The deflationists continue to run rampant with glee as stocks, gold and commodities in general get hammered. Is this the market giving a big “thumbs down” to quantitative easing (QE)? Have central banks started to lose the final battle in their war to reflate asset prices? Or is this just the big dump before the insiders buy at the bottom and start the next pump?
[Read more...]Trees Don’t Grow Gold
April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
If you’re the sort of person who keeps a diary, put a star in the corner of this week’s entries. Ten years from now, you’ll look back on this week and be amazed at what people were saying. What will be even more amazing is that some people were doing exactly the wrong thing at the right moment. More on that below.
[Read more...]Shale, the Conquering Hero!
March 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Finally! Something happened recently that had nothing to do with interest rates, monetary policy, or the currency wars!
Australia’s Linc Energy’s announced that there could be a whopping $20 trillion worth of oil locked in Australian oil shale formations. The geology looks promising. That is, there is probably oil, or something very much like it trapped in the Ackargina Basin in South Australia.
[Read more...]Germans Ban Getting Naked
May 19, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Austria is not Australia. Sorry about that.
Late last week we reported that the Australian Mint sold more gold coins in the first two weeks of April than it had in all of the first quarter combined. That was a mistake. It was the Austrian Mint, which makes a lot more sense, given that nearly all of the sales were to Europeans who are in a mild state of panic about the stability of their currency and their banking sector.
[Read more...]The Great Money Shift
May 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment
It will be a thoughtful reckoning today. Put on your thinking cap. There is a lot to think about. What exactly is going on in the world and what, if anything, can you do about it?
Let’s start with China, where Shanghai stocks fell 5.1% yesterday and are 26% off the index’s 52-week high. If Chinese stocks are leading the economy, one crash is in and another could be just beginning.
[Read more...]Europhoria
May 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Monday was the day the world’s capital markets turned into a giant fiat money casino. Consider yourself forewarned. You might be able to trade your way to profits in this market on the tide of easy money being printed now by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB). But the financial markets are setting up for the mother of all collapses.
[Read more...]The New Phase of Chinese Growth
February 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Recently we claimed that borrowing your way to national prosperity is a sure-fire way to servitude and political instability. Today, we aim to prove it. To do so, we cite this article from Reuters. It suggests that China is using or should use its large holdings of US Treasury bonds as a cudgel with which to bludgeon the United States, its strategic adversary/indispensable economic partner.
[Read more...]The “Second Round of Pain”
February 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment
If you’ve been thinking about reducing exposure to stocks, now might be a good time. And if you’ve been thinking about increasing your exposure to precious metals, now might be a good time.
According to Morgan Stanley economist Gerard Minack, the stock market is in for a correction after its 9-month “relief rally.” In a note to clients Minack wrote, “We see the rise from March 2009 as a typical relief rally that follows major bear markets. Those relief rallies can occur regardless of underlying macro conditions, regardless of liquidity conditions and – most importantly – regardless of what happens next… We think risk assets have swung to pricing a better outlook than is likely.”
[Read more...]
Super-Antifragilistic
The more you try to de-risk a system, the more accident-prone it becomes, and the more damaging the accidents are. The economist Hyman Minsky described this aspect of the financial system by saying that stability breeds instability.
But Minsky’s insight does not merely describe stock market tendencies. It goes beyond that…as we are learning from the antics of Ben Bernanke and his central banking peers.
[Read more...]Click for detailed story