Gold has big year in 2020 and outlook for this year robust. Learn about monetary expansion and gold future prices.Read More

The gold futures price reached US$1,767/ounce this week before retreating, which was the second time it has surpassed US$1,760 in the past two months, marking some of gold's highest levels in several years.Read More

Breaking BRIC piggy banks … Since 2009 the word "austerity" has not been too far away from the lips of finance ministers across the globe. Deficits and debt-to-GDP ratios around the world surged due to the financial crisis, and it was felt that they were fast becoming unsustainable. Once the immediate danger of the global recession passed politicians across the globe rushed to redu...Read More

Debt Ceiling: China Calls for World to Be 'De-Americanised.' Chinese government mouthpiece says 'Pax Americana' has failed on all fronts … Xinhua calls for de-Americanised world. China's official news agency has called for the creation of a "de-Americanised world", saying the destinies of people should not be left in the hands of a hypocritical nation with a dys...Read More

World top bankers warn of dire consequences if U.S. defaults … Three of the world's most powerful bankers warned of terrible consequences if the United States defaults on its debt, with Deutsche Bank chief executive Anshu Jain claiming default would be "utterly catastrophic" … "This would be a very rapidly spreading, fatal disease," Jain said on Saturday at a co...Read More

Obama's national debt rate on track to double … President Obama likes to say that raising the nation's borrowing limit "won't add a dime" to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office. When Mr. Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood...Read More

UK fracking ambitions threatened by EU warning over methane emissions. The EU authorities have opened a new front in efforts to clamp down on shale gas, warning that the carbon footprint from methane emissions may be high enough to call into question the whole future of fracking in Europe. – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: Without Brussels, would the world burn up?Free-Market Analysis: Th...Read More

Factional conflicts have the power to destroy empires – and republics … Bitter fights in Washington are making the US economy look much worse than it is. The US Founding Fathers abhorred factions. The 10th Federalist Paper by James Madison in 1787 is a study of how to defend the fledgling republic against the dangers of organised zealotry, the curse that blighted earlier republics in w...Read More

Why I'm Very Happy About Janet Yellen … President Barack Obama plans to nominate Janet Yellen as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In doing so, he will promote the pre-eminent policy economist of her generation to the role of the most powerful central banker in the world. Yellen is quite simply more qualified for the job than any of her predecessors … Tonight, I feel...Read More

Carter: Middle class today resembles past's poor…Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that the income gap in the United States has increased to the point where members of the middle class resemble the Americans who lived in poverty when he occupied the White House.Carter offered his assessment of the nation's economic challenges Monday at a Habitat for Humanity construction sit...Read More

Britain must stay in the EU, says Nissan boss … Carmaker says threat of European Union import tariffs could be an "obstacle" for Nissan if Britain exits the single market. Nissan employs 6,400 people at the Sunderland car plant … One of the UK's most important foreign investors, the Japanese car-giant, Nissan, has said that Britain's membership of the European Union...Read More

Ben S. Bernanke, the world’s most-powerful central banker, says he doesn’t understand gold prices. If his peers had paid attention, they might have stopped expanding reserves that lost $545 billion in value since bullion peaked in 2011.Bernanke, who holds economics degrees from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Federal Reserve through the biggest...Read More

Sir Bob Geldof: 'All humans will die before 2030'… Bob Geldof based his miserable prediction on the effects of climate changeThe musician-turned-activist reckons the world will end in 2030 – leading to the extinction of humankind.Sir Bob, 61, based his miserable prediction on the effects of climate change.“The world can decide in a fit of madness to kill itself," he...Read More

Shutdown: A fight with no room for compromise … To end the government shutdown, all Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) needs to do is let the House of Representatives vote on a budget. It would pass within 30 minutes. Virtually all 200 House Democrats would vote to keep the government open, as would as many as 50 Republicans. An easy majority. But no. Boehner and other Republican leaders refuse t...Read More

IRS at 100: How income taxation built the middle class … Exactly a century ago, on October 3, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the first modern federal income tax into law. The sky did not fall.That may have surprised the eminences of the American plutocracy. For years they had predicted the most dire of consequences should the federal government begin taxing the incomes of America&rsq...Read More

Economic focus should shift from the BRICs to Africa's emerging markets … Just as the green shoots of recovery are appearing in the UK, and positively sprouting upwards in the US, so it seems that the so-called BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are slowing. 'The BRICs really matter. They now account for one quarter of global GDP and, since 2005, they have...Read More

A short history of North America's financial panics … President Andrew Jackson rode a wave of hostility toward financiers into the White House. He declared America's national bank corrupt, and set out to thwart its activities. Private banks responded with rapid expansion, fuelling a real estate bubble. Jackson, who had paid off the national debt, insisted that public lands be paid fo...Read More

Three trends that will create demand for an Unconditional Basic Income … The digitization of our economy will bring with it a new generation of radical economic ideologies, of which Bitcoin is arguably the ?rst. For those with assets, technological savvy, and a sense of adventure, the state is the enemy and a cryptographic currency is the solution. But for those more focused on the decline o...Read More

This is What Budget Cuts Have Done to Detroit … And It's Freaking Awesome … Leaving aside the details on whether the U.S. budget is actually shrinking, one needs to look no further than the city of Detroit to find the spontaneous order, civic cooperation, and peaceful market forces that take over when government simply isn't around. – policymix.comDominant Social Theme: A...Read More

Fed mulls adjusting its tune to quell jittery markets … Federal Reserve officials are considering moving the goal posts on U.S. monetary policy with a promise to keep interest rates low for longer in the hopes of heading off a troubling rise in markets borrowing costs. Top Fed officials, who have pulled out all the stops to boost the U.S. recovery from recession, have worried for months that...Read More

The wheels are coming off the whole of southern Europe … Europe's debt-crisis strategy is near collapse. The long-awaited recovery has failed to take wing. Debt ratios across southern Europe are rising at an accelerating extreme austerity is breaking down in almost every EMU crisis state. And now the US Federal Reserve has inflicted a full-blown credit shock for good measure. A leaked re...Read More

Edward Snowden and the disaster of privatization … In May, computer analyst Edward Snowden flew to China, handed over volumes of National Security Agency surveillance data to a reporter, and launched a heated national conversation about our nation's surveillance state. Underscoring that conversation was the fact that Snowden was a private contractor, given access to a vast store of infor...Read More