STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Showing 6901 - 6950 of 7086
April 13, 2009
We've been waiting a while. American insurance companies, like European ones, are heavily invested in a variety of instruments that are more or less shaky. In fact, it stands to reason that they have adopted the same kind of investment behavior and purchased th ...
April 11, 2009
Sure, maybe oil was the proximate cause of what is turning into a worldwide depression, but is it the trigger that matters or the aftermath? The current economic situation seems to have gotten so bad so quickly because of the amount of mal-investment that was g ...
April 10, 2009
What is going on is a definite re-alignment of the world from a financial standpoint. But even if one accepts the above point of view about money and power, what is occurring is neither as clear cut nor as simple as one might think. Why? Because one has to rem ...
April 09, 2009
The problem is so much deeper than aggregation. Scarcity made the product palatable. But it is less so every day. The major Western media regularly publishes and presents information that is misleading and filled with half-truths. Readers can find better and mo ...
April 08, 2009
Yes, it is the Internet, rolling on, telling the truth with every ebb and flow of the daily tide. And what a truth it is: That the ongoing manipulation of the money supply by powerful men (almost all men) for purposes of financial consolidation and sociopolitic ...
April 07, 2009
We shall be interested to see just how far and fast this notion of an IMF super currency travels. And we shall be even more interested to see – if it continues to be mentioned by such prestigious thinkers as George Soros – whether there will spring up in Am ...
April 06, 2009
The big idea of the monetary elite is to seek an ever closer union worldwide. But the Internet is likely fracturing the credibility of the participants. Strides will continue to be made, but the ground is crumbling, in our humble opinion. There is a vast free-m ...
April 04, 2009
Despite the great impact that Obama has had on world leaders, the reality of what has been accomplished and Obama's own personal understanding of what is actually going on remains suspect. He is a very young man for the world stage, with a Harvard law education ...
April 03, 2009
From a free-market standpoint the worst has seemingly been averted. No international regulator, no grand, immediate attack on banking freedom, no huge amount of money poured down the various rat-holes of failed global capitalism. Of course, incrementally, the l ...
April 02, 2009
He is one of the best free-market traders of all time. And again, with this downturn, he has made literally billions, betting against various currencies. Sooner or later we think he will bet against the US dollar and go out in a blaze of glory having made billi ...
April 01, 2009
We are not sure if a new monetary standard will be announced following the upcoming G20 meeting. But maybe the meeting's communique might hint at such thing. In any event, we are sure that anything that comes out of such meeting will not be market-based. How co ...
March 31, 2009
It is not easy to say with any certainty what is going on in the halls of global leadership. But it would seem that the groundswell of support for gold-as-currency has proven so powerful that it must be acknowledged at the highest levels. It is not yet being ac ...
March 30, 2009
If one concludes that the upcoming, tripartite formulation for increased global controls is the main aim of the G20 summit, then the controversy over additional funds to combat the current fiscal crisis may be seen as something of a sideshow. The by-now worldwi ...
March 27, 2009
Yes, it is fairly obvious that the monetary elite – central bankers and others – have decided for one reason or another that now is a good time to plump for a global currency. Like everything else in this modern day and age, the promotion is not especially ...
March 26, 2009
You could see them popping like metaphorical popcorn kernels yesterday, all over America and probably in Canada and the EU as well. So called conspiracy "nuts" jumping into the sky as if they'd been fried in oil and propelled heavenward. What likely bounced the ...
March 25, 2009
There is some difference yet between what Obama is trying to do and what Roosevelt attempted. But the difference is only one of method, not motive. Obama is a go-slow kind of fellow, at least compared to Roosevelt. But he has no problem with wage and price cont ...
March 24, 2009
We were all set to believe that Zhou came to his conclusions by himself, from rigorous study of the way the world works. But now we are not so sure. And here is a question that gives us a bit of a headache: Where does all this enthusiasm for the IMF come from i ...
March 23, 2009
The American and EU perspectives could not be farther apart. The American experiment was conceived as one in which each individual was sovereign and the state was the subservient entity. The EU is conceived of in exactly the opposite way. It was put together by ...
March 21, 2009
The farther away from the American Constitution – which still embodies bedrock principles to many -- that the federal leadership drifts, the worse the confusion and corruption becomes. The trouble is, when a country's founding mythos cannot be supported, even ...
March 20, 2009
Here's our question. If AIG has a potential US$1.6 trillion exposure, and it is JUST ONE COMPANY, how much more exposure is out there of this nature? Journos in business pubs throw around the figure US$400 trillion and it seems perfectly likely if, indeed, AIG' ...
March 19, 2009
The mythos - like preparations to entomb a mummy - is being painstakingly prepared. The wrappings are steeped in preservation fluids. The body is hollowed out. Certainly, the Federal Reserve could print all the money the "bailout" needs, but that would interfer ...
March 18, 2009
The argument over mark-to-market perpetuates the idea that better regulation can rationalize markets and prevent what just happened from happening again. But the whole stock market, from the definition of "public companies" to the regulatory apparatus that has ...
March 17, 2009
To fulminate about AIG bonuses is to miss the point. There is no way that America's largest insurer could have or would have taken such risks were not the entire system corrupt from bottom to top. AIG's top people were not foolish, anymore than the rest of Wall ...
March 16, 2009
That the mainstream media continued to portray the administration as "conservative" – and that even the conservative mainstream press remained quiet while the Bush administration expanded federal power in every conceivable way – remains an astonishing pheno ...
March 14, 2009
It is no wonder that history never seems to sort out the full truth. Those living through the Great Depression probably saw the problem full on, but to peer backward in time is to look through a very foggy glass. Will the same thing happen today? Will our child ...
March 13, 2009
Couldn't one conclude that the purpose of such commentary is to serve the interests of a centralized power? Couldn't one also assume that the monetary elite is increasingly uncomfortable with the growing audience of free-market thinkers that exists outside the ...
March 12, 2009
People are waiting nervously to see if President Obama's $3.2 trillion stimulus-budget will work (if passed). But it will not work because it does not put money into the hands of individual entrepreneurs and consumers who are necessary to the basic health of th ...
March 11, 2009
Again comes the drum roll of potential cures for the economic crisis. Over in Britain, Gordon Brown has his own ideas about what constitutes a cure for the current financial maelstrom. Brown wants an over-arching global regulator and a regulatory regime adminis ...
March 10, 2009
Very recently uber-investor Warren Buffet gave an interview saying that the economy was falling off a cliff and American's could see inflation that surpasses that seen in the late 1970s. The major liberal US newsweeklies, Newsweek especially, are starting to ta ...
March 09, 2009
There seems to be an obvious pattern. Brown calls for an institution like the IMF to receive a far greater and more cohesive international role – meanwhile the IMF releases a report that shows how incompetent it is. The IMF report is self-damning no doubt, bu ...
March 06, 2009
It is indeed puzzling to see the fluctuating value of marketplaces and major financial players. Bank of America and even venerable Wells Fargo are plunging toward the penny stock range (BOA is already there.) Of course, people don't get it. Capitalism has faile ...
March 05, 2009
It will be both fascinating and worrisome to see how this plays out. America is still the most powerful and, in some ways, most prosperous country in the world. The Obama regime so far has shown little compunction in moving quickly to leverage staggering sums o ...
March 04, 2009
Unfortunately, Bernanke is not party to political solutions. It is his job to "stabilize" the world's largest economy using the tools of fiat money. But since the entire system of fiat money has now pretty much collapsed, that is a tall order indeed. It cannot ...
March 03, 2009
Forget where Barack Obama was born. That the issue is still alive at all is the important part. It sure isn't alive because of the mainstream press – there's hardly been mention of it. But it's still all over the Internet. The article goes on to state that on ...
March 02, 2009
How are they going to perform this feat? You would think they'd figure out a way to slash government expenses through efficiencies of scale. Then they'd make a joint declaration about cutting taxes and finally they would pledge to reexamine the role that fiat m ...
February 27, 2009
Obama's curatives are truly radical in size and scope, justified supposedly by the dire predicament of the American economy. George Bush's egregious spending was justified by a supposed war on terror. Either camp has its reasons to spend trillions of dollars, b ...
February 26, 2009
So much money being spent means that the public sector will inevitably continue to choke off the private sector to some degree. Government is notoriously inefficient at creating jobs, except of the make-work variety. In order for the American economy and the wo ...
February 25, 2009
Really? Is this truly any reason not to buy gold? Is this any reason not to hold gold? With regularity, gold goes up when turbulence hits the fiat marketplace. Had you purchased gold in 2001 when it was hovering near US$250 and held it you would have quadrupled ...
February 24, 2009
Poor Germans, they have been through a lot. Do they really want to take on the de facto responsibilities of running an empire? Do they want to deal with the Basques, the Irish and the Italians all at once? There has never been any sort of buy-in for this rag-ta ...
February 23, 2009
The suspicion always is that the monetary elite itself jealously guards its privilege and that the current crisis is one more way to create a command and control economy that lessens opportunities at the same time as it ratchets up regulatory pressure. The solu ...
February 20, 2009
There are actually two kinds of banks in Switzerland these days. There are a few big banks like UBS and Credit Suisse that can rightly be called international - "public" - banks and then there are Swiss private banks. It is the public, international kind of Swi ...
February 19, 2009
There are numerous ways to combat a depressive economy, but printing more money and providing massive government outlays for make-work programs will only aggravate the problem. What works are tax cuts and reducing government spending. What would work even bette ...
February 18, 2009
You could hear a lot of talk about nationalization over the next weeks and months, we would think - whether or not it occurs. And yes, after a while you may grow inured to the concept. But in fact nationalization is not shorthand for "government taking over ban ...
February 17, 2009
We are not suggesting that citizens of Western economies will be reduced to eating grass, only that the inevitable race downhill will never be won by government types. They will lag behind, raising taxes and salaries where they can, reducing benefits, compensat ...
February 16, 2009
The current spending packages are not actually intended to "stimulate." They are more likely a way of buying off civil discontent and buying time to prop up the system. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing mainstream media campaign to confuse the Western middle class ...
February 13, 2009
We're not sure these two articles add up to a trend. But decades of gold-watching gives us the idea that while the monetary elite may be resigned to higher gold prices, they are not likely to give up "input." Slow or fast, the ascent of gold and silver will arr ...
February 12, 2009
As long as we are patting ourselves on the back, we shall go ahead and risk a cramp by pointing out that we also made the following prediction: The total bailout, over time, including central bank monetization, may well be somewhere in the area of US$100 trilli ...
February 11, 2009
We're sure Geithner et. al. will keep tinkering until they come up with a formula that gets at least a bit of a better reception on Wall Street. The market will rise up at least temporarily, and the mainstream media will make a big deal about it. The implicatio ...
February 10, 2009
Timothy Geithner, one of at least four Barack Obama nominees that did not pay all his taxes – (and apt to be an even more aggressive leveler to make up for it) – is scheduled to attend a meeting of the G7 industrial countries on Friday. It's all very hush, ...
February 09, 2009
What does China need to do now? The answer apparently is that it will provide goods and services at a faster rate to its own population. Whether this is feasible is yet another question, but China's aging leaders have decided to try. They need to do something a ...
