Tag Archive: Interest Rate

Central Banks…Why Bother?

2022-05-21

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2022-05-21

Central banks…why bother? Inflation is here and it cannot be contained. US inflation is touching a 40-year high, the UK has hit the 40-year high, and the EU’s has already hit an all-time high.

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“Die Nationalbank ist an vielen Fronten gefordert (Challenges for the Swiss National Bank),” NZZ, 2021

2021-08-10

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2021-08-10

Should the SNB follow the Fed and the ECB and rework its strategy? There is a case for rethinking the broad inflation target, the monetary policy concept, and the communication strategy. Equally important is a strategy review outside of the SNB: The SNB cannot and must not decide about the framework within which it operates.

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Is Now a Good Time to Buy Gold? Market Report 16 March

2020-03-16

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2020-03-16

We got hate mail after publishing Silver Backwardation Returns. It seems that someone thought backwardation means silver is a backward idea, or a bad bet. “You are a *&%#! idiot,” cursed he. “Silver is the most underpriced asset on the planet,” he offered as his sole supporting evidence. He doesn’t know that backwardation means scarcity, not that a commodity’s price is too high.

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Money and Prices Are a Dynamic System, Report 1 Dec

2019-12-03

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2019-12-03

Gold and Silver Prices
The basic idea behind the Quantity Theory of Money could be stated as: too much money supply is chasing too little goods supply, so prices rise. We have debunked this from several angles. For example, we can use a technique that every first year student in physics is expected to know. Dimensional analysis looks at the units on both sides of an equation.

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Raising Rates to Fight Inflation, Report 24 Nov

2019-11-26

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2019-11-26

Physics students study mechanical systems in which pulleys are massless and frictionless. Economics students study monetary systems in which rising prices are everywhere and always caused by rising quantity of currency. There is a similarity between this pair of assumptions. Both are facile. They oversimplify reality, and if one is not careful they can lead to spectacularly wrong conclusions.

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Dollar Supply Creates Dollar Demand, Report 2 June

2019-06-03

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2019-06-03

Gold and Silver Price
We have been discussing the impossibility of China nuking the Treasury bond market. We covered a list of challenges China would face. Then last week we showed that there cannot be such a thing as a bond vigilante in an irredeemable currency. Now we want to explore a different path to the same conclusion that China cannot nuke the Treasury bond market.

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Monetary U-Turn: When Will the Fed Start Easing Again? Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting Q1 2019

2019-03-10

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2019-03-10

Trey Reik
On occasion of its Q1 meeting in late January, the Incrementum Advisory Board was joined by special guest Trey Reik, the lead portfolio manager of the Sprott Institutional Gold & Precious Metal Strategy at Sprott USA since 2015

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What They Don’t Want You to Know about Prices, Report 10 Feb

2019-02-11

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2019-02-11

Gold and Silver Price
Last week, in part I of this essay, we discussed why a central planner cannot know the right interest rate. Central planner’s macroeconomic aggregate measures like GDP are blind to the problem of capital consumption, including especially capital consumption caused by the central plan itself.

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Jim Grant: “Markets Trust Too Much In The Presence Of Central Banks”

2017-12-15

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2017-12-15

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the renowned investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of the unseen consequences of super low interest rate and questions the extraordinary actions of the Swiss National Bank. Nearly ten years after the financial crisis, extraordinary monetary policy has become the norm.

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Dollar Surge Continues Ahead Of Jobs Report; Europe Dips As Catalan Fears Return

2017-10-07

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2017-10-07

CBOE VIX Gauge, 1990 - 2019
World stocks eased back from record highs and fell for the first time in eight days, as jitters about Catalonia’s independence push returned while bets on higher U.S. interest rates sent the dollar to its highest since mid August; S&P 500 futures were modestly in the red - as they have been every day this week before levitating to record highs - ahead of hurricane-distorted nonfarm payrolls data (full preview here). U.S. jobs report will also be...

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The Internet Helped Kill Inflation In America, Says Credit Suisse

2017-06-02

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2017-06-02

Burkhard Varnhlot
Whether or not San Francisco Fed President John Williams is right about US inflation and employment being about as close to the central bank’s targets as investors have seen - as he told CNBC two days ago - is irrelevant: The central bank is going to raise interest rates two more times this year no matter what happens to consumer prices, says Credit Suisse Chief Investment Officer for Switzerland Burkhard Varnholt.

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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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Video: Interest Rate Differentials Increasing Financial Market Leverage To Unsustainable Levels

2017-02-25

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2017-02-25

We discuss the rate differentials between Switzerland, Britain, Europe, Japan and the United States and how this Developed Financial Markets carry trade is incentivizing excessive risk taking with tremendous leverage and destabilizing the entire financial system in the process in this video.

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Canadian Bank Starts Charging Negative 0.75percent Rate On Most Foreign Cash Balances

2016-11-22

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2016-11-22

BMO Nesbitt Burns
Despite speculation over the past year that Canada may join Japan and Europe in the NIRP club and launch negative interest rates, so far the BOC has stood its ground. However, starting on December 22, for the broker dealer clients of one of Canada's most reputable financial institutions, BMO Nesbitt Burns, it will be as if the Canadian bank has cut its deposit rate on most currencies, to match the deposit rate of Switzerland.

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Former Treasury Secretary Summers Calls For End Of Fed Independence

2016-11-06

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2016-11-06

Larry Summers
At an event in Davos, Switzerland earlier today, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, argued that Central Bank independence from national governments should be scrapped in favor of a coordinated effort between politicians, central bankers and treasury to engineer inflation. Seems reasonable, right?...what could possibly go wrong?

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Yield Purchasing Power: Think Different About Purchasing Power

The dollar is always losing value. To measure the decline, people turn to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), or various alternative measures such as Shadow Stats or Billion Prices Project. They measure a basket of goods, and we can see how it changes every year. However, companies are constantly cutting costs. If we see nominal—i.e. dollar—prices rising, it’s despite this relentless increase in efficiency. At the same time, the interest rate is...

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SNB Monetary Assessment March 2013

2013-03-14

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2013-03-14

Jordan in the ECO interview
In its monetary assessment the SNB maintains the EUR/CHF floor and warned against further risks in the euro zone. The SNB has downgraded the inflation path to -0.2% (previously-0.1%) in 2013 and +0.2% (+0.4%) in 2014.We do not completely agree.

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