Monthly Archive: July 2021

Celebrating Five Years of Interest on Gold

2021-07-23

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2021-07-23

This month marks the five-year anniversary of Monetary Metals paying interest on gold. It was July 2016 when we offered our first Gold Fixed Income True Gold Lease. The gold lease was to Valaurum for manufacturing their flagship product, the Aurum®. It paid 3.0% interest on gold to investors (you can read the original press release here).

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Do Rising ‘Global’ Growth Concerns Include An Already *Slowing* US Economy?

2021-07-23

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2021-07-23

Federal Reserve Nat'l Activity Index, 1970-2021
Global factors, meaning that the wave of significantly higher deflationary potential (therefore, diminishing inflationary chances which were never good to begin with) in global bond yields the past five months have seemingly focused on troubles brewing outside the US. Overseas turmoil, it was called back in 2015, leaving by default a picture of relative American strength and harmony.

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Forced Vaccinations in France Bring Both Repression and Protest

2021-07-23

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2021-07-23

In a speech to the nation just ahead of Bastille Day on July 14 celebrating the French Revolution, President Emmanuel Macron delivered a paradoxical blow to the Republic’s famous slogan: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. He announced a series of measures to speed up the pace of covid-19 vaccinations which undermine individual liberties and threaten a strong political and economic backlash.

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FX Daily, July 22: Enguard Lagarde

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

Overview: The rally in US shares yesterday, ostensibly fueled by strong earnings reports, is helping to encourage risk appetites today.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is posting its biggest gain in around two weeks, though Japan's markets are closed today and tomorrow.  The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is building on yesterday's rally, and with today's ~0.8% gain, it is up on the week.

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Honey production collapses in Switzerland

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

The short spring and wet summer means Swiss bees have produced ten times less honey than usual. As a result the price of honey is set to increase. After last year’s exceptional harvest, 2021 is looking very meagre: while a hive normally produces 15-20 kilos of honey, the current figure is 0-3 kilos, Swiss public radio, RTS, reported on Thursday.

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Have We Reached “Peak Self-Glorifying Billionaire”?

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

Perhaps we should update Marie Antoinette's famous quip of cluelessness to: "Let them eat space tourism." As billionaires squander immense resources on self-glorifying space flights, the corporate media is nothing short of worshipful. Millions of average citizens, on the other hand, wish the self-glorifying billionaires had taken themselves and all the other parasitic, tax-avoiding, predatory billionaires with them on a one-way trip into space.

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Ask Bob: Withholding Taxes From Social Security

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

Withholding Taxes From Social Security

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Episode 22: Reimagining Physical Gold with Adam Trexler of Valaurum

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

Can there be innovation in physical gold? Absolutely! In our increasingly digital reality, innovation in the material world may seem a bit passé, but not to Dr. Adam Trexler, founder and President of Valaurum. Valaurum produces the Aurum® – the smallest verifiable unit of gold for investment available on the market today. Adam joined Keith and John for an invigorating discussion on what the future of gold is going to look like.

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Portrait of an Evil Man: Karl Marx

2021-07-22

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2021-07-22

In the "German Democratic Republic" they tell the story about a weary old man who tries to gain entrance into the Red Paradise. A Communist Archangel holds him up at the gate and severely cross-questions him.

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SNB-Gewinn von 5 Mrd. Franken im zweiten Quartal erwartet

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

Die starke Performance des SNB-Portfolios während der Krise helfe Bund und Kantonen, die zusätzlichen Ausgaben teilweise zu decken. (Bild: ZVG)Am 30. Juli publiziert die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) ihr provisorisches Finanzergebnis für das zweite Quartal 2021.

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Facebook Pay To Be Available to Online Retailers Starting With Shopify

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

With digital payments picking up pace across the globe, social media giant Facebook is extending its payment services to online retailers. Shopify has become the first e-commerce platform to sign up for Facebook Pay. This will allow Shopify merchants to offer Facebook Pay as a payment option during checkout, eliminating the need to re-enter payment information for every transaction.

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FX Daily, July 21: Did Japan Deliver a Fait Accompli to the US?

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

Overview:  The biggest rally in US equities in four months has helped stabilize global shares today.  In the Asia Pacific region, Japan, China, and Australian markets advanced.  Led by information technology and consumer discretionary sectors, Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is up around 1.35% near the middle of the session. 

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Has a new price premium on cocoa really helped struggling African farmers?

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

Farmers in Ivory Coast - the world’s largest cocoa-producing nation - are getting less for their cocoa despite the introduction of a payment that aims to secure them a living wage.  

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Lower Yields And (fewer) Bills

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

Back on February 23, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell stopped by (in a virtual, Zoom sense) the Senate Banking Committee to testify as required by law. In the Q&A portion, he was asked the following by Montana’s Senator Steve Daines.

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Big Tech: “Our Terms Have Changed”

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be surprised if bad things start happening. I received another "Our Terms Have Changed" email from a Big Tech quasi-monopoly, and for a change I actually read this one. It was a revelation on multiple fronts. I'm reprinting it here for your reading pleasure: We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.

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Fiat Money Economies Are Built on Lies

2021-07-21

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2021-07-21

Now and then, it pays to take a step back to get a broader perspective on things, to look beyond the daily financial news, to see through the short-term ups and downs in the market to find out what is really at the heart of the matter. If we do that, we will not miss the fact that we are living in the age of fiat currencies, a world in which basically everything bears their fingerprints: the economic and financial system, politics—even people’s...

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FX Daily, July 20: Doom and Gloom Takes Toll

2021-07-20

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2021-07-20

Overview:  The capital markets have begun stabilizing after yesterday's dramatic moves.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index did, though, see follow-through selling, and the third consecutive loss saw the benchmark close below its 200-day moving average for the first time in a year.  Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is posting small gains to snap a four-day drop. 

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Weekly View – Staying on script

2021-07-20

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2021-07-20

Big US banks released their 2Q earnings last week. The figures were good thanks to robust growth in investment-banking income as well as a drop in loan-loss provisions. But banks also reported that wage costs were beginning to rise, and while a booming housing market has boosted mortgage-loan business, the renewed retreat in long-term yields has been a drag on interest income.

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Swiss Trade Balance Q2 2021: export record

2021-07-20

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2021-07-20

Swiss exports and imports, seasonally adjusted (in bn CHF), Q2 2021
Swiss foreign trade showed dynamism in the second quarter of 2021. Exports rose 3.2% to a record level. They posted a fourth consecutive quarterly increase since the drop recorded at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Imports continued the momentum of the previous quarter and increased 3.8%. The trade surplus stood at 11.5 billion francs.

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Inching Closer To Another Warning, This One From Japan

2021-07-20

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2021-07-20

UST Yield Curve, 2017-2019
Central bankers nearly everywhere have succumbed to recovery fever. This has been a common occurrence among their cohort ever since the earliest days of the crisis; the first one. Many of them, or their predecessors, since this standard of fantasyland has gone on for so long, had caught the malady as early as 2007 and 2008 when the world was only falling apart.

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