STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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December 29, 2008
History shows us that so many of science's greatest breakthroughs were made by mavericks, outliers with little mainstream exposure. This is at it should be. Government likely can no more create scientific breakthroughs by throwing money at approved scientists a ...
December 26, 2008
Again, we have a technical analysis of a too-real difficulty – Britain's ongoing, slow-motion economic collapse. Britain was once the industrial engine of the world. The sun never set on her empire. But after two world wars and 50 years of intermittent but in ...
December 25, 2008
What do we hope for? How about a more enlightened leadership that understands the efficacy of free markets and the difficulties of fiat money. It is an ineluctable law in life that something cannot be derived from nothing; the ability to coin money from thin ai ...
December 24, 2008
The idea that lawsuits will fly over the Madoff fraud is hardly newsworthy of itself, but the idea that a regulatory body may be sued is news indeed. The Western regulatory structure usually puts regulators beyond the consequences of either actions or results. ...
December 23, 2008
Does it begin to come clear? Despite the above positives, what we have here is unfortunately one more in a series of analyses by the Western mainstream press that spells out the dangers of increased state interference in markets - but makes such seem inevitable ...
December 22, 2008
One can get whiplash taking all of this in and when we are finished with the article we know little more than when we began – except that public/private partnerships are the cause of Western prosperity and that America should never have abandoned them. What t ...
December 19, 2008
Sometimes it seems as if the Federal Reserve has set up a bailout fund for almost every kind of securitized instrument. The underlying conversation finally becomes whether any of these products had lasting value. The answer is that they should have had; but so ...
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December 18, 2008
The Fed is going to buy up securities to push up prices – and this quantitative easing is intended to replicate the Japanese pseudo-success with that deleveraged economy in the 2000s. The idea, though, for which the Fed wants to gain credit is that while it t ...
December 17, 2008
One believes that the Western monetary leadership is focused on the economic crisis more clearly these days. But whether it makes any difference is not so clear. Ultimately, what has occurred is that the distortion of the economic system due to an ongoing overs ...
December 16, 2008
Tensions are rising, not just in South America. The Western world is abuzz with dire predictions these days, much of which can be traced to the changing of the guard in the American White House. Many of the more paranoid perspectives – finding outlets then as ...
December 15, 2008
What is behind all the pressure on tax havens? The common analysis holds that Western governments are stressed, so they need the money, and tax havens have it. But surely this pressure has been going on for a while. In fact, it is our belief that the current ec ...
December 12, 2008
This is a much bigger story than it seems – and it is one that will not ever be reported in all its breadth and depth because much of the ramifications will be hidden, the way the tremendous power of the New York money establishment is hidden. ...
December 11, 2008
The World Bank, a profoundly anti-democratic and anti-market entity is turning away from market solutions to the intractable problems of hunger and poverty. This is damaging enough. But by avoiding a discussion of what central banks do to inflate the money supp ...
December 10, 2008
To use public works programs as a cover for the creation of political unpopular infrastructure and bureaucratic expansion will likely prove unpopular in certain areas and with certain interest groups that have already mustered considerable resistance. If it tur ...
December 09, 2008
What was Zell thinking a year ago? That the economy was going to bounce back from whatever it was starting to go through? Nonetheless, he went ahead and made a big acquisition that he can't handle now in the deteriorating business environment. And we're not any ...
December 08, 2008
It stands to reason. If indeed some derivatives deals are already headed south, then a US$500 trillion market is in jeopardy. Where one transaction can go, others can follow. The central banking mechanisms around the world that stand ready to support institutio ...
December 05, 2008
There is an increasingly contagious supposition that the Chinese, sooner or later, are fixing to offer the world the next reserve currency – and it is obviously being fanned by the Chinese themselves. But not so fast. We believe that Chinese currency, like th ...
December 04, 2008
It certainly seems true that offshore tax havens redirect funds that would otherwise go to American and European Union coffers. But from a free-market standpoint, taxes are methodology of control in a central-banking economy more than a necessity (as the centr ...
December 03, 2008
It sounds reasonable; but let us examine this premise in a little more detail. First of all, how much of American infrastructure is "necessary - how much was built in response to market forces and how much was built in a way that markets would have organized. A ...
December 02, 2008
The current economic crisis will hit American towns and cities hard and it will be interesting to see how much Federal largesse will trickle down to the states and the local level. The infection of the graduated income tax, which became law on a federal level i ...
December 01, 2008
Keynes' reputation had gone into serious decline but now for some reason the master of economic misinformation is making a comeback. Keynes was a member of what is called the Bloomsbury Group, a retinue of the British elite determined to bring socialism to tha ...
November 28, 2008
The dominant mainstream media theme is that the dollar is a safe haven against whatever is happening in the world. But the Citigroup report which is all over the Internet if not the mainstream news, has taken the unusual step of agreeing with the gold "perma-bu ...
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 ...
