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Yesterday’s speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen roiled markets across the globe. Any increase in US dollar interest rates has been postponed yet again. As a consequence, it is not surprising that the dollar tanked, and gold jumped higher in a spell of <frenetic short-covering>. While Fed officials often speak in a nuanced way,Read more

In testimony before Congress in 1912, J.P. Morgan, the leading financier of his day, declared: “Money is gold, nothing else.” A century later a diametrically opposing view was taken by Wall Street legend Warren Buffett who proclaimed that gold “has no utility” and that “anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head” trying toRead more

The following silver chart will be familiar to everyone who follows my work. I first presented this pattern in my newsletter about twenty years ago, and I have been tracking it closely ever since, though recently there has been a twist to the way this pattern has developed. I have been describing silver’s long-term chartRead more

In an interview on July 8th in King World News I noted how gold that day had slipped into backwardation. Since then I have read a lot of commentary on various websites about backwardation, which made clear to me that this term and, more importantly, the implications to the gold price when backwardation appears areRead more

At the beginning of the year, I wrote: “The financial system has become so abnormal, the Fed has to keep inflating to prevent the system from literally going off the rails. But the irony is that eventually the financial system dies as a consequence of accumulated inflation.” I then went on to identify three thingsRead more

The precious metals have been in a 2-year trading range. Though gold rose 10.2% in 2011 and 7.0% in 2012, these rates are below the 16.8% average annual appreciation gold has achieved over the past twelve years. Importantly, by being in a trading range, it is clear that the precious metals have refused to breakRead more

An article in The Wall Street Journal a few days ago caught my attention. It reported: “Gold prices dropped on signs that demand for the precious metal is sagging.
Global gold demand fell 11% during the third quarter compared with a year ago.

The US federal government spent $369 billion in August, but only received $179 billion in revenue. The resulting $190 billion deficit was a record for any August and the third highest monthly deficit in the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30th.

Money should always be separated from politics. Germany learned this lesson the hard way, and the Allies wanted to make sure for everyone’s sake that history didn’t repeat.

Nikolai Kondratieff (1892-1938) was a Russian economist who theorized that capitalist economies are subject to a repeating 54-year cycle, though I have seen his work interpreted to fit economic periods lasting anywhere from 40 to 60 years. Each “Kondratieff wave” is divided into four periods that are given the name of the four seasons. ARead more