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What I find rather fascinating about markets is how at different times investors follow completely different indicators. In the 1970s inflationary environment, investors were captivated by interest rate movements and by consumer price inflation data. Inflation had begun to accelerate in the sixties and reached an initial peak in 1970. Thereafter,…
“If all currencies are moving up or down together, the question is: relative to what? Gold is the canary in the coal mine. It signals problems with respect to currency markets. Central banks should pay attention to it.” Alan Greenspan “Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War” – “Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good…
Since people are suddenly so concerned about fake news, disinformation, and misinformation by major media outlets, I thought of addressing some issues we should be aware of. First, we should all realize that disinformation and propaganda have existed in every society from the earliest time of human history. People have been extremely receptive to…
The American geopolitical strategist and historian Hal Brands recently penned a column for Bloomberg entitled U.S. Can’t Let Russia Get a Sphere of Influence. The view that the US can’t let Russia get a sphere of influence is nothing new but based on the ill-conceived Wolfowitz Doctrine, which makes it clear that “the price of world peace is the…
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility,” wrote the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. Being a strong supporter of free markets and a protagonist of the capitalistic system, Feud’s observation should cause me great discomfort. But then I think…
In early February, the Indian government announced that the “melody queen” Lata Mangeshkar had died at the age of 92 in a Mumbai hospital, and that there would be two-day mourning. The cultural icon, fondly referred to as Didi (elder sister), and known as the “Nightingale of India” had a career that spanned seven decades. The reason I am bringing…
Last month’s report concluded that, “by holding an overweight position in resource and precious metals, Hong Kong shares and value stocks around the world, I am taking the view that going forward these positions will outperform growth and perceived growth stocks such as FAANG, and related companies, semiconductors, social media, cloud computing,…
Friedrich von Hayek who maintained that, “[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.” Looking at current leaders in our Western democracies, it seems to me that Hayek forgot to add to seizing…
I grew up in a strict family and social environment in the 1950s and 1960s. But life became freer as time went by. Part of this increase in freedom had to do with studying in London in the late sixties (a swinging place at the time), and then working in New York, and after 1973 in Hong Kong, which although not a democracy was nonetheless one of the…
Josh Hammer, the Newsweek Opinion Editor, recently penned a brief essay entitled The American Ruling Class Reaches Its Inflection Point. According to Hammer, the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla (1943 – 2021), wrote in the American Spectator “America's Ruling Class,” a rare essay that was, in retrospect, so prescient as to be outright…
Marc Faber