This article is a follow-up to Part II. I expound upon a point I touched on, and also address some questions raised by readers. First, let’s look at an update of the open interest numbers as of Feb 6. Gold’s open interest actually declined further. Next, here is an update of the bases. The gold […]
In Part I of this article, we looked at arbitrage between the physical metal market and the futures market. We saw that there are arbitrageurs who straddle the spread between these markets, who don’t care about price but about the difference between two prices. They seek to profit, not from a change to the gold price, […]
It’s curious, isn’t it? So-called “paper gold” (a futures contract) has a price that is not only very close to physical gold, but it remains locked to it. This is despite the fact that “paper gold” is reviled in the gold community. I am writing this on Sunday evening with little liquidity in the market, […]
In a gold-based monetary system, every asset is ultimately backed by gold. This does not mean that every debtor (including banks) keeps the full amount of its liability in gold coin just lying around. Why would one bother to borrow if one did not need the money? It means that every asset generates a gold […]
I have written other pieces on the topic of fractional reserve banking and duration mismatch, which is when someone borrows short-term money to lend long-term and how falling interest rates actually encourage duration mismatch. Falling interest rates are a feature of our current monetary regime, so central that any look at a graph of 10-year […]
Today, short-term interest rates are set by the diktats of the central bank. And long-term interest rates are set in a “market” in which the central bank is obliged to keep coming back to buy ever more bonds, and speculators front-run the central banks to buy ahead of them. The result has been that, for […]
As the title of this essay suggests, a loan is an exchange of wealth for income. Like everything else in a free market (imagine happier days of yore), it is a voluntary trade. Contrary to the endemic language of victimization, both parties regard themselves as gaining thereby, or else they would not enter into the […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here. The Monetary Sleight of Hand The Keynesians and Monetarists have fooled people with a clever sleight of hand. They have convinced people to look at prices (especially consumer prices) to understand what’s happening in the monetary system. Anyone who has ever been at a […]
Jude Wanniski, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, coined the term “Laffer Curve” after a concept promoted by economist Art Laffer.Laffer himself says the idea goes back to the 14th century The idea is that if one wants to maximize the government’s tax revenue, there is an optimal tax rate. (Ignore for the moment […]
Since 1982, US Treasurys have been in a bull market. This is Exhibit A: the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond (the yield and the market price of the bond are inversely related, like a teeter-totter). This statement should not be controversial. But outside Austrian circles, most people don’t understand that this structural decline is […]
