On 9 December 2009 Representative Ron Paul introduced H.R. 4248 the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009.  This Act has the potential to impact the investment world more than any other legislation that has been enacted for decades.  The impact on the bond market, Treasury market, stock market and general economy would be tremendous [...]

The great monetary scientist Isaac Newton, who served as England’s Master of the Mint for 24 years, also did some ancillary work in physics.  The laws of Newtonian physics are known by nearly everyone and are often used by analogy to apply logical reasoning in other fields.  In this case, a few of these laws [...]

Back in the olden days, people simply bartered products.  One might trade a couple of loaves of bread for a fish.  In order to ease this process so people didn’t have to bring their produce to market, over time people turned to gold, later paper money backed by gold and ultimately paper money backed by [...]

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, started 2010 off by devaluing the Venezuelan bolivar by 50% from 4.3 per dollar from 2.15 per dollar, along with several other silly little limits.  This is continuing the theme of currency devaluations from late 2008 and 2009.  But the evaporation of currency is not only limited to third world [...]

Last week was a good lesson in terms of what might, or what might not, happen when policy makers attempt to steer currency markets. Notwithstanding the obvious question of much how clout policy makers de-facto holds with respect to moving currency markets (not a lot I think), the outgoing finance minister in Japan Hirohisa Fujii [...]

Two interesting quotes caught my eye in a recent Andy Smith note:
“We cannot stop terrorism or defeat the ideologies of violent extremism when hundreds of millions of young people see a future with no jobs, no hope, and no way ever to catch up to the developed world” Hillary Clinton, Remarks to the Center for [...]

Many people believe that the exchange rate regime (i.e. the monetary policy regime) of each country is its own sovereign choice.
In the Great Depression, we saw the harmful effects of the exchange rate mercantalism that is feasible with fiat money. This was a key motivation for Keynes and others in their design of the post-war [...]

Howard Davies was a deputy governor of the Bank of England, and the first head of the UK FSA. He is one of the world’s leading thinkers on financial regulation and monetary policy, and one of the people who combines skills in both finance and monetary economics. In a recent article, he focuses [...]

The FRN$ has been the world’s reserve currency for decades.  As a result, the breadth and depth of the capital markets add tremendous liquidity to the fiat currency illusion.
This is one of the reasons the FRN$ is near the bottom of the liquidity pyramid and rises in value with each round of the credit contraction. [...]

Goldman Sachs (GS) gangbangers are engaged in public service, or more appropriately pillaging, as fast as possible even while the victims are getting increasingly shrill in their protests.  No means no and the gangbangers are not being respectful.  Bankers, financiers, hedge fund managers and others are being exterminated under suspicious circumstances.  Even senior gangbangers have [...]