October, 2017

Bitcoin, Postmodern Money

In the articles below, Keith Weiner covers many of the reasons why bitcoin is unsound and not money and rather the very model of a (post)modern monetary marvel. Bitcoin: What is it Good For? revisits the volatility aspect of bitcoin and addresses the reasons it serves neither the savers, nor the borrowers in our economy. […]

Gold and Silver Get Powelled, 27 Oct 2017

On Friday’s “Powell Spike”, somebody thought Powell would be good for gold. The price rallied four bucks in a minute, and then another three bucks within 8 minutes. But who? Was it stackers loading up on coins, prepping for inflatiocalypse? Or was it speculators loading up on leverage, betting on futures? And how can we […]

Falling Discount, Gold and Silver Get Powelled, Report 29 Oct 2017

Warren Buffet famously proposed the analogy of a machine that produces one dollar per year in perpetuity. He asks how much would you pay for this machine? Clearly it is worth something more than $1.00. And it’s equally clear that it’s not worth $1,000. The value is somewhere in between. But where? This leads to […]

Falling Interest, Gold and Silver Report 22 Oct 2017

Last week, we discussed the marginal productivity of debt. This is how much each newly-borrowed dollar adds to GDP. And ever since the interest rate began its falling trend in 1981, marginal productivity of debt has tightly correlated with interest. The lower the interest rate, the less productive additional borrowing has in fact become. Let’s […]

What Made Silver Go Up, Update 20 Oct 2017

Silver’s move on October 19th was more extreme than gold’s (see here for an explanation of gold’s price action). The price move was four times as great. What of the basis move? The basis move was also correspondingly larger: 30bps vs. 7bps. Again, it uncannily tracks the price. Unlike gold—for whatever it’s worth—the silver basis […]

What Made Gold Go Up, Update 20 Oct 2017

Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced that initial jobless claims dropped. Quite a lot. So naturally, markets reacted. The stock market began to rise. The euro rose, at least for a while. And the prices of our favorite heavy metals rose, particularly silver. Silver was around its low of $16.92 before the report. Two and […]

Falling Productivity of Debt, Gold and Silver Report 15 Oct 2017

Last week, we discussed the ongoing fall of dividend, and especially earnings, yields. This Report is not a stock letter, and we make no stock market predictions. We talk about this phenomenon to make a different point. The discount rate has fallen to a very low level indeed. Discount in stocks is how you assess […]

A Free Market for Goods, Services, and Money

A thesis submitted September 3, 2012 by Keith Weiner to the Graduate Faculty of the New Austrian School of Economics, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Major Subject: Monetary Science. Abstract A free market is composed of people who produce and trade the products of their efforts in […]

Gold and Silver Intraday for Friday 6 Oct 2017

These are the intraday charts for Friday, subscriber-only supplement to the Supply and Demand Report for 8 October. The price action was pretty crazy on Friday, so we wanted to show what happened with the basis. Speculative or fundamental? Here is the chart. We see that the basis tracks the price. Although, there is this […]

Stocks Up and Yields Down, Gold and Silver Report 8 Oct 2017

Many gold bugs make an implicit assumption. Gold is good, therefore it will go up. This is tempting but wrong (ignoring that gold does not go anywhere, it’s the dollar that goes down). One error is in thinking that now you have discovered a truth, everyone else will see it quickly. And there is a […]