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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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05.31.18- Deutsche Bank Forced to Run Decisions by Fed, Stock Hits All-Time Low
Now comes news that the Fed has privately placed the bank on a list of ‘troubled’ lenders, meaning that DB has had to run decision-making through the Fed for at least the past year. A process that, until now and despite being a publicly traded company using the capital of untold numbers of investors, has been shrouded in total secrecy. The bottom line is this: Deutsche Bank is unequivocally too big to fail. No matter how catastrophic their bad bets have been, no matter how criminal their behavior, they will be bailed out on the backs of taxpayers. Read More |
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05.30.18- The new Fed director wants the US middle class to pay for the next crisis
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05.29.18- Why Big Banks LOVE Paying Fines to the U.S. Government
When Volkswagen executives found out U.S. regulations would kill one of their diesel models, they pulled some tricks. They fooled U.S. regulators by installing software which misrepresented the emissions released. But the U.S. found out, and arrested the top executives involved. One of them, a German citizen, was sentenced to 7 years in prison late 2017 for his role in the scandal. That’s a pretty intense prison sentence for trying to trick regulators. The government says that society is the victim in this case, because the regulations are an attempt to keep the environment clean. Read More |
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05.28.18- America 2018: Dicier by the Day
If we look beneath the cheery chatter of the financial media and the tiresomely repetitive Russian collusion narrative (that's unraveling as the Ministry of Propaganda's machinations are exposed), we find that America in 2018 is dicier by the day. The more you know about the actual functioning of critical subsystems, the keener your awareness of the system's fragility, reliance on artifice and an unceasing flow of "free money." Keynesian economics boils down to a very simple premise: a slowing or stagnant economy can be goosed by distributing plenty of "free money" which can be blown on either speculation or goods and services. Read More |
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05.26.18- The End Of Stimulus?
Back in January of 2016 we saw what appeared to be, and in my opinion should have been, the end of the Everything Bubble blown by the word's central banking cartel. The carnage started in the emerging markets. Highly-leveraged positions and carry trades began to unwind. That's a fancy way of saying that all the big, sophisticated investors -- who were busy borrowing heavily in countries with cheap money (the US, Japan, and Europe) and using that debt to speculate in markets offering higher yields (junk debt, emerging markets, stocks, etc.) -- began to reverse their trades. Read More |
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05.25.18- There Is No Exit: Let’s Just Accept The Fact That The Fed Will Not Be
by Graham Summers of Gains Pains & Capital Let’s cut through the BS about Central Bank Balance Sheet reduction. There. Is. No. Exit. Once a Central Bank begins to employ ZIRP and QE for years at a time, there is no going back. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Japan. Read More |
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05.24.18- Speculation on Hyperinflation
Hyperinflation Myths:
BOTH IDEAS ARE INCORRECT. For more, read Bill Holter: WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF HYPERINFLATION? Read More |
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05.23.18- America’s long-term challenge #3: destruction of the currency
It was one of the first major pieces of legislation in the young country’s history… and it was an important one, because it formally created the United States dollar. Under the Act, the US dollar was defined as a particular amount of copper, silver, or gold. It wasn’t just a piece of paper. A $10 “eagle” coin, for example, was 16.04 grams of pure gold, whereas a 1 cent coin was 17.1 grams of copper. Read More |
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05.22.18- A Central Banker’s Plan for Your Money
Through these signals, in the frequencies beyond normal human hearing… elites communicate with each other. Their communications are public. But their language can be so thick, so technical — so innocuous — not one in a hundred can crack it open. Only the intended audience can penetrate the deeper message within… and that audience is their fellow elites. Read More |
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05.21.18- The Fed’s Been Lying to Us About Inflation; It’s Frighteningly High
The Fed will not be deterred from continuing to tighten, continuing to remove money from the system, just because of the silliness that “CPI missed expectations.” It’s still at least 2%… and it’s heating up. Read More |
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05.19.18- Blundering Into Recession
That’s when the Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, the Fed’s interest rate policy arm, will in all likelihood raise interest rates another 0.25%, the seventh such rate increase since the “liftoff” in interest rates in December 2015. The market is currently putting the odds of a rate hike at 95%. This is the most aggressive tempo of rate hikes of any major central bank and puts U.S. policy rates significantly higher than those in the U.K., Japan or eurozone. Read More |
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05.18.18- Are We About To Reach That ‘Margin Call’ Moment, Again?
For those who have never seen this movie, regardless if you are involved in stock trading, it is a must watch on so many levels, be it general business, corporate leadership, department interactions, skullduggery, familial, as well as personal backstabbing, the list goes on. It is absolutely loaded with a plethora of take-aways of the real-life-lesson variety. I say this because I have been involved around, in, as well as been at the receiving end of the proverbial “poisoned dagger.” Not on Wall Street, but within other fields. Read More |
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05.17.18- "The Bond Spike Confirms The End Of Experimental Monetary-Policy Rally"
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05.16.18- The Fed is Corrupt: Period The State of Illinois has a very large unfunded pension liability and will likely have to pay much of it off by raising taxes. The Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability estimated the state’s unfunded liability at $129.1 billion in mid-2017,[1] which was about 19% of state personal income.[2] Benefits to public employees are protected under the Illinois Constitution, and a recent attempt to reduce the unfunded liability by reducing retirees’ benefits was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court.[3] So, assuming that the state can’t reduce its current pension obligations and that it wants to maintain its current level of services, Illinois residents are going to have to pay higher taxes. What’s the best way to do it? Read More |
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05.15.18- Can we blame the bankers?
Today that pattern – of a global financial crash, austerity and a rise in political populism and authoritarianism – is evident in both Europe and the US. And talk of war has risen to the top of the US political agenda. Why have we not learnt lessons from the past? Read More |
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05.14.18- How the Financial System Actually Works:
The Federal Reserve, “the Fed”, is the central bank of the United States of America that was created in 1913 by Congress. It is a banking cartel that has a government-granted monopoly on the creation of money and credit. The Fed literally loans “money” (Federal Reserve Notes) into existence. Federal Reserve Notes are paper promises backed by nothing of intrinsic value and they are only functioning as money because the government forces them on the public through legal tender laws. Federal Reserve Notes are referred to as dollars but are not. Read More |
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05.12.18- Inside Gold-USD Relationship
It bears remembering that there is not a 1:1 inverse correlation in the movements of the two. Especially in an economy so heavily impacted by unprecedented levels of debt and Fed policy, casting a wider net for potential catalysts and pricing factors is the sensible approach. The US dollar index has breached above its 200-day moving average for the first time in 12 months and continues to do so for the past 7 trading days. Despite that, gold remains above its 200-day moving average as it has done since December. Read More |
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05.11.18- Beware Of The Economic Debt Bomb
Sorry for the drama, but I need to get your attention. We know that the Fed has kept interest rates low for many years until recently. Why did it do so? Here are some of the reasons we have been told:
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05.10.18- The Fed Rips Off “Band-Aid” of Quantitative Easing (QE) as Mortgage Rates Soar
One of them will be what happens when you use solutions like Quantitative Easing (QE) to prop up an economy with indirectly “printed money” after a recession. Another will be the major mortgage rate and housing price jumps that have happened recently that will likely cause market distress. Both will involve ripping off an economic “Band-Aid” while hoping the U.S. economy doesn’t keep “bleeding” afterwards. Read More |
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05.09.18- The Fed Has Robbed the Future
The Federal Reserve intervened massively to cage the menace of depression after the 2008 financial crisis. Quantitative easing, zero interest rates and the rest of the central banker’s emergency kit came to bear. The heroics “worked.” The crisis has passed. And the economy is presently in its 108th month of recovery. Yes, the central bank may have saved the present with its emergency medicine. Read More |
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05.08.18- Has the Fed really turned hawkish?
The US central bank sets the interest rate on the world’s most important currency, and therefore has an impact on the entire global financial system. The question for markets now is: has the “easy money” Fed of the past several decades been replaced by a “no more Mr Nice Guy” Fed in the form of Jerome Powell? Let’s see. Read More |
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05.07.18- Central Bank Gold Purchases: Stunning Impact On The Gold Market
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why the Central banks decided to liquidate a portion of their gold holdings, but what we do know is that the amount equaled less than half of the United States supposed gold reserves were sold into the market from 2002-2009. Furthermore, Official Gold sales took place right at the very same time the Gold ETF market took off. Read More |
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05.05.18- Market Report: FOMC Minutes Mark The Low
Gold was down $14 from last Friday’s close to trade at $1310 in early European trade this morning (Friday), and silver was down ten cents at $16.40 on the same time scale. Read More |
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05.04.18- Fed’s QE Unwind Accelerates Sharply
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The post, titled “Three Ways Bitcoin is Like Regular Currency,” doesn’t precisely endorse Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. In another recent report, the St. Louis Fed was critical of Bitcoin’s inefficiency. Read More |
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05.02.18- The Fed Has Successfully Destroyed The U.S. Housing Market
As I mentioned to my friend in a private message, I see the same fallacious arguments repeatedly within the housing industry. America is great, deficits and debt don’t matter. Rah, Rah, Rah! I get it. Read More |
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05.01.18- Deutsche Bank Calculates The Level Of The New "Fed Put"
Specifically, commenting on the February rout, Dudley said an equity rout like the one that occurred in recent days "has virtually no consequence for the economic outlook" and added that, if the market continued to go down sharply, “that would affect my view,” he said at a New York event, but "this wasn't that big of a bump in the stock market" and " is not a big story for central bankers yet." Read More |
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04.30.18- Economics 101: Who Sets Prices?
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04.28.18- Weekend Rant: The Next Crash...Making The Fed An Instrument For Disaster
While we’ve been bombarded with a litany of scandals from the Oval Office and the Trump family, there’s a crucial institution in Washington that few in the media seem to be paying attention to, even as President Trump quietly makes it his own. Read More |
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04.27.18- Capitalism Works For Capitalists
Construction noise is relentless. OSHA has added to it with beep-beeping machines. The noise, all penetrating, is very stressful. Many years ago on a large construction site a heavy equipment operator backed over a workman who, like the operator, was not paying attention. Read More |
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04.26.18- The Real Inflation Rate May Signal That the U.S. Economy is in a Death Spiral
Aside from trade wars, geopolitical tension, and debt, inflation might stand center-stage as the final nail in the U.S. economic “coffin”. According to Torsten Slok, the Chief International Economist at Deutsche Bank, inflation “is the mother of all risks here”. You see, the floundering U.S. dollar, tight labor market, Quantitative Easing and trade wars have all paved the way for rising inflation. And, in a recent survey of global fund managers conducted by Bank of America, 82% expect the CPI index to keep climbing over the next year. Read More |
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04.25.18- Fox in the Hen House: Why Interest Rates Are Rising
On March 31st the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for the sixth time in 3 years and signaled its intention to raise rates twice more in 2018, aiming for a fed funds target of 3.5% by 2020. LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate) has risen even faster than the fed funds rate, up to 2.3% from just 0.3% 2-1/2 years ago. Read More |
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04.24.18- Fake Markets Produce A Fake Economy
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04.23.18- "Ice Nine" Comes to China
Today’s $100 bill is only worth 10 cents on the dollar compared with the $100 bill of 1969. Europe will abolish the 500 euro this year. We all recall what happened in India in late 2016 when India abolished the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes (worth about $10 and $20, respectively); there was mass chaos as peasants lined up to turn in the old notes for digital credit. Read More |
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04.21.18- Inflationary Reality vs. The Efforts of the Fed to Manage Expectations
Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today use the term 'inflation' to refer to the phenomenon that is an inevitable consequence of inflation, that is the tendency of all prices and wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that there is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages. There is no longer any word available to signify the phenomenon that has been, up to now, called inflation. Read More |
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04.20.18- Now Even a Fed Dove Homes in on the “Everything Bubble”
“If we have learned anything from the past, it is that we must be especially vigilant about the health of our financial system in good times, when potential vulnerabilities may be building,” explained Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard in a speech in Washington, D.C., this morning. This was a reference to a time-honored banker adage, now mostly forgotten after nearly nine years of easy money: Bad deals are made in good times. Read More |
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04.19.18- Danielle Dimartino Booth on the $240 Trillion Global Debt Bomb
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04.18.18- It’s Been a Good Run: 70 Years of Dollar Dominance Draws to a Close
It’s a long game, to be sure. As gold hoards are amassed and repatriated, as the petro-yuan becomes a more widely accepted form of petro-commerce, as the greenback is printed into oblivion and obscurity, US paper fiat currency is losing both its prominence, status, and power both within and without American borders. If the gold standard were to be reinstated, control of the dollar would revert to free market forces instead of the whim of the Federal Reserve. It would mean that each dollar would have its equivalent in gold, as it did prior to 1913. Read More |
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04.17.18- There Is No ‘Patriotic Duty’
Aside from a single episode in 1894, there would be no income tax in the United States of America for nearly 40 years. It was during this period that the United States emerged as the largest, most powerful economy in the world. And the country achieved this with no income tax. No inflation. And very little public debt. Today it’s entirely different. The dollar has lost over 99% of its value since 1913. Read More |
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04.16.18- Why Trade Wars Will
Trade wars also escalate geopolitical tensions and economic hardships the world over. They have in the past. When the U.S. imposed tariffs in the 1930’s to try to relieve the Great Depression at home, they achieved the opposite effect. Read More |
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To get around the obstacle of public opinion, governments have an extensive history of lying their way into war. This is hard to believe for people who think that government has their best interest in mind, but it is something that rulers have been doing since the beginning of time. In the modern United States, people are led to believe that the establishment accidentally flounders its way into war. Read More |
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04.13.18- Ron Paul: Assad Gassing His Own People is “Total Nonsense”
“An incident will occur and somebody will get blamed and it’s usually a false flag,” said Paul. “Right now, recently, it’s all been in Syria, ‘Assad did it! Assad did it!’” explained the former congressman. “No proof at all.” Read More |
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04.12.18- The Fed is Officially Screwed: Inflation's Over 2% Despite 6 Rate Hikes
The single biggest concern for the Fed is inflation. The reason for this is that US Treasuries are currently in a massive bubble. And those Treasury yields trade based on inflation. If inflation rises, so do Treasury yields. If Treasury yields rise, Treasury prices fall. If Treasury prices fall, the bond bubble begins to burst. Read More |
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04.11.18- Jerome Is The New Janet: Tie, Trousers And Same Old Keynesian Jabberwocky
That is to say, Trump's new Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, amounts to Janet Yellen in trousers and tie. In fact, you can make it a three-part composite by adding Bernanke with a full head of hair and Greenspan sans the mumble. Read More |
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04.10.18- Ayn Rand’s Hymn To Money
Millions of people who have read Ayn Rand’s 1957 monumental work “Atlas Shrugged” must have been impressed by an insert that could be entitled “Hymn to Money”. This insert is buried in the 1600 pages of the novel and is difficult to find. However, it is a self-contained literary masterpiece in its own right. For these reasons it may be a good idea to publish it separately. Read More |
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04.09.18- Inflation Alert: Prepare For The Coming Price Spikes BEFORE Costs Are Passed On
The Prices Paid Index just rose for its fourth straight month to 78.1: its highest level since April 2011. Why does this matter? Because it’s a MAJOR warning that inflation is coming. Read More |
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04.07.18- Weekend Rant: The Central Bank Effect - The Best Friend of The One Percent
The Federal Reserve has almost limitless power to print paper money, extend credit and create debt, thus creating the illusion of prosperity where none exists. At one time, hard work could provide a secure future for generations. Now, a person is fortunate if hard work can help them get through the day. Read More |
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04.06.18- Futures Tumble Amid Tariff, Payrolls, Powell Chaos
Until 6pm, the answer was the latter, however with one announcement Trump flipped everything on its head, and just as the president called for an additional $100 billion in Chinese tariffs, futures tumbled, with Dow futs plunging over 400 points as escalating trade war with China was back front and center. Read More |
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04.05.18- The First Wave of Inflation is Already Here… The Next One is the Bad One
Why does this matter? Because it’s a MAJOR warning that inflation is coming. You see, when inflation hits, it doesn’t hit all at once. Instead it rolls out into the economy in stages. The first stage occurs at the “production” level of the economy. In this stage, managers at large manufacturers/production companies will see a spike in the cost of goods and services they buy in order to supply their firms. Read More |
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04.04.18- From the Leader of the Free World to Banana Republic: Fiat Debt 101
If you go to the hospital and they give you morphine once so that you don't have to feel short-term, significant pain, fine. Taking morphine for the next 10 consecutive years because it's just easier that way? Not so fine. Read More |
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04.03.18- How The Federal Reserve Drives The Economy
This is true with respect to various policies, statements, and actions; and includes comments made by board members, either in speeches or interviews. But it is also true regarding purpose and motivation. To a large extent, it is a matter of perception. Some, maybe most, people see the Fed as the lead driver. There is an assumed aura of authority and control. On all matters economic, we look to them for direction. But where are they taking us? That question might be better answered by asking where they/we have been. And not just since last month or last quarter. Read More |
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04.02.18- Fed mistakes could spark ‘unusually fast’ bear market, ‘lost decade’ for stocks
Last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the economic outlook had strengthened, but he painted a mixed picture about what policy might look like going forward. The U.S. central bank raised interest rates but indicated it would only do a total of three rate hikes in 2018, which some saw as a dovish signal given that a number of investors had expected four this year. However, the Fed pushed up its expected rate path in 2019 and 2020. Read More |
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03.31.18- Why Do Media Idiots Love Stormy Daniels But Ignore a Totally Rigged
QTR digs into why consensual sex by two people that lack moral compasses in the year 2006 is in any way worth reporting on and confirms the existence of the Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets, explaining the executive order that put the group in place during the Reagan administration. Read More |
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03.30.18- Central banks manipulating & suppressing gold prices
n fact, gold is a special case. Gold to central bankers is like the sun to vampires. They are terrified of it, yet in some ways they are in awe of it. Terrified since gold is an inflation barometer and an indicator of the relative strength of fiat currencies. The gold price influences interest rates and bond prices. Read More |
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03.29.18- The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year
When it comes to the economy, most people are lost. Read More |
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03.28.18- Who Needs Wall Street When You Can Have A Monetary Unicorn?
We got to ruminating about those core propositions when we read that San Francisco Fed head, John Williams, may be headed toward the true #2 job at the Fed. That is, President of the New York Fed----the joint that actually runs the casinos domiciled in the canyons of Wall Street. Read More |
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03.27.18- The Fake Recovery: Risk Asset Price Increases Have Been Simple Inflation
There is a relatively fixed universe of stocks to buy in the US. The Wilshire 5000 is made up of almost every single nationally listed, SEC-reporting company on the NYSE, AMEX, and Nasdaq, and is comprised of about 6,700 individual companies. For the vast majority of American stock investors, institutional and retail alike, that’s where their investment money is going to go. And when the Fed creates an investment universe in which banks are simply awash in ZIRP cash, a lot of that money is going end up bidding up this relatively limited pool of equities. Read More |
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03.26.18- What Fed Chair Powell Forgot To Mention
What are the chances of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell being wrong? The chances he’ll be wrong on the economy’s growth prospects, the direction of the federal funds rate, and inflation itself? Our guess is his chances of being wrong are quite high. The new central planner-in-chief. Central banks are facing a special case of the socialist calculation problem pertaining to the financial system. Like the comrades in the former Eastern Bloc, who tried to adjust their plans based on prices they were able to observe in the capitalist West, their best bet is to simply follow market rates. Unfortunately market rates – especially at the short end of the yield curve – are subject to an observer-participant feedback loop with the Fed. Read More |
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03.24.18- From Zero Interest-Rate Policy to Zero Options Left: Prepare for Chaos
In this way, equilibrium is maintained. If, via dint of central bankery, such pain is delayed, it simply accumulates. A decade of manipulated prosperity has resulted in a largely anesthetized market that has forgotten what true pain feels like. There will be no controlling the pain when the dam breaks and system collapses. Investments in risk assets will be eviscerated across the board. In such an environment, the flight to safety into silver and gold will likely drive unprecedented price appreciation. Read More |
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03.23.18- When Powell Does It, It’s Policy;
That said, even small-scale trader behavior and tactics can bleed over from “aggressive and creative” to illegal pretty easily by the letter of regulatory law. To see central banks loudly and proudly and openly boasting of their market manipulations, which have drastic impact on not just market participants but on all citizens (often while cloaking themselves in the fraudulent fabric of ‘public service’) is repugnant. Read More |
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03.22.18- The Central Bank Bubble: It Will Be Ugly
Central Banks over the last decade simply created credit out of thin air. Snap a finger, and credit magically appears. Only central banks can perform this type of credit magic. It’s called printing money and they have gone on the record saying they are magic people. Read More |
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03.21.18- What Should Gold Investors Expect From The New Fed Chair?
First FOMC meeting under Powell as Chair Do you remember your first bike ride? Or the first date – and kiss? People often fear doing something new. It’s normal. We are status quo creatures. We are afraid of changes. They are risky. Particularly in monetary policy. Indeed, we like technical innovations, but we prefer predictable and conservative banks, don’t we? Read More |
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03.20.18- Fed Day: Mr. Market Meets Mr. Hyde
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03.19.18- Will Rising Interest Rates
There are typically two sides to the debate on the impact of gold from the change in interest rates. There are those who see rising interest rates as good for gold, and there are those that see rising interest rates as harmful to the price of gold. But who is right? We look to see which side is correct? Could they both be wrong? Or both are right? Read More |
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03.17.18- Weekend Rant: The recycling of the US dollars financing the US deficits is going to end
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03.16.18- The Fed Has Its Finger On The Button Of A Nuclear Debt Bomb
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03.15.18- Shooting Ourselves In the Foot
Serious problems affect Americans. Problems first, solutions at the end!We did what to ourselves? Our representatives, senators, and Presidents, supposedly acting on our behalf, voted for and created what history has shown are huge monetary and fiscal mistakes. Some will disagree, but consider this partial list: Read More |
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03.14.18- Will Inflation Burst the Everything Bubble?
In the last 24 hours we’ve seen:
The markets have already taken note, with inflationary assets exploding out of downtrends and entering raging bull markets. Read More |
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03.13.18- Cash vs. Gold vs. Inflation: Would You Prefer $2,000 or $4,900,000?
Inflation = Game, Set, Match: Gold. Fears of rising inflation will push the gold price higher. Gold has plenty of room to run up to the top end of its range, near $1,360. If it breaks above that ceiling and heads higher, it won’t take much to test $1,400. Read More |
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03.12.18- Super-Duper-Irrational Exuberance, Report 11 Mar 2018
Anyway, Greenspan cut interest rates a few times in late 1998. Technology companies were able to raise $5 million or more with just a sketch on a napkin (“serviette” for those outside the US). Companies at a “later stage”, though without revenues, could raise $30 million. A company called “Webvan” was able to raise nearly a billion dollars without ever becoming profitable. Read More |
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03.10.18- Central Bankers Never Get it Right
Why should we ever listen to any of these self-important central bankers. They are consistently inaccurate in their forecasts and policies. Their timing is always wrong as they are always behind the curve. More importantly they are distorting the natural economic cycles by artificial manipulation of markets and thereby creating booms and busts of an enormous magnitude. Central banks and bankers should not exist. They fulfil no purpose and the world economy would function so much better without them. Read More |
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03.09.18- New Fed Chairman Hints at Big Policy Change That Could Crush Markets
On February 5th, Jerome Powell was sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. The next day, in his first testimony before Congress, he hinted that some big changes were on his mind. However, when you’re the head of the world’s most powerful central banking system, making major policy changes can have serious consequences. Read More |
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03.08.18- MOPE; The Government
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03.07.18- Is Jerome Powell About to End the Famed
That something is the famed “Fed put” or the idea that the Fed would immediately move to prop up stocks any time they began to fall. Jerome Powell was sworn in as Fed Chair on February 5th 2018. At that time, the market was in the sharp sell-off annotated in the chart below: Read More |
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03.06.18- Are Subprime Debt Slaves, a Leading Indicator, Worrying the Fed?
The new Fed remains a somewhat unknown quantity: There are still four vacancies on the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors that forms the core of the policy-making FOMC. The new Chairman, Jerome Powell, has already shown in his testimony before Congress last week that he may use a little more straight talk than his predecessors, and the markets took notice. No one knows for sure what this new Fed will look like once the four vacancies are filled. But this new Fed will likely try to push interest rates back to a somewhat more normal level and lighten their balance sheet so that they have some options when the business cycle trips over balled-up credit problems. Read More |
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03.05.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Now, a Trade War -
Currency wars do not exist all the time; they arise under certain conditions and persist until there is either systemic reform or systemic collapse. The conditions that give rise to currency wars are too much debt and too little growth. In those circumstances, countries try to steal growth from trading partners by cheapening their currencies to promote exports and create export-related jobs. Read More |
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03.03.18- Rising Economic Head Winds
Remember the “fiscal cliff” drama of Dec. 31, 2012, when Congress raised taxes and cut spending to avoid a debt default and government shutdown? Remember the actual government shutdown in October 2013 as Republicans held the line against more government spending? Well, congratulations if you do, because everyone else seems to have forgotten. Read More |
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03.02.18- An Apocalyptic Paul Tudor Jones Warns The Fed Is About To Lose Control
Joining such luminaries as Bill Gross and Ray Dalio, who have both claimed the bull market in bonds is over, PTJ joins the choir and warns that "markets disciplined Greece for its budget transgressions. Read More |
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03.01.18- The Latest in a Long Line: The USD’s Inevitable Fiat-Currency Failure
Fiat currencies have been tried again and again and again and again throughout history, and they always fail. But because the vast majority of Americans can’t remember a time when America didn’t seem like the immortal ruler of the world, they simply can’t imagine a state of reality where that is not the case. Read More |
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02.28.18- Lemonade Stand Economics
“Dad, I’m excited and ready for business. Mom made me sign an IOU when she gave me sugar and frozen lemonade so I have stuff to sell.” Timmy looked up at his father and smiled in anticipation. “Great job! This’ll be a learning experience. Here comes your first customer.” James, his father, wanted to be helpful, but expected Timmy to interact with customers. A retired gentleman pushed his walker toward the lemonade stand and said, “Hi little fellow, I want a cup of that lemonade.” Read More |
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02.27.18- "Money For Nothin'...
Now look at them yo-yo’s that’s the way you do it After 9 years of artificial liquidity drenching markets the same game continues in 2018: It’s raining money. Again. Still. Read More |
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02.26.27.18-.18- The Dirty Work Is Already Done,
Yet across the planet, folks high and low are already telling him exactly how he should do his job. What’s more, they’re passing advanced judgement on things that may or may not happen. For example, the South China Morning Post recently offered the following opinion: Read More |
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02.24.18- An Insider’s Insider to Advise the Fed
We had an event like that last week. The most important financial story I have read in a long time went completely unnoticed. It was not reported in the mainstream media. You will not hear it discussed anywhere, you will not see it reported anywhere. Read More |
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02.23.18- The End of (Artificial) Stability
There is nothing natural about the stability of the past 9 years. The bullish trends in risk assets are artificial constructs of central bank/state policies. As these policies are reduced or lose their effectiveness, the era of artificial stability is coming to a close. The 9-year run of Bull-trend stability is ending as a result of a confluence of macro dynamics: Read More |
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02.22.18- Trump’s New Dark Money Man Takes Over
While attempting to lock in her record, Yellen urged, “There’s less to lose sleep about now than has been true for quite some time.” Well, a lot of people lost sleep these past few days. And they might lose more sleep in the days to come. Markets were due for a correction. Whether it turns out to be something worse, time will tell. Read More |
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02.21.18- The Fed’s “Catch 22”
Money and credit creation in excess of wealth output causes currency devaluation. It is this currency devaluation that arises from money and credit printing that causes “price inflation.” More money (and credit) chasing a relatively less amount of “goods.” Read More |
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02.20.18- The Federal Government Can’t Account for $21 Trillion. Does Anybody Care?
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02.19.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Matrix Revealed -
Major institutions on this planet that control Military, Money, Energy, Government, Medical, Corporate, Media, and Education are becoming, more and more, global cartels, horizontally integrated across national borders. Read More |
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02.17.18- The Worst Threat We Face
Last week, volatility made a long-overdue return to the US and global equitymarkets. It began with a 2-day back-to-back violent drop. Day 3 saw a big rebound, swiftly followed by two more days of gut-wrentching losses. And then finally, last Friday, the day saw massive swings both high and low, ending with a huge upside run. Read More |
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02.16.18- New Fed Chairman Will Trigger A Historic Stock Market Crash In 2018
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02.15.18- Do Financial Markets Still Exist?
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02.14.18- This May Be The Beginning Of The Great Financial Reckoning
And the numbers are pretty gruesome. In order to plug the gaps from its soaring deficits, the Treasury Department expects to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year. Then nearly $1.1 trillion next fiscal year. And up to $1.3 trillion the year after that. Read More |
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02.13.18- Danielle DiMartino Booth: Don't Count On The Powell Fed To Rescue The Markets
The recent gut-wrenching drop in asset prices began on the first day of the job for new Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
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02.12.18- The Fed’s Impossible Choice In Just Three Charts
Wage inflation is acceleratin Normally, towards the end of a cycle companies have trouble finding enough workers to keep up with their rising sales. So they start paying new hires more generously. This ignites “wage inflation,” which is one of the signals central banks use to decide when to start raising interest rates. Read More |
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02.10.18- The Spark That Lights the Wick: Velocity of Money to Ignite Inflation
The velocity of money measures the turnover of dollars, how often they are spent, and then spent again by their recipients, over a certain period of time. It has been falling, more or less on a line, since 2008. Read More |
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02.09.18- Global Synchronized Bond Collapse
However, the more salient phenomenon now underway—far more important than the rather pedestrian move higher in global GDP--is the globally synchronized bond collapse, which the Main Stream Financial Media is dismissing with alacrity. Yields are on the move higher around the world and the rate of change is now escalating. Read More |
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02.08.18- Trump’s New Dark Money Man Takes Over
While attempting to lock in her record, Yellen urged, “There’s less to lose sleep about now than has been true for quite some time.” Well, a lot of people lost sleep these past few days. And they might lose more sleep in the days to come. Markets were due for a correction. Whether it turns out to be something worse, time will tell. Read More |
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02.07.28- What The Crypto Crash & Stock Market Plunge Have In Common
Also having a rough start to the week is anyone with a long stock position or a cryptocurrency portfolio. The Dow Jones closed down over 1,200 points today, building off of Friday's plunge of 666 points. The relentless ascension of stock prices has suddenly jolted into reverse, delivering the biggest 2-day drop stocks have seen in years. Read More |
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02.06.18- Two Elephants In The Room That The GOP Has Completely Forgotten
Needless to say, both ends of the Acela Corridor are completely oblivious to these twin menaces. Indeed, they are the proverbial elephants in the room, thereby giving rise to a considerable irony: To wit, the GOP party of the elephant, which is supposed to be the palladium of financial rectitude in American politics, has forgotten about them completely. Read More |
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02.05.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What the FISA Memo Reveals about the FBI, DNC, GOP–and the sketchy timeline
In fact, the contents of the memo should be disturbing to everyone. But Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, and Edward Snowden revealed much worse. Americans are desensitized to immense abuses of their rights. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton Campaign paid Christopher Steele $160,000 to dig up information on Trump team members including Carter Page. Steele also provided this information to the FBI. Read More |
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02.03.18- Fed’s QE Unwind Accelerates Sharply
The Fed’s balance sheet for the week ending January 31, released this afternoon, completes the fourth month of QE-unwind. And it’s starting to be a doozie. This “balance sheet normalization” impacts two types of assets: Treasury securities and mortgage backed securities (MBS) that the Fed acquired during the years of QE and maintained afterwards. Read More |
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02.02.18- Yellen Starts Work At Brookings Institution On Monday
Fed watchers will recall that shortly after he departed the Fed to make way for Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke first joined the Brookings Institution in DC (before also joining PIMCO and Citadel as an advisor), where he became blogger emeritus. Fast forward a little over three years, when deja vu has hit, and as Steve Liesman reported moments ago, Janet Yellen - who is still technically employed by the Fed until this weekend - will begin work Monday morning as a distinguished fellow at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC Read More |
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02.01.18- The Dollar Breakdown:
This event may signal the most important trend of 2018: the breakdown of the dollar. Read More |
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01.31.18- Big Little Lies by Central Bankers
Just in the past 24 hours we got a heap of communications that can be considered cringeworthy at best, highly disingenuous more likely. But it all fits with a script that has been unfolding for years. After all central bank intervention was supposed to be an emergency driven policy to re-inflate a global economy and help financial institutions at the brink of collapse back to solvency and health. The big little lie: Central banks would nurse economies back to health and then normalize their policies and unwind their balance sheets. Truth: It’s never going to happen. Read More |
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01.30.18- We’re Getting A Stock Market Correction (At Best) Or A Crash (At Worst)
My firm was Greenwich Capital Markets, one of a select group of “primary dealers” allowed to transact directly with the Federal Reserve. Monetary policy is conducted through open-market operations run by a trading desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Read More |
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01.29.18- The Fed Will Ignite The Next “Financial Crisis”
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01.27.18- Beware These Mischievous Actions Behind the Fed’s Curtain
It’s almost like they can’t make up their mind when it comes to monetary policy. On one hand, they’re raising interest rates, but are also leaving the 2018 policy outlook unchanged. And on the other hand, in spite of the evidence I’ll point to in a second, they’re still talking about “negative” interest rates over at the St. Louis Fed: Read More |
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01.26.18- Fed Nominee Marvin Goodfriend Lied to the Senate about Taxing Cash
Unfortunately this issue that would directly impact every single American wasn’t brought up until well over an hour into this testimony. It was then that Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto asked Mr. Goodfriend about his past advocacy on “taxing currency” and whether he would support such a policy today. Read More |
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01.25.18- Real Estate to be Torpedoed in 2018?
But since then, home prices have skyrocketed to new highs thanks to federally sponsored low-interest mortgages. In fact, home prices have risen so much, so fast that Americans have all but forgotten the Great Recession and foreclosure crisis of 2008/2009. Read More |
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01.24.18- No Sugar High from Tax Cut Unless the Fed and Banking System Provide the Sugar
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01.23.18- "The Dollar Will Be Destroyed By Its Own Government"
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01.22.18- Is The Federal Reserve Really Thinking About Negative Interest Rates?!
It’s almost so incredible that were it not published on the Fed’s own St. Louis branch website, it might be hard to believe it’s true. But apparently St. Louis Federal Reserve economist Yi Wen disagrees with the projected Fed mantra that it’s time to raise interest rates. Because he actually just wrote an essay explaining what negative interest rates are, and how it could be a perfect next move for the Fed. Read More |
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01.20.18- A Shocking Admission: “The Federal Reserve is a Criminal Conspiracy”
In an extraordinary admission, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve conceded that the Federal Reserve is “at heart a criminal conspiracy of bankers.” The Board followed up this revelation with a breezy confession that the Fed “doesn’t really give a rat’s rear-end about the American people, and we’re tired of having to claim we do.” Read More |
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01.19.18- The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One
And if you look at the stock and asset markets, as Donald Trump tends to do (and as Barack Obama did, too), you’d think all is fine with the world. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 24% last year. The Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index rose 6.20%. The price of one bitcoin rose about 1,646%. And so far 2018 has been more of the same. On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4% last year and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1%, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7%, its lowest level in nearly four decades.Read More |
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01.18.18- If Interest Rates Spike, Here's Who Will Be Hurt The Most
And while the financial sector is poised to benefit from this increase, although not if the curve flattens and eventually inverts, something which would unleash havoc among the banks, there are many parts of the US economy that will be unequivocally and negatively impacted from the rise in interest rates. Among them are housing, business investment and, of course, consumer spending: with credit card already at record highs, increase in the APR will crush America's purchasing power. Read More |
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01.17.18- Albert Edwards: The Trigger For The Next Market Correction
Edwards is the global strategist for Societe Generale and is based in London. He spoke at his firm’s annual investment conference in London on July 9. A copy of his slides, as well as those from his colleague Andrew Lapthorne’s presentation, can be found below. Read More |
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01.16.18- As the Controlled Inflation Scheme
On Monday the Federal Reserve released its latest report of consumer credit outstanding. According to the Fed’s bean counters, U.S. consumers racked up $28 billion in November in new credit card debt and in new student, auto, and other non-mortgage loans. This amounted to an 8.8 percent increase in consumer borrowing. It also ran total outstanding consumer debt up to $3.83 trillion. Read More |
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01.15.18- Drowning In The Money River
It's a big club and you ain't in it. ~ George Carlin If you suspect society is unfair, that there's a different set of rules the rich live by, you're right. I've had ample chance to witness first-hand evidence of this in my time working on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Simply put: our highly financialized economy is gamed to enrich those who run it, at the expense of everybody else. The Money River A recent experience really drove this home for me. Read More |
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01.13.18- Social Change Will Upend the Status Quo
The core narrative of the Status Quo is that nothing fundamental needs to be changed: all the problems can be solved with more "free money" (borrowed from the future at low rates of interest) and a few policy tweaks such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) (the topic of my new book Money and Work Unchained). This core narrative is false: everything needs to change, from the bottom up. And that of course terrifies those gorging at the trough of status quo wealth and power. Read More |
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01.12.18- Party While You Can - Central Bank Ready To Pop The 'Everything' Bubble
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01.11.18- Traders Remind Central Banks to Take Care on Route to Exit Door
A minor tweak in the Bank of Japan’s bond-purchase operation Tuesday saw the yen strengthen more than 1 percent in two days. A change in the way China’s central bank manages the yuan sparked losses in that currency while recent hawkish comments from European Central Bank officials nudged the euro higher. Read More |
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01.10.18- The day I found out it was all rigged
The most exciting stories from the morning’s newspapers were reviews of the upcoming Iron Man 2 film. But all that changed at around 2:45pm when, without warning, the stock market crashed, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,000 points within minutes. It was unprecedented… especially because there was absolutely no reason why stocks should have fallen so much. Read More |
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01.09.18- What Has QE Wrought?
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01.08.18- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: UFOs, Tesla, DeLonge, ETS, Covert Ops
This is a “what if” story. But it’s also based on decades of experience analyzing propaganda and cover stories. It’s based on the knowledge that military and intelligence operatives are trained to lie, and they like to lie, and they get up in the morning, licking their chops, because they know they’re going to lie during another day in paradise. Read More |
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01.06.18- It’s Not About Democracy: Control Fraud Is the Core of our Political System
he many are finally calling out the abusers of power because there’s no longer any need to pay the corrupting costs of centralization. If we strip away the pretense of democracy, what is the core of our political System? Read More |
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01.05.18- Final Warning for America - The Fed Coin
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01.04.17- Phillips Curve R.I.P.
Central banks’ excuse for their massive injections of liquidity in the 21st century is that they are striving to stimulate the 2% rate of inflation that they think is the requirement for sustained rises in wages and GDP. In a total contradiction of the Phillips Curve, in Japan massive doses of central bank liquidity have resulted in the collapse of both consumer and financial asset prices. In the US the result has been a large increase in stock averages propelled by unrealistic P/E ratios and financial speculation resulting in Tesla’s capitalization at times exceeding that of General Motors. Read More |
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01.03.18- Why the Financial System Will Break: You Can't "Normalize" Markets that Depend on Extreme Monetary Stimulus
In a nutshell, central banks are promising to "normalize" their monetary policy extremes in 2018. Nice, but there's a problem: you can't "normalize" markets that are now entirely dependent on extremes of monetary stimulus. Attempts to "normalize" will break the markets and the financial system. Let's start with the core dynamic of the global economy and nosebleed-valuation markets: credit. Modern finance has many complex moving parts, and this complexity masks its inner simplicity. Read More |
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01.02.18- Forecast 2018 — What Could Go Wrong?
Since I believe that the financial system is at the heart of today’s meta-question (What Could Go Wrong?), it would be perhaps more to the point to ask: what has held this matrix of rackets together so long? After all, rackets are characterized by pervasive lying and fraud, meaning their operations don’t add up. Things that don’t comport with reality are generally prone to failure so sooner or later they have to implode. Read More |
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01.01.18- The Dreaded “Flattening Yield Curve” Meets QE Unwind
The price of three-month Treasury securities fell and the yield — which moves in the opposite direction — rose, ending the year at 1.39%, after having spiked to 1.47% on December 26, the highest since September 12, 2008. This is in the upper half of the Fed’s new target range for the federal funds rate (1.25% to 1.50%). Back in October 2015, the yield was still at 0%: Read More |
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12.30.17- Doug Casey On The Coming Financial Crisis: "It's A Gigantic Accident Waiting To Happen"
Justin: Doug, I know you disagree with Yellen. But I’m wondering why she would even say this? Has she lost her mind? Read More |
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12.28.17- The Dark Power Behind the Frauds and Financial Asset Bubbles - Whose Fool Are You?
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12.27.17- Doug Kass' 15 Surprises For 2018: FANG Crackdown, Gold All-Time-Highs, Stocks Slump
After a year of historically low volatility and ever-rising stock prices, the bullish consensus was "in" and the contrary was "out" in 2017. But after the Trump election win in late 2016, a market on steroids was not a conclusion or forecast by any main stream Wall Street forecaster. Read More |
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12.25.17- Ready To Delete The Fed
That is, the writer didn't intend to enlighten, and for 99% of the people in the country, it won't -- because America is, for the most part, an innumerate nation. It is for this very reason that I have pounded my head against the wall on this web page for over 10 years. If the people of this nation were not innumerate there would have been an utterly vicious reaction by now and not one single politician -- or Fed President -- would still be in office. None. They'd have either left peacefully or piecefully long ago. Read More |
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12.23.17- Weekend Rant: Benjamin Franklin’s
On September 17, 1787 on the final day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman as he walked out of Independence Hall. “Well Doctor, what have we got– a republic, or a monarchy?” she asked. It was a burning question on everyone’s mind: what form of government would the Constitutional delegates establish for the new country? Franklin didn’t hesitate. “A republic– if you can keep it.” Read More |
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12.22.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: De Facto Travel Restrictions Now Exist For Americans
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12.21.17- Yield Curve Steepens Dramatically:
The yield curve is said to steepen when the spreads between short-term and long-term rates increases. The yield curve flattens when spreads shrink. A bearish steepener occurs when rates are rising and long-term yields are rising more than short-term rates. Spreads widen. A bullish steepener occurs when rates are falling and short-term rates are falling faster than long-term rates. Spreads widen. A bullish flattener occurs when rates are falling and long-term rates are falling faster than short-term rates. Spreads narrow. Read More |
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12.20.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How to Recapture the True Spirit of Christmas in a Toxic Age
I keep waiting to encounter the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” Christmastime environment that Charles Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol: “when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Read More |
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12.19.17- Bad Juju! US Treasury 10Y Term Premia Crushed As Fed Unwinds Treasury Note/Bond Holdings
As The Fed dumps their Treasury Note/Bond holdings, the 10 year Term Premium declines. The Term Premium is the compensation that investors require for bearing the risk that short-term Treasury yields do not evolve as they expected. Read More |
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12.18.17- Central Banks Want the World to Carry On While They Quietly Tighten
Led by interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China, central banks around the world shifted toward a tighter monetary stance this week. Yet the moves were either so well-telegraphed, or so tiny, and the language about future action so hedged, that there was barely a ripple in financial markets. Read More |
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12.16.17- Four Charts Prove The 'Economic Recovery' Is Just A Fed-Induced Entitlement Program For The Wealthy
Historically "economic recovery" was largely characterized by job and wage growth, distributed across the income spectrum, and a rebound in GDP growth to north of ~3%-5%. These days, the notion of "economic recovery" has been hijacked by the Fed and bastardized in such a way that they celebrate "asset bubbles" rather than real growth in economic output. Read More |
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12.15.17- And So Begins The Rug-Yank Phase Of Fed Policy
Take the latest tax bill, for instance. The GOP wants to tax less and spend more. The Democrat party wants to tax more and spend even more. We don’t recall seeing any proposals to tax less, spend less, and shrink the size of the state. And why would we? Read More |
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12.14.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Get The Rope, Pitchforks And Torches
There is one simple and easily actionable approach that each of us could take to try to wrest control over health policy decisions away from the lobbyists who now control it with little effective counterbalance and put it back in the hands of our patients, who should be powerful shapers of such decision making. This is a short excerpt from an article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) on a conversation they urge doctors to have with you. The gist of it? Obamacare and forced cost-shifting in general is something you should demand more of from politicians. Read More |
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12.13.17- The Fed is Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic (the Iceberg Comes in 2018).
The entire financial world expects the Fed to raise rates a final time. This will mark the fifth rate hike since December 2015, and the fourth of the last 12 months. Throughout this time period, the Fed has routinely stated that it is confused as to why inflation is “too low.” Inflation is not too low. The method the Fed uses to measure inflation is intentionally incorrect. As a result, the official inflation numbers reflect whatever the Fed wants, as opposed to reality. Read More |
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12.12.17- The Fed's Fantasy on Neutral Interest Rates
The neutral rate currently appears to be quite low by historical standards, implying that the federal funds rate would not have to rise much further to get to a neutral policy stance. If the neutral level rises somewhat over time, as most FOMC participants expect, additional gradual rate hikes would likely be appropriate over the next few years to sustain the economic expansion.Read More |
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12.11.17- The Process Through Which the First Major Central Bank Goes Bust Has Begun
The goal here was to reflate the financial system by pushing the “risk free rate” to extraordinary lows. By doing this, Central Bankers were hoping to: 1) Backstop the financial system (sovereign bonds are the bedrock for all risk). Read More |
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12.09.17- Warning: Trump’s Federal Reserve Pick Hates Gold and Cash
There are stories of banks and governments suspending accounts for no legitimate reason. Furthermore, the interest rates at banks hardly give you much incentive to store your money there. But as with anything that gives individuals more control over their lives, the government doesn’t like it. They want the ultimate control to cut you off from your economic power. Read More |
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12.08.17- Finally, An Honest Inflation Index – Guess What It Shows
To which the sound money community keeps responding, “You’re looking in the wrong place! Include the prices of stocks, bonds and real estate in your models and you’ll see that inflation is high and rising.” Well it appears that someone at the Fed has finally decided to see what would happen if the CPI included those assets, and surprise! the result is inflation of 3%, or half again as high as the Fed’s target rate. Read More |
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12.07.17- Central Banks, Governments & Keynesian Economists Are Losing Their $hit Over Bitcoin
In this particular case, it happens to be bitcoin! With bitcoin now on the cusp of breaking through $12,000 and a $200 billion market cap it seems all the puppets of the archaic, violent, tyrannical system of money and banking are losing their $hit! Read More |
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12.06.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: BLOCKBUSTER! - Deep Black Ops Contractor Exposes OKC!
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12.05.17- The Economics of Bitcoin
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12.04.17- Three Blatant Lies The Fed Just Told You
Most of the little tidbits I gleaned from the latest meeting minutes (go here if you missed my expose earlier this week) are prevarications, obfuscations, or bald-faced lies. Here are a few. Lie #1: Equities rise and fall because of investor behavior. Here’s what they said: Broad equity price indexes rose notably, reportedly reflecting in part investors’ perceptions that tax reform was becoming more likely. Read More |
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12.02.17- Weekend Rant: Wall Street Criminals Continue Their Fraud And Theft: NO JAIL TIME  Via America’s Lawyer: Mike Papantonio talks with Danielle DiMartino Booth about how a new federal lawsuit says Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks rigged the U.S Treasury Bond Market to gain profits for themselves. Read More |
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12.01.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Ant and the Grasshopper
This tweet was getting retweeted all over the place last weekend. Apologies for the bad language. Read More |
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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?
New figureheads arrive at the Fed every so often. When they do, they inherit all of the policy decisions that were made before them.
What the most important chart in the world is predicting
On April 2, 1792, George Washington signed into law what’s commonly referred to as the Mint and Coinage Act.
Jim Rickards calls them “silent dog whistles.”
Even by the deeply flawed and misleading Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation is at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s target. By other measures that more accurately portray inflation, it is well above target.
June 12 is just three weeks away.
Over this past weekend the movie 
“Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Geniuses remove it.“
This week, gold and silver traded lower ahead of the FOMC minutes released on Wednesday. As widely expected, there was no change in the target for the Fed Funds Rate, which will probably be raised a quarter point in June. Yesterday, precious metals began to recover their poise, improving from the lows of earlier in the week.
Former Congressman Ron Paul has strongly argued following the alleged chemical gas attack blamed on the Syrian government that it makes no logical sense for Assad to order a gas attack, and has called the accusations a telltale sign of a false flag attack meant to provide justification for the U.S. military to maintain a presence in Syria.
The Fed is now officially screwed. 
I hear a lot of talk lately in the alternative media (and even the mainstream media) of the potential for World War III. The general assumption when one hears that term is that “nuclear conflict” is imminent. But a world war does not necessarily have to be fought with nukes. For example, we are perhaps already witnessing the first shots fired in a global economic war as the Trump administration gets ready to implement far-reaching trade tariffs. This action might provide cover (or justification) for destructive attacks on the U.S. fiscal system by China, Japan, Russia, the EU, OPEC nations, etc. The ultimate attack being a dumping of their U.S. debt holdings and the death of the dollar’s world reserve status. 
In a striking interview with Goldman's Allison Nathan, legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones argues that US inflation is set to accelerate sharply, making bonds a very poor investment, and that the Fed must act swiftly to tackle financial bubbles created by prolonged monetary easing.
Summary: Timmy, a precocious ten-year-old opens a lemonade stand and learns about unbacked currencies. 
With apologies to the Dire Straights:
Jerome Powell, the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, just completed his third week on the job. He’s hardly had enough time to learn how to operate the office coffee maker, let alone the all-in-one printer. He still doesn’t know what roach coach menu items induce a heinous gut bomb.
Sometimes the most important news is buried so deep it’s not even news. A certain story may be the most important market development by far, but if no one notices and no one understands the significance, it hardly qualifies as news.
During her last news conference in December, Janet Yellen stood firm on her record stating, “The global economy is doing well. We’re in a synchronized expansion. This is the first time in many years that we’ve seen this.”
Before diving into the topic, let’s be clear about one thing: The economic definition of “inflation” is the increase in money supply relative to the marginal increase of wealth output (GDP) in the economic system for which money supply is created. This is differentiated from “price inflation,” which is “a general rise in prices.”
[Catherine Austin Fitts Note: This article was submitted by Terrence Leveck for publication. It was so substantially edited that we decided to publish at Solari.com. Our readers really want to know where the missing money went and how we get it back!] 
The following information comes from insider interviews with Ellis Medavoy and Richard Bell, two people I interview extensively in my collection, 
Ever since the credit and equities crash of 2008, Americans have been bombarded relentlessly with the narrative that our economy is “in recovery”. For some people, simply hearing this ad nauseam is enough to stave off any concerns they may have for the economy. For some of us, however, it’s just not enough. We need concrete data that actually supports the notion, and for years, we have seen none. In fact, we have heard from officials at the Federal Reserve that the exact opposite is true. They have admitted that the so-called recovery has been fiat driven, and that there is a danger that when the Fed finally stops artificially propping up the economy with constant stimulus and near zero interest rates, the whole farce might come down. 
For many decades the Federal Reserve has rigged the bond market by its purchases. And for about a century, central banks have set interest rates (mainly to stabilize their currency’s exchange rate) with collateral effects on securities prices. It appears that in May 2010, August 2015, January/February 2016, and currently in February 2018 the Fed is rigging the stock market by purchasing S&P equity index futures in order to arrest stock market declines driven by fundamentals, and to push prices back up in keeping with a decade of money creation. 
Less than two weeks ago, the United States Department of Treasury very quietly released its own internal projections for the federal government’s budget deficits over the next several years.
The new Fed Chair may break from his predecessors
Critics of “New Age” monetary policy have been predicting that central banks would eventually run out of ways to trick people into borrowing money. There are at least three reasons to wonder if that time has finally come:
Forget the Trump tax cuts, the Senate budget deal, the Fed's Quantitative Tightening and the collapse in foreign buying of US Treasuries: after years of dormancy, the biggest catalyst for a sharp inflationary spike has finally emerged, and it is none of the above. Behold: the velocity of money.
We have all heard, in ad nauseam fashion, Wall Street’s current favorite mantra touting a global synchronized economic recovery. For the record, global GDP growth for 2017 was 3.7%, according to the International Monetary Fund. And, although this is an improvement from recent years, you must take into account that in 2004 it was 4.4%, in 2005 it was 3.8%, in 2006 it was 4.3%, and in 2007 it was 4.2%. The Point being, it’s not as if the current rate of global growth has climbed to a level never before witnessed in history—it’s not even close. 
During her last news conference in December, Janet Yellen stood firm on her record stating, “The global economy is doing well. We’re in a synchronized expansion. This is the first time in many years that we’ve seen this.”
Today saw Jerome Powell sworn into office as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, replacing Janet Yellen. Looking at the sea of red across Monday's financial markets, Mr. Powell is very likely *not* having the sort of first day on the job he was hoping for...
It wasn’t the bombshell everyone hoped for. But the release of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) memo did corroboratewhat we already knew: the government is corrupt.
A glitch in the monetary matrix?
Recently, we saw the dollar index (the DXY), which measures the USD against a basket of the world’s major currencies, break below its support of 91 for the first time since January of 2015 (Figure 1).
How stupid do central bankers think we are? By account of their communications and actions the answer is: Very.
I started in the Treasury bond business in 1985 after a 10-year career in commercial banking. I retired as a senior officer of Citibank that year at a relatively young age and made the move to Wall Street.
There seems to be a very large consensus the markets have entered into a “permanently high plateau,” or an era in which price corrections in asset prices have been effectively eliminated through fiscal and monetary policy.
Sometimes we get the impression that the Fed has absolutely no clue what they’re doing.
The government shutdown wasn’t long enough to delay the nomination hearing for an economist who could be considered to be one of the 
Real estate is the number one form of wealth for most people. However, as the last housing bubble and ensuing recession have shown, real estate is not always a safe investment. In 2006, housing prices peaked before falling to new lows in 2011 in the aftermath of the recession.
There has been chatter about whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) will result in a temporary stimulus, or sugar high, to U.S. economic activity because of the increase in corporate after-tax profits and the increase in household disposable income that will flow from the tax-rate cuts. How can putting this extra after-tax income in the hands of businesses and households not stimulate private sector spending? In order to answer this question, you have to follow the money. 
At the same time the Federal Reserve claims it’s going to raise interest rates and normalize its balance sheet, it’s also publishing an essay 
We made it through 2017.
Interest rates are finally rising, and as we 
American consumers are not only feeling good. They’re feeling great. They’re borrowing money – and spending it – like tomorrow will never come.
The nation is fragmenting because the Status Quo is failing the majority of the citizenry.
Many people do not realize that America is not only entering a new year, but within the next month we will also be entering a new economic era. In early February, Janet Yellen is set to leave the Federal Reserve and be replaced by the new Fed chair nominee, Jerome Powell. Now, to be clear, the Fed chair along with the bank governors do not set central bank policy. Policy for most central banks around the world is dictated in Switzerland by the 
Global central banks are being served a sharp reminder by investors that their monetary policy planning carries the potential to roil financial markets in 2018.
May 6, 2010 started off as a pretty boring day.
It has now become a daily ritual in which story after story of broke Americans plaster the web. Yet somehow on the mainstream press, very little is discussed about this topic. Americans are largely broke because 
“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” - Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas
Its going to be bad juju (or incoming weeks) for some Treasury investors as The Fed continues its “great unwind” of their $4.4 Trillion balance sheet.
In her testimony to the Congressional Economic Committee on November 29, 2017, the Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that the neutral rate appears to be quite low by historical standards. From this, she concluded that the federal funds rate would not have to increase much to reach a neutral stance.
In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, Central Banks began cornering the sovereign bond market via Zero or even Negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) programs.
I told you I’d get you the rest of my Fed meeting notes soon, and (unlike the Fed) I always try to say what I mean.
