The Pew Research Center last week released a report showing that from 2009 to 2011 the top 7% of American households (based on net worth) realized a 28% gain in wealth while the bottom 93% saw a 4% decline. In a statement of the blatantly obvious, Pew said the difference was a result of the wealthy being more likely to [...]
Gold dropped 20%. Oil dropped over 10%. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index dropped 11%. The US Dollar rose. Last week? No, that's what happened in the first week of July of 2008. Last week's rout in the commodities markets was eerily similar to that week nearly 5 years ago when the first signs of the great financial crisis were coming [...]
Earlier in the week I outlined the relationship between gold and collateralized liquidity in the banking system. In a second post, I put together the pieces of what may currently be driving growing illiquidity, with particularly emphasis on Europe. This post intends on adding detail and evidence to this cumulative analysis. First, we need to step back a moment and [...]
Gold has not behaved like money in decades, rather gold is, for the most of the world, an investment class. We may not like such a development (it is one of the most insidious actions intentionally undertaken by central banks, including Basel rules) but gold is a liability on a bank’s balance sheet complete with a greater-than-zero risk-weighting. That means [...]
Getting into the arcane accounting of central banks is a chore, but, in an uncertain world with every central bank “doing something” at exactly the same time, it is a vital task that requires patience. A lot of patience. Central banks all have familiar financial disclosures and statements. The Fed, ECB, SNB, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, et al, [...]
Joe should have known better than to ask, but for the sake of keeping this a blog post and not a full-blown research essay I will oversimplify as much as possible. In most media, the Swiss currency is treated like every other – as a function of, or tied to, the local economy. Thus currency moves are related to how [...]
File these under Joe Calhoun’s “everything has already happened” theme. In doing research for last Friday’s RealClearMarkets column I happened to read the Republican Party Platform. I was mostly interested in the Gold Commission/hard money initiatives, but some of the other “planks” offered a very telling glimpse into the party’s positions: They [The Democratic Administration] have debauched our money [...]
Precious metals prices are currently fixed on strikes at mines in S Africa. Potential unrest is pushing PM prices higher. In the current weakening global trade environment, is it possible that an increase in worker unrest upsets the supply of metals at exactly when banks are shifting toward gold? Major disruption to platinum is expected from the current strike and [...]
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