Quantitative Easing: How Much is Enough?

Well, not only is the giddiness of the weekend over, but the giddiness of the recent currency and precious metals rally is looking very tired. What’s strange about the dollar rebound is the weakness in Treasuries. The yields on Treasuries are rising again… And if you’re a fan of silver, you won’t want to miss the “Then there was thisâ€� today… So, we’ll talk about the dollar rally, and the Treasury weakness, along with other things this morning. Are you ready? Yes, I’m ready…

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Golden Shell Games

That’s right, gold. You know, the ultimate money. Or Gold: The Once and Future Money, as our friend Nathan Lewis titled his 2007 book, for which we were privileged to write the foreword.

Hey, Wall Street can take a $250 million sewer project in Alabama and turn it into an insurmountable debt 20 times as big. So it can find a way to pervert the Midas metal, too. And the evidence is piling up: You don’t have to be partial to conspiracy theories about the “manipulation� of gold to conclude something just doesn’t look right.

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ETFs and the “Flash Crash”

Liquidity is one of the key selling points for exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but the Dow Jones “flash crash” of May 6 shows how that supposed advantage can turn into a huge liability for investors.

A report this week from the SEC and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found that ETFs accounted for the overwhelming majority of securities that fell at least 60 percent that day. Many of those ETFs fell all the way to $0.01 per share during trading.

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