Government statistics are always suspect, for at least one obvious reason: Modern economies are way too big and complex to measure in real-time. So virtually
One of the defining traits of financial bubbles is the willingness of traders and investors to interpret pretty much everything as a buy signal. Rising
In a fiat currency system, perception is, by definition, everything. Paper money has no intrinsic value. So the people saving it and accepting it in
Here’s one for the “seriously, you’re surprised?” file: China pegs its currency, the yuan, to the dollar, the dollar soars, taking the yuan with it…and
One of the oddities of floating exchange rates is that they cause people to view the world in terms of their own national currency. For
The point of competitive devaluation, aka currency war, is that a cheaper currency gives a country several advantages over its trading partners, leading to better
The way markets usually work is that on any given day (or in any given year) some asset classes are up while others are down.
The premise of a currency war is that by devaluing its currency a country is able to sell things overseas more cheaply, which gooses its
The term gets tossed around a lot, but the meaning and consequences of a “currency war” aren’t intuitively clear to most people. Especially confusing is
Today the European Central Bank acknowledged that the currency it manages is being sucked into a deflationary vortex. It responded in the usual way with,
Switzerland, as everyone knows by now, has slipped out the back door of the drunken orgy that is the modern financial system. And the other
In the sound-money community there is universal skepticism about the Fed’s plan to stop monetizing the world’s debt. Hardly anyone thinks they’ll go through with
Warren Buffett’s classic observation that “You only see who’s swimming naked when the tide goes out” is being tossed around more frequently these days, as
Twelve short months ago, the immediate future looked like a lock. Overvalued equities had to fall, ridiculously-low interest rates had to rise, and beaten-down precious
To say that gold is in a bear market is to misunderstand both gold and markets. Gold isn’t an investment that goes up and down.
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