Official measures of inflation don’t really tell us what they are designed to demonstrate. Any expectations of veracity should be very much tempered by the real world complications of price changes. Ultimately, we are trying to measure redistribution of the sort that is as far, far from homogenous. The effects of price changes are going to be drastically different across [...]
There is a tendency of the modern age (post-modern) to disregard conventions of the past as mere anachronisms suited only to academic curiosity about how people lived in less “civilized” times. There is much to be said about that impulse, not the least of which is the caution of such hubris. In seeking out history you often find that those [...]
The appearance and intensity of uncertainty is in direct proportion to the counter efforts intended to sow content and maintain the idea of control. It amounts to the financial equivalent of a “show of force.” Yet, how often do such forceful demonstrations actually provide comfort? More often than not, participants in that uncertainty interpret the need to show force as [...]
I’m not sure what popular perception believes of international holdings of “reserves”, but I would wager there is a rather large disconnect between it and how the international system actually works. This is more than just theoretical notions of banking in eurodollar shadows, but the pipelines that connect and cross the globe. Central banks do not have massive stores of [...]
We spend a lot of time and effort decrying the state of conventional wisdom around here, but for good reason. For gold, convention posits a store of value that is demanded greatly in times of inflation, and as such is a reliable alternate measure of it. In terms of exchange, that would mean investors increase their preference for “moneylike” assets [...]
Though we have passed through the event horizon on taper finally, it is still difficult to understate how much the threat of it upset the various settled mannerisms of credit and dollar markets this past summer. Though there is a degree of calm in appearance now, there are certainly more than a few hints of markets still enthralled by some [...]
As gold established price behavior based on forward rate movements in 2013, it is clear that the ebb of each successive wave of collateral selling was met with less intensity on the price upswing. There are a number of reasons for that, including the price volatility on the downside and central banks conspiring to convince markets that “tail risks” are [...]
What is most disheartening about the current political formulation on economics is the bipartisan acceptance of “inflation.” It comes from both the left and the right. That is in full part due to the orthodoxy of the economic “profession.” Despite being drastically wrong about pretty much everything for most of the past few decades (never saw a bubble they didn’t [...]
Earlier this week, Bloomberg published an article that examined the case of the missing link. It was not devoted to human evolution in a biological sense, but rather unintentionally to the emotional need to resist change. The title of the piece is, America’s Role of Consumer of Last Resort Goes Missing, and it continues from there on the theme of [...]
There is something very much broken in the media, particularly with regard to economic reporting. I have already commented more times than I care about the overemphasis on logical fallacies, but the proportionality of the disconnect only grows with share price inflation. Under the headline, Bull Market Shows No Sign of Death With Yellen Support, this Bloomberg article begins, “The [...]
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