The dollar is a favorite refuge for money seeking safety as the European banking crisis again dominates financial news. Consequently, 10-year US treasury bills are now yielding a record low of 1.39% as money pours into them. (As bond prices are bid higher, yields drop.)
Not surprisingly, Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England, recently said that the central bank would take “whatever action is needed to support growth” in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Carney’s statements seemed to have been crafted from Mario Draghi’s repeated promises that the European Central Bank would do “whatever it takes” to
As stock market indexes fail to punch out new highs, the bulls keep looking for positive developments so that they can keep investors buying stocks. Some stock bulls have noted that one of the bright spots in the US economy has been auto sales, forecast to hit 17.7 million vehicles this year and breaking last
For years, China watchers have warned that banks there are vulnerable to failure because of bad debt that the banks refuse to recognize. Now the IMF says that China’s corporate debt, which stands at 145 percent of Gross Domestic Product, “is a potential risk to the global economy.”
One of the primary tenets of Austrian economic theory is that economies cannot be “managed,” that interference, be it deficit spending, regulations, taxing policies, central bank quantitative easing programs or negative interest rates, will send false signals that will distort decisions made by the private sector, the real driver of economic growth. The bigger the
Is the US economy slowing down, which will prompt more Fed stimulus, or is it “dramatically better” as NY Fed President William C. Dudley said in a recent New York Times interview, which will allow the Fed to raise the discount rate later this year? In the first quarter, US Gross Domestic Product rose only
And, the stock market — using the Dow Industrials — fails to make new highs. The U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in two years the first quarter 2016, with GDP rising .5 percent, less than half the gain posted fourth quarter 2015. For some time, the U.S. was the shining star among world
At the Group of 20 largest economies summit just concluded in Shanghai, the primary concern was deteriorating global growth and how to counter it. Much discussed was a “coordinated effort,” which would include increase government spending by members, in addition to the massive deficit spending already going on worldwide. Mark Carney, Bank of England head,
Mario Draghi, ECB chief, again reaffirmed his pledge to print more euros next month in a Keynesian effort to fillip economic activity in the eurozone. In December, the ECB’s measures fell short of market expectations, and stock markets declined. This time Draghi does not plan to disappoint.
The main reason to buy gold and silver is to protect against currency debasement, which is brought on by massive deficit spending that requires the Fed to print dollars to cover debt that could not be sold to private investors.