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

Germany fears revolution if Europe scraps welfare model … German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, and dropping the continent's welfare model in favor of tougher U.S. standards would spark a revolution. Germany, along with France, Spain and Italy, backed urgent action to rescue a genera...Read More

India's Golden Problem … The legendary Indian obsession with purchasing gold has been passed down for generations. Families purchase gold on auspicious religious occasions and, in larger quantities, for weddings. It forms a significant part of savings, particularly in rural areas, and is often passed down as inheritance. Today, however, it is also being credited as one of the main reason...Read More

Government Bonds (JGBs) and that can't be a good thing. Panic tends inevitably to lead to crisis, and goodness knows, global financial markets could hardly deal with another crisis without contagion on a massive scale. – CounterpunchDominant Social Theme: Turbulence? What turbulence?Free-Market Analysis: Japan's market turbulence may only be a glitch in a larger globalist plan to eve...Read More

Brazil Forgives Most of Africa's $900 Million Debt … The Brazilian government is forgiving or restructuring Africa's almost $900 million debt in an effort to strengthen economic ties between Brazil and the African continent. Twelve countries will benefit from the decision, including Tanzania, Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville. – Clutch MagazineDominant Social Theme: Africa … t...Read More

12 years ago with Sheryl Sandberg, long before she joined Facebook Inc. and wrote her book on female empowerment. We were listening to her boss at the time, U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, speak about the need for structural reforms to the Japanese economy, in a giant auditorium devoid of women. It was one of several male-dominated events that day. The author of "Lean In" leane...Read More

Bernanke hasn't thrown grandma under the bus … Is the Fed sticking it to the little guy by "punishing people who've done the right things"? It's certainly a common complaint, one that Bernanke hears nearly every time he entertains questions … Only 3% of Americans own any bonds outside their retirement account, but those who do, own a lot. The average (mean) holdin...Read More

China Plans to Reduce the State's Role in the Economy … Beijing has signaled that, even though the economy is weakening, there is unlikely to be a major government stimulus package this year. The Chinese government is planning for private businesses and market forces to play a larger role in its economy, in a major policy shift intended to improve living conditions for the middle class a...Read More

Why are our Bridges Falling? The Economics of the Infrastructure Deficit …Tonight I turned on the news to learn that a major bridge over the Skagit River on Washingon State's I-5 had fallen down. The bridge is not far from where I live. I have driven over it more times than I like to think. Why did it fall? The proximate cause is clear: A large truck, carrying an oversize load, hit a cru...Read More

Austerity About-Face: German Government to Gamble on Stimulus … With the euro crisis refusing to relent, the German government is backing away from its austerity mandates and planning to spend billions to stimulate ailing economies in Southern European. But can the program succeed? Wolfgang Schäuble sounded almost like a new convert extolling the wonders of heaven as he raved about his...Read More

The Bank of Japan must crush all resistance, and will do so … Kudos to Kyle Bass at Hayman Advisers for warning that the Bank of Japan would lose control of its ¥70 trillion bond buying blitz. The spike in the 10-year yield to 1pc on Thursday was certainly shocking to behold. His point is that the BoJ faces a "rational investor paradox". The authorities are trying to drive up t...Read More

Don't fear the bubble …The bubblista side of the argument, at heart, says that the flood of money being poured into the global economy by the world's central banks is driving up asset prices to well beyond fundamental valuations, and that if and when valuations revert to sanity, the unwind (the "burst") could be disastrous in all manner of unpredictable ways. This is a pred...Read More

Europe needs Britain, says ECB president Mario Draghi … Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, has issued a plea for a more co-operative Britain to stay in Europe. – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: Europe will do what we tell it to do.Free-Market Analysis: We have noticed recently that the top Eurocrats seem a bit more frazzled than usual. We wrote about a recent arti...Read More

Sen Al Franken (D-MN) was using such a circuitous "serpentine" walking pattern in an effort to avoid TRN's Jason Mattera's tough question that he inadvertently body checked one of his own staffers in the process. The absurd weaving to avoid the tough inquiry even brought the senator to laughter at one point as the beleaguered staffer tried to run interference for Franken by claim...Read More

The European Union's unending quandary … The pace of European disintegration continues to quicken. Recession deepens in the 17-member euro zone; it is now the longest downturn since the currency was launched in 2000. The union will survive only by becoming minimalist. Europeans – who are first of all Germans, French, Italians, Poles, Brits and others – may distrust their poli...Read More

Hamilton City Council backs living wage … Hamilton City Council's lowest-paid staff could receive more than $100 a week after a trailblazing decision to lift workers' minimum pay rates. The council is set to become the first city in the country to adopt a living wage policy guaranteeing its staff an hourly wage of at least $18.40. In a fiercely debated decision the council voted to i...Read More

Don't be fooled: Gold is no currency … An investment in search of a believable story …Gold is an investment in search of a story — or at least one that's true more often than not. That's not to say there aren't lots of tales told around gold … Gold bugs spun that yarn on the notion that paper currencies — especially the dollar — were having their...Read More

Goldman: Four Reasons Why the Market is Going Much Higher … Last night's much-buzzed about research report from Goldman Sachs, in which the firm lays out its new S&P targets, contains an interesting rationale for higher stock prices. Rather than making the bull case based on earnings growth, Goldman believes that the 2% dividend yield on the S&P 500 will serve as a rising floor...Read More

Derivatives Reform on the Ropes … New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street and a setback for financial reform. They may also signal worse things to come … The regulations, required under the Dodd-Frank reform law, are intended to impose transparency and competition on the notoriously opaque multitril...Read More

Too soon to dial back Fed stimulus … It is too soon to determine whether to dial down the Federal Reserve's massive bond-buying program, and the economic picture may not be clear enough to make that decision for another three or four months, an influential U.S. central bank official said. New York Fed President William Dudley, a close ally of Chairman Ben Bernanke, said on Bloomberg TV t...Read More

Liberalism not at fault for recent scandals … If in any of these situations even one person of influence had adhered to the basic tenets of liberalism all of these scandals could have been avoided … Never mind that there is zero correlation between the political ideology called liberalism and the cascading scandals of the Obama administration. If anything, it's the opposite: it'...Read More