Tag Archive: On Economy

The Recline and Flail of Western Civilization and Other 2019 Predictions

2018-12-31

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2018-12-31

The Recline and Flail of Western Civilization and Other 2019 Predictions. “I think it’s a tremendous opportunity to buy.  Really a great opportunity to buy.” – President Donald Trump, Christmas Day 2018. Darts in a Blizzard. Today, as we prepare to close out the old, we offer a vast array of tidings.

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How Faux Capitalism Works in America

2018-12-17

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2018-12-17

The Short Squeeze Tweet
Stars in the Night Sky. The U.S. stock market’s recent zigs and zags have provoked much squawking and screeching.  Wall Street pros, private money managers, and Millennial index fund enthusiasts all find themselves on the wrong side of the market’s swift movements.  Even the best and brightest can’t escape President Trump’s tweet precipitated short squeezes.

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The Big Picture: Paper Money vs. Gold

2018-12-12

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2018-12-12

PBoC balance sheet
Numbers from Bizarro-World. The past few months have been really challenging for anyone invested in gold or silver; for me personally as well. Despite serious warning signs in the economy, staggering debt levels and a multitude of significant geopolitical threats at play, the rally in risk assets seemed to continue unabated.

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Pushing Past the Breaking Point

2018-11-06

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2018-11-06

Schemes and Shams. Man’s willful determination to resist the natural order are in vain.  Still, he pushes onward, always grasping for the big breakthrough. The allure of something for nothing is too enticing to pass up.

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Eastern Monetary Drought

2018-10-26

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2018-10-26

Looking back at the past decade, it would be easy to conclude that central planners have good reason to be smug. After all, the Earth is still turning. The “GFC” did not sink us, instead we were promptly gifted the biggest bubble of all time –  in everything, to boot. We like to refer to it as the GBEB (“Great Bernanke Echo Bubble”) in order to make sure its chief architect is not forgotten.

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Switzerland, Model of Freedom & Wealth Moving East – Interviews with Claudio Grass

2018-10-07

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2018-10-07

Last month our friend Claudio Grass, roving Mises Institute Ambassador and a Switzerland-based investment advisor specializing in precious metals, was interviewed by Sarah Westall for her Business Game Changers channel.

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Seasonality in Cryptocurrencies – An Interesting Pattern in Bitcoin

2018-09-27

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2018-09-27

The last time we discussed Bitcoin was in May 2017 when we pointed out that Bitcoin too suffers from seasonal weakness in the summer. We have shown that a seasonal pattern in Bitcoin can be easily identified. More than a year has passed since then and readers may wonder why we have not addressed the topic again.

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Jayant Bhandari – The US Dollar vs. Other Currencies and Gold

2018-09-07

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2018-09-07

Maurice Jackson Speaks with Jayant Bhandari About Emerging Market Currencies, the Trade War, US Foreign Policy and More. Maurice Jackson of Proven & Probable has recently conducted a new interview with our friend and occasional contributor to this site, Jayant Bhandari, who is inter alia the host of the annual Capitalism and Morality seminar.

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A Fake Brexit and the “Noble Dream” – Claudio Grass Speaks With Godfrey Bloom

2018-08-30

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2018-08-30

Introductory Remarks: The “Anti-Politician” Godfrey Bloom, by PT Most of our readers will probably remember former UKIP chief whip and European Parliament representative Godfrey Bloom. As far as we know, he is the only politician who ever raised the issue of the workings of the fractionally reserved central bank-directed monetary system in the EU parliament. This system is of course central to the phenomenon of the recurring boom-bust sequences...

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An Inquiry into Austrian Investing: Profits, Protection and Pitfalls

2018-08-11

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2018-08-11

Kevin-Duffy
“From a marketing perspective it pays to be overconfident, especially in the short term. The higher your conviction the easier it will be to market your investment ideas. I think the Austrian School is at a disadvantage here because it’s more difficult to be confident about your qualitative predictions and even in terms of investment advice it is particularly difficult to be confident in these times because we don’t really have any historical...

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Separating Signal from Noise

2018-08-01

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2018-08-01

Todd Horwitz is known as Bubba and is chief market strategist of  Bubba Trading.com. He is a regular contributor on Fox, CNBC, BNN, Kitco, and Bloomberg. He also hosts a daily podcast, ‘The Bubba Show.’ He is a 36-year member of the Chicago exchanges and was one of the original market makers in the SPX.

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A Scramble for Capital

2018-07-26

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2018-07-26

TMS-2 vs. C&I loans
A Spike in Bank Lending to Corporations – Sign of a Dying Boom? As we have mentioned on several occasions in these pages, when a boom nears its end, one often sees a sudden scramble for capital. This happens when investors and companies that have invested in large-scale long-term projects in the higher stages of the production structure suddenly realize that capital may not be as plentiful as they have previously assumed.

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Getting Their Pound of Flesh – Precious Metals Supply and Demand

2018-07-21

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2018-07-21

Keith Weiner’s weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

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US Money Supply and Fed Credit – the Liquidity Drain Becomes Serious

2018-07-18

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2018-07-18

Our good friend Michael Pollaro, who keeps a close eye on global “Austrian” money supply measures and their components, has recently provided us with a very interesting update concerning two particular drivers of money supply growth. But first, here is a chart of our latest update of the y/y growth rate of the US broad true money supply aggregate TMS-2 until the end of June 2018 with a 12-month moving average.

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Merger Mania and the Kings of Debt

2018-06-24

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2018-06-24

Corporate Debt
Another Early Warning Siren Goes Off. Our friend Jonathan Tepper of research house Variant Perception (check out their blog to see some of their excellent work) recently pointed out to us that the volume of mergers and acquisitions has increased rather noticeably lately. Some color on this was provided in an article published by Reuters in late May, “Global M&A hits record $2 trillion in the year to date”, which inter alia contained the following...

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How to Get Ahead in Today’s Economy

2018-05-14

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2018-05-14

Statistical Oddities
This week brought forward more evidence that we are living in a fabricated world. The popular story-line presents a world of pure awesomeness. The common experience, however, falls grossly short. On Tuesday, for example, the Labor Department reported there were a record 6.6 million job openings in March. Based on the Labor Department’s data, there were enough jobs available – exactly – for the 6.6 million Americans who were actively looking for a...

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US Money Supply Growth Jumps in March , Bank Credit Growth Stalls

2018-05-12

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2018-05-12

VEF/USD Black Market Rate, Jun 2010 - May 2018
There was a sizable increase in the year-on-year growth rate of the true US money supply TMS-2 between February and March. Note that you would not notice this when looking at the official broad monetary aggregate M2, because the component of TMS-2 responsible for the jump is not included in M2. Let us begin by looking at a chart of the TMS-2 growth rate and its 12-month moving average.

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The Capital Structure as a Mirror of the Bubble Era

2018-05-09

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2018-05-09

Richard Nixon
As long time readers know, we are looking at the economy through the lens of Austrian capital and monetary theory (see here for a backgrounder on capital theory and the production structure). In a nutshell: Monetary pumping falsifies interest rate signals by pushing gross market rates below the rate that reflects society-wide time preferences.

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From Fake Boom to Real Bust

2018-04-27

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2018-04-27

Judgment day
More is revealed with each passing day. You can count on it. But what exactly the ‘more is of’ requires careful discrimination. Is the ‘more’ merely more noise? Or is it something of actual substance? Today we endeavor to pass judgment, on your behalf.

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Getting High on Bubbles

2018-04-26

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2018-04-26

GoodBuzz
Back in the drug-soaked, if not halcyon, days known at the sexual and drug revolution—the 1960’s—many people were on a quest for the “perfect trip”, and the “perfect hit of acid” (the drug lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD). We will no doubt generate some hate mail for saying this, but we don’t believe that anyone ever attained that goal.

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