great Recession economic “recovery” was largely reserved for the few who could participate in the rising financial markets of those years, not the majority who continued to work longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, to stay afloat. Read More |
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12.15.18- It’s official:
It wasn’t the first time in history that a government needed to borrow money to fight a war. But the Venetians came up with an innovative idea: Every citizen who loaned money to the government was to receive an official paper certificate guaranteeing that the state would make interest payments. Those certificates could then be transferred to other people… and the government would make payments to whoever held the certificate at the time. Read More |
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12.14.18- Fed Net Worth Turns Negative Following Record $66BN In Paper Losses
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12.13.18- Jerome Powell Is Between
Powell’s borne the brunt of President Trump’s recent accusations that the Fed’s hikes are what’s hurting the stock market and threatening the economy. That lead to a media debate over whether Powell would “cave” to Trump or demonstrate that the Fed is the independent body that it’s legally designed to be, and continue with planned hikes anyway. Read More |
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12.12.18- The Fed Dollar System Is Going To Fail, The System Is Ready For A Reset
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12.11.18- JPMorgan Teams Up With French Central Bank To Juice Gold-Lending
The gold lending market’s opacity is further supported by regulators who protect the secrecy of the central banks, and mainstream financial news agencies whose editorial policies seem to forbid any market investigations, in-depth or otherwise. Read More |
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12.10.18- Every Bubble Is In Search Of A Pin
Now that the world’s central banking cartel is taking a long-overdue pause from printing money and handing it to the wealthy elite, the collection of asset price bubbles nested within the Everything Bubble are starting to burst. The cartel (especially the ECB and the Fed) is hoping it can gently deflate these bubbles it created, but that's a fantasy. Bubbles always burst badly; it's their nature to do so. Economic suffering and misery always accompany their termination. It's said that "every bubble is in search of a pin". History certainly shows they always manage to find one. Read More |
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12.08.18- Yield Curve Poised to Invert – Where Will Fed Go From Here?
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones continued to trend downward since October 3, dropping 800 points. After a tumultuous ride on Thursday, the index ended the week on Friday by dropping another 550 points. An article over at MarketWatch highlighted the yield curve between 2-year and 10-year treasury notes as one potential signal of Tuesday’s drastic drop: Read More |
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12.07.18- How Private Banks Create Bubbles —
He is unlikely to allocate his meagre wealth to less essential goods as far as life and wellbeing is concerned. His variety of consumer goods is likely to be very limited. As his real wealth begins to expand, the individual is likely to expand the variety of goods consumed, thereby raising his living standard. Read More |
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12.06.18- The Art of Defaulting
Principles for navigating big debt crises Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates is one of my role models in life and, when he writes a new book, I would normally visit Amazon.co.uk more quickly than you can count to ten, but not this time! Read More |
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12.05.18- Why the Yield Curve Inverts
OK. But Why? Answer: The Fed kept hiking in the face of a slowing economy as the chart I posted shows. Thus, whether or not the 3-month to 10-year spread inverts may very well depend on how many more hikes the Fed gets in. Read More |
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12.04.18- This Is How the “Everything Bubble”
That’s because the Federal Reserve’s current rate-hiking cycle, which started in 2015, is set to pop “the everything bubble.” I’ll explain how this could all play out in a moment. But first, you need to know how the Fed creates the boom-bust cycle… To start, the Fed encourages malinvestment by suppressing interest rates lower than their natural levels. This leads companies to invest in plants, equipment, and other capital assets that only appear profitable because borrowing money is cheap. Read More |
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12.03.18- Caved
Home sales are dropping hard. Global growth is slowing hard. Financial conditions are tightening. Stock have been dropping. Never mind all the Fed Crying or Trump expressing his displeasure. Real rates are still negative and the Fed’s tough talk on raising rates came to a sudden halt: Fed’s Powell, in dovish shift, says rates near neutral: Read More |
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12.01.18- Chairman Powell Talks Out of Both Sides of His Mouth
But CNBC notes that, as recently as October, Powell’s was indicating that rates were “a long way from neutral.” Could the change in tone simply be public relations damage control? Read More |
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11.30.18- Don't Get Distracted By The Trump/Fed Soap Opera - The Crash Will Continue
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11.29.18- Dollar Dumps, Gold Jumps As Powell Abandons Hawkish "Long Way" From Neutral Stance
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11.28.18- Bitcoin’s Crash Looks Like a Real Currency Crisis
Bitcoin is in crisis. You can never really declare it dead — the idea of an electronic currency that is theoretically borderless and lawless will always live on somewhere — but its price has slumped 80 percent in less than a year, wiping about $700 billion off cryptocurrency markets. Where does it go from here? True believers are betting on a simple repeat of past asset bubbles, like dot-com stocks or real estate: a system-wide cleansing of bad actors before the roller-coaster ride begins anew. On that argument there’s a price for everything, even niche assets with no intrinsic value. Maybe Bitcoin should be above $3,700. Read More |
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11.27.18- A Message for Trump
I propose to you a measure fully in accord with your vision of a great, united nation of America, working for prosperity; a measure that conveys a fundamental message of inspiration for the American people. The greatness of a nation flowers when its moral stature is elevated, and such is the object of the measure that I suggest to you. Read More |
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11.26.18- This RED PILL Will Change EVERYTHING You Thought You Knew!
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11.24.18- Who Owns The Fed?...
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11.23.18- Why Interest Rates Are Rising Long-Term
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11.22.18- Jim Cramer Rips Housing’s “Toxic Cocktail” Created by the Fed
National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Chairman Randy Noel downplayed the situation, saying customers are “taking a pause” to see how high rates will go and keeping an eye on prices. Sentiment dropped 8 points in November alone to 60. The total drop of 12 points since November 2017 is the sharpest drop in one year since 2014. The red arrow points to the start of an even bigger downward trend (sustained drop over time). Read More |
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11.21.18- Unthinkable!
Official US national debt is $21.6 trillion. Unfunded liabilities are five to ten times higher. Global debt is about $250 trillion. US national debt has doubled every eight to nine years for decades.
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11.20.18- Central Banks Take Aim at Bitcoin
Dublin is a vibrant, lively city. Not especially elegant, unlike Paris… and not especially dynamic, unlike London… Nor is it especially huge and imposing, like New York or Chicago. Instead, it is a comfortable, charming, livable place… with many restaurants, hotels, and bars where you can pass an agreeable hour in front of a fire while drinking a pint of Guinness. But let’s turn to our beat – money. Read More |
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11.19.18- Rates on Their Way to 10-Year High After Hawkish Fed’s Recent Meeting
There was a bit of tension in the markets last week. This tension stemmed from a prediction that the federal funds rate would be well on its way to a decade high even if the Fed did nothing at their November meeting. Well, that concern has been justified. In a statement issued after the meeting, the Fed kept their funds rate at 2 – 2.25%, the same range after their September meeting. Read More |
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11.17.18- As the Fed Tightens, Where Will the Credit Crunch Pinch First?
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11.16.18- The Fed Will Continue Tightening Until Everything Breaks
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11.15.18- Fate Has A Sense of Irony
In 2016 Governor Gerry Brown signed into law SB-3 which would phase in a series of increases in California’s minimum wage until it finally reaches the goal of $15 per hour in 2023. This was done to provide a ‘living wage’ for those working minimum wage jobs. I’m telling you right now, you may as well start stuffing little squares of toilet paper in your wallets and purses, because if you don’t learn about the nature of coin, credit and circulation it will have about the same value as the money you currently use to purchase goods and services. Read More |
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11.14.18- The Fed Is “Triple Tightening” Into Crisis
It’s my job to continue pointing out the risks to the financial system that we still face and to try to help people prepare for the next crisis. Of course, central banks are a big part of the problem. If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve. Read More |
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11.13.18- It’s Fraud & Theft, the Central Banks Get Special Set of Laws to Steal Our Wealth
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11.12.18- When Fake Money Becomes Scarce
A rousing display of diversions this week assured the American populace was looking every which way but right under its collective nose. Midterm elections. White House spats with purveyors of fake news. The forced resignation of Attorney General Sessions… Old drug warrior (otherwise recused) on his way home to Alabama… Sideshows like these, and many more, offered near limitless opportunities to focus on matters of insignificance. Read More |
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11.10.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Nation's Fiscal Doomsday Machine is Now Unstoppable
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11.09.18- The Fed Will Continue Tightening Until Everything Breaks
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11.08.18- The Next Big Market Risk: Here Comes A Sharp Slowdown In Stock Buybacks
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11.07.18- The Fed Crying Has Begun
It was quite the scene. Here’s the global market cap wiped off in just October: Read More |
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11.06.18- The Fed's Misleading
So, just what is the measure of money that is most suited for taking the temperature of the economy and forecasting its course? Is a narrow metric, like the monetary base (M0), the best? Or, should we focus on broad money metrics, like M3 and M4? For national income determination, the more inclusive the metric, the better. Indeed, for the most complete and accurate picture, one should include all the important components of money supply, not just a few. Read More |
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11.05.18- What Happens When You Stomp The Gas and the Brake Simultaneously? Pro-cyclical Trump / Congress vs. Counter-cyclical Fed
Many American's believe in a simple idea called fiscal conservatism. Low taxation coupled with low government spending and low (or reduced) government debt. However, the nations leadership (executive and legislative branches) have fallen in love with the idea of spending tax money you and I haven't made yet.Read More |
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11.03.18- Central Banks Have Gone Rogue,
Central banks buying stocks are effectively nationalizing U.S. corporations just to maintain the illusion that their “recovery” plan is working. … At first, their novel entry into the stock market was only intended to rescue imperiled corporations, such as General Motors during the first plunge into the Great Recession, but recently their efforts have shifted to propping up the entire stock market via major purchases of the most healthy companies on the market. Read More |
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11.02.18- Time to Worry
America’s deteriorating public credit is the cold-button issue of the 2018 midterms. With rare bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans compete to pretend that the country isn’t going broke. In 1992, the third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot likened the widening gap between federal receipts and federal spending to “the crazy aunt tucked away in the room upstairs nobody talks about.” The old gal’s dottier than ever. Read More |
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11.01.18- The Fed Will Panic…
On one side is Donald J. Trump, pretending that he has “already made America great again” and blaming the Fed for ruining his beautiful work. He wants the Fed to lower interest rates, not raise them. On the other is the Fed, pretending that it is the architect and creator of such an amazing economy, and that it’s now guiding it to perfection. It believes it is “normalizing” the economy by gradually raising rates. So who’s right? Read More |
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19.31.18- Halloween Special: The Monster Mash
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10.30.18- Trump Is Right, The Fed IS Crazy
When not forced to use a government-created currency, individuals have historically chosen to use a precious metals as money. The reasons include that precious metals are durable and their value tends to remain relatively stable over time. A stable currency ensures that prices accurately convey the true value of goods and services. Read More |
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10.29.18- The Cantillon Effect: Because of Inflation, We’re Financing the Financiers
If you read a lot of modern macroeconomic literature or major in economics in college, you’ll hear economists talk of the “multiplier effect” of monetary and fiscal stimulus. In times of economic slump, money injection (for monetary policy) or government spending (fiscal policy) greases the wheels of our complex economic machine, bringing unemployment down and output up. Read More |
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10.27.18- Weekend Rant: The Establishment Must Undermine Alternative Economists As Crisis Unfolds
This fraudulent view appeals to the masses for a time because it provides fuel for false hopes. In economics, an analyst must always account for two major factors: the hard math and human psychology. Read More |
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10.26.18- Central Banks And ETF Investors
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10.25.18- Trump vs. The Fed: When Markets Crash, Who Is To Blame?
Unfortunately, these lies can be complex, to the point that even many alternative researchers get caught up in their own biases to the point that they lose track of reality. Of course, this is what propaganda and 4th generation warfare is meant to accomplish; it creates a series of filters that thin out the crowd of truth seekers a little at a time. Read More |
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10.24.18- Inside The Fed's Survey Of Economic (Un)Well-Being
The Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Consumer Affairs 5th annual Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making is designed to gain understanding of how adults in the U.S. feel about the state of their finances. A sample of 12,000 received the survey in late 2017. What’s unique about the study in my opinion, is that it tackles subjective well-being from a financial perspective and emerging issues that may be formidable obstacles in the future. Read More |
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We join with all Americans today in breathing a sigh of relief; justice is being done. The bad guys are being hunted down. Our pristine democracy – in its pure white, unblemished, unsullied, and unbelievable gown – is being protected. Finally, at least one of our foreign enemies has been nabbed by the gendarmes and will soon be railroaded by the courts; others will surely follow. Read More |
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10.22.18- Bubbles, Balloons, Needles and Pins
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10.20.18- Weekend Rant: It Ain't So, Alan! Why Greenspanian Central Banking Is the Mortal Enemy of Capitalist Prosperity
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10.19.18- Bill Fleckenstein: Fed Confidence Won't Last & the Dollar Will Collapse
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10.18.18- My Proprietary Fed “Hawkometer” is Redlining
Reading the purposefully repetitive and strategically mind-numbing minutes of the FOMC meetings, such as the minutes that the Fed released today, can be a brutal affair. But it’s where the Fed discusses the economy and vaguely hints at risks balling up in it. It sprinkles in clues about its decisions on interest rate hikes. So these minutes are a link in understanding where interest-rate policy might go in the future, and they’re designed to communicate precisely that. Read More |
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10.17.18- Chairman Powell - You're Fired!
On Donald Trump’s hit TV show, The Apprentice, contestants competed to be Trump’s chief apprentice. Predictably, each show ended when the field of contestants was narrowed down by the firing of a would-be apprentice. While the show was pure entertainment, we suspect Trump’s management style was on full display. Trump has run private organizations his entire career. Within these organizations, he had a tremendous amount of unilateral control. Unlike what is required in the role of President or that of a corporate executive for a public company, Trump largely did what he wanted to do. Read More |
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10.16.18- Powell has lost his North Star, and the Fed is flying blind
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is in an unenviable position. Folks expect him to fine-tune interest rates to keep the economy going and inflation tame but he can’t make things much better...only worse. Read More |
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10.15.18- Trump Is Right: The Federal Reserve Is Crazy And Here Are 101 Reasons
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10.13.18- Weekend Rant: Of Course
And Trump is certainly right, but in reality the Fed has been loco for many years, so why be surprised if it acts crazy now? The reason Mnuchin and a million other ‘experts’ may be right without realizing it is that the Fed has been crazy enough to kill the financial markets. Read More |
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10.12.18- Convincing Congress to Abolish the Fed
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10.11.18- The Myth Of The Eternal Market Bubble And Why It Is Dead Wrong
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10.10.18- Why Do Most Nations Use Fiat Money Today?
This reality starts with the meaning behind the word “fiat”… The term fiat may sound obscure, even mystical, but it’s actually straightforward. Fiat is Latin for “let it be done,” or “it shall be.” Apply that definition to money and it simply means that currency is “money” because a government says its money. The dollar bill in your wallet is money by government decree. Read More |
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10.09.18- Why Your Vote Hasn’t Mattered Since 1913
That was a popular phrase during the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. Colonists thought it was unfair to be taxed and subjected to English rule without consent. Today Washington DC hands down laws and taxes to every one of the 320 million people living in the United States. And just like under English rule, we are not represented in the federal government. Read More |
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10.08.18- The Federal Reserve’s Rising Interest Rates Are A Ticking Time-bomb For U.S. Economy
This is indeed a big change for the Federal Reserve’s “economic stimulation policy” as it kept interest rates below 0.25% since January 2009. And with extremely low-interest rates, nearly zero, it allowed the United States to more than double domestic oil production. Unfortunately, this newly created oil supply has come at a cost. Read More |
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10.06.18- Will Phillips Curve Revenge Trigger Inflation?
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10.06.18- Will Phillips Curve Revenge Trigger Inflation?
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10.05.18- The Tragically Flawed Fed Policies And The Eventual Reset Of The Gold Price
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10.04.18- Fed Chair Powell Hints He May Soon Crash The Market
Powell also praised the wage increases, saying some gains are welcome and noting that "the Phillips curve is not dead, just resting." Read More |
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10.03.18- UN Report Cites Central Bank Liquidity Bubbles, Loose Money, Debt Expansion
Seldom does one see a report that "debt is the problem" while being 180 degrees wrong as to the cause of the buildup in debt. The United Nations' Trade and Development Report for 2018 blames the "Free Trade Delusion" for what ails the word. Read More |
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10.02.18- Fed Indicates
As a result of the Fed’s interest-rate increases in recent years, many of the emerging market economies are already experiencing currency chaos. And while wider turbulence has yet to impact the pricing in the U.S. markets, the evidence that the real estate market is running into trouble continues to emerge. With similar consequences becoming increasingly more likely in the stock and bond markets as well as the Fed continues to attempt to unwind its low-interest-rate policy. Read More |
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10.01.18- The Fed is Facing Two Bubbles…
On that same day Fed chair Jerome Powell stated that stock market valuations were in the “upper reaches of historic ranges” i.e. bubbly. And most importantly, the Fed stated it would likely hike rates again in 2018… with another three rate hikes in 2019. If each rate hike were for 0.25%, the Fed is targeting an interest rate of 3.25% before it’s done. Read More |
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09.29.18- Banks Sputter After
On Wednesday, the Fed raised rates for the eighth time since tightening started. But the KBE Bank ETF — which holds Bank of America and Citigroup among others — failed to rally. This could be a sign of an alarming trend beginning to unfold. Read More |
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09.28.18- Fed QT is Bull's Death Knell
This week traders are focused on the Fed's 8th rate hike of this cycle, which was universally expected. Ever since the FOMC's previous meeting in early August, federal-funds futures have implied odds of another hike way up at 91% to 100% at this latest meeting. But the Fed's ongoing hiking pales in comparison with what it's doing with its balance sheet. One year after its birth, quantitative tightening is hitting full speed. Read More |
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09.27.18- Member of Economic Elite Comes Clean
The mainstream analysts at university faculties or Wall Street banks are almost unanimous in saying, “All is well.” Most predict years of strong growth ahead, higher stock prices and higher interest rates. Of course, these are the same people who told you Brexit would never happen and Hillary would be president and who never saw the 2008 panic coming when it was staring them in the face. Read More |
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09.26.18- The Fed's In A Box And People Are Starting To Notice
That generation-defining crossroad is finally in sight. On one hand, a tight labor market is pushing inflation to levels that normally call for higher interest rates: Read More |
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09.25.18- With a New Crash Looming, it is Time to Learn the Lesson of 2008
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09.24.18- Central Bank Gold Purchases Now Control 10% Of The Total Market
For example, Central Banks dumped over 2,600 metric tons of gold into the market between 2003 and 2007, according to data from the World Gold Council. So, what kind of impact on price did the sale of 84 million oz of Central Bank gold have on the market during that period? The price of gold doubled from $363 in 2003 to $695 in 2007. Read More |
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09.22.18- The 10-Year “Illusion” that May Signal a Repeat of the 2008 Financial Crisis
The real estate market dried up, and the mortgage industry’s exotic loan products put subprime buyers out on the streets. In September 2008 the stock market crashed at an unprecedented rate, costing many investors and retirees their livelihoods. Read More |
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09.21.18- Hyperinflation Has Destroyed Venezuela
Venezuela is in crisis mode. Ninety percent of citizens live in poverty conditions. Most of them have lost up to 25 pounds due to lack of food. Call it the Maduro Quick Weight-Loss Plan. President Maduro, who has blamed everything but his own socialist policies for the economic disaster, points out that he has raised the minimum wage to 3 million bolivars. For Venezuelans, this is utterly meaningless when prices are doubling every 18 days. Read More |
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09.20.18- Heroes & Whores
The quote I used from Harry Markopolos’ No One Would Listen book about the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme in my last article triggered a bittersweet recollection. For me, the experience captured the true nature of our warped financial markets, a culture glorifying wealthy arrogant criminal assholes, while ignoring or ridiculing honest, hard working, highly intelligent truth tellers. Read More |
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09.18.18- The Committee to Destroy The World:
While central banks are not a government entity, their primary purpose is to create money for the benefit of the government. By mindlessly printing fiat currency, central banks create a shaky illusion of financial stability. In reality, each central bank is a monopoly that controls the production of distribution of currency and interest rates. Read More |
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09.17.18- By the Time the Fed Hits the Neutral Rate of Interest, the Markets Will Be Crashing
Hitting the “neutral rate of interest.” The neutral rate of interest is when the Fed has rates equalto the pace of inflation. While this is technicallywhat the Fed is SUPPOSEDto be doing, NO Fed (or any other Central Bank for that matter) has done it in over 30 years: the Greenspan, Bernanke, and Yellen Feds were all notorious for running “accommodative” policy in which rates were kept well BELOW the rate of inflation. Read More |
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09.15.18- The Fed's Plan for "Countercyclical Capital Buffers" Is Just More of the Same
A countercyclical capital buffer, often abbreviated CCyB, is a capital requirement enforced on the US’s largest banks to promote bank stability when the inevitable recession hits. Restated in FedSpeak, CCyB Read More |
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09.14.18- How the Trade War Helps Hide Central Bank Sabotage Of The Economy
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09.13.18- Blame the Fed — Not Investors — For Asset Bubbles
The New York Fed chief is of the view that the US central bank should develop effective tools to counter this menace. According to Dudley, it should be the role of the Fed to stop the expansion of the bubble while it is still in the making. Read More |
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09.12.18- The End Of Cheap Debt: The Fall & Rise Of Interest Rates
Total debt (public + private) in America is currently at a staggering $67 trillion. That number has been rising fast over the past 47 years, following the US dollar's transformation into a fully-fiat currency in August of 1971. Perhaps this wouldn't be such a big concern were America's income, measured by GDP, growing at a similar rate. But it's not. Read More |
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09.11.18- Bubble Watch: The Fed Has Burst the Everything Bubble
No one has noticed it. Indeed, everyone in the US seems to be blissfully unaware. But the reality is that the massive bubble created between 2008 and 2018 is in the process of bursting. And the Fed was the needle. If you think I’m being dramatic, consider what has happened around the world in the last nine months. Read More |
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09.10.18- Congressmen Introduce Bill to End Taxation of Gold and Silver
Washington, DC (September 7, 2018) – The battle to end taxation of constitutional money has reached the federal level as U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) pictured right, today introduced sound money legislation to remove all federal income taxation from gold and silver coins and bullion. Read More |
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09.07.18- Fed Said to Be More Unprepared For Crisis Than 10 Years Ago
“Some of the tools to fight the hopefully rare but extreme crises in the future have been weakened,” Tim Geithner, a distinguished Group of 30 member, told Bloomberg. Read More |
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08.06.18- The Shocking History of Market Shocks
The nation pauses to acknowledge its sweating and groaning classes — those who hew its wood… and draw its water. Or at least it pretends to. Today is also Sept. 1. On this day in 1939, the lights went out across Europe as the German Wehrmacht rolled on Poland. Nearly six years, it would be, before they came on again. Read More |
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09.05.18- The Fed Will Not Give up “Dark Money”
On one hand, the projection of 4.1% second quarter growth is a sign of a surging economy set to grow for years to come. But on the other hand, it is seen as temporary sugar rush created by tax cuts and debt. It’s unsustainable in the light of higher tariffs, an escalating trade war that could impact large portions of the economy, and rising federal deficits that put America even deeper in debt. Read More |
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09.04.18- Mike Maloney: REVEALED —
The Federal Reserve is the communal foot on the gas. Their massive QE campaigns have injected titanic liquidity into risk assets and kept the stock market free-floating into bubbled-out valuation territory for years on end. And by pursuing a zero (or nearly zero)-interest-rate policy for the better part of a decade, corporations and consumers alike were heavily incentivized to leverage themselves to the extreme. Read More |
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08.03.18- How Trump Turns on The Fed
Just look at the Dow (near an all-time high)… and unemployment (near an all-time low)… The tax cuts ARE WORKING! The trade war, too! And those who say otherwise are just jealous SOBs! Read More |
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09.01.18- Inflation Is A Policy Decision
A FEW CONSEQUENCES:
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08.31.18- Interest Rates Need to Tell the Truth
Lost in the exchange was one simple question: should it be the business of any central bank to be targeting or setting interest rates, or should this be the business of the market forces of supply and demand, as with any other price in the economy? Read More |
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08.30.18- Chairman Powell’s Bizarre Statement Ignores the Reality of Price Inflation
During strong economic growth, this inflationary cycle is common. And if you look only at the numbers on their surface, the illusion of a strong economy is what someone would see. But all that changes once you look behind the curtain… But official inflation has moved well past that benchmark. It is currently nearing 3% while rising at a consistent and alarming rate (see chart below): Read More |
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08.29.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Hippies
Today is Saturday, October 22th, 2011. We are quickly approaching the tenth anniversary of the Silver Bear Cafe which will come in January, 2012. Over the last ten years your editor has scoured, sourced, verified, formatted, re-formatted, adorned, posted and archived over twenty thousand essays and articles from the minds of gracious free thinking pundits around the globe. Most of these patriots are ignored by the mainstream media (an industry that, coincidentally, happens to be owned by the "Darkside"). Read More |
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08.28.18- Trump’s War With the Fed
It’s what happens when the sordid fantasies of politics run into the gaudy delusions of finance. Everyone can see the crash coming. No one can do anything about it. Today, we draw up a chair and bring popcorn. New York Post GuyDonald Trump is naturally at odds with the “elite.” He’s a New York Post guy; The New York Times despises him. Read More |
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End The Fed -- or Face The Consequences
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08.25.18- The Fed Will Not Give up “Dark Money”
On one hand, the projection of 4.1% second quarter growth is a sign of a surging economy set to grow for years to come. But on the other hand, it is seen as temporary sugar rush created by tax cuts and debt. It’s unsustainable in the light of higher tariffs, an escalating trade war that could impact large portions of the economy, and rising federal deficits that put America even deeper in debt. Read More |
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08.24.18- The Fundamental Case
Many times a central bank mistake forces the fiscal authorities to step in and get aggressive with the budget. Just think of the financial crisis. The Fed engineered a real estate bubble that, when it burst, forced the Treasury to step in and backstop the financial system to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. The federal government was also forced to implement significant fiscal stimulus during the recession that followed. This led to a record budget deficit of over a trillion dollars and the gold price soared. Read More |
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08.23.18- Iran Sanctions, Emerging Markets And The End Of Dollar Dominance
Case in point, the latest reports that the U.S. trade deficit is now on track to hit 10-year highs, after a 7% increase in June. This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen when tariffs were initiated. In fact, I recall much talk in alternative media circles claiming that the mere threat of tariffs would frighten foreign exporters into balancing trade on their own. Obviously this has not been the case. Read More |
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08.22.18- How Bill Clinton’s Fed Twisted the Economy
From CNBC: The dollar weakened on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump slammed the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates, while global equity markets rose as strong economic and earnings growth favored stocks in a relatively benign environment. Read More |
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08.21.18- "How to End the Federal Reserve" with Ellen Brown
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08.20.18- Trump Complained About Fed's Rate Hikes, Expected Powell To Be
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08.18.18- Governments and Central Banks Should Look to Gold, Not Cryptocurrencies
There will be no Fedcoin, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in testimony given before the House Committee on Financial Services. “We’re not looking at this at the Fed as something that we should be doing,” Powell said, when asked whether the Fed is considering issuing its own digital currency. “That’s not something we’re looking at.” Read More |
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08.17.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Decline in the Fall
To begin with, America is no longer a country. It is a set of special interests occupying the same place: Corporations, races, ethnicities, faiths, ideologies, foreign agents pretending to be Americans, all at each other’s throats. No cure is possible. Read More |
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08.16.18- Economic Contagion?
We have heard talk of “contagion” before. Not long ago, Italy’s political shift toward a supposedly populist government led to fears of debt contagion within the European Union; this is still a valid concern, just not for the reasons the mainstream financial media usually presents. Read More |
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08.15.18- For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades
But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. Read More |
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08.14.18- 'It's big corrupt government': Glenn Beck on why it's time to audit the Federal Reserve
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08.13.18- The Donald From Jekyll Island: Will Trump Take Over The Federal Reserve?
If there’s one good thing about Trump’s recent “attack” on the Fed, it’s that he may be helping to expose the criminal organization for what it's always been: a monstrous tool of the .000001%. During an interview with CNBC, Trump, in very simple words (which is about all he knows… he does have “the best words” though!), openly voiced his disagreement with current Fed policies. Read More |
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08.11.18- Hawkish Fed Accelerates QE Unwind – Sets a “Ticking Time Bomb”
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08.10.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Roger Williams
Kings never impressed him. And Roger Williams was exposed to Kings from early in his life. As a youth, he worked for Sir Edward Coke, who was a lawyer, judge, and held other similar political posts in 17th century England. Williams accompanied him daily into the chambers of Parliament and other Councils. Coke trailblazed many decent government policies for the time. One was that a man’s home is his castle. This helped set the tone for individual rights in England, even against royal opposition. It was Ye Olde Stand Your Ground. Read More |
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08.09.18- Signs Point to a Global Slowdown
This forecast is based on a better-late-than-never realization by the Fed that they are overtightening into fundamental economic weakness, followed quickly by a full-reversal flip to easing in the form of pauses on rate hikes in September and December. Those pauses will be an admission the Fed sees no way out of its multiple rounds of QE and extended zero interest rate policy from 2008 to 2013 without causing a new recession. Once that occurs, inflation is just a matter of time. Gold will respond accordingly. Read More |
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08.08.18- Putting The 'Con' In 'Confidence': All The Fed Really Has To Offer Is Smoke And Mirrors
“Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” – Mario Draghi July 26, 2012 On July 26, 2012, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi essentially guaranteed the ECB would not allow the markets to cripple the Euro region. This shot across the bow finally remedied the instability caused by the sovereign debt crisis. The markets quickly reversed the damaging trends and uncertainty that had plagued the Euro-zone for months. Read More |
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THE AMERICAN DREAM - how debt slavery is killing us
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08.06.18- Here's Why Rip-Roaring Inflation
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08.04.18- Trump Discovering Federal Reserve’s Dilemma
When the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and printed several trillion dollars a few years ago, even former chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that the purpose was to promote easier financial conditions and the appearance of wealth. Of course it would logically follow though that when interest rates rise and the printed money is retracted, that you would get the opposite effect. Which is never particularly politically palatable. Read More |
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08.03.18- 21st Century Misery Index: Labor’s Share Of The Economy And Real-World Inflation
Isn’t it obvious that those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid don’t want us to know how much ground we’ve lost while they’ve gorged on immense gains? In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an era of stagflation, the Misery Index was the unemployment rate plus inflation, both of which were running hot. Read More |
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08.02.18- What’s behind the stock and bond markets’ spooky reaction to the Fed’s moves?
Helping stocks to recover from the year's lows in early February is the eerie calm in the U.S. bond market. The Bond Vigilante Model suggests that the 10-year Treasury bond TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.56% yield tends to trade around the growth rate in nominal GDP on a year-over-year basis (Fig. 1). It has been trading consistently below nominal GDP growth since mid-2010. The current spread is among the widest since then, with nominal GDP growing 5.4% while the bond yield is just below 3.0%. Read More |
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08.01.18- America’s greatest foe isn’t China or Russia — it’s debt
The numbers don’t lie. While recent tax cuts seem to have at least partially fueled strong economic growth, projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for this year forecast an $890 billion deficit, up from $438 Billion in 2015. If current CBO projections hold, next year the deficit will surpass $1 trillion. The last time that happened was during the great recession. Read More |
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07.31.18- Trumping the FED...What Will It Mean?
Private Central Banks Create Illusory Money These are not small matters. Financial sins of the Federal Reserve have been horrendous since its creation in 1913. Read More |
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07.30.18- America’s middle class is slowly being ‘wiped out’
America’s middle class is being wiped out by the cost of living far outpacing salaries, says Alissa Quart, author of ‘Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America.’ After spending his days teaching AP American history and economics at the public Live Oak High School in San Jose, Calif., Matt Barry drives for Uber. Read More |
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07.28.18- How Inflation Destroys a Civilization
Today, Casey Research’s globetrotting analyst, Nick Giambruno, shows one more threat posed by America’s “fake” money, and reveals what you can do to protect yourself. Fight for $15! This was the rallying cry of what eventually became the largest fast-food strike in U.S. history. Read More |
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07.27.18- Confederate Inflation Rates (1861 – 1865)
Committee on the purchasing power of Confederate Notes. The table below shows the actual Confederate Treasury Note Inflation data that was used to develop this chart. At the beginning of the war on January 1, 1861 one Confederate dollar would purchase one gold dollar. By May it took $1.05 Confederate dollars to purchase one Gold Dollar or 5% inflation in four months. By February of 1861 it took $1.25 Confederate Dollars to buy one Gold Dollar or 25% inflation. Read More |
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07.26.18- Trump vs. The Fed: America Sacrificed At The NWO Altar
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07.25.18- IRS to revoke 362,000 passports
They called it the “FAST Act”, which stood for Fixing America’s Surface Transportation. Yet despite $300 billion earmarked for infrastructure repairs, they didn’t manage to fix very much of America’s surface transportation. The legislation did, however, have two major effects: 1) The FAST Act authorized the US government to plunder excess capital from the Federal Reserve… which is about as stupid as thing as anyone could possibly do. Read More |
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07.24.18- More Lies From The Corrupt Elite...
The rise in corporate profits that resulted from substituting foreign labor for American labor rewarded corporate executives and boards, hedge funds, large shareholders, and Wall Street with profits at the expense of the American population and the US economy. Read More |
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07.23.18- America The Insolvent
Watching the world these days, I’m experiencing the same fury that rises up from my gut when the driver in the car ahead me is weaving drunkenly, endangering everyone on the road. Fury is a normal and rational human response when threatened with unnecessary harm. Women who are groped (or worse) by a disgusting predator like Harvey Weinstein, pensioners whose funds are stolen by Wall Street shysters, everyone who is being fleeced by corporations in search of a few extra dollars this quarter -- all have the right to be infuriated. Read More |
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07.21.18- Are You Prepared for the
This, no doubt, is an important question. And we ask it with clear intent and purpose. Namely, we want to better understand how it’s possible for America to rack up such a massive trade deficit with China. America’s trade deficit with China, in 2017 alone, was $375 billion. That’s a gap of over $31 billion a month – or $1 billion a day. We believe having a better grasp on what money is will bring clarity to the nasty trade deficit that’s motivating today’s burgeoning trade war. Read More |
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07.20.18- Fed chair Jerome Powell is whistling past two looming threats to the US economy
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is overlooking two central risks facing the US economy: the prospect of a trade-war induced slowdown and a key recession warning sign from financial markets. Read More |
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07.19.18- What Can QE Tell Us About QT?
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07.18.18- The Fed Will Sacrifice Stocks
This bond represents the “risk free” rate of return for a total economic cycle (roughly 10 years) denominated in the global reserve currency (the $USD). Put simply, this is THE bond to watch if you want to keep an eye on how the financial system is acting. It is the bedrock for all risk… and its yield represents rate of return against which all risk assets are priced/ valued. Read More |
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07.17.18- Purchasing Power Warning
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07.16.18- Powell’s Testimony:
During Fed Chair Jay Powell’s congressional testimony over the next 2 days, consider the following 4 numbers:
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07.14.18- Fed Sweeps Yield Curve Under the Rug – What Are They Trying to Hide?
In that article, we showed rates possibly being raised more than 4 times in 2019. But more importantly, we warned that anyone investing in the market should start preparing to expect the unexpected. And right now, it looks like the Fed’s bizarre moves are continuing. Read More |
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But Powell told Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal that business contacts across the US have raised alarm about Trump's trade policy to the 12 Federal Reserve branches. "And we are hearing a rising level of concern about the effects of changes in trade policy," Powell said. Read More |
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07.12.18- Is This The Most Hawkish Fed Ever?
But what makes its monetary policy extraordinarily restrictive is that for the first time in history the Fed is also selling $40 billion per month of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and Treasuries starting in Q3 and $600 billion per year come October. Because the Fed is destroying money at a record pace while the rest of the world’s major central banks are still engaged in money printing (QE) and zero interest rate policies (ZIRP), Jerome Powell’s trenchant and unilateral tightening policy is now causing chaos in emerging markets. Read More |
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07.11.18- Is Hammurabi's Code the key
Looking at the non-farm payroll reports you would think that everything is booming yet we see from a number of sources that low unemployment numbers do not tell the whole story. There are a large number of facts and arguments that support that point of view. Read More |
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07.10.18- Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow
Unfortunately, in recent decades, even dictionaries have been offering a revised definition of inflation, as “an increase in the price of goods and services.” This is a pity, as it makes an already confusing subject even more difficult to understand. Read More |
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07.06.18- As the Yield Curve Flattens, Threatens to Invert, the Fed Discards it as Recession Indicator
In the minutes of the FOMC meeting on June 12 and 13, released this afternoon, there was a doozie, obscured somewhat by the dynamics of the rate hike plus the indication that there would be two more rate hikes this year, for a total of four, up from three at the prior meeting, with more hikes to come in 2019, along with other changes – a phenomenon I called, This Fed Grows Relentlessly More Hawkish, Gone are the Kid Gloves. But the doozie in the minutes was about the flattening “yield curve.” Read More |
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07.06.18- As the Yield Curve Flattens, Threatens to Invert, the Fed Discards it as Recession Indicator
In the minutes of the FOMC meeting on June 12 and 13, released this afternoon, there was a doozie, obscured somewhat by the dynamics of the rate hike plus the indication that there would be two more rate hikes this year, for a total of four, up from three at the prior meeting, with more hikes to come in 2019, along with other changes – a phenomenon I called, This Fed Grows Relentlessly More Hawkish, Gone are the Kid Gloves. But the doozie in the minutes was about the flattening “yield curve.” Read More |
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07.05.18- Unfunded Promises
A debt occurs when you receive something now in exchange for a promise to give something back later. It doesn’t have to be cash. If you borrow your neighbor’s lawn mower and promise to return it next Tuesday, that’s a kind of debt. You receive something (use of the lawn mower) and agree to repayment terms – in this case, your promise to return it on time and in working order. Read More |
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07.04.18- Globalists Are Telling Us Exactly What Disasters They’re Planning for The Economy
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07.03.18- The Dollar Is a Source of Global Instability
So the dollar’s strength or weakness can have an enormous impact on global markets. Using the Fed’s broad real trade-weighted dollar index (my favorite foreign exchange metric, much better than DXY), the dollar hit an all-time high in March 1985 (128.4) and hit an all-time low in July 2011 (80.3). Right now, the index is 95.2, below the middle of the 35-year range. But what matters most to trading partners and international debtors is not the level but the trend. Read More |
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07.02.18- James Grant and Jim Chanos:
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06.30.18- Fed Unwinding the Bernanke Experiments: Progress Report
In this research report, we will examine the evolution of Fed policy as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) seeks to create a sustainable approach to managing an economy no longer requiring emergency measures. Specifically, we will study: Read More |
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06.29.18- The Yield Curve Is The Economy’s Canary In A Coal Mine
As an example of the ongoing underlying systemic decay and collapse conveyed by this week’s title, it was announced that General Electric would be removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average index and replaced by Walgreen’s. GE was an original member of the index starting in 1896 and was a continuous member since 1907. Read More |
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06.28.18- Guess What Happens When Money Is Made Cheap And Labor Is Made Expensive?
Employment expands in the Protected cartel-dominated sectors, and declines in every sector exposed to globalization, domestic competition and cheap capital. If you want to understand why the global economy is failing the many while enriching the few, start with the basics: capital, labor and resources. What happens when central banks drop interest rates to near-zero? Capital becomes dirt-cheap. It becomes ludicrously easy to borrow money to buy whatever cheap capital can buy: Read More |
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06.27.18- How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable?
Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations. Read More |
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06.26.18- The Fed Just Made Its Most Hawkish Turn in 30+ Years (Did Anyone Notice?)
To confirm the relevance of what I thought I heard during the post-meeting press conference, I spent some time last week reviewing old speeches, transcripts and other materials produced by Fed officials. I’m now convinced that Chairman Jerome Powelldelivered an important message that went largely unreported, and I expect him to keep at it until people take notice. Read More |
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06.25.18- Abolishing The Private Central Bank (Fed) Is Challenging And Those Who’ve Tried We’re Stopped
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06.23.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: More TRUTH… and it Matters!
But you won’t believe what just a little research has revealed. Keep in mind, this is the research the Far Left & the MSM are banking on you will never do. If you don’t know the facts, they are free to lie & brainwash & mis-represent to their heart’s content. Read More |
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06.22.18- Fun With The Fed's "Stress" Test
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06.21.18- How you can undermine the ‘evil cabal’
Language is perhaps the most important device we have for creating reality, and just as George Orwell knew, the more linguistically vague, simplistic, ambiguous and nondescript the language, the more room there is to shape perception. This is called Newspeak, and in the case of the ‘Evil Cabal,’ the term fails to fully describe our complex world, but succeeds tremendously in maintaining the prison of fear that actually inhibits freedom. Read More |
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06.20.18- The Federal Reserve Cartel –
Colonel Ely Garrison was a close friend of both President Teddy Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson. Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve, “Paul Warburg was the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition. The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.” Read More |
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06.19.18- The Federal Reserve Is Increasing The Pace Of Interest Rate Hikes Just In Time
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06.18.18- The Fed’s Short-Term Rate Policy Is Meaningless: The USD Is Doomed
Except it’s not water. It’s quicksand. Once the Fed first fell for the mirage that it could somehow execute the job so perfectly executed by free markets better than those free markets on their own, it has been left trying to extricate itself from yet another totally unnecessary, could-have-been-avoided, self-created disaster. Read More |
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06.16.18- Texas Bullion Depository
In June 2015, Gov. Greg Abbot signed legislation creating the state gold bullion and precious metal depository. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, business, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in transactions. In short, a person will eventually be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money. Read More |
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06.15.18- The Federal Reserve: Public Enemy Number One
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06.14.18- The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Roundtable and The Illuminati
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06.13.18- The Federal Reserve Cartel: Freemasons and The House of Rothschild
This was before their knowledge that the masons were being corrupted by the Rothschild Cartel ~ It was then outlawed in The United States Read More |
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06.12.18- The Federal Reserve Cartel; The Eight Families
We Won The Battle But Lost The War Against The Cabal’s Bank From Which We Fled Britain In The First Place. As It Followed Us Here To America Through Rothschild’s Son-In-Law Alexander Hamilton In 1791. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1] So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks? This information is guarded much more closely. Read More |
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06.11.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: World Trade Center Building 7 Was Brought Down by Explosives
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06.09.18- Beware Former Central Bankers Telling You To Work More
Hard work is fundamental to our continued existence and advancement as a species. I would never devalue the importance of hard work, particularly when combined with intense passion and drive, which leads to extraordinary technological progress and soaring artistic creations. Read More |
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06.07.17- How Many Rabbits?
I’ve been in this game for quite a while. I started in 1994 doing seminars for local investment clubs. That migrated into the first newsletter in 1996, and in 1997 we launched the web site. All along the way, there were ills and evils that I pointed out, about how the economy is fake, the economic reports were fudged, the debts were unpayable, and on and on. And yet, through the magic of Central banking, they’ve managed to keep the wheels on this thing. It truly is incredible if you think about it. Read More |
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06.06.18- A Recession Is Coming... And the Fed Can't Stop It
Extensive research shows that it takes between 300 and 500 basis points of interest rate cuts by the Fed to pull the U.S. economy out of a recession. (One basis point is 1/100th of 1 percentage point, so 500 basis points of rate reduction means the Fed would have to cut rates 5 percentage points.) Right now the Fed’s target rate for fed funds, the so-called “policy rate,” is 1.75%. How do you cut rates 3–5% when you’re starting at 1.75%? You can’t. Negative interest rates won’t save the day. Negative rates have been tried in Japan, the eurozone, Sweden and Switzerland, and the evidence is that they don’t work to stimulate the economy. Read More |
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06.05.18- What History Teaches
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06.04.18- Fed Finds New Way to Blunder 
If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve. The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system. The Fed uses the Phillips curve to understand the relationship between unemployment and inflation when 50 years of data say there is no fixed relationship. Read More |
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06.02.18- The Fed's Mission Impossible
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06.01.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Modern Civil War Without Guns - So Far!
The answers are “Yes” and “Yes.” Furthermore, a case can be made that we are already in such a civil war. I received the following via email. The main piece was written by Jack Minzey, a person I was unfamiliar with. His take on this issue seems unique and accurate! According to him, we are already in a Civil War whether we recognize it or not. Read More |
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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.
There are THREE WARNINGS for this article.
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.
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.
This week, 
In the spring of 1692, an energetic young Scotsman named John Campbell started a new business in central London.
QUESTION: You mentioned that Rome had no national debt and no central bank. Exactly how did it function for 1,000 years? 
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. 
The next crisis will soon hit the financial system.
It’s “Totally Incorrect” week here at Casey Research...
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.
Still no visible crack in the stock market. But the economy may be breaking down.
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.
Our Current Financial Circumstances:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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”
James Madison:
The clouds part, and a crack of sunshine scatters the gloom…
Fiat paper money: Once gold and silver derivatives 
I think there’s a very high chance of a stock market crash of historic proportions before the end of Trump’s first term.
In a speech on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated that he had a “neutral” outlook on rates. According toa 
It may come as a surprise to you that the United States has been financing a welfare program that takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich. 
It’s no surprise that China has its own plunge protection team -but why were they so late?-, nor that Beijing blames its problems on Trump’s tariffs. GDP growth was disappointing at 6.5%, but who’s ever believed those almost always dead on numbers? It would be way more interesting to know what part of that growth has been based on debt and leverage. But that we don’t get to see. 
Donald Trump just made one of the most brilliant moves of his entire presidency. By accusing the Federal Reserve of 
Finally financial ‘markets’ go through a substantial dip, which Steve Mnuchin claims is just temporary and Donald Trump says is caused by the fact that the Fed is ‘loco’. Mnuchin may well be right, but it won’t be because he knows something you don’t. 
When Congress borrows money on the credit of the United States, bonds are thus legislated into existence and deposited as credit entries in Federal Reserve banks. United States bonds, bills and notes constitute money as affirmed by the Supreme Court (Legal Tender Cases, 110 U.S. 421), and this money when deposited with the Fed becomes collateral from whence the Treasury may write checks against the credit thus created in its account (12 USC 391). For example, suppose Congress appropriates an expenditure of $1 billion. To finance the appropriation Congress creates the $1 billion worth of bonds out of thin air and deposits it with the privately owned Federal Reserve System. Upon receiving the bonds, the Fed credits $1 billion to the Treasury's checking account, holding the deposited bonds as collateral. 
Economic collapse is not an event — it is a process. I’ve been saying this since the initial 2008 crash, and I suppose I will keep saying it until it burns into people’s minds because I don’t think that it is a widely understood concept. When alternative analysts talk about financial collapse, we are not talking about something that suddenly happens out of the blue, we are talking about an ongoing decline that occurs in stages. This decline is happening today in the U.S. and around the world, and it has been accelerating since the chaos of 2008. When we bring up the reality of collapse, we are referring to something that is happening NOW, not something waiting on the distant horizon. 
The primary reason nations use fiat money today is that it doesn’t limit how much of their currency they can put into circulation.
One of the worst things for an over-heated and extremely leveraged economy is rising interest rates. So, with the recent 2-2.25% interest rate, big trouble is on the horizon, Also, with higher interest rates, the U.S. Treasury will have to fork out even more money to service its debt. In just a little more than two years, the U.S. Fed Funds Rate jumped by nearly 2%.
It’s long been an article of faith in the sound money community that the Fed, by bailing out every dysfunctional financial entity in sight, would eventually be forced to choose between the deflationary collapse of a mountain of bad debt and the inflationary chaos of a plunging currency.
It’s 30% more expensive to be middle class than it was 20 years ago, according to a new book
Does our country run the risk of a civil war? Is such a horrible event even possible today?