On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared that the United States would no longer honour its promise to exchange US dollars held by foreign central banks for gold at a fixed price of $35 an ounce. The innocuous term ‘Nixon closed the gold window’ that is now widely used to describe this act does [...]
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UK Chancellor George Osborne and Bank of England Governor Mervin King last week announced another round of fiscal and monetary stimulus measures, including steps to ease the funding for banks and allow them to extend more loans. If these measures were hoped to instil confidence they must be classified as a failure. We have lived [...]
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To answer this question is not straightforward. As the gold-sceptics keep reminding us, gold pays no coupon and no dividend, it does not offer a running yield, so traditional measures of ‘fair value’ do not apply. But gold is money, and just as the paper ticket in your wallet does not pay interest, neither does [...]
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I took the title for this blog from an interview that James Turk of the GoldMoney Foundation conducted with Eric Sprott, a Canadian fund manager. You can see it here. (I also recommend you have a look at this interview with Doug Casey.) I think the quote is a succinct summation of the role that [...]
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“The unlimited resources” of the European Central Bank (ECB) is quickly becoming the new magic mantra in political commentary and financial market analysis, now that the bigger euro-dominos are beginning to wobble and everybody realizes that nobody has the firepower to bailout Italy, or to ‘recapitalize’ (i.e. bailout again) all the banks that lent to [...]
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When the tectonic plates underneath society shift, confusion reigns, together with wishful thinking. It appears that financial markets have again managed to get themselves into a state of unrealistic expectation. The European summit this coming Sunday (or the follow-up summit on Wednesday) is now supposed to bring a “comprehensive plan” to solve the European debt [...]
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The Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, has kindly invited me to host a webinar for the Mises Academy on the topic of “The Fiat Money Crisis: The Market, the Central Banks, and the Coming Monetary Breakdown” tonight at 6 pm U.S. Eastern time (11 pm British Summer time). If you are interested in [...]
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First of all, apologies appear to be in order. Over the past six weeks, my commentary on the Schlichter Files was somewhat sporadic. I spent most of the summer with my family in Italy where I voluntarily removed myself somewhat from the fitful convulsions of the financial system’s death-throes. Then, last week I attended the [...]
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Apologies if the title of this Schlichter-file sounds somewhat arrogant but after the events of the past three weeks I may perhaps be forgiven for feeling a bit emboldened in my views. Of course, this is often the point at which the pendulum swings in the other direction and developments take a slightly different turn, [...]
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One of the major lessons of the financial crisis thus far should be that every bond constitutes credit risk – even those issued by sovereign states and banks. Conceptually, that should be obvious, but the investment management industry has long treated government bonds as “safe assets”, at least those that are issued in the government’s [...]
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Recent Comments
{ Feeding a little conspiracy theory ... considering a four-year schedule, put aside the gold standard... } – Sep 27, 3:20 PM
{ Federico, apologies for the slow response. You make a very good point. Banking systems in... } – Sep 27, 3:15 PM
{ Mr Schlichter, excellent article. I agree with previous comments to a great degree as well.... } – Sep 27, 9:16 AM
{ Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed, and a member of the FOMC of the... } – Sep 27, 3:50 AM
