money

The Corruption of Capitalism in America Excerpt: Chapter 17, Serial Bubbles

"Never before in history had the nation's financial system been pummeled by two gigantic bubbles and two devastating crashes in such a brief interval. That Greenspan's heir apparent managed to detect the Great Moderation at the midpoint of this cycle of financial violence was only added testimony to the degree to which monetary policy had become unhinged. It was no longer plausible, therefore, to describe the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the various venues for equity derivatives as a free market for raising and trading equity capital issues. Instead, they were violently unstable casinos, ineptly stage-managed by a central bank." Continue reading →

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Where Nervous Europeans Are Really Putting Their Money

"Demand for $100 bills has jumped since 2008 as nervous Europeans stuff them under the mattress, providing vivid proof that the world still loves the dollar and confirming the benefit to the US of the currency’s status as a global reserve. The amount of dollar cash in circulation has risen by 42 per cent in the last five years, with a main reason being demand from Europe, according to a top US Federal Reserve official. According to one set of estimates by the Fed in Washington, the share of US currency held abroad has risen from about 56 per cent to nearly 66 per cent in the last five years. It amounts to a $19bn-a-year gift from the rest of the world." Continue reading →

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Detlev Schlichter: Could Bitcoin be the money of the future?

"The crypto-currency Bitcoin is still merely a speck on the global monetary landscape. It is young, experimental, and for all we know, it may ultimately fail to break into the monetary mainstream. However, on a conceptual level I am willing to call it a work of genius and arguably the most exciting development in the field of money for more than 130 years. Let’s say since the start of the Classical Gold Standard in 1879. Does this sound like hyperbole? Well, let me explain." Continue reading →

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Discovery Of A 17th Century Spanish Shipwreck Yields Awesome Treasure

"A great superpower, weakened by economic calamity at home and staggering under the debt from years of war in the Middle East, finally collapses. A new political best-seller, or an apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster? Neither — it's the story told by a 1622 shipwreck whose treasures were desperately needed to shore up the finances of the struggling Spanish Empire. The galleon Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario was one of 28 ships in the Tierra Firme fleet; all were sailing from the New World back to Spain, laden with colonial treasures, when they were struck by a powerful hurricane off the Florida Keys." Continue reading →

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A Ton Of Gold Bricks: What Capital Flight Looks Like In Italy

"Curious why so little has been said about cash flowing out of Italy's banks, especially when even UniCredit's CEO today proudly warned everyone he is all for confiscating uninsured deposits as long as 'everyone else is doing it' - and no, he is not kidding, so when it does happen, nobody will be able to say they weren't warned. Maybe it is because Italian cash is actually not leaving the country at all. Instead, real 'wealth' is departing the boot-shaped nation, quietly and under the radar, as fast as it can in another form: gold. Continue reading →

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Indian gold smugglers take body route to outwit customs

"Smugglers and couriers who bring gold into the country illegally, have usually been known to bring the commodity by hiding it outside their body through various means. But with air intelligence units of the customs wising up to myriad modes of concealment, smugglers have resorted to reshaping gold to get it through. In Monday’s incident two men who arrived from Sri Lanka at the airport had shaped crude gold bits to fit inside the base of their mouth under the tongue. In another incident, a buxom lady was arrested after sleuths found that her bosom appeared extra-large as she had sewn 4 kg of shaped gold into her brassiere." Continue reading →

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Gold’s Black Market?

"Have investors really lost faith? We read that gold demand in Asia and India remains very strong and informal reports from gold buyers (for physical gold) seem to indicate that it is difficult to buy gold at any price. Silver, not much better. One explanation for this would be that the paper market and the physical market are diverging. The paper market, according to those who see this crash as manipulated, is easy to push down. The physical market might reject these manipulations were it a mark-to-market operation. But it is not. The physical price of gold is apparently fixed twice a day by a consortium of wise men." Continue reading →

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Central Bankers Admit They Are Flying Blind

"Growing concern at the International Monetary Fund over the long-term side-effects of interest rates close to zero came as some of the leading figures in central banking conceded they were flying blind when steering their economies. It is troubling for monetary policy experts that their crisis-fighting tools - rates stuck at zero, money printing operations to bring down longer-term interest rates and encourage private sector spending, and efforts to calm financial market fears - might have nasty side-effects. The central bankers were clear that they had got it wrong before the crisis, lulled into thinking they had eliminated financial vulnerabilities." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin ATMs coming soon

"42-year-old media entrepreneur Jeff Berwick hopes to bring Bitcoin ATMs to a city near you soon. Berwick expects to put the first two ATMs in Los Angeles and Cyprus in the next two weeks and is choosing between several different retail locations in both areas. He added that orders are coming in by the hundreds from 30 different countries. Berwick will charge roughly $10,000 to ATM operators to maintain the machines and then split fees with those operators. So far, Berwick has used his personal savings to develop the software and build out the first prototype. He is currently hoping to raise between $1 million and $3 million in outside capital." Continue reading →

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A Telling Gold Anecdote From Hong Kong

"Went to Hang Seng bullion counter yesterday. The line was out the door. It took an hour wait to see a teller. When I asked if people were buying in the dip or selling in panic, she told me that they haven't had once ounce of gold sold back to them all day. She told me they have sold more gold in 24 hrs than they normally do in 3 months. Yes, there was a lot of extra security. The guy in front of me bought over $1 million USD in gold. He paid in cash and walked out of the door with the bullion in a Nike bag. Amazing. [..] Here, the man would be arrested and jailed just for having his own money in cash. Oh, and the cash would be stolen." Continue reading →

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