Jim Rogers Exclusive Interview: QE, currency wars, inflation and gold
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Monetary Madness, Part II
"Like today, the Fed helped create a bond market bubble in the 1970s … but then began a panicky retreat in 1979 that helped drive T-bond yields to 13%, T-bill rates to 17% and the prime rate to 21%. Like today, the Fed kept the lid on short-term interest rates in the early 1990s … but then was forced to unleash them in 1994, causing the largest calendar-year decline in bond prices in modern history. And like today, in the first half of the 2000s, the Fed papered over every financial disaster it ran into — only to beat a sudden retreat by letting Lehman Brothers fail. They will do the same thing again — not because of any particular plan, but because they will have no other choice." Continue reading →
How a wire transfer stuck in OFAC almost cost me $140K
"My wire transfer for $600,000 got stuck for more than a week in two banks and I almost lost my $140,000 deposit on a house as a result. If the funds transfer had been done with bitcoin, I would have had the funds there within an hour of sending them, and nobody could have stopped it. The escrow part could also have been done with bitcoin. One this becomes the norm, bitcoin is going to revolutionize the process of closing a house purchase, making it safer, cheaper, and faster for everyone. Here is the OFAC SDN list. If your first and last names match any of the names in this list, don't do any large wire transfers!" Continue reading →
Economist Recommends ‘E-Dollar’ That Loses 5% Of Its Value Per Year
"'If you care at all about the future of this country, one of the things you need to realize is we need to solve the demand side so we can get back to the supply side issues that are really the tricky thing for the long run,' he said. 'The way to solve the demand side issues that is the most consistent with not messing up our supply side is monetary policy and making it so we can have negative interest rates.' At the moment, e-dollars are still only a theoretical concept, but Kimball is hopeful that they could be put into action in the near future. He believes that if a government bought in, it could be using an electronic currency in three years and reap the benefits of it soon after." Continue reading →
Dutch Bank Rabobank is Blocking Customers from Buying Bitcoins
"In the US many banks don’t accept any bitcoin businesses as clients, possibly because of regulatory concerns and money laundering risks. Individuals aren’t free from bitcoin banking issues either. CoinDesk reported recently that a Swedish bank froze a customer’s account for selling just 5 BTC. Now it is the Netherlands’ turn. According to an article in the Dutch press, Rabobank cancelled 99% of its customers’ transactions with bitcoin exchanges on Tuesday and Wednesday. Rabobank did not give a reason for this, but a spokesperson for Dutch bitcoin exchange BTCNext said it was because transactions are seen as potential fraud." Continue reading →
Keiser Report: Bitcoin is Beautiful
"In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss bitcoin barbarians at the gate as U.S. cedes dominance to China and as nations and people around the world reject U.S. made technology due to NSA spying. In the second half, Max interviews Karl Gray and Austin Craig about the documentary film, Life On Bitcoin, and about the latest in crypto-currencies, including Litecoin." Continue reading →
Open the Window and Let Out Tedious Tapering
"The exercise of power is often a ludicrously simple thing. And Federal Reserve deliberations often partake of such simplicity. The tapering debate is yet one more example. It is symptomatic of a dialectic that everyone can understand and participate in. We are meant to examine two choices, and two choices only: Either the Fed tightens or it doesn't. Either of these choices acknowledges the primacy of the Fed and its central importance. The Fed is NOT intrinsically important. Absent the force of the state, there is no way that a tiny group of mis-educated people would be able to gather in a well-appointed room to fix the value and volume of money for hundreds of millions." Continue reading →
Median CPI Up 0.1% in October
"My advice: ignore all price inflation statistics that are not accompanied by publicly available methodologies. The Median CPI is accompanied by public explanations. It is published monthly by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The trend of the Median CPI is toward lower price inflation. It is not yet price deflation. But prices are barely rising. This leaves the Federal Open Market Committee lots of room to continue its quantitative easing policy of buying half a trillion dollars a year of long-term Treasury bonds and half a trillion worth of Freddie/Fannie bonds. The FOMC can continue to subsidize the housing market without fear of political repercussions." Continue reading →
The Fundamental Characteristic that Recommends Janet Yellen
"We expect an ever more emphatic stream of double-talk and market manipulations as the final acts of this tragedy play out. First, a Wall Street Party and then ... the ruinous aftermath. And throughout this scenario, the constant, delusional drip of increasingly unmoored statements about the Fed's competence and the government's efficiency generally. Somehow the eventual unwinding of these trillions shall be blamed on the private markets and as everything crashes down, those at the top will suggest a new and even more globalized system using the strategies that have created such domestic havoc." Continue reading →
Bitcoin Could be Regulated as a Commodity: Senate Banking Hearing
"BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi also presented, and argued against regulation. He recommended that Congress take the same approach to bitcoin as they did to the commercial Internet in the early nineties: wait and see. 'If America is the leader in Bitcoin technology, America will create more jobs and more exports,' he said. 'If the United States doesn’t allow our businesses to accept bitcoin and create more jobs and exports, then countries like Germany and China certainly will.' He understood why banks might be nervous about virtual currencies, though, as it is a disruptive technology, which threatens to undermine their business models." Continue reading →