Warren Buffett Is Completely Wrong on Gold
Every year the financial media await the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, relishing the opportunity to run interviews with Warren Buffett. Buffett didn’t disappoint this year, speaking freely about his thoughts on a number of issues. Among them was the idea of gold as an investment, which Buffett rejected. The media reported his statements on gold with not even...
The Subtle But Powerful Danger of Inflation
We haven’t heard its name bandied about much in recent years, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a major threat: inflation. As John Maynard Keynes once wrote: Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved,...
The Fed Doesn’t Understand Real Money
For over one hundred years, monetary policy in the United States has been the purview of the Federal Reserve System. Over that period, the dollar’s value has decreased by over 96% as the Fed has pursued loose monetary policy for decade after decade. Yet despite that abysmal performance, the policymakers at the Fed still consider themselves to be monetary...
Congress Is Clueless on Financial and Banking Stability
A new legislative provision making its way through Congress highlights just how little most Congressmen know about financial and banking stability. The changes that Congress wants to make are being touted as beneficial to small banks, but they could end up making the banking system much less stable and lead to more bank failures in the future. While most people...
Likelihood of Trade War Makes a Stronger Case for Gold
Stock markets took another beating last week as the trade war between the United States and China threatened to intensify. After President Trump slapped $50 billion worth of tariffs on China, China retaliated by placing the same amount of tariffs on imports from the US. Then President Trump decided to up the ante and floated the idea of a...
The Ticking Time Bomb of Higher Interest Rates
Most mainstream economic commentary focuses on large headline numbers like the level of the Dow Jones and S&P 500, on the number of jobs created, or on the unemployment rate. But far more important numbers are often ignored – interest rates. Very few people understand the concept of interest, or the importance of interest rates to the functioning of...
Continued Stock Market Upheaval Makes the Case for Gold
The horrendous stock market performance last week has hopefully put to rest any notions that the Dow Jones will continue pushing upward to set new highs. A market that is reliant on easy money and investor euphoria for its continued growth is a market that is destined to crash, and to crash hard. The economy is under attack on...
Deposit Insurance Leads to Moral Hazard
The fractional reserve banking system is a system that is doomed to fail, it’s just a matter of when, not if. Governments throughout history have taken steps to prop up that system, but in the long run nothing has ever worked. You just can’t loan out deposits while telling depositors they can retrieve their money at any time without...
More Tariffs Means the Economy Is in for a Rough Spell
With his recent decision to place tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, President Trump could cause some serious disruption to the economy. In an attempt to rectify what he sees as an uneven trade deficit, he could harm American industries and consumers. But with so much discussion of the trade deficit, it is surprising that no one seems to...
New Fed Chief Doesn’t Inspire Confidence
Last week saw the first Congressional testimony of new Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell. Anyone who expected anything groundbreaking from his testimony was, of course, disappointed. But Powell’s appearance did show signs of his thinking and of what we might expect from the Fed going forward. For investors, both Powell’s testimony and his answers to questions didn’t inspire...