This article claims that falling prices will increase Latvia’s burden of debt. It is not falling prices, but falling interest rates, that increase the burden of debt (and it is not just Latvia but the whole world, which has falling interest [...]

“…holdings in [gold] exchange-traded funds fell to the lowest in over four years…” as this article states. But is this a real relationship? Do holdings at the ETF necessarily fall with a falling gold price and rise with a rising gold price? The [...]

Homebuilder confidence increased in May. Lumber prices in the last two months? Not so much, down over 20%.   When I was a kid, I saw many competing stereo receivers offering higher and higher wattage. It was pretty ridiculous to [...]

  If there really was gold manipulation, articles like this one would do an injustice. The author uses the word “indisputable”. I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. According to this article, “Indian inflation eased to [...]

Today, the European Central Bank announced that it was cutting interest rates. It also said that it was open to negative deposit rates. We are witnessing nothing less than the metastasis of monetary cancer. A falling interest rate causes the [...]

A flash crash occurs when the bid is either very thin or disappears altogether. Under any selling pressure, the cleared price can fall to any level at least temporarily. By definition and by nature, money is not subject to flash [...]

In the 17th century, the price of Dutch tulips ran up to incredible levels before collapsing, ruining many who participated in the first well-documented bubble. We are not knowledgable about horticulture, but we are sure that those Dutch tulips were [...]

Not too long ago, I wrote dollar backwardation. It’s happening, not in the dollar, but in the euro in Cyprus. Zero Hedge writes the following. Banks have been closed all week, the threat of loss of part of one’s deposits [...]

Put this in perspective. The government of Cyprus borrowed money it had neither means nor intent to repay. Borrowing, for a government, means selling bonds. The Cyprus banks borrowed money, which for a bank means taking in deposits (among other [...]

As this set of infographics show, more than half of the silver mined throughout history is still in human inventories.  Be sure to keep reading and scroll to the bottom.