Federal Reserve

Fractional reserve gold. Like bank notes, banks don't hold the gold they owe to people, so when you come to collect, it may not be there.

Federal Reserve

The Fed has cartelized central banks around the world.

The Fed is forced to acknowledge increasing price inflation.

Central banks including the Fed do not possess the gold they claim they do.

A gold-backed currency can't be the world's reserve currency.

"This is the paradox: to maintain the “exorbitant privilege” of a reserve currency, a nation must “export” its currency in size; a nation that runs trade surpluses cannot supply the world with enough of its currency to act as a reserve currency.
And any nation running large trade deficits will soon empty its gold reserves as international holders of the currency choose to convert their currency into gold, which is exactly what happened in the late 1960s in the U.S."

But gold should be the world's reserve currency.

Foreign Policy

One of the reasons Russia is buying gold is oil is beginning to be traded in gold to get around US sanctions.

Six Russian diplomats have died in the last 60 days. That's crazy. Maybe it's the CIA. Maybe it's Putin.

The bogus intelligence leaks about Trump's ties to Russia are designed to prevent Trump from de-escalating tensions with Russia.

Economy

Microsoft nearing $1 trillion valuation, mostly thanks to android patents.

"Microsoft is generating $2 billion per year in revenue from Android patent royalties, says Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund in a new note on the company.
He estimates that the Android revenue has a 95% margin, so it's pretty much all profit. 
This money, says Sherlund, helps Microsoft hide the fact that its mobile and Xbox groups are burning serious cash. "

Thank the government.

Apple hits record high.

Alan Greenspan suddenly remembers gold is money.

Economic globalization versus political globalization.

Testosterone blamed for bubbles.

Another woman's retailers goes bankrupt.

"BCBG is just one of many retailers to announce store closures in 2017. The Limited shut down all brick-and-mortar locations, including local stores, and also filed for bankruptcy. Macy’s, Sears, Kmart and Ann Taylor will also cut select locations."

Nine retailers closing stores nationwide, but the economy is fine.

The bubble will soon pop despite Trump's reforms.

Big data will not enable a centrally planned economy.

GDP and ZIRP prove the economy is still bad contrary to the hype.


Skepticism of AI concerns voiced by plutocrats.
We need robots to take jobs.

Home ownership rate in 2016 lowest since 1965.

Technology can't prevent recessions because they are caused by misallocation of resources due to low interest rates and artificial credit.

Fractional reserve banking would be limited in a free market.

Bonds containing risky mortgages receive AAA rating as they did in 2007-2008.

There are no Christmas presents in broken Venezuela.

Ten fundamental laws of economics.

Inflation is about the money supply, not prices. Price inflation is a product of monetary inflation.

The correct definition of money is important.

Federal Reserve

Link between NIRP and the war on cash and gold.

Federal Reserve

After confiscating cash, India confiscates gold. More.

Summary of the war on cash.

Federal Reserve

Modi declares war on cash so gold skyrockets. Consequences.

Banks

Western central banks including BIS keep selling gold to keep the price low while China, Russia and others buy it to replace the dollar.

"Obviously, the sellers had no physical gold to sell so they conveniently dumped all this gold in the paper market. It would have been totally impossible for them to do this trade in the real gold market which is only physical of course. Western Central banks have no physical gold of any quantity to sell. This is why they must fabricate paper gold out of thin air in order to dump it in the market. In total these banks officially have around 23,000 tons of gold. I doubt they even hold half that figure. The rest is likely to have been sold covertly."

Oops.

Economy

The illusion of prosperity.

"It seems like markets are also an illusion. How else can the Dow be 63% above the 2000 high whilst the Euro Dow 50 stocks are down 45% in the same period and with Emerging Markets down 36%, Brazil and Hong Kong down 35%, Nikkei down 25% and Shanghai down 49% all since 2014-15. We live in a totally interconnected global economy but there just seems to be more skilled illusionists in the US who can defy reality. With corporate profits declining fast, with current account and budget deficits for half a century, with 95 million people not in the workforce, almost 50 million on food stamps, with Q2 GDP at 1.2% (if real inflation rate was applied GDP would be negative) and with exponentially growing debts of over $200 trillion (incl. unfunded liabilities), you wonder what US investors are smoking."

Not gold.

Politics

In a surprise, Brits vote to leave EU. Great for them. Stocks, pound fall. Gold rises.

Betting sites, polls and rulers were all wrong about Brexit.

"The betting sites were wrong. The polls were wrong. The politicians were wrong."

This is good news for Trump.

Obama and Clinton are on the wrong side of history regarding Brexit, Trump on the right.

"Republican strategists had panned Trump’s decision to travel to the UK in the midst of campaign turmoil, and in the wake of his blistering attack on Hillary Clinton earlier this week.
Now, however, it looks like a risk that paid off handsomely, in the currency of foreign policy credibility." 

That's why he was invisible. The press wouldn't cover him.

Brexit comment:

"This is a sign of people being fed up. It’s a sign of protest against the powers-that-be. I’d like to think that it’s more, that it’s a sign of rebellion against too much political power in the hands of invisible and distant powers, a protest against power itself. "

It's the same sentiment behind Trump's success. This may be the most momentous political event since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Minority babies outnumber whites in US.

Tax and Spend

Venezuela sells off gold reserves to pay debts.

Federal Reserve

Texas government charters private gold depositories.

Federal Reserve

The 500 euro note won't be banned, just phased out.

China moves yuan closer to gold.

Federal Reserve

Clinton emails confirm what I've been saying: the war in Libya was about saving the dollar from gold-backed money. That's why the rebels set up a central bank in Benghazi before the war even started.

IMF supports negative interest rates by the six central banks which have employed them.

Federal Reserve

Paper notes are not money.

Debt is not money.

Federal Reserve

ECB bans 500 euro note.

Stockman on the plan to ban the $100 bill.

Home safes sold out in Japan.

Even BIS admits negative rates are counterproductive. More.

Gold rises.

The role of degraded currency in the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Economy

Semiconductor bigwigs meet to discuss the end of Moore's Law.

Gold demand skyrockets amid crash.

Coffee hits $15 a cup on San Francisco area.

Federal Reserve

Fed raises rates for the first time in seven years, to 1/4 of a point. This tiny hike shows the economy still stinks.

Stocks rise contrary to what might be expected.

"After the Fed’s November meeting, when the Fed decided not to hike interest rates, the stock market fell, indicating the disappointment of market participants.  Because lower interest rates tend to raise asset prices, the market decline was an indication of disapproval from market participants.
At the Fed’s December 16th meeting, in keeping with expectations, they announced they will increase interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. After the announcement, the stock market surged.
While I am always reluctant to associate movements in the stock market with specific causes, this one looks pretty clear. The surge in the stock market came right after the announcement.
Following the conventional wisdom, higher interest rates should lower asset prices, so the rise in the stock market is all the more interesting. Investors appear to believe that the damage being done to the economy as a result of artificially low interest rates is greater than the boost to asset prices that come with low rates."

Good.

Negative interest rates are absurd.

"What we can’t forget is that the real rate of interest can never be negative. The real, or natural, rate of interest is a function of the preference for present goods over future goods. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, in other words. A negative natural rate of interest would mean that someone prefers less in the future to more in the present. Given the choice between $20 today and $10 tomorrow, you would prefer the $10 tomorrow. That is a complete absurdity that would never happen in reality. But when you realize that most of the assumptions made by mainstream economists in creating their models are absurd, unrealistic, and nonsensical, you can understand at least a little why those practitioners of voodoo mathematics think that negative interest rates are a potential policy tool."

The economy is people acting in their own interests, not mathematical models.

Phony job numbers enabled the Fed to raise rates.

"He added that part-time shift work has taken over full-time employment, and this is where much of the jobs gains have shifted to. Schiff alluded to the increase in part-time workers, which saw the biggest gain since September 2012, rising by 319,000 to 6.1 million in November. Ultimately, says Schiff, those who can’t find full-time work are taking part-time jobs."

Some economy.

Gold demand surges.

Economy

Why increasing the supply of commodity money like gold doesn't produce booms and busts. I'm not sure this analysis is complete. When a new gold mine is discovered, people tend to leave their current jobs to find gold, producing a local boom. When the gold runs out, there's a bust. I guess this is true of every natural resource. It has nothing to do with the resource being money.

Economy

Excellent description of today's economy.

Every boom and bust are different, and the next will be different from the last.

"First of all, boom and busts do not necessarily occur in the same sectors or with the same magnitude from one monetary expansion to the next. The last financial crisis was concentrated in mortgages on the U.S. housing market, but this time around a bubble is forming in corporate spending, where monetary expansion is used to fund mergers, acquisitions, and to invest in one’s own company by buying its shares off the market."

OK, but don't discount a real estate bust. It'll be big too.

Americans buying lots of gold.