STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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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 ...
February 06, 2009
Yesterday we analyzed a Herald article that indicated the citizens of Iceland were irritated that the central bank hadn't properly reined in their commercial banks. We pointed out that it was rather more likely that those in Iceland were annoyed with the centra ...
February 05, 2009
OK, we know how hideous the Russians are. Vladimir Putin has been nationalizing everything in sight, and what he doesn't nationalize the KGB (or whatever it is called now) beats into a pulp, especially reporters. But nonetheless, the above article excerpt makes ...
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February 04, 2009
Are you a confused denizen of the West – or East for that matter? You can hardly be blamed if you are puzzled by headlines and stories such as these. Normal people go to work, make a living and try to save what they can. They may own a house, a car and have s ...
February 03, 2009
The SMH article, excerpted above, in its entirety is filled with one odd factoid after another. But we find it interesting because we've been waiting for a statement about how the center-left leaders that run most of the world's Western governments these days a ...
February 02, 2009
For regular readers of the Bell, such difficulty is hard to fathom. Here is what even such great minds as those that blessed Davos ought to consider: Cut taxes drastically; cut government spending drastically; reduce central banking activities as much as possib ...
January 30, 2009
The salient point of this article is that "tempers flair," and that if the United States pushes China too hard, the Chinese leaders will dump Treasuries on the market and in doing so break the fiscal back of the free world. Of course maybe it isn't so simple as ...
January 29, 2009
What the heck are multiple reserve currencies? In fact, what's a reserve currency anyway? It's actually a post World War II development, courtesy of Bretton Woods that made the dollar the world's most accepted money. At the time, countries were still gasping al ...
January 28, 2009
We can't shake the feeling that there is more at work here than irritation with the Swiss - or a need for additional US taxpayer funds, or even a determination to punish miscreants. We can't prove it, but it strikes us that the financial crisis is being used to ...
January 27, 2009
One of the illuminating experiences of living through a fiat-money crash is to see how the system perpetuates itself, even though the system itself may be at least partially at fault. This article, excerpted above, is a beautiful example, our estimation, of pro ...
January 26, 2009
One hardly knows where to begin. China is manipulating its currency? That's rich. What about the European Union and America? What is a central banking economy if not an ongoing manipulation? How are market forces at work - when central bankers themselves determ ...
January 23, 2009
While Obama's planned stimulus package does have a kind of tax-cutting component, it is not exceptionally strong or clear-cut. If passed, his tax cuts would likely be akin to standing in a category five hurricane with an umbrella and expecting it to help. And ...
January 22, 2009
Some have indicated a discomfort with a rush to judgment as regards America's brand new president – Barack Obama. In fact, we would have to plead guilty – not to a rush to judgment perhaps, but certainly to having a certain discomfort with the kind of cult ...
January 21, 2009
Just so we don't depress our readers too much, let us state for the record that there are things to be done, only Gordon Brown and his brain trust aren't doing them. As they could be done in America, by the way, only Obama probably won't do them, either (sorry, ...
January 20, 2009
Obama's appeal is obviously based on his good looks, youth and energy. It is also based, at least partly, on his low-key personal style and, importantly, on a very calculated campaign that has tended to emphasize generalities. His clever approach has been to pr ...
January 19, 2009
We've seen how the EU is evolving. Its socialist leaders seem to want a USSR-lite. They just sued Microsoft again and they haven't given up on the idea of a full-fledged constitution, a standing army, etc. Brussels, the supposed example for how Europe's tribes ...
January 16, 2009
It is especially interesting to see how quickly the state and its leaders are willing to jettison the burning issues that provided until recently a raison d'etre for its existence. "It doesn't make any sense to talk about education, infrastructure, water, healt ...
January 15, 2009
Of course, to listen to the constant din of post mortems, nothing really went wrong recently but regulation. Had the American Democrat/Republicans not done as they did, then everything would have been OK. Thus, out of the woodwork have emerged all sorts of pres ...
January 14, 2009
We're not sure what to make of this one. We thought the pump-priming for an Iranian war had slowed. No more build-up, no more almost daily reports about the insanity of the Iranian mullahs or the rapid expansion of their nuclear program. But now comes Newsmax w ...
January 13, 2009
Now Germany, despite its leaders' protestations, has followed France, England and the United States off the cliff and into a dangerous sea of free-spending and monetary expansion that should likely retard recovery. As we pointed out yesterday, courtesy of free- ...
January 12, 2009
Reisman reminds us of something very important: Just as inflation in free market terms is an expansion in the money supply, so deflation is a decrease in the money supply - and both of these events are likely natural within a larger business cycle. But as Reism ...
January 09, 2009
The sad thing, given what looms, is that the middle class is due for a severe case of whiplash – something else we have in fact mentioned in the past. The potential crack up – giving rise to the initial whiplash – began in 2008 with the deleveraging of Am ...
January 08, 2009
We've read stories reporting the Chinese are going to dump close to US$1 trillion in American debt, and we never found that too convincing. Doesn't make much sense to dump everything you bought on the market all at once – unless you want to take a mighty big ...
