The stories are all over the Internet. Governments are forcing us into a cashless society. Supposedly the pretext is terrorism, and the real reason is to take more control. No doubt more power appeals to politicians, and banning cash seems like the next step after mandatory reporting of cash transactions. However, I think there is […]
It’s the start of a new year. The question on everyone’s mind is whither the prices of gold and silver? This Brief presents our answer (and the full Monetary Metals Outlook 2015 report gives our reasoning). One approach to the question of price is to draw a line, extrapolating the past trend into the future. […]
We don’t normally analyze the crude oil market. However, there has been a huge price move (which may not be complete yet). With the endless rumors of deals that explain the move, we thought we would look at the spreads. The data shows a startling picture. You should approach supply and demand in this market […]
by Steve Saville Below is an excerpt from a commentary originally posted at www.speculative-investor.com on 12th October 2014. That gold mining has generally been a crappy long-term investment for almost five decades is evidenced by the following chart. The chart, much of the data for which were provided by Nick Laird of www.sharelynx.com, shows the ratio of the Barrons […]
Most of my writing about the gold standard is about how it works, and how the paper dollar standard doesn’t. A casual conversation I had with someone recently underscored that there is an even stronger argument. Our opponents, those who support central banking and irredeemable paper money, have to make two cases. One is to […]
An interesting article on MarketWatch today caught my attention. The subhead is the money quote, “Back in April every economist in a survey thought yields would rise. Guess what they did next.” Every? The article refers to 67 economists polled by Bloomberg, all of whom would seem to believe in the quantity theory of money. […]
After President Nixon’s gold default in 1971, many people have advocated a return to the gold standard. One argument has been repeated: consumer prices are rising. While this is true, it wasn’t compelling in the 1970’s and it certainly doesn’t fire people up today. Rising prices—what most people think of as inflation—is a dead-end, politically. […]
Last week, a story broke about Fed whistleblower Carmen Segarra. I wrote an article on Forbes about it, Disgruntled Fed Lawyer Blows Whistle on Regulatory Capture. Segarra is a former Fed regulator assigned to supervise Goldman Sachs. She secretly recorded 46 hours of audio from her meetings, during her short stint on site at Goldman […]
The European Central Bank again cut the interest rates it controls. Notably, the deposit rate was moved deeper into negative territory. It is now -0.2% (minus 20 basis points, that is not a typo). The ECB says it’s trying to nudge prices higher, but it’s actually feeding the cancer of falling interest. The linked article […]
An article caught my eye this week. The Tirumala Tirupati Temple in India has deposited gold at the State Bank of India, and is getting paid interest on their deposit. There is something unique about this. The interest is paid in gold. To understand why no one else is paying interest in gold, let’s first […]
