Blog

October 18, 2004 – Readers are probably aware that I was interviewed in the October 4th issue of Barron’s. The entire interview, which was fairly wide ranging, is posted at the Smart Money website:  www.smartmoney.com. I received a lot of feedback about the interview, but nearly all of it was directed to my comments aboutRead more

September 27, 2004 – I am often asked to provide my thoughts about the “big picture”. It’s a fair request, as it is understandable that people want to view as many different perspectives on the future as possible. But to better understand the future, it is sometimes necessary to look at the past. And perhapsRead more

September 13, 2004 – Last week Sons of Gwalia, one of Australia’s largest gold mining companies, declared bankruptcy. It is being labeled as an $800 million collapse, but the betting is that the company’s liabilities will top $1 billion when the debt on its balance sheet is toted up with its off-balance sheet liabilities. Off-balanceRead more

August 30, 2004 – Next month central bankers from around the world will gather in Washington D.C. for another annual meeting of the Int’l Monetary Fund. No one benefits from the conspicuous self-indulgence and excessive revelry accompanying these meetings except Washington’s hookers, but in between the caviar, lavish parties and limousines, these pooh-bahs of financeRead more

August 9, 2004 – Crude oil is going to $60 per barrel, and probably even a lot higher than that. It is an outcome that is inevitable, but we should not be surprised. Crude oil has been getting more and more expensive for decades, as can be seen from the following chart. From $1.17 perRead more

July 27, 2004 – How does the gold cartel pick pockets?  One way works like this.  There is a huge pool of capital – running well into the tens of billions – that trades the commodity markets.  When leveraged, this capital can have the impact of hundreds of billions of dollars. Much of this capital is tradedRead more

July 26, 2004 – I hope that you subscribe to and read the gold market commentaries of Bill Murphy and his associates that are posted almost daily at www.lemetropolecafe.com. They are first-rate. Not only are they informative, they provide in my view real and valuable insight about what is happening within the gold market fromRead more

July 12, 2004 – It was both a privilege and a pleasure to attend this past Friday the first meeting of the Single Global Currency Assn. (www.theunionleader.com).  The meeting was the idea of Morrison Bonpasse, founder of the SGCA, which held their conference at the beautiful Mount Washington Hotel & Resort in Bretton Woods, NewRead more

June 14, 2004 – A recent report crossed my desk by Dr. Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report. I first met Marc nearly twenty years ago when I was in the Middle East, and I have always very much valued his big-picture vision of markets and economies around the world. SoRead more

May 24, 2004 – ‘Leverage’ is a generic term applied to debt that is applied to and used in trading and investment positions. For example, if you use $10,000 of your savings to buy stocks, and then use these stocks to borrow another $10,000, you have leveraged your position. Or as it applies to goldRead more