Banks, Money, & The Dollar

• SILVER THEN & GOLD NOW: IS IT REALLY THE SAME?
  Today (so runs the attempted analogy) central banks have demonetised gold and are busy selling it off.  That constitutes the dominant condition in the gold market, and will for decades to come.
   
• SQUINTING AT BONDS & THE DOLLAR 
  Sometimes I feel like Peter Falk, the stupid detective squinting cross-eyed at the facts trying to make some sense out of them.  Here’s one column of figures that doesn’t add up.
   
• HOW BIG IS THE RESERVE? 
  Only confusion can result from listening to economists, especially those who shill work for central banks like the Federal Reserve.
   
• THE PARABLE OF THE CARDS 
  About a month ago I published an article that criticized a Nevada bill to mint silver coins.  Here’s some follow-up.
   
• NEVADA SILVER COIN BILL:
  SOUND SENTIMENT BUT BAD JUDGEMENT 
  Several people e-mailed me copies of bill AB 532 introduced into the Nevada legislature.  The bill would require the state of Nevada to issue silver coins with a face value of US$50 million. As Mark Twain once said, “It’s sound sentiment, but bad judgement.”
   
• HOW WILL THE FED RESPOND TO DEFLATION?
  INFLATION, INFLATION, toujours INFLATION
  You don’t need the imagination of Hans Christian Andersen to understand that as surely as “tire” follows “flat”, a debt deflation follows every credit inflation.
   
• THERE’S DEFLATION, AND THEN THERE IS DEFLATION
  Since 1971, no currency in the entire world is backed by anything but debt.  Every currency in the world is a fiat currency, that is, its value is determined wholly by politics.
   
• MORE TAXIS, MORE PROSTITUTES 
  Originally I sat down to write an article about the bank closures in Argentina, with an eye to protecting yourself in case like events strike the United States.  Wait, don’t laugh, the last bank “holidays” in the US occurred in 1983 & 1984 in Ohio and Maryland.  Don’t think it can’t happen here.
   
• CREATING ANOTHER CARRY-TRADE MONSTER
  Remember the “yen carry-trade”?  The Bank of Japan drove yen interest rates so far down that big hedge funds and speculators began to borrow yen at 1% or so, sell them into the market, buy US Treasury bonds paying 4% with the proceeds, and drive home with free money. 
   
• THE COST OF FIAT MONEY
  Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked.
   
• THE US DOLLAR: 
  CURRENCY CRISIS FLEAS ON THE INFLATIONARY DOG
  Many times recently I have mentioned the amazing levitating US Dollar.  By all usual measures of currency strength, it should have broken long ago.  Presently the US Dollar holds the key to financial markets world-wide.  As long as the dollar remains high, things will hold together; when the dollar cracks, other markets will crack with it.
   
• THE WAGES OF SIN
  (are paid in fiat money)
  By the time you realise you’re lost, you’re already in a mess.  At that point hardly anybody [male] will stop and ask directions, let alone consult the map to puzzle out how he got lost.
   
• WATCHING THE US DOLLAR -- CLOSELY
  In addition to increasing the supply of dollars, events have simultaneously forced Greenspan to lower interest rates.  To appreciate how he has painted himself into a corner, you have to ponder how interest rates affect a currency’s exchange rates. 

   

Back to the previous page