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 […]
The price of gold dropped a few bucks this week, but the price of silver jumped about half a buck. The drumbeat for the gold bull market is well underway, and it is beginning now for silver. So let’s do a quick update on the supply and demand fundamentals. Here is the graph of the […]
In mainstream economic thought, there is one primary way that the economy can go screwy. Prices can rise too fast, and this is called bad inflation. This is to be contrasted with good inflation, when prices are rising at the Goldilocks-just-right rate. Diehard Keynesians (and monetarists) do fret about falling prices. But as Ben Bernanke’s […]
Socialism and Gold Most people assume that the central bank prints money when it buys bonds. They further assume that this increase in the quantity of money causes an increase in the general price level. And, this leads them to assume that the value of the money is 1 / P (P is the general […]
The basic idea behind the Quantity Theory of Money could be stated as: too much money supply is chasing too little goods supply, so prices rise. We have debunked this from several angles. For example, we can use a technique that every first year student in physics is expected to know. Dimensional analysis looks at […]
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 […]
