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 | Alasdair Macleod - Finance and Eco. |
| The egregious errors of static statistics |
| The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. Lord Macaulay wrote this nearly two hundred years ago. His aphorism is particularly apposite of modern politicians, and also of the modern state itself, which is meant to be selfless in the interest of the common good. We can be certain that when a person moves from outside to inside the machinery of the state, he or she changes from representing the people to representing the state. Presumably therFriday, March 16, 2018 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Price Spikes vs. Dollar as Trump Sacks Tillerson 'Cos of Russia', Inflation Rises |
| GOLD PRICES leapt against a sinking Dollar on Tuesday but quickly fell back after US consumer prices showed the fastest inflation in 6 months and US President Donald Trump sacked his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with a tweet, one day after Tillerson called Russia "a force for instability in the world."
Trump had tweeted overnight that the House Intelligence Committee "
found no evidence of collusion or coordination" between his 2Wednesday, March 14, 2018 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Prices Bounce After N.Korea 'Dotard-Rocket Man' Drop as US Job Growth Leaps |
| GOLD PRICES bounced late-Friday to end the week unchanged per ounce after the United States reported the strongest jobs growth in 19 months.
Rallying to $1323 as London trade ended, the gold price had earlier slipped to 7-session lows at $1314 after Donald Trump became the first US president to announce a meeting with the leader of Stalinist dictatorship North Korea.
The Bureau of Labor StatistiSaturday, March 10, 2018 |
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 | Andy Hoffman - Miles Franklin |
| Did The Office Of Management And Budget Just Throw In The Towel |
| At some point you really have to begin to wonder if the U.S. government has simply given up on the idea of even pretending to have any sort of fiscal plan.
It’s almost as if they’ve stopped trying to even bother to maintain the appearance of solvency, and are just wondering how long it will take before the market notices and ends the charade.
A quick review is that the publicly stated debt is now over $20 trillion, with unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare raising the real totaFriday, February 23, 2018 |
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 | Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| Will Hawkish Fed and Strong Payrolls Blow Out Gold Rally |
| At the end of last week, gold encountered a couple of headwinds. Will they topple the yellow metal?
First Gust of Wind: Fed
As we predicted, the last FOMC meeting turned out to be more hawkish than expected. On January 30, we wrote:
(…) the Fed has its own meeting this week. We could see a hawkish strike, especially that it will be the last Yellen’s meeting and she has nothing to lose. The changing composition of the policy committee could also point to a more aggressive pace of rate hikes in 20Tuesday, February 6, 2018 |
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 | Peter Schiff - Euro Pacific Capital |
| Raising Rates Reflect Bigger Debt Not Faster Growth |
| While investors are justifiably focused on what may be the opening crescendo of a long overdue sell-off in stocks, there is not, as of yet, as feverish a discussion of the parallel sell-offs in bonds and the U.S. dollar, which have been underway for at least a year and a half in bonds and 14 months for the dollar. I contend that this should be widely understood as the root causes of the jittery Dow, and are ultimately far more important. A continued decline in the dollar and bonds holds the poteMonday, February 5, 2018 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Price -$10 on Strongest US Wage Inflation Since Jan '09 But Fed 'Behind the Curve' |
| GOLD PRICES sank $10 inside 30 minutes Friday lunchtime in London as new US data showed a stronger-than-expected rise in new jobs plus the largest annual rise in average wages since January 2009.
The Dollar jumped on the FX market, extending an overnight rally begun as the Bank of Japan became the first central bank amid 2018's sell-off of government bonds to step into the market and buy in a bid to stem the resulting surge in longer-term intereFriday, February 2, 2018 |
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 | Mish - Global Economic Analysis |
| CPI Up 0.1 Percent: How Much is the CPI Understated |
| The BLS says the CPI is up 0.1% for the month and 2.1% from a year ago. What's the real story?
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.1 percent in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index rose 2.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.
An increase of 0.4 percent in the shelter index accounted for almost 80 percent of the 1-month all items increase. The food index rose in DThursday, January 18, 2018 |
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| Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| Gold Prices Choppy after Payrolls |
| The U.S. economy added only 148,000 jobs in December. Gold prices reacted in a choppy way, confusing some analysts. Why?
December Payrolls Disappoint
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased only 148,000 in December, the slowest pace in three months. The employment gains were generally widespread, but the biggest employers were construction (+30,000), leisure and hospitality (+29,000), education and health services (+28,000), and manufacturing (+25,000). The latter rise is a particularly brighTuesday, January 9, 2018 |
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| Mish - Global Economic Analysis |
| GDPNow Dives Following Jobs, ISM Report: Little Reaction in Nowcast |
| A volatility difference between the GDP models is again in play. GDPNow declined 0.5 PP to 2.7% while Nowcast rose 0.1. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast for fourth-quarter GDP took a half-percentage-point dive following today's economic reports.
GDPNow Forecast: 2.7% - January 5, 2018
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2017 is 2.7 percent on January 5, down from 3.2 percent on January 3.
The forecasts of real consumer spendinFriday, January 5, 2018 |
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 | James Howard Kunstler |
Forecast 2018 — What Could Go Wrong  |
| Markets
If you take your cues from Consensus Trance Central — the cable news networks, The New York Times, WashPost, and HuffPo — Trump is all that ails this foundering empire. Well, Trump and Russia, since the Golden Golem of Greatness is in league with Vladimir Putin to loot the world, or something like that.
Since I believe that the financial system is at the heart of today’s meta-question (What Could Go Wrong?), it would be perhaps more to the point to ask: what has held this matrix of rackeMonday, January 1, 2018 |
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 | Richard Mills - Ahead of the Herd |
| Imaginations of the Misguided |
| aheadoftheherd.com
The end of the world as we know it
It’s Christmas 2017 and North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong-un is facing a crisis. Recently the United States, with UN approval, imposed the harshest round of economic sanctions yet on his reclusive regime.
While North Korea has been sanctioned since 2006 due to continuing attempts to develop nuclear weapons, this new provocation by its sworn nemesis is the last straw for Kim, who feels the great legacies of his father and grandfather, Kim Friday, December 29, 2017 |
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| Peter Schiff - Euro Pacific Capital |
| Fake Tax Reform |
| After supposedly chomping on the bit for years to pass meaningful tax reform, Republicans are now set to blow an historic opportunity. Whatever version of the Bill that emerges from the House and Senate Conference Committee (which will be signed by President Trump faster than he can down a Filet o’Fish), will be far less than the Republicans envisioned when they finally captured the White House and both Congressional Chambers in 2016. But from what I have seen of the particulars, the revisions tThursday, December 7, 2017 |
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 | Deepcaster |
| Profit, Protection, Despite Cartel Interventions—November 2017 Update |
| Governments love [the war on cash]. Then they can control you...we are not going to have as many freedoms as we have now ...get prepared because we're going to have the worst economic problems we've had in your lifetime or my lifetime and when that happens a lot of people are going to disappear.“…the next time aroWednesday, November 1, 2017 |
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 | Keith Weiner - Monetary Metals |
| Stocks Up and Yields Down, Gold and Silver Report 8 Oct 2017 |
| Many gold bugs make an implicit assumption. Gold is good, therefore it will go up. This is tempting but wrong (ignoring that gold does not go anywhere, it’s the dollar that goes down). One error is in thinking that now you have discovered a truth, everyone else will see it quickly. And there is a subtler error. The error is to think good things must go up. Sometimes they do, but why?
First, we think it’s a cop-out to say, “well it’s all subjective.” If it were all subjective, then there would beMonday, October 9, 2017 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| Gold Price Sinks, Platinum -11 in 4 Weeks as Stocks Up, Vix Down to Record, US Fed 'Pencils In' Rate Hike |
| GOLD PRICES sank to 8-week lows against a rising Dollar on Friday as yesterday's fresh all-time highs in global equities were followed by US data showing joblessness in the world's largest economy falling to a fresh 16-year low.
"I have
penciled in a third rate hike in December," said Federal Reserve voting member Patrick Harker to CNBC on Thursday, "[although] we have to see how the inflation dynamics play out."
Friday, October 6, 2017 |
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| Mish - Global Economic Analysis |
| Three Massive Bubbles in 17 Years: When Will This One Bust A 60 Decline Coming |
| John Hussman’s presents a message no one wants to hear because nearly everyone is too busy believing for the third time in 17 years that “It’s different this time”.
Last week Hussman wrote about Valuations, Sufficient Statistics, and Breathtaking Risks. This week it’s more of the same with his post Behind the Potemkin Village.
The markets are so overvalued now that Hussman expects a 60% decline from here.
There’s an apocryphal story that in 1787, during the journey of Empress Catherine II to CSaturday, September 16, 2017 |
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| Przemyslaw Radomski CFA - SunshineProfits |
| Payrolls in August 2017 and Gold |
| The U.S. economy added 156,000 jobs in August. What does it mean for the gold market?
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased 156,000 in August, following an increase of 210,000 in June (after a downward revision), according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Analysts had expected 180,000 jobs to be created. Thus, the actual number significantly disappointed expectations. Moreover, employment gains in June and July combined were 41,000 lower than previously reported. It means that job gaTuesday, September 5, 2017 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| GLD Shrinks Like It's Sept 2011 Before US Jobs Data Send Gold Prices -0.6 for Week |
| GOLD PRICES sank 0.6% against the Dollar on Friday as the US reported stronger-than-expected jobs data for July.
New York's stock markets opened the day lower as the Dollar rallied from its latest 31-month lows to the Euro and bond prices fell, pushing longer-term interest rates higher.
Non-farm payrolls expanded by 209,000 last month, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics said, beating anFriday, August 4, 2017 |
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| Bullion Vault |
| Spot Gold Jumps as US Retail Sales + Inflation Hit Dollar, Risk of 'Bar Selling' on Japan's 0 JGB Plan |
| SPOT GOLD prices jumped near 2-week highs at $1232 per ounce Friday lunchtime in London as weak US retail sales and inflation data saw the Dollar drop hard on the forex market.
Consumer prices rose 1.6% in July from a year earlier, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics said – the weakest inflation since before Donald Trump won the presidential election last November – while retail sales fell for a second month running, also
deFriday, July 14, 2017 |
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