Tag Archive: debt

What happens if the debt ceiling raises

It’s that time again when the US government has to prepare itself for an internal battle to raise the debt ceiling so it can meet various obligations. This is a merry dance that has been danced before, as we mention below.

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Ep 50 – Brent Johnson: Has the Dollar Milkshake Spilled or Just Begun?

Is the dollar heading to new heights or new lows? Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital joins the Gold Exchange Podcast LIVE in New Orleans! Listen to Brent discuss the historic rise of the DXY, the effects on (d)emerging markets, and how he sees a currency and sovereign debt crisis playing out. Will Powell be able to solve Triffin’s Dilemma?

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Ep 39 – Tavi Costa: Breaking Down the Pressures on the Market

Tavi Costa of Crescat Capital joins Keith and Dickson on the Gold Exchange Podcast to talk about the current state of the market, investing in good times and bad, and what future indicators to watch.

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Inflation

(Traveling and unable to provide a technical overview this week.) Rising price pressures, stronger and more persistent than generally expected, has been the main challenge for consumers, businesses, and policymakers. It will stay top of mind in the week ahead as both the world's two largest economies, the US and China, report July consumer and producer prices.  During the Great Depression, the central governments discovered their balance sheets,...

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The end of central banking as we know it

The severest crisis the European Central Bank (ECB) ever faced coincided with the early days of a new Executive Board. Over the past year and a half, the board’s six members, including the ECB’s president and vice president, have all been replaced, either because they resigned, or because their eight-year mandate expired. 

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They’ve Gone Too Far (or have they?)

Between November 1998 and February 1999, Japan’s government bond (JGB) market was utterly decimated. You want to find an historical example of a real bond rout (no caps nor exclamations necessary), take a look at what happened during those three exhilarating (if you were a government official) months.

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Growing Dollar Demand, Silver Weirdness, Market Report, 15 June

The Federal Reserve has become more aggressive again, after several years of acting docile. As you can see on this chart of the Fed’s balance sheet, it has very rapidly expanded from a baseline from (prior to) 2015 through 2018, of about $4.4 trillion. After which, it had attempted to taper, getting down to $3.8 trillion last summer. Then it was obliged to reverse itself well before responding to the COVID lockdown. Since then, its balance sheet...

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The Federal Counterfeiter

Suppose you wanted to run an enterprise the right way (we know, we know, this is pretty far-out fiction, but bear with us). And, your enterprise has a $1 million dollar piece of equipment that wears out after 10 years. You must set aside $100,000 a year, so that you have $1 million at the end of 10 years when the equipment needs replacing. There’s a word, now archaic, to describe the account in which you set aside this money.

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What to Expect from the World Bank and IMF

The spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF will be held virtually this week amid a profound economic crisis spurred by a novel coronavirus.  Unlike previous such viruses, this went global in such a destructive way that many countries have responded the same way.  Encouraging social distancing, closing non-essential businesses, and enforcing lockdowns. 

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The Out Has Not Yet Begun to Fall, Market Report 31 March

So, the stock market has dropped. Every government in the world has responded to the coronavirus with drastic, if not unprecedented, violations of the rights of the people. Not to mention, extremely aggressive monetary policy. And, they are about to unleash massive fiscal stimulus as well (for example, the United States government is about to dole out over $2 trillion worth of loot).

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FX Weekly Preview: Sources of Imbalance and the Pushback Against New Divergence

The US dollar's surge alongside gold has eclipsed the equity market rally as the key development in the capital markets. Even the traditional seemingly safe-haven yen was no match for the greenback.  The dollar appeared to have been rolling over in Q4 19, as the sentiment surveys in Europe improved, Japanese officials seemingly thought the economy could withstand a sales tax increase, and data suggested the Chinese economy was gaining some...

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Who Would Invest in a Gold Bond?

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet famously dismissed gold. “Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.” I have recently written about how a government with gold mining tax revenues can use gold. The benefits of issuing gold bonds include reducing risk, and getting out of debt at a discount. Pretty useful, eh?

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The Benefits of Issuing Gold Bonds

A gold bond is debt obligation that is denominated in gold, with interest and principal paid in gold. As I will explain below, it’s a way for the issuer to pay off its debt in full, and there are other advantages. Sometimes, I find that it’s helpful to show a picture of what I’m talking about. At the Harvard Club in New York, an old gold bond is hanging on the wall among other memorabilia.

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Currency Risk That Isn’t About Exchange Values (Eurodollar University)

This week the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release updated estimates for Q2 GDP as well as Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and Personal Incomes for July. Accompanying those latter two accounts is the currently preferred inflation standard for the US economy. The PCE Deflator finally hit 2% and in two consecutive months, after revisions, earlier this year.

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Do Record Debt And Loan Balances Matter? Not Even Slightly

We live in a non-linear world that is almost always described in linear terms. Though Einstein supposedly said compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe, it rarely is appreciated for what the statement really means. And so the idea of record highs or even just positive numbers have been equated with positive outcomes, even though record highs and positive growth rates can be at times still associated with some of the worst. It...

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No Paradox, Economy to Debt to Assets

It is surely one of the primary reasons why many if not most people have so much trouble accepting the trouble the economy is in. With record high stock prices leading to record levels of household net worth, it seems utterly inconsistent to claim those facts against a US economic depression.

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Jobless Claims Look Great, Until We Examine The Further Potential For What We Really, Really Don’t Want

Initial jobless claims fell to just 234k for the week of February 4, nearly matching the 233k multi-decade low in mid-November. That brought the 4-week moving average down to just 244k, which was a new low going all the way back to the early 1970’s. Jobless claims seemingly stand in sharp contrast to other labor market figures which have been suggesting an economic slowdown for nearly two years.

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BIS: The VIX is Dead, The Dollar is the new “Fear Indicator”

Over the past few years, one of the recurring themes on this website has been an ongoing discussion of how the VIX has lost its predictive value as a market risk indicator. This culminated recently with a note by Russel Clark who explained in clear term why the "VIX is now broken." Today, in a fascinating note Hyun Song Shin, head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the "central banks' central bank" has agreed with the...

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China: Services Companies Benefit on Lower Tax with VAT introduction

Yesterday, China announced one of the most important tax reforms of the past twenty years.  It is replacing a business tax on gross revenue for non-manufacturing companies with a VAT.   Manufacturing companies have been subject to a VAT approach subject

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Great Graphic: Measuring Cost of Extend and Pretend

There is a debate.  On one hand is Summers, who argues that modern economies have entered an era of secular stagnation.  Full utilization of the factors of production and particularly capital and labor is not possible without stimulating aggregate demand in a way that facilitates bubbles.  The broad strokes of the argument can be found …

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