In the next downturn (which may have started last week, yee-haw), the world’s central banks will face a bit of poetic justice: To keep their
Corporate share repurchases have turned out to be a great mechanism for converting Federal Reserve easing into higher consumer spending. Just allow public companies to
Insanity, like criminality, usually starts small and expands with time. In the Fed’s case, the process began in the 1990s with a series of (in
One of the crucial things to understand about today’s world is that money is fungible. Whether it’s created in Japan, Europe, China or the US,
For a while there it looked like the US and its main trading partners had finally achieved escape velocity. Growth was up, inflation was poking
One of the traditional signs of market tops is individual investors finally succumbing to the lure of apparently easy money and pouring their savings into
It’s the same story every time: Imbalances build up during a recovery but most investors ignore them because good times have become the new normal
The Trump Christmas stock market rally has taken valuations beyond a point that in the past has signaled trouble, which in turn has generated a
At first, the idea of central banks intervening in the equity markets was probably seen even by its fans as a temporary measure. But that’s
A week ago it looked like the US government was destined to end up firmly – maybe even more firmly — in the hands of
In the sound money community it’s generally understood that abandoning the last vestige of the gold standard in 1971 gave major countries effectively-unlimited credit cards
Brexit looked like the end of the world — until people figured out that central banks would have to ease in response. Then markets turned
One of the oddest things in this increasingly odd world is the spread of negative interest rates everywhere but here. Why, when the dollar is
The theory was pretty straightforward: push interest rates down far enough — in some cases to negative territory where borrowers actually turn a profit on
In that deservedly-famous 2006 CNBC debate between Peter Schiff and economist Arthur Laffer (in which the latter manages to be both arrogant and wrong about
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