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

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India: The Genie of Lawlessness is out of the Bottle

2017-09-24

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2017-09-24

People
Recapitulation (Part XVI, the Last). Since the announcement of demonetization of Indian currency on 8th November 2016, I have written a large number of articles. The issue is not so much that the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a tyrant and extremely simplistic in his thinking (which he is), or that demonetization and the new sales tax system were horribly ill-conceived (which they were). Time erases all tyrants from the map, and...

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US Debt: To Hell In A Bucket

2017-09-20

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2017-09-20

No-one Cares. “No one really cares about the U.S. federal debt,” remarked a colleague and Economic Prism reader earlier in the week.  “You keep writing about it as if anyone gives a lick.” We could tell he was just warming up.  So, we settled back into our chair and made ourselves comfortable.

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21st Century Shoe-Shine Boys

2017-09-16

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2017-09-16

Anecdotal Flags are Waved. “If a shoeshine boy can predict where this market is going to go, then it’s no place for a man with a lot of money to lose.” – Joseph Kennedy It is actually a true story as far as we know – Joseph Kennedy, by all accounts an extremely shrewd businessman and investor (despite the fact that he had graduated in economics*), really did get his shoes shined on Wall Street one fine morning, and the shoe-shine boy, one Pat...

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The Government Debt Paradox: Pick Your Poison

2017-09-12

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2017-09-12

Rahm Emanuel
“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” said President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November of 2008.  “They are opportunities to do big things.” At the time of his remark, Emanuel was eager to exploit the 2008 financial crisis to raid the public treasury. With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009, Emanuel’s wish was granted.

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Christopher Columbus and the Falsification of History

2017-09-09

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2017-09-09

Human sacrifice
The Los Angeles City Council’s recent, crazed decision* to replace Christopher Columbus Day with one celebrating “indigenous peoples” can be traced to the falsification of history and denigration of European man which began in earnest in the 1960s throughout the educational establishment (from grade school through the universities), book publishing, and the print and electronic media.

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How to Make the Financial System Radically Safer

2017-09-07

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2017-09-07

Mouse traps
Clear thinking and discerning rigor when it comes to the twisted state of present economic policy matters brings with it many physical ailments. A permanent state of disbelief, for instance, manifests in dry eyes and droopy shoulders. So, too, a curious skepticism produces etched forehead lines and nighttime bruxism.

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S&P 500 Index: A Single Day Beats the Entire Week!

2017-09-05

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2017-09-05

US S&P 500 Index, 2000 - 2017
Many market participants believe simple phenomena in the stock market are purely random events and cannot recur consistently. Indeed, there is probably no stock market “rule” that will remain valid forever. However, there continue to be certain statistical phenomena in the stock market – even quite simple ones – that have shown a tendency to persist for very long time periods.

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Hidden Forces of Economics

2017-08-31

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2017-08-31

J.M. Keynes
We have noticed a proliferation of pundits, newsletter hawkers, and even mainstream market analysts focusing on one aspect of the bitcoin market. Big money, institutional money, public markets money, is soon to flood into bitcoin. Or so they say.

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Why There Will Be No 11th Hour Debt Ceiling Deal

2017-08-22

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2017-08-22

United States Consumer Debt
A new milestone on the American populaces’ collective pursuit of insolvency was reached this week. According to a report published on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, total U.S. household debt jumped to a new record high of $12.84 trillion during the second quarter. This included an increase of $552 billion from a year ago.

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How to Profit from the Death of Retail. Guest Bill Bonner.

2017-08-18

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Subscribe to stay up to date with the latest videos ► https://www.sbry.co/suBiH Episode 13 – How to Profit from the Death of Retail. Guest Bill Bonner. Porter’s back in the studio with Buck as they dig deeper into the James Damore Google memo with a unique perspective that underlines what most people are missing about …

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Is Historically Low Volatility About to Expand?

2017-08-18

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2017-08-18

Dow Jones: 21-Day Volatility
You have probably noticed it already: stock market volatility has recently all but disappeared. This raises an important question for every investor: Has the market established a permanent plateau of low volatility, or is the current period of low volatility just the calm before the storm?

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Yanking the Bank of Japan’s Chain

2017-08-13

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2017-08-13

Based on the simple reflection that arithmetic is more than just an abstraction, we offer a modest observation. The social safety nets of industrialized economies, including the United States, have frayed at the edges. Soon the safety net’s fabric will snap. This recognition is not an opinion. Rather, it’s a matter of basic arithmetic. The economy cannot sustain the government obligations that have been piled up upon it over the last 70 years.

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Prepare for Another Market Face Pounding

2017-08-12

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2017-08-12

“Better than Goldilocks” “Markets make opinions,” goes the old Wall Street adage.  Indeed, this sounds like a nifty thing to say.  But what does it really mean? Perhaps this means that after a long period of rising stocks prices otherwise intelligent people conceive of clever explanations for why the good times will carry on.  Moreover, if the market goes up for long enough, the opinions become so engrained they seek to explain why stock prices...

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What Went Wrong With the 21st Century?

2017-08-11

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2017-08-11

Lydian gold stater minted under King Croesus ~540 BC.
POITOU, FRANCE – “So how much did you make last night?” “We made about $15,000,” came the reply from our eldest son, a keen cryptocurrency investor. “Bitcoin briefly pierced the $3,500 mark – an all-time high. The market cap of the entire crypto market shot up, too… with daily trading volume also rising.

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Views From the Top of the Skyscraper Index

2017-08-03

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2017-08-03

Iron workers (the non-distraught variety) atop the 10 ton spire of the Wilshire Grand Center in Lost Angeles.
On a warm Friday Los Angeles morning in spring of 2016, we found ourselves standing at the busy corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Figueroa Street. We were walking back to our office following a client wire brushing for events beyond our control. But we had other thoughts on our mind.

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Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting, Q3 2017

2017-08-02

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2017-08-02

Banknotes
The quarterly Incrementum Advisory Board meeting was held last week (the full transcript is available for download below). Our regulars Dr. Frank Shostak and Jim Rickards were unable to attend this time, but we were joined by special guest Luke Gromen of research house “Forest for the Trees” (FFTT; readers will find free samples of the FFTT newsletter at the site and in case you want to find the link again later, we have recently added it to our...

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The Myth of India’s Information Technology Industry

2017-07-28

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2017-07-28

Cheating Saharsa District
When I was studying in the UK in early 90s, I was often asked about cows, elephants and snake-charmers on the roads in India. A shift in public perception— not in the associated reality — was however starting to happen. India would soon become known for its vibran

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The Student Loan Bubble and Economic Collapse

2017-07-25

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2017-07-25

Complain
The inevitable collapse of the student loan “market” and with it the take-down of many higher educational institutions will be one of the happiest and much needed events to look forward to in the coming months/years.

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Congress’s Radical Plan to End Illegal Money

2017-07-23

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2017-07-23

What Constitution? One of the many downfalls of being the United States Secretary of the Treasury is the requirement to place one’s autograph on the face of the Federal Reserve’s legal tender notes. There, on public display, is an overt record of a critical defect.  A signature endorsement of a Federal Reserve note by the Treasury Secretary represents their personal ratification of unconstitutional money.

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India: The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum

2017-07-22

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2017-07-22

Goods and Services Tax, and Gold (Part XV) Below is a scene from anti-GST protests by traders in the Indian city of Surat. On 1st  July 2017, India changed the way it imposes indirect taxes. As a result, there has been massive chaos around the country. Many businesses are closed for they don’t know what taxes apply to them, or how to do the paperwork. Factories are shut, and businesses are protesting.

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