STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Showing 9051 - 8 of 8
November 27, 2008
So who is Paul Volcker. He is the consummate insider's insider. As chairman of the Federal Reserve in the late 1970s he tightened interest rates until the American economy (and therefore the world's) squeaked and in the process managed to create a two year West ...
November 26, 2008
Stocks were up, the dollar has been strong (relatively speaking) and gold has been making a push. What's going on? Money metals provide a haven when economies become distorted, and the current economic situation is fairly maladjusted from decades of monetary st ...
November 25, 2008
Gee, we figured that central banks around the world would spend up to $100 trillion on the financial crisis, and the United States is already closing in on US$10 trillion. Things are moving fast! Of course, US$100 trillion sounded like an absurd amount, but wat ...
November 24, 2008
One wonders how in the world President George Bush can get up on the big stage and call for free markets given the state of the country that he is leaving behind. This is not to say that another American president will necessarily be able to reinvigorate Wester ...
November 21, 2008
Using fiat-money capitalism, the United States bestrode the world like a colossus, sending its military far and wide, destabilizing countries in South America and the Middle East and exporting inflation via non-gold-backed Treasurys that first Japan and then Ch ...
November 20, 2008
Central banks struggle against deflation much as a tiny band of Spartans struggled against overwhelming Persian forces so long ago. Under this scenario, one is to visualize Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, et. al. as overwhelmed but battling courageously on our beha ...
November 19, 2008
At its peak, Citicorp employed some 375,000 workers and one wonders what all those people did. Of course one needn't wonder much longer because if Citicorp does survive it will be in a much diminished state. Why question Citicorp's survival? Because there will ...
November 18, 2008
We estimated yesterday that the price of the ongoing bailout, worldwide, would be in the tens of trillions, or even over US$100 trillion. Now along comes an article that makes the point that the current tab, a few months into the "crisis" in America alone is al ...
November 17, 2008
Last we looked, there was not much in the American Constitution about bail-outs for car-makers or even for banks. And while we thought an initial, targeted bail-out involving bad bank loans might be helpful to ease the transition from good times to bad – give ...
November 14, 2008
The strangeness of the late 2000s media dialogue continues. Now America's President George Bush has issued a warning to other countries: "Don't mess with capitalism." The article, excerpted above, points out his belief that capitalism is the best system for unl ...
November 13, 2008
Anyone with a sufficient grasp of reality might well feel a twinge of paranoia at the pattern of current events. The best way to counteract it is to seek solutions that alleviate the helplessness that often accompanies such a state. Preparing for the worst, som ...
November 12, 2008
We have been fairly straightforward about our belief there is something fishy as regards the price of gold and silver. We think in a normal environment the price would have gone higher, and sooner. Of course such a suspicion demands a motive. The motive, fairly ...
November 11, 2008
From a free-market perspective, the above remarks reaffirm what we already understand to be true about precious metals: in a bear market, with all its attendant anxieties, gold and silver often thrive. Bear markets are inherently difficult from an emotional sta ...
November 10, 2008
It is hard to keep track of all the international organizations these days. Once upon a time, the United Nations was going to provide a central forum for these sorts of activities, but no more, apparently. The UN, perhaps because of endless corruption, has appa ...
November 07, 2008
For some reason, it is widely accepted within the mainstream media that Barack Obama shall bring a sense of reason and purpose to responses to the economic crisis. He is meeting with people reputed to be at the top of the economic field, and the idea is that t ...
November 06, 2008
The idea that Barack Obama will be more friendly to the European Union is fairly discouraging. There is nothing very democratic about the EU these days, with its constant electoral do-overs and endless striving for the attributes of a nation state. There is als ...
November 05, 2008
The victory of Barack Obama is being presented in the mainstream media as a resounding affirmation for Obama's slogan of "change." While no one is absolutely sure of what "change" entails, one might offer with some certainty the idea that the vote that propelle ...
November 04, 2008
In truth, George W. Bush's record is one of militant government activism. He used every lever of federal government machinery to build a legacy featuring a public debt over $10 trillion, two hot wars and several more cold ones, a dysfunctional, national educati ...
November 03, 2008
Putin joins Chinese leaders in demanding a change in the international financial scene. But it is not clear what he means by this. The Chinese, perhaps, are slightly clearer, having called for more regulation and a decreased role for the dollar. Putin apparentl ...
October 31, 2008
This subject can be made complex, but it is really quite simple. Here at the Daily Bell, we've been commenting on it for months, but now a spate of articles have hit the hard-money and alternative 'net press predicting that fairly significant events will occur ...
October 30, 2008
It is fairly obvious to anyone who reads a lick that central banks and fiat money are the most responsible for the endless blowups that afflict Western, and now world, economies. And the blow ups constantly seem to get worse. In America the first real blow up c ...
October 29, 2008
Everything is OK now? The Dow roared up an almost impossible 10 percent yesterday, purportedly on news of an expected rate cut by the Fed. All this is fairly cynical in our opinion. Between basic money generation and rate cuts (credit generation), the amount of ...
October 28, 2008
It is just astonishing that the IMF is creeping back into the picture in a big way. The IMF is putatively supposed to help countries that have spent too much money and are in danger of going broke. Of course, once upon a time, such countries were third world. T ...
October 27, 2008
China looks out for its own. But this time the old men who run the place may be feeling a tad snookered. Yes, it would seem the dragon is stirring. (See next article as well.) It could be that China's leaders see a chance to flex their muscles, or it could be t ...
October 24, 2008
What a load of hooey. Do you really think that Greenspan was surprised by the current speculative bubble? Do you still think he had no idea? He writes as a young man, The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-tri ...
October 23, 2008
Actually, this is not merely "infighting" but yet another historical opportunity to watch the conflict between socialism and republicanism. For Switzerland is probably as close to a functional republic as the Western world has now that America has dropped out o ...
October 22, 2008
It's fascinating to watch tomorrow's history being written today. When it comes to the financial crisis, one can see the meme being constructed – capitalism fails and socialist/Fabian-ist John Maynard Keynes makes a comeback. Government is useful after all .. ...
October 21, 2008
The leftist Guardian can't help itself of course. These plans have been circulating for months, for years, probably. Those behind them just needed one big, fat crisis. And now they have one. And they are licking their lips. Certainly Jeffrey Sachs is. One of th ...
October 20, 2008
It is hard to see through the vagueness to exactly what is being called for, but no doubt whatever takes place will do nothing to address the root cause of the current economic crisis. Those who are most forceful in calling for "reform" – whatever that is – ...
October 17, 2008
Being part of a publishing company based in Switzerland, we doubt the average citizen is going to be especially pleased with what is going on in its storied banking business. The Swiss are an industrious people to be sure, but above all what Switzerland provide ...
October 16, 2008
Actually, it is starting to seem as if Bernanke will say virtually anything to sound like he knows what he is doing. But what he's saying seems to get increasingly bizarre. Alan Greenspan, Bernanke's predecessor was always talking about asset bubbles (even if h ...
October 15, 2008
The kind of soft socialism that has been ushered in with the latest and most expansive US government involvement in the private sector is un-American in a fundamental sense. If one subscribes to the idea that America was once the world's most powerful and produ ...
October 14, 2008
One would not have predicted years ago that the current American administration would be taking $125 billion-plus position in America's largest investment banks (eventually, we will see how much it really is), and dictating the terms as well. That this is takin ...
October 13, 2008
Thanks to the current credit crisis, which is actually a crisis of Western "fiat" money, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seemingly made a comeback in popular opinion. Popular opinion had previously been running heavily against Brown, who succeeded the increa ...
October 10, 2008
Evans-Pritchard is one of the better mainstream economic commentators, and he has been hitting the economic crisis hard. He certainly has hard-money sympathies, and he has written on one occasion or another that the only currency worth owning right now is bulli ...
October 09, 2008
As part of what we hope could be considered a public service, we continue to report on calls for ever deeper and more invasive regulatory fixes, worldwide. These efforts are usually accompanied by melancholy protestations of sincerity. And the breast-beating an ...
October 08, 2008
From farce to tragedy? This is what happens when free-markets are overtaken by uncontrolled cronyism and corruption. A 35-year-old gets tapped to run a US$700 billion bailout fund that is supposed to save the American economy and thus the world's financial syst ...
October 07, 2008
A funny thing happened on the way to a commodity collapse. Gold went up. As part of the endless attack on money metals by the monetary elite, the idea that gold and silver are "commodities" has been another arrow in the quiver of honest-money negativity. But go ...
October 06, 2008
We began to predict calls long ago for more international regulation based on the current "financial crisis." Our perception of what was bound to occur has indeed come true in various regions. Take the United States. Here, the Democrats have been gearing up for ...
October 03, 2008
It must be great for those of the "Swiss persuasion" who identify with large banks to see that UBS is back on track. Everything sounds really good. After a loss of only US$43 billion, the great Swiss bank has turned the corner. Its management expects it to be p ...
October 02, 2008
Global capital flows have indeed transformed the American economy, and other Western economies as well. But where do these capital flows come from? Watching the American debate over the economy has been dispiriting because even with the addition of the recent L ...
October 01, 2008
Except what is "good " for some may not be good for all, or even many. The contraction of banking in the United States proceeds apace with that country's largest banks merging one after the other. What is most fascinating about the consolidation is that it begi ...
September 30, 2008
We are pleased to present the above excerpt because it dovetails neatly with a point we made recently - that there is probably no question now that precious metals markets are highly manipulated and that this ongoing manipulation will eventually render these ma ...
September 29, 2008
It has long been our contention that the world remains on a de facto gold and silver standard, even if many of the people in it don't understand the reality of the money they use. This money is supposedly guaranteed by the "full faith and credit" of the state. ...
September 26, 2008
e wrote about how Europeans seemed a little smug recently when being quoted about the problems in the US. What the problems come down to, in our estimation, is that the Federal Reserve carried on with a loose money policy for so long that it created a euphoria ...
September 25, 2008
US President Bush hit the airwaves last night to hype the administration's $700 billion bailout of America's largest financial firms. He spent a good deal of time explaining the reason why the nation was in the fix it is in. He explained that a large influx of ...
September 24, 2008
The avalanche of finger-pointing has begun and will not cease for several decades, if then. But the above excerpt is from an article that is among the best of the most recent crop, in that it actually attacks the Federal Reserve rather than "greed" or "Wall Str ...
September 23, 2008
On and on, high finance will go. OK, maybe. But one thing is fairly certain: The frustration of America's lenders will go on and on. The Chinese alone are on the hook for something like a trillion dollars of American Treasurys. In fact, you would think some of ...
September 22, 2008
Goodness, it didn't take very long to realize our prediction that the current debacle would be used as a way to further "globalize" domestic financial systems, especially America's. And so long as we're keeping track (and we do), we wish note once more, as we h ...
September 19, 2008
In a free market, participants would be free to buy or sell securities as they wished. Patently, as we have learned once again in the past weeks and months, the securities marketplace is not "free" and in fact is basically a kind of colony of the American Feder ...
