Gold Equilibrium
Why the U.S. could return to a gold standard at $1300/oz without risk of inflation or deflation There are two prices of gold. There is the market spot price of gold (POG) and an optimum POG which represents the price…
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Latest Posts
A Gold Standard vs. CRB Index
Trump’s nomination of Steve Moore and Herman Cain to Fed Board positions has shaken up the Fed establishment. Moore is advocating a CRB (commodities) Index target while Cain has written in favor of a gold standard. A gold standard or…
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End of Normalization
In January 2018, I saw a market inflection occurring due to Fed normalization. I wrote Market Memo: Market Inflection. The week I wrote it, the Dow hit 26,600 and then began a decline. Capital flows to where it receives the…
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A Trapped Fed II
The Fed creates money based on a monetary standard. Think of a monetary standard as the Fed’s carburetor that regulates how much liquidity gets injected into the economic engine. To maintain a standard requires adjusting base money supply to hit a specific…
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A Trapped Fed
The clearest way to understand current Fed policy and its effect on markets is to view it through interest rates. Interest rates are the price of credit. Credit is not money. When a bank creates credit, it does not create…
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Market Indices and Gold
Measurement requires a standard of reference. We accept this universally in the mathematical and scientific world. Suggesting that the length of the meter or the volume of a liter be constantly changed and tinkered with would defy common sense. Money…
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The Basics of Money
Start with the basics of money. Money is not wealth, it is the measurement of wealth. All money does is value the exchange of goods and services—the productive economy—similar to any other basic unit of measurement in the International System…
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Trump vs the Fed
Trump Bashes the Fed Over Rate Hikes The Federal Reserve and the Holy Natural Rate of Interest The Federal Reserve is on a Monty Pythonesque search for the Holy Grail of natural interest rates—the Wicksellian natural rate of interest. As…
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Kendall Rule Revisited
Yellen’s Inadvertent Gold Standard Nathan Lewis posted an excellent piece on Forbes about gold’s correlation with the dollar during Yellen’s tenure as Fed Chair. Lewis asks the question, “have we effectively recreated the Bretton Woods gold standard system?” Bretton Woods linked…
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The Wisdom of the Electorate
The first rule to understanding elections is the wisdom of the electorate. The electorate is always right. That is why democracy works. The population in aggregate is far wiser than any elite few. Political systems have evolved in a trial-and-error…
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