| |
| Benjamin Constant |
On the Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns  |
| "He loved liberty as other men love power," was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a 19th-century admirer.His great public concern, all throughout his adult life, was the attainment of a free society, especially for his adopted country, France; and if a (by no means uncritical) French commentator exaggeraMonday, February 8, 2021 |
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 | Alasdair Macleod - Finance and Eco. |
| The origin of cycles |
| It was Karl Marx who was among the first believers that cyclical behaviour was endemic to free markets.He lived through a time when there was a regular cycle of boom and bust, with phases of economic expansion followed by contraction. Workers were employed and then unemployed, and the only way this could be stopped, in Marxian economics, was for the workers to acquire the means of production, or more correctly, the state to do so on their behalf.Other economists, such as Jevons and Wicksell, recSunday, January 24, 2021 |
|
 | Mickey Fulp - Mercenary Geologist |
| The Never-Ending Wars of the United States of America |
| A Monday Morning Musing from Mickey the Mercenary Geologist"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefiMonday, November 23, 2020 |
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 | John Butler - Goldmoney |
| Financial crisis dynamics, the ‘shadow’ gold demand, and Mene |
| The study of financial crises is as old as the economics discipline itself. One of the most prominent theorists of financial crises ever to hold a senior Federal Reserve policy position was John Exter, vice-president of the New York Federal Reserve during the 1950s. Several years ago I co-wrote a series of essays on Exter’s theories together with his sonin- law, Barry Downs. In this paper, building on Exter’s work, including his eponymous ‘pyramid’, I introduce a new ‘hourglass’ framework for unSaturday, November 14, 2020 |
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 | Jesse - Le Cafe Américain |
| The Crash of 1929 - |
| "...people believed that everything was going to be great always, always. There was a feeling of optimism in the air that you cannot even describe today."
"There was great hope. America came out of World War I with the economy intact. We were the only strong country in the world. The dollar was king. We had a very popular president in the middle of the decade, Calvin Coolidge, and an even more popular one elected in 1928, Herbert Hoover. So things looked pretty good."
"The economy was changingThursday, October 29, 2020 |
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 | Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| The “Gold Sterilization” of 1937 |
| Today, we will start investigating the U.S. recession of 1937, and along with that, claims that the Federal Reserve caused it by some sort of misbehavior. As is our usual practice, we will begin with just looking at some general information about that time.
Industrial production had a short, sharp shock in 1937.
Here’s what it looked like in terms of nominal GDP:
I am not going to try to disentangle what was going on at that time. There were a lot of things, from the introduction of Social SecThursday, May 21, 2020 |
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| Graham Summer - Gains Pains & Capital |
| Democratization of Money vs. Economic Feudalism |
| The Fed is the Market, Until Someone Bigger Comes Along..
UPDATE:This editorial was written 3 days ago in reaction to reading the Zerohedge post As Bitcoin Nears $10,000 "Central Banks Kept Up At Night"
by Vince Lanci
“Free markets for free men”- patch worn on the Nymex floor during Iraqi war.
The reality: We were cheerleaders for Halliburton and naively thought we were on the same team. Money that can’t cross borders freely for its citizenry is not a free market. There was a time before eMonday, August 13, 2018 |
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| Graham Summer - Gains Pains & Capital |
| Cryptocurrency Bank AriseBank To Acquire 100 Year Old FDIC Bank; Partner With BitShares. |
| Intro by Vince Lanci
via the Soren K. Group at Marketslant.com
The Next Revolution is already Happening
Over the past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of meeting the next revolutionaries in the democratization of money. This was while looking to understand better the guts of the blockchain tech and how it differed from crypto to crypto. I had the pleasure of meeting with and speaking to several people involved with Bitshares and those involved at the periphery with Arisebank. During that tMonday, August 13, 2018 |
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 | Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| Is the Economic Summer Coming |
| Cycles, cycles everywhere. We’ve already discussed the current state of the U.S. business cycle, arguing that the expansion should last for a while, although it is more advanced than in Europe. However, business cycles aren’t the only creatures living in an economic zoo. They are simply the most popular within the modern macroeconomics. The post-war business cycles lasted, on average, almost 6 years. But economists distinguished also shorter cycles, called Kitchin inventory cycles, which are belSaturday, March 17, 2018 |
|
| Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| Unbiased Gold Analysis of Draghi Dropping the Bias |
| The ECB dropped its easing bias on Thursday. Monetary hawks are pleased. But doves are holding tight. And what does gold do?
Hawks Awaken in Frankfurt…
A major change at the European Central Bank! On Thursday, it removed its long-standing pledge to increase bond buys if needed. In January we could read that statement:
(…) if the outlook becomes less favourable, or if financial conditions become inconsistent with further progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, we stand rWednesday, March 14, 2018 |
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 | Peter McKenzie-Brown - Language Instinct |
| Capturing a Cacophony of Voices |
| My 2017 book, Bitumen: The people, performance and passions behind Alberta's oil sands, its book of the year. I'm quite honoured. Here is an intro to the oil sands, based on information from that book.
By Peter McKenzie-Brown
Hudson’s Bay
Company explorer James Knight made a seminal observation in his diary on
June 27, 1715. On an expedition into today’s Alberta, he wrote that he had
learned from Cree “Home Guard” Indigenous people, local trappers and factory
provisioners “abt the Great RTuesday, March 13, 2018 |
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| Alasdair Macleod - Finance and Eco. |
| Trade Wars |
| An overt trade war has commenced. President Trump has fired the starting gun, setting in motion an election promise, part of his Make America Great Again undertaking. It is a blow squarely aimed against China, costing China some trade perhaps, but basically a loser’s last roll of the dice.The back story appears to be far deeper than some relatively minor tariffs on steel and aluminium would suggest. It comes after a prolonged period of shadow-boxing between America in the blue corner and Russia Friday, March 9, 2018 |
|
 | The Energy Report |
| The Smallest Company in the Lowest Cost Oil Play in the US |
| Keith Schaefer of Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin profiles a micro-cap oil company with land in a prime area.
Small oil producers have been shunned by the market, making them extremely cheap now—giving the whole sector lots of leverage for investors.
The one I'm focused on this year is Jericho Oil Corp. (JCO:TSX.V; JROOF:OTC). It's the smallest company I can find in the best play—which right now looks like the STACK play in Oklahoma.
It was the rare mWednesday, March 7, 2018 |
|
 | Stewart Dougherty |
| Mr. President, If We Don’t Have Gold, We Don’t Have a Country |
| “Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive. … Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” Mao Tse-tung, proclaiming the founding of the People’s Republic of China, 1949Circumstantial evidence is mounting high that there is something seriously wrong with the amount of gold reportedly owned by the United States government, or more precisely, the American people.After nearly two generations of being brainwashed into believing that gold is a mWednesday, March 7, 2018 |
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| Peter McKenzie-Brown - Language Instinct |
| Barbecues, Booms and Blogs |
| Barbecues, Booms and Blogs
Fifty Years of Public Relations in Calgary
ISBN number: 978-1-55059-363-1
Copy for inside front cover:
Public relations is "the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or organization with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn understanding and acceptance."
Canadian Public Relations Society definition
Title: Barbeques, Booms and BlogsSubSunday, March 4, 2018 |
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 | Nelson Hultberg - AFR.org |
| Pod People and the Matrix |
| The two greatest science fiction movies of the 20th century are Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Matrix (1999). Both are seminal cinematic efforts that portray big ideological truths about the dangers of modernity and tyranny, and they do so with relentless hammer blows of frightful eeriness.
The Pod People
Invasion of the Body Snatchers involves an extraterrestrial invasion in which mysterious plant spores have settled onto earth and then hatch into sinister leafy pods that migratSunday, March 4, 2018 |
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| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| Where’s The Magic Formula |
| (This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on March 3, 2018.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2018/03/02/wheres-the-magic-formula/#3a4e6da97a01
For some time, I’ve argued that a lot of economic policymaking boils down to the Magic Formula, which is: Low Taxes and Stable Money. There is more to it than this, of course; but if you don’t get the big stuff right, the little stuff won’t matter. So, get the big stuff right, first.
Conversely, when a country runs into trouble, you can usualSaturday, March 3, 2018 |
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 | Keith Weiner - Monetary Metals |
| Gold is a Giant Ouija Board |
| We have been promising to get back to the topic of capital destruction, which we put on hiatus for the last several weeks to make our case that the interest rate remains in a falling trend. Today, we have a different way of looking at capital destruction.
Socialism is the system of seeking out and destroying capital. Redistribution means taking someone’s capital and handing it over as income to someone else. The rightful owner would steward and compound it, not consume it. But the recipient of uMonday, February 26, 2018 |
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| Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| The End Is Near |
| The doomsayers have been calling for recession for years. Mainstream economists laughed at them, painting a rosy picture. However, the recent plunge in the stock market strengthened the pessimists’ hand. They interpret the dive as a signal of a coming recession. Is the end of the stock market boom really near?
What Lies Ahead?
The recent stock market turmoil brought traders to their knees. We, of course, covered the descent for our readers, calling for calm. We urged investors not to panic aboutTuesday, February 20, 2018 |
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| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| “Rules-Based” Monetary Proposals Won’t Create S... |
| (This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on February 9, 2018.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2018/02/09/rules-based-monetary-proposals-wont-create-stable-money/#4b822c96128e
I often say that governments should follow the “Magic Formula,” which is: Low Taxes and Stable Money. Good things happen to governments that do this, and bad things happen to those that don’t.
“Stable Money” means: money that is stable in value. The traditional way to accomplish this is to link currencies to gMonday, February 12, 2018 |
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