Investing

There can be little doubt that Fed Chairman Benjamin Bernanke has been a very, very good friend to gold investors. However, some of those who have benefited from his largesse now fear that the recent selloff in gold indicates an imminent end to Bernanke's monetary...

If one were asked to describe the major global economic changes that have unfolded since the financial crisis began, a good starting place would be the massive shift of debt from the private to the public sector. Attempting to arrest a deepening crisis, governments...

While the markets have known for almost three months that the 2010 election delivered the House of Representatives to the tea-infused Republican Party, I did expect a greater reaction on Wall Street to the formalities of the opening sessions of Congress yesterday. If...

The United States Postal Service announced last week that all future first class postage stamps sold will be the so-called "forever stamps" that have no face value but are guaranteed to cover the cost of mailing a first class letter, regardless of how high that cost...

There is an old adage on Wall Street: no one rings a bell to signal a market top or bottom. Yet, I have found that bells do ring; it's just that few people know exactly what sound to listen for.  Perhaps the biggest and most liquid of all markets is for...

Pre-holiday cheer is certainly evident in the financial markets. The overwhelming consensus is that the Congressional agreement to not raise taxes while extending hundreds of billions in new stimulus will finally allow the recovery to take hold. The good feelings are...

?Despite the fact that the S&P is up over 80% in the last 21 months, US financial firms are currently tripping over each other in their zeal to raise their S&P 500 and GDP targets for 2011. JPMorgan's chief US equities strategist, Thomas Lee, came out on...

This week Washington displayed the kind of "bipartisanship" that will bankrupt our country and wreck our currency.  Coming at a time when both parties say they want to address our long-term fiscal imbalances, the compromise extension of the Bush era tax cuts...

Despite America's economic problems, the US dollar has maintained its respected status the world over - and has even managed to maintain value in comparison to other currencies. It appears that the dollar will likely finish 2010 at the same levels that it started....

This past Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes", Americans received a massive dose of mendacity from our Fed Chairman. Mr. Bernanke's shaky delivery, and even shakier logic may cause faith in America's economic leadership to evaporate faster than the value of our...

If you've spent enough time in the gold community, you might be under the impression that the most imminent threat to the average American isn't terrorism or unemployment, but rather gold confiscation. Starting with the fact that FDR confiscated gold during the last...

Today's payroll report severely disappointed on the downside and left economists scratching their heads to explain the weakness. The explanation, however, is plain as day. As I have been saying for years, the US economy will not create jobs as long as the Fed keeps...

Given the opposing views of the potentially parsimonious new Congress and the continuously accommodative Federal Reserve, there is a movement afoot among Republicans to eliminate the Fed's "dual mandate." Prior to 1977, the Fed only had one job: maintaining price...

Certain deflationists have recently gone on record saying that the increase in the Fed's balance sheet is meaningless with regard to creating inflation because our central bank can't print money, it can only create bank reserves. The problem with their view is that it...

Given all that stress that the Federal Reserve's currency debasement program is laying on the global economy, last week's G-20 summit in South Korea should have been the monetary equivalent of a military degradation for the U.S. dollar. The greenback should have been...

?The continued bull market in the price of gold has been one of the staple discussions in the financial media for the better part of a decade. But, in that time, almost no consensus has emerged to explain the phenomenon. If you ask ten Wall Street pundits to explain...

With our economy sagging and our international clout waning, one of the few assets upon which the United States can rely is the confidence that the rest of the world has traditionally showered upon us. That confidence is the reason why the US dollar was elevated to...

As the world awaits another $600 billion flood from Bernanke's printing press, central bank governors from Brasília to Tokyo are preparing to respond in kind. This is the monetary equivalent of a nuclear war, except instead of radiation, bombs of inflation...

?While it's true that history repeats itself, the patterns should always be separated by a generation or two to keep things respectable. Unfortunately, in today's economic world, it seems the cycle can be counted in months.  On July 24, 2009, just as the Federal...

?It seems the Fed has given up on the idea that the country can build a viable and stable economy through the conventional means. Instead, our central bank has resorted to once again growing GDP and increasing employment by the creation of asset bubbles. This is a...

This week, desperation became palpable at the Fed. In both the formulaic statement that accompanied its FOMC policy decision and Chairman Ben Bernanke's unusual (and clumsy) Washington Post op-ed follow up, the guardians of our currency expressed grave disappointment...

It seems the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve is of the belief that diluting the dollar is the cure for everything from a recession to male pattern baldness. And like other snake-oil salesmen before him, Mr. Bernanke is heavy on promises and light on results....

There has been so much discussion recently about "QE 2" that you would think the entire financial sector were about to embark on a transatlantic cruise. Unfortunately, they, and we, are not so lucky. In the year 2010, "QE 2" doesn't refer to a sumptuous ocean liner,...

Last weekend, the G-20 finance ministers met in South Korea to find areas of agreement in preparation for the main G-20 gathering in November. The Chinese rebuffed renewed American pleas for them to revalue their yuan. They rejected Secretary Geithner's suggestion of...