Category Archive: 6b.) Debt and the Fallacies of Paper Money

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French Selection Ritual, Round Two

2017-04-26

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2017-04-26

Marantonacron Still Life
The nightmare of nightmares of the globalist elites and France’s political establishment has been avoided: as the polls had indicated, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are moving on to the run-off election; Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s late surge in popularity did not suffice to make him a contender – it did however push the established Socialist Party deeper into the dustbin of history.

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Central Banks Have a $13 Trillion Problem

2017-04-24

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2017-04-24

Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, September 2016 - May 2017
GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – The Dow was down 118 points on Wednesday. It should have been down a lot more. Of course, markets know more than we do. And maybe this market knows something that makes sense of these high prices. What we see are reasons to sell, not reasons to buy.

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Simple Math of Bank Horse-Puckey

2017-04-23

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2017-04-23

Sky from Mt. Wilson
We stepped out on our front stoop Wednesday morning and paused to take it all in. The sky was at its darkest hour just before dawn. The air was crisp. There was a soft coastal fog. The faint light of several stars that likely burned out millennia ago danced just above the glow of the street lights.

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On the Commemoration of World War I: From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump

2017-04-22

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2017-04-22

Donald Trump and Woodrow Wilson
It is altogether fitting that the US attack on a Syrian airport, the dropping of a MOAB on defenseless Afghanistan, and the potential outbreak of nuclear war with North Korea have all come in the very month in which an American president led the nation on its road to empire one hundred years earlier.

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India – Is Kashmir Gone?

2017-04-21

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2017-04-21

Odisha Story
Everything Gets Worse (Part XII) – Pakistan vs. India After 70 years of so-called independence, one has to be a professional victim not to look within oneself for the reasons for starvation, unnatural deaths, utter backwardness, drudgery, disease, and misery in India.

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French Election – Bad Dream Intrusion

2017-04-19

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2017-04-19

Candidates
The French presidential election was temporarily relegated to the back-pages following the US strike on Syria, but a few days ago, the Economist Magazine returned to the topic, noting that a potential “nightmare option” has suddenly come into view. In recent months certainty had increased that once the election moved into its second round, it would be plain sailing for whichever establishment candidate Ms. Le Pen was going to face. That certainty...

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Hell To Pay

2017-04-18

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2017-04-18

Yellen Cartoon
Economic nonsense comes a dime a dozen. For example, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen “think(s) we have a healthy economy now.” She even told the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy so earlier this week. Does she know what she’s talking about?

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The Cost of a Trump Presidency

2017-04-13

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2017-04-13

Syrian Bombing
Last Thursday’s wanton attack on a Syrian air field by the US and its bellicose actions toward North Korea have brought the real cost of candidate Trump’s landslide victory last November to the forefront. Unlike most laymen, accountants, and financial analysts, economists look at cost differently.

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The American Empire and Economic Collapse

2017-04-05

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2017-04-05

American Empire
Despite widespread optimism among libertarians, classical liberals, non-interventionists, progressive peaceniks and everybody else opposed to the US Empire that some of its murderous reins may finally be pulled in with the election of Donald Trump, it appears that these hopes have now been dashed.

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LIBOR Pains

2017-04-01

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2017-04-01

If one searches for news on LIBOR (=London Interbank Offered Rate, i.e., the rate at which banks lend dollars to each other in the euro-dollar market), they are currently dominated by Deutsche Bank getting slapped with a total fine of $775 million for the part it played in manipulating the benchmark rate in collusion with other banks (fine for one count of wire fraud: US$150 m.; additional shakedown by US Justice Department: US$625 m., the price...

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Price Inflation – The Ultimate Contrarian Bet

2017-03-29

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2017-03-29

Egg in Berlin, early 1923
If there is one thing apparently no-one believes to be possible, it is a resurgence of consumer price inflation. Actually, we are not expecting it to happen either. If one compares various “inflation” data published by the government, it seems clear that the recent surge in headline inflation was largely an effect of the rally in oil prices from their early 2016 low.

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March to Default

2017-03-25

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2017-03-25

“May you live in interesting times,” says the ancient Chinese curse. No doubt about it, we live in interesting times. Hardly a day goes by that we’re not aghast and astounded by a series of grotesque caricatures of the world as at devolves towards vulgarity. Just this week, for instance, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters tweeted, “Get ready for impeachment.”

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“People Need to Understand that their Biggest Asset is Individual Liberty” – an Interview with Claudio Grass

2017-03-21

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2017-03-21

As election season is upon us in Europe and political and economic tensions are heating up, Claudio Grass notes that “the euro is the most artificial currency in history”, highlighting one of the most fundamental problems at the heart of the EU’s troubles. It is undeniable that public awareness is growing, and so is active opposition to ever greater centralization of political power.

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Welcome to Totalitarian America, President Trump!

2017-03-19

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2017-03-19

Deep State vs Donald Trump
If there had been any doubt that the land of the free and home of the brave is now a totalitarian society, the revelations that its Chief Executive Officer has been spied upon while campaigning for that office and during his brief tenure as president should now be allayed.

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The Long Run Economics of Debt Based Stimulus

2017-03-18

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2017-03-18

Miracle
Something both unwanted and unexpected has tormented western economies in the 21st century. Gross domestic product (GDP) has moderated onward while government debt has spiked upward. Orthodox economists continue to be flummoxed by what has transpired.

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Boosting Stock Market Returns With A Simple Trick

2017-03-14

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2017-03-14

Ballooning S&P 500, Jan 2012 - 2017
Trading methods based on statistics represent an unusual approach for many investors. Evaluation of a security’s fundamental merits is not of concern, even though it can of course be done additionally. Rather, the only important criterion consists of typical price patterns determined by statistical examination of past trends.

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Speculative Blow-Offs in Stock Markets – Part 2

2017-03-07

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2017-03-07

On-Margin
As noted in Part 1, historically, blow-patterns in stock markets share many characteristics. One of them is a shifting monetary backdrop, which becomes more hostile just as prices begin to rise at an accelerated pace, the other is the psychological backdrop to the move, which entails growing pressure on the remaining skeptics and helps investors to rationalize their exposure to overvalued markets.

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Speculative Blow-Offs in Stock Markets – Part 1

2017-03-06

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2017-03-06

Brokers
Why is the stock market seemingly so utterly oblivious to the potential dangers and in some respects quite obvious fundamental problems the global economy faces? Why in particular does this happen at a time when valuations are already extremely stretched? Questions along these lines are raised increasingly often by our correspondents lately. One could be smug about it and say “it’s all technical”, but there is more to it than that. It may not be...

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The Big Myth

2017-02-27

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2017-02-27

Dodd Frank and All Other Laws 2009 - 2015
Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an article, The Myth of Banking Deregulation, to debunk a lie. The lie is that bank regulation is good. That it helped stabilize the economy in the 1930’s. And that deregulation at the end of the century destabilized the economy and caused the crisis of 2008.

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Farewell, Welfare State

2017-02-25

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2017-02-25

Otto von Bismarck
The tweet was never sent and never received: “Lying Otto von Bismarck set us up for bankruptcy! What was he thinking? Sad!!” Instead, Mr. Trump said last weekend that, far from trying to curb the promises and cut the costs of the welfare state, he was nearly ready to unveil a plan to replace Obamacare with something better: a plan that would provide “insurance for everybody.”

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