April 1, 2023 First, it was the crypto-focused Silvergate Bank. Then it was Silicon Valley Bank. And immediately after, Signature Bank. Silvergate and Signature could be dismissed because, well, crypto. But Silicon Valley Bank is something entirely else. It was older, and much larger. And a mainstay of high-tech, venture-funded startups for many decades. Then […]
As the Federal Reserve has hiked rates from 0% to over 4.75%, the average interest rate on bank deposits has remained low, around the FDIC’s national average for savings accounts of 0.37%. This has led many to ask the simple question. Why aren’t banks raising the interest rate on deposits? The Hotel California Banking System […]
Last week, we had this to say about the implications of SVB’s collapse… Everyone in the market has to think about an unpleasant reality and come to grips with it. They have to consider the risks of things that previously they may have thought absolutely safe. Such as bank deposits, and Treasury bonds (and government-guaranteed […]
You can listen to an audio summary of this article below. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was then seized by the California Department of Financial Protection on Friday, March 10. This came after a frenetic two days, when the bank announced a big loss, tried to raise capital, and then faced an accelerating run-on-the-bank. […]
Listen to the audio version of this article here. Consumer prices have been on a tear, since early last year. Right now, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is rising at more than 8% per year. Source: St Louis Federal Reserve Conventional thinking calls for higher interest rates. It makes this call via two channels. One […]
Keith Weiner sat down for an interview on the SilverDoctors.com podcast for a robust discussion on a variety of topics related to gold and monetary economics. Topics included: What is Keith’s current assessment of the gold & silver markets? What is a gold bond, and is it better than a government bond? The government needs […]
This week, the Supply and Demand Report featured a graph of debt vs profitability in the Russell 2000. Here’s the graph again: This graph shows a theme that we, and practically no one else(!) have been discussing for years. It is the diminishing marginal utility of debt. In this case, more and more debt is […]
This is a textbook case. Well, it would be if there was a textbook that presented the dynamics of the rising and falling interest rate cycles. Costco is spending over a quarter billion dollars, to make a capital investment in chicken processing. This is not the typical entrepreneurial investment, which seeks to increase margins by serving […]
Trouble in Swiss Employment This story from Switzerland will be ignored, lest it generate cognitive dissonance. The mainstream looks at a few carefully curated statistics. I encourage you to do a Google search on “marginal productivity of debt”. My articles are all over the first page of results. This is not because I am such […]
The dollar is failing. Millions of people can see at least some of the major signs, such as the collapse of interest rates, record high number of people not counted in the workforce, and debt rising from already-unpayable levels at an accelerating rate. I am going to share a little bit about myself and my […]
