In a truly remarkable piece for the Financial Times yesterday, Wolfgang Münchau took another swipe at the Euro-sceptic and ECB-critical community in Germany, which he accuses of inflation-paranoia and of simply not getting ‘modern central banking’. Well, I know of many qualified commentators – many non-German – who swallow a tad harder when reflecting on [...]
Continue Reading →There was a beautiful symmetry to last week’s policy announcement by the Fed. Precisely a week after the ECB had pledged its commitment to unlimited purchases of Euro Zone government bonds, the Fed declared that its new round of debt monetization – ‘quantitative easing’ or QE3 – would be open-ended. Unlimited, open-ended. The concept of [...]
Continue Reading →Dear readers, first of all, apologies seem in order. An unusual gap between blog posts has appeared on the Schlichter Files this summer. The reason is that I was travelling with my family in East Africa through most of August, enjoying the spectacular landscapes and the fascinating wildlife there, and meeting some very interesting people. [...]
Continue Reading →On page two of today’s Wall Street Journal Europe you will find the result of a readers’ poll from last Friday: Question: Will the ECB’s rate cut help restore confidence in the bloc’s economy? Answer: 81 percent of readers say no, 19 percent yes. Last week’s round of global monetary easing – another ECB rate [...]
Continue Reading →In my view, there is no escaping the fact that things are not getting better. If anything, they are getting worse. Following the large swings in financial markets this past week and reading the commentary in the press, it strikes me that there is still a surprisingly strong belief out there that our fate is [...]
Continue Reading →“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Benito Mussolini Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will have noticed the accelerating trend towards interventionist policies and assertive state action all around us. This is not a conspiracy theory circulating on the internet. It is a phenomenon that [...]
Continue Reading →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 [...]
Continue Reading →What disturbing and nauseating image greeted us this morning from the covers of the morning papers: a smiling and moved Angela Merkel surrounded by a bunch of suited, self-satisfied, sycophantically grinning parliamentarians happily signing their country’s economic future away, burdening their fellow countrymen and women with financial obligations the grotesque size of which have long [...]
Continue Reading →It is a beautiful autumn day in London, unseasonably warm and sunny, the city looking its very best, and I am trying to find a hook for this blog. I should write about the European debt crisis, the sharp drop in equity markets last week after “Operation Twist” was announced, and the washout in commodity [...]
Continue Reading →The global finance bureaucracy is clueless. Its policies are failing. Yet, the bureaucracy is not giving up. The same tired and idiotic explanations for what is wrong with the economy and what the economy needs are regurgitated with numbness-inducing persistency: The economy is in need of more, wait for it, “demand”. Not necessarily your demand [...]
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Roger { Feeding a little conspiracy theory ... considering a four-year schedule, put aside the gold standard... } – Sep 27, 3:20 PM
Detlev Schlichter { Federico, apologies for the slow response. You make a very good point. Banking systems in... } – Sep 27, 3:15 PM
o2flyisfun@gmail.com { Mr Schlichter, excellent article. I agree with previous comments to a great degree as well.... } – Sep 27, 9:16 AM
George { Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed, and a member of the FOMC of the... } – Sep 27, 3:50 AM
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