Tag Archive: On Economy

Attaining Self-Destruct Velocity

2016-12-03

by

2016-12-03

Jump
Some Monday mornings are better than others. Others are worse than some. For one Amazon employee, this past Monday morning was particularly bad. No doubt, the poor fellow would have been better off he’d called in sick to work. Such a simple decision would have saved him from extreme agony. But, unfortunately, he showed up at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and put on a public and painful display of madness.

Read More »

A Note on Gold and India – What is Driving the Gold Price?

2016-11-29

by

2016-11-29

It is well-known that India’s government wants to coerce its population into “modernizing” its financial behavior and abandoning its traditions. The recent ban on large-denomination banknotes was not only meant to fight corruption. In fact, as our friend Jayant Bhandari has pointed out, fresh avenues for corruption immediately opened up upon enactment of the ban (see “Gold Price Skyrockets in India After Currency Ban” – Part 1, Part 2 and Part...

Read More »

Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban – Part III

2016-11-26

by

2016-11-26

In part-I of the dispatch we talked about what happened during the first two days after Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes, comprising of 88% of the monetary value of cash in circulation. In part-II, we talked about the scenes, chaos, desperation, and massive loss of productive capacity that this ban had led to over the next few days.

Read More »

The Problem with Corporate Debt

2016-11-26

by

2016-11-26

There are actually two problems with corporate debt. One is that there is too much of it… the other is that a lot of it appears to be going sour. As a brief report at Marketwatch last week (widely ignored as far as we are aware) informs us.

Read More »

Good Money and Bad Money

2016-11-26

by

2016-11-26

Stock Market Cartoons
OUZILLY, France – Last week’s U.S. jobs report came in better than expected. Stocks rose to new records. As we laid out recently, a better jobs picture should lead the Fed to raise rates. This should cause canny investors to dump stocks.

Read More »

Too Early for “Inflation Bets”?

2016-11-23

by

2016-11-23

Bonds Long Term
After 35 years of waiting… so many false signals… so often deceived… so often disappointed… bond bears gathered on rooftops as though awaiting the Second Coming. Many times, investors have said to themselves, “This is it! This is the end of the Great Bull Market in Bonds!”

Read More »

Gold Bull Market Remains Intact – Long Term Fundamentals Outweigh Short Term Market Gyrations

2016-11-22

by

2016-11-22

Kool-AID
In early 2016 gold had a big bull run. The precious metal rose close to 25% this year, pushed higher in a summer rally that peaked on July 10th. Gold experienced a bumpy ride over the remainder of the summer though, as investors became increasingly concerned about a potential rate hike by the Federal Reserve. Uncertainty returned to gold market and has intensified further since then.

Read More »

Putting an End to the Regulatory Industry

2016-11-22

by

2016-11-22

Get Ready
Corporate life in America these days is fraught with tedium. First the MBAs imposed their silly six sigma processes and reduced workers to mere widgets. Then the regulators went through and squashed out any fun that remained.

Read More »

Two Types of Credit — One Leads to Booms and Busts

2016-11-19

by

2016-11-19

Factory Shop
In the slump of a cycle, businesses that were thriving begin to experience difficulties or go under. They do so not because of firm-specific entrepreneurial errors but rather in tandem with whole sectors of the economy. People who were wealthy yesterday have become poor today. Factories that were busy yesterday are shut down today, and workers are out of jobs.

Read More »

About that Economic Inequality

2016-11-19

by

2016-11-19

I address this essay to two groups. One group is those among the liberty movement, who believe that there’s nothing wrong with inequality. These are often Objectivists, who unknowingly defend a regime that artificially suppresses working people.

Read More »

Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban – Part II

2016-11-16

by

2016-11-16

Fakes
Here is a link to Part 1, about what happened in the first two days after India’s government made Rs 500 (~$7.50) and Rs 1,000 (~$15) banknotes illegal. They can now only be converted to Rs 100 (~$1.50) or lower denomination notes, at bank branches or post offices. Banks were closed the first day after the decision. What follows is the crux of what has happened over the subsequent four days.

Read More »

Inflation Expectations Rise Sharply

2016-11-16

by

2016-11-16

WIN
We have witnessed truly astonishing short term market conniptions following the Donald Trump’s election victory. In this post we want to focus on one aspect that seems to be exercising people quite a bit at present, namely the recent surge in inflation expectations reflected in the markets. Will we have to get those WIN buttons out again?

Read More »

Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban

2016-11-10

by

2016-11-10

Google Search by Indian
As I write this in the morning of 9th November 2016, there are huge lines forming outside gold shops in India — and gold traded heavily until late into the night yesterday. Depending on who you ask, the retail price of gold has gone up between 15% and 20% within the last 10 hours.

Read More »

Is there a Savings Glut?

2016-11-06

by

2016-11-06

Bakers and Work
In his speech at the New York Federal Reserve of New York on October 5, 2016, the Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer has suggested that a visible decline in the natural interest rate in the US could be on account of the world glut of saving. According to Fischer, both increased saving and reduced investments have potentially significantly lowered the natural rate of interest.

Read More »

Incrementum Advisory Board Meeting Q3 2016

2016-11-06

by

2016-11-06

Is Stagflation a Potential Threat? The Incrementum Fund held its quarterly advisory board meeting on October 3 (the transcript can be downloaded below). Our regular participants – the two fund managers Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek, advisory board members Jim Rickards, Frank Shostak and yours truly – were joined by special guest Grant Williams this time.

Read More »

Recessions, Predictions and the Stock Market

2016-11-02

by

2016-11-02

Only Sell Stocks in Recessions? We were recently made aware of an interview at Bloomberg, in which Tony Dwyer of Cannacord and Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research were quizzed on the recently announced utterly bizarre AT&T – Time Warner merger. We were actually quite surprised that AT&T wanted to buy the giant media turkey. Prior to the offer, TWX still traded 50% below the high it had reached 17 years ago.

Read More »

The Point of War Is Not to Win

2016-10-30

by

2016-10-30

In time, everything goes away. We are confident, for example, that it won’t be too long before the market cracks (please don’t hold us to this forecast, but don’t forget if it turns out to be correct!). U.S. corporate profits are falling. GDP is sinking. Productivity has slumped for the longest period since the 1970s.

Read More »

Governments Will Lose Their War on the Markets

2016-10-25

by

2016-10-25

Gosudarstvenaya duma in Russia
DELRAY BEACH, Florida – The markets continue to dawdle. Not much conviction in either direction. We’ve already looked at the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. So let’s move on – using our new lens to look at another of the feds’ fake wars. No war was ever officially declared against the markets.

Read More »

A Looming Banking Crisis – Is a Perfect Storm About to Hit?

2016-10-20

by

2016-10-20

Andy Duncan of FinLingo.com has interviewed our friend Claudio Grass, managing director of Global Gold in Switzerland. Below is a transcript excerpting the main parts of the first section of the interview on the problems in the European banking system and what measures might be taken if push were to come to shove.

Read More »

Interview with Doug Casey

2016-10-12

by

2016-10-12

Our friend Natalie Vein recently had the opportunity to conduct an extensive interview with Doug Casey for BFI, the parent company of Global Gold. Based on his decades-long experience in investing and his many travels, he shares his views on the state of the world economy, his outlook on critical political developments in the US and in Europe, as well as his investment insights and his approach to gold, as part of a viable strategy for value...

Read More »