March, 2013

U.S. Deficit / GDP

A group called “Being Liberal” posted the following graph to Facebook purporting showing how deficit as a proportion of GDP has fallen from 10% to 4%. The caption implies two things: 1) most Americans are simply ignorant if they think that there is a borrowing or debt problem 2) the deficit is falling (the caption […]

Bitcoin Crashed. Again.

When writing about economics (as opposed to trading), one does not expect to be proven right within days of publishing something. Things can take years to play out. On Monday, February 25, we published What Drives the Price of Gold and Silver? In that article, I wrote: If there is a credible rumor that the […]

The Importance of Gold Backwardation

Gold is in Backwardation!

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: March 8, 2013

The Last Contango Basis Report The dollar went down 0.16%. After close last Friday (March 1), it took 19.74mg of gold to buy a dollar. Today, it takes 19.71. By the way, we publish weekly graphs of the prices of the major currencies. It’s a paradigm shift to begin thinking of the price of the […]

Gold Caught With Its Backwardation Showing

With all the discussion on the Internet, some of it confusing, we thought a picture would be worth a thousand words. Backwardation is when there is a profit to decarry the metal. This is the simultaneous sale of metal in the spot market and purchase of metal in the futures market. Selling is on the […]

Silver Perspective

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.

The Ten Minute Gold Standard

Far too many people believe that gold serves no useful purpose. I am therefore publishing this response to The 10 Minute Gold Standard: It’s Much Easier than You Think by Nathan Lewis. Mr. Lewis, a professed advocate of the gold standard, argues that even if we have a “gold standard”, we don’t need actual gold. […]

Is Bitcoin Money?

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: March 2, 2013

The Last Contango Basis Report The dollar strengthened further this week, which is another way of saying that the price of the metals, measured in dollars, declined. Gold was -$6, and silver -$0.13. On Monday, we published What Drives the Price of Gold and Silver? We argued that the price of a metal could rise […]

U.S. Debt Repudiation

John P. Cochran writes on Zero Hedge about Murray Rothbard’s propsal that the government default on its debt: Rothbard’s recommendation: “I propose, then, a seemingly drastic but actually far less destructive way of paying off the public debt at a single blow: outright debt repudiation.” Repudiation is not only a sound economic solution to our […]