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 […]
Keith Weiner discusses why interest rates prior to 1933 was set by the marginal saver and how the saver was removed from this process post 1933.
Japan will buy the bonds of the so-called “European Stability Mechanism”. (See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/japan-to-buy-esm-bonds-using-forex-reserves-to-help-weaken-yen.html ) The ESM is an 80 billion euro pool of capital that can be levered up to 700 billion euros by selling bonds. Supposedly, 200 billion has to be kept safe but that remains to be seen. The ESM is a mechanism […]
There has been much buzz in the past few days about a truly horrible idea. Instead of having to negotiate with Congress to raise the debt ceiling so the Treasury Department can sell more bonds to pay for more spending, why not just mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin? This coin would contain one ounce of […]
We now see who are “millionaires and billionaires” in practice. They are individuals with income over $400,000 or married couples with income over $450,000. Their top tax bracket rises from 35% to 39.6%, an increase of 13%. The capital gains tax rate goes from 15% to 20%, an increase of 33%. The temporarily reduced payroll […]
The last workweek of the year is complete. Beers were had with friends yesterday, Friday evening. The final shopping trip to the mall was completed today, followed by a good meal with my wife. Now I find myself in a reflective mood, and this is a perfect time to reflect on what an incredible year […]
It is now the second anniversary of a campaign to “crash” JP Morgan by encouraging people to buy silver (see max Keiser http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4IBUTHyROs). The idea is that JP Morgan has a large naked short position in silver. If people buy physical silver it will drive the price up and deprive JP Morgan of the metal […]
Dear Mr. Price: I read your piece: “On the Use of Gold Coins as Money” (http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/arti…iidarticulo=196). I think you ask the right question. This is the elephant in the room. Why do gold and silver not circulate? I love your analogy of the Swiss asserting that they will “allow” gold to have a monetary role, […]
In Free Market Revolution, co-authors Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, colleagues at the Ayn Rand Institute, undertook a difficult task. Since Ayn Rand made the case for egoism as the morality of capitalism in Atlas Shrugged (and more pointedly in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), numerous books have argued that free markets produce wealth, discussing various […]
The financial press and alternative investing blogosphere is all abuzz about proposed German controls that attack High Frequency Trading (http://www.cnbc.com/id/49174317). Government always justifies its coercive intrusion into markets by appeal to a sense of the “public good”, and its interference never delivers the goodies as advertises (see my doctoral dissertation for a full explanation of […]
