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

Comeback: Why the US Sits at the Brink of a New Boom … It's the best-kept secret in the economics media: The United States is on the brink of a period of solid, long-term growth rivaling that of the 1950s and 1960s. It is not a finance-driven, self-destructive boom, like the 2000s' housing bubble. No, the new economy will be durably grounded in energy and heavy manufacturing, even th...Read More

Sen. Marco Rubio on immigration bill: No 'parades' for me … Marco Rubio is defending his participation in the Gang of Eight's immigration bill efforts, saying he knows it won't win him any "parades" among conservatives, but it's necessary. – PoliticoDominant Social Theme: It is a difficult task but one that the Gang of Eight has tackled courageously.Free-M...Read More

Christine Lagarde's 'allegiance' letter to Nicolas Sarkozy: 'use me' … Christine Lagarde, one of the most powerful women in the world as head of the International Monetary Fund, is facing acute embarrassment after a letter in which she urged former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to "use me" was found during a police raid on her Paris flat. – UK Telegraph...Read More

Majority of Americans Don't Trust Newspapers and Television News … Only 23 percent of Americans have confidence in newspapers, according to Gallup. Majority of Americans Don't Trust Newspapers and Television News … According to a new Gallup poll, confidence in mass media continues to fall … Continuing a decades-long downward trend, fewer than one-fourth of Americans have...Read More

India sets up elaborate system to tap phone calls, e-mail … India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance program that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said. The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government...Read More

If Bernanke really shakes the tree, half the world may fall out … We no longer have a free market. The world's financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers. Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like...Read More

Corrupted credit ratings: Standard & Poor's lawsuit and the evidence … In response to the civil lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice in February 2013, Standard & Poor's affirms that its ratings were "objective, independent and uninfluenced by conflicts of interest". This column presents empirical evidence opposing this claim. The data suggests a systemati...Read More

How Cities Are Fixing America … Mired in partisan division and rancor, the federal government appears incapable of taking bold action to restructure our economy and grapple with changing demography and rising inequality. With each illustration of partisan gridlock and each indication of federal, and also state, unreliability, metros are becoming more ambitious in their design, more assertive...Read More

Woz: This is not my America … Stopped by Spanish language tech journalists at an airport, the Apple co-founder says that after the NSA revelations, he questions his own government and wonders whether it's behaving like a king. As the passions and justifications swirl around the revelations concerning the NSA, the rest of the world sits and wonders. Is only the U.S. involved? Or might, pe...Read More

Ben Bernanke under pressure to spell out QE timeline … Ben Bernanke under pressure to spell out QE timeline. US stocks jumped and the dollar climbed against the yen on Monday, amid expectations that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke will spell out how it will decide when to put the brakes on America's quantitative easing programme, at its two-day meeting this week. Ben Bernanke cauti...Read More

U.S. says Taliban agrees to Afghanistan peace talks … Senior Obama administration officials said Tuesday that the Taliban has agreed to participate in peace talks based in Qatar, a key step forward in the effort to jump-start a political resolution of the war in Afghanistan ahead of U.S. plans to withdraw troops. Officials said direct talks between U.S. officials and Taliban representatives...Read More

EU and US 'in biggest trade deal' … UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced plans for what could be "the biggest bilateral trade deal in history" between the EU and the US. He announced the start of formal negotiations on a trade deal worth hundreds of billions of pounds, aimed at boosting exports and driving growth. Mr Cameron said a successful agreement would have a...Read More

Tilting at windmills in Germany … The wheels are falling off of Germany's green energy revolution … The quiet backwater in the Ruhr, close to Düsseldorf, is the proposed site for the biggest converter station in Europe. This vast installation will transform high-voltage direct current to alternating current. It will be an important link in Germany's new "power highway...Read More

"We are going to do it our way, this is our decision," Sveinsson, 45, said in an interview in Brussels today. "This government is not going to keep on pushing forward this application. At some time, there will be a referendum, but I cannot tell you when and by whom." EU leaders had celebrated the prospect of welcoming Iceland — a developed nation where the economy grew 1....Read More

IMF warns US economic recovery has been slowed by 'ill-designed' cuts but warns Congress against spending less on infrastructure and education … IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said: 'The IMF's advice is to slow down but hurry up.' … The International Monetary Fund said on Friday that an "excessively rapid and ill-designed" deficit reduction plan h...Read More

Syria: The slippery slope to an international crisis … The proposed talks in Geneva, under joint American and Russian auspices, remain the only realistic opportunity for producing a solution to the civil war in Syria … With the United Nations this week reporting 93,000 fatalities in Syria since the civil war began, it is arguably somewhat late in the day to be considering intervention...Read More

Fitch says China credit bubble unprecedented in modern world history … China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned. Fitch warned that wealth products worth $2 trillion of lending are in reality a "hidden second balance sheet" for banks, allowing them to circumvent loan cu...Read More

China's Great Uprooting – Moving 250 Million Into Cities … Moving 250 Million Into Cities … China's government-driven effort to push the population to towns and cities is reshaping a nation that for millenniums has been defined by its rural life … China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities...Read More

NEW TIME POLL: Americans Believe Country Heading In Wrong Direction … A majority of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a new TIME poll, with President Barack Obama's approval and disapproval ratings essentially tied. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said the United States is on the wrong track, with only 33 percent saying it is heading in t...Read More

My creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be … I hate to do this but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be. This is in no way to detract from the great courage of Glenn Greenwald in reporting the sto...Read More