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

Gold Rises Most in Nine Weeks as Physical Demand Climbs … Gold prices advanced the most in nine weeks as demand for coins, bars and jewelry rebounded following the record quarterly plunge. – BloombergDominant Social Theme: Gold is so 'last year.'Free-Market Analysis: The puzzling thing about the decline in the price of gold relative to dollars is that there is demand for the ph...Read More

Feldstein: Why Inflation Is Low … Why has quantitative easing coexisted with price stability in the United States? Or, as I often hear, "Why has the Federal Reserve's printing of so much money not caused higher inflation?" Inflation has certainly been very low. During the past five years, the consumer price index has increased at an annual rate of just 1.5%. The Fed's prefe...Read More

Mark Carney goes in to bat for Britain … Governor Mark Carney takes the Tube on his first day … Mark Carney started his first day at the Bank of England with a Tube ride on the central line and a slew of advice on how he might try to fix the British economy. – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: Mark Carney, the most brilliant central banker of his generation, takes the subway to...Read More

Historic Mistake Watch … When the Fed began its talk of "tapering" asset purchases, I warned that it might turn out to be a "historic mistake". I guess the historic bit is still up in the air; but the mistake aspect is now glaringly obvious. Bond prices have plunged, and the Fed's attempts to inform markets that they've got it all wrong have only modestly mitigate...Read More

Irish bankers 'hoodwinked' government over bailout, secret recordings show … Tape recordings suggest bankers 'hoodwinked' the government over the size of the bailout. A top banker with the financial institution that almost bankrupted Ireland boasted that he had picked the figure of €7bn (£5.9bn) they told the Irish government was needed to rescue the Anglo Irish Ba...Read More

Danny Alexander: Tories should not waste time on EU referendum laws as Ukip will 'come and go' … The Tories should not be wasting time on an EU Referendum Bil as "Ukip will come and Ukip will go", Danny Alexander, a senior Liberal Democrat minister, has suggested. Labour and Lib Dem MPs are expected to be encouraged to boycott the Tory EU referendum Bill. Mr Alexander, the...Read More

U.S. plays down reports of spying on EU, other allies … Nearly all national governments, not just the United States, use "lots of activities" to safeguard their interests and security, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday, responding for the first time to allegations that Washington spied on the European Union and other allies. – ReutersDominant Social Theme: Hor...Read More

Risk of 1937 relapse as Fed gives up fight against deflation … The US Federal Reserve has jumped the gun. It has mishandled its exit strategy from quantitative easing, triggering a global bond rout that it did not anticipate, and is struggling to control. That the Fed should tighten even as it cut its own growth and inflation forecasts for this year is a bizarre state of affairs … It h...Read More

Viva la Siesta Should Southern Europe Really Be More German? In the wake of the euro crisis, Southern Europeans have increasingly traded their traditions of leisure for more work and more consumption – often at Germany's prodding. As backlash sets in, this logic must be questioned. Europe is groaning under German hegemony, but that isn't something we in Germany like to hear. From the...Read More

When the Guardian and the Washington Post revealed details about the National Security Agency collecting phone data from telecommunications companies and U.S. government programs pulling in emails and photographs from internet businesses, suddenly "George Orwell" was leading the news. The British essayist predicted it all, commentators asserted, and the United States now seems straight o...Read More

Emerging, maturing, protesting markets … At the beginning of this year, Eurasia Group, the political risk firm I lead, released its top 10 risks of 2013. We forgot to put Pepsi-guzzling whistleblowers on the list, but we did give our top slot to increasing turmoil in "emerging markets." In a global economy that has become more reliant on countries whose economies are vulnerable to...Read More

Families face 'unprecendented' squeeze on living standards … The rise in the cost of living and the squeeze on household budgets is much worse than the official measures suggest. Due to the 25pc rise in the cost of goods and services, families are facing a "squeeze" on their standard of living. The cost of essential goods and services has rocketed by 25pc in the past five y...Read More

Tour de France 2013: It was impossible to win Tour without taking drugs, claims Lance Armstrong … Five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault reacted angrily to Armstrong's comments and his claims that there was a doping culture in cycling. "We've got to stop thinking that all cycle racers are thugs and druggies," he told BFM TV. "It depresses me to hear all this. I think th...Read More

Shale gas in northern England could meet Britain's gas needs for 40 years Northern England could provide enough shale gas to meet the UK's needs for more than four decades, an official report has revealed … The government said a British Geological Survey report estimates that there could be 1,300 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas trapped in the rocks under Lancashire, Yorkshire and su...Read More

Can the state be trusted to do anything right? … Revelations of unacceptable snooping and the draconian treatment of whistleblowers are making a mockery of the government's quest for 'openness and transparency.' This week, Peter Francis, a former Special Branch covert agent, told Channel 4's 'Dispatches' that his job had been to infiltrate the grieving family and '...Read More

Rubio addresses tea party criticism on senate floor … Sen. Marco Rubio took to the floor of the U.S. Senate Wednesday afternoon, to address concerns that have arisen from some grassroots conservatives over his support of immigration reform. "I have received numerous emails and calls from conservatives and tea party activists," he said at the beginning of his remarks. "To hear...Read More

Why U.S. is being humiliated by the hunt for Snowden … The increasingly slapstick global steeplechase in pursuit of Edward Snowden, the former American contractor who leaked topsecret details of surveillance programs, looks like a cross between "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities." Nobody, except perhaps Snowden himself, is coming out of this well....Read More

Two Fed Presidents Emphasize Stimulus to Persist After QE Taper … Two Fed Presidents Emphasize Stimulus to Persist After QE Taper Two Federal Reserve (TREFTOTL) presidents who differ over the need for more stimulus emphasized that monetary policy remains accommodative, less than a week after a timeline to reduce bond purchase jolted financial markets. "What we're talking about here...Read More

Fed fights back against 'feral hogs' … A top US central banker on Monday warned the "feral hogs" of financial markets against trying to force the Federal Reserve to shelve plans to slow its bond buying, as yields on US Treasuries climbed to their highest level since August 2011. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, said in an interview with the Financial...Read More

Analysis: Brazil riots raise questions over sporting mega-events … Brazilian anger against the cost of staging the World Cup could undermine the argument that host countries benefit from sporting mega-events as they become too big for most countries to handle. UEFA's idea of splitting the Euro 2020 championship into minitournaments hosted in 13 different countries could be one of the alt...Read More