"First they came to register your guns, and now they want to register when you sell (and sometimes when you buy gold) gold. A bill has been introduced in Illinois, the most anti-gun state in the US, that will require the registration of the buyers and sellers of gold. In Houston, a law has been passed in the city that requires any consumer selling gold to submit to fingerprints and mugshots." Continue reading →
"First they came to register your guns, and now they want to register when you sell (and sometimes when you buy gold) gold. A bill has been introduced in Illinois, the most anti-gun state in the US, that will require the registration of the buyers and sellers of gold. In Houston, a law has been passed in the city that requires any consumer selling gold to submit to fingerprints and mugshots." Continue reading →
"Pursuit of price stability is the one goal that nearly everyone agrees is a central bank responsibility. Yet it is the one on which the Fed and other central banks have failed miserably. Since the Fed's founding in 1913, consumer prices have increased by a factor of 23 times. If the U.S. can extricate itself from fiscal deficits, price stability would be an attainable goal for central banks. Otherwise, central banking is nothing but mythology." Continue reading →
"Many have dubbed the last decade or so to be an era of easy money. As it turns out, that characterization may have been premature. Based on the new crop of central bankers who are primed to take control of the world's financial system, the age of truly easy money may be just getting started. Many expect that when Bernanke's term expires in January 2014, he will be succeeded by the dovish Yellen. But that's just the beginning. In short order, a host of serial money printers will take up the reins at the world's most important central banks." Continue reading →
"Last year, the ECB supported ailing Greece for months, because the EU couldn't agree on a bailout package for so long. It recently looked the other way when the Irish central bank came to the aid of a bank, and the prohibition on directly funding public budgets was cunningly circumvented. If the ECB were now forced to help an Italian government that is unwilling to institute reforms, its credibility would be destroyed once and for all. Many central bankers are no longer willing to cooperate with the lawmakers behind Europe's rescue programs." Continue reading →
"The world's largest private, and commercial, gold vault, that belonging once upon a time to Chase Manhattan, and now to JPMorgan Chase, is located, right across the street, and at the same level underground, resting just on top of the Manhattan bedrock, as the vault belonging to the New York Federal Reserve, which according to folklore is the official location of the biggest collection of sovereign, public gold in the world. We will let readers make up their own mind why the the thousands of tons of sovereign gold in the possession of the New York Fed, have to be literally inches across, if not directly connected, to the largest private gold vault in the world." Continue reading →
"The Japan government's nominee to be the next central bank governor outlined more forceful policy prescriptions on Monday to finally defeat deflation, saying he would not set any limits on the amount of cash the Bank of Japan pumps into the economy. Haruhiko Kuroda told lawmakers the BOJ's current policies were not powerful enough to boost inflation to 2 percent, a target he said the central bank should strive to achieve in two years. Kuroda suggested the most natural central bank stimulus for the economy would be through huge purchases of longer-dated government bonds. The BOJ should also consider kicking off its open-ended asset purchases early." Continue reading →
"Well, Fellow Reckoner, it’s been something of a sad week for proponents of Bitcoin… Would-be buyers of the fringy cyber experiment have had to watch as the price of their beloved currency shot to within (as of this writing) a few cents shy of $35 per coin. No buyer wants to see that kind of action…unless they are also an 'already boughter.'" Continue reading →
"Recently armed with $500,000 in seed funding and a partnership with Silicon Valley Bank, Coinlab, a startup based out of Seattle, is bringing its innovative Bitcoin project closer to the U.S. market. The deal brings over the North America-based book of Mt. Gox, one of the largest and most widely used bitcoin to currency exchanges. According to Coinlab CEO, Peter Vessenes, the book is worth nearly $500 million in annualized trade volumes, which he expects to grow nearly ten times over the next year. Silicon Valley Bank, a company that provides financial services to emerging growth companies, will be holding deposits of bitcoin and dollars for Coinlab." Continue reading →
"If history teaches us anything, it is that inflation usually ends in violence. The Johannesburg-based economic research house ETM Analytics (www.etmstrategy.com), which has a strong Austrian bias, puts out a monthly 'riot alert' based on the speed with which countries are debasing their currencies. It has been scarily accurate in predicting where trouble is most likely to erupt. For all the press acreage given to the political causes of violence in countries like Syria and Egypt, it is difficult to side-step the obvious common denominator: inflation. A 10% rise in food prices can transform a hungry man into an angry man." Continue reading →