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 [...]
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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. [...]
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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 hate to give personal investment advice. So please do me a favour and do not treat the following as investment advice. I am expressing my personal opinion here. I do so with honesty and conviction, without a personal agenda – I am not trying to sell you anything – but with some good arguments, [...]
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Surprise, surprise, the Euro Zone debt crisis is back. Or was it never gone? As yields on Spanish and Italian government bonds are heading higher once again, I am reminded of the old saying, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Not even with a trillion euros. I previously described the [...]
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I was thinking of starting this blog with a cynical comment along the lines of, last week equity markets came off, I think we need another €1 trillion from the ECB! – Okay, maybe it wasn’t the greatest joke but you get the idea. But then the Wall Street Journal beat me to it, and [...]
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Years ago a friend of mine in New York told me about his massively overweight neighbour who took to wearing a black t-shirt with “I beat anorexia” printed on it. I think that is how our central bankers look at the wonderful job they are doing. Since the last link to gold was severed in [...]
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Are you feeling optimistic yet? Are you confident that policy-makers have things under control? – If so, you must believe that we can solve any economic problem by throwing freshly printed money at it. Even problems that are evidently the result of previous periods of ‘easy money’– such as overstretched and weak banks. The ECB [...]
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The Bank of England is expected today to announce another round of debt monetization, called ‘quantitative easing’. A majority of economists polled by Dow Jones Newswire earlier this week expect the central bank’s policy committee to agree “to £50 billion ($79 billion) of additional bond purchases using freshly created money to underpin demand and ensure [...]
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Anybody with any knowledge of economics should feel uneasy at the sight of a country where half of recorded economic activity is conducted by the state. Are such semi-socialist societies operable, and if so, for how long? That complete socialism is impossible and that any attempt to establish it must fail, we know for sure [...]
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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
