Ask a D.C. insider what’s the best way to solve the debt crisis. Nine times out of ten, they’ll recommend taking on more debt. That’s how things operate in the Potomac swamp. Up is down, right is left, digging yourself into more debt is the best way to get out of it. But it wasn’t always like this. In fact, there used to be common sense when it came to the economy. So where did it all go wrong?
Baron Rothschild, the famous French financier, was once heard to say that he knew of only two men who really understood money — an obscure clerk in the Bank of France and one of the directors of the Bank of England. “Unfortunately,” he added, “they disagree.”
Politicians — elected officials — are street smart rather than book smart. If you care about influencing government policy it helps to know how they think. Forbes contributor Nathan Lewis argues that: “Too much is done today on the oral tradition. That is, literally, what it is. In this post-Gutenberg age, we have some better …
The market has selected different things as money throughout history. Some of these items have served as money in isolated places for specific periods of time — for instance, cigarettes in prisoner-of-war camps. Cigarettes continue to be a currency in prisons if allowed, but if not, according to Wikipedia, “postage stamps have become a more …
The standard version of how money came to be goes like this: First, there was barter. (A handful of nails for a pint of ale!) Then, along came various forms of money. An evolutionary derby eventually crowned gold and silver as the supreme money. And finally, credit (or debt) was born. This is the apex …
Stock investors are still acting as though Janet Yellen will be good for the economy… or at least good for stock prices. Gold investors must think so too. But will she be? Yellen has no business or investment experience. Her entire career has been spent in academia and public policy institutions. She has never started …
Want to know just how invasive the state is going to get in the United States? Well, take a look across the pond. In terms of the large, invasive state, we English are way ahead of you guys. We’re a good 50 or more years further down the road to serfdom. Nineteenth-century Britain was about …
Stocks settled down recently. The Dow dropped 40 points. Either the market had already priced in “QE forever”… or investors are starting to wonder. Maybe an economy with falling household incomes is not a good place to own stocks. Maybe an economy that is barely growing doesn’t justify the highest stock prices of all time. …
Jim Rickards lit up the Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver telling the crowd the price of gold will soar north of $7,000 per ounce in an inevitable global currency reset, the fourth reset since the founding of the Federal Reserve. The first was in 1914, the second in 1939, and the third in 1971. …
In recent months, the price of gold has tumbled. Along the way, lower gold prices have undermined the share price of many mining plays. The yellow metal is selling for its approximate cost of production at many of the world’s largest mines. Yet for all the gloom and doom within the gold investment space, there …