Tag: turmoil

What Everyone Needs to Know About the Financial and Political Turmoil Right Now

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas

International Man: What types of risks — financial or otherwise — should people be aware of today?

Jeff Thomas: Well, much of the former free world, as we once knew it, is on the verge of collapse economically.

You have the U.S. after World War II suddenly taking over the world in production, and they were the future. A lot of countries got onboard: Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan. All those countries got on that particular train and did very well.

But the U.S. went from being the greatest nation in the world in terms of manufacturing to losing almost all of that and became the foremost debtor nation in the world. Now the US may well be in a worse financial place than any country in the world.

It’s just that whatever collapse is going to occur, it hasn’t happened yet.

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It Is What It Is

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

I was in a gathering of folks when a dispute escalated between a husband and wife over what has now become the title of this article.  During our discussion someone recited those words and the wife divulged how much she hated that statement.  After quietly listening to the exchange for a few moments, the husband spoke up and said:  “Well that must be more proof of how opposites attract, because I LOVE that phrase and I say it all the time!”

Which may have been part of the reason why the wife disliked the expression, but I wasn’t about to go there.

Instead, I mentioned how that particular shibboleth of sorts was surely defined in the minds of the beholders.  On the one hand, its utterance could be an excuse – even a fatalistic expression derived from laziness or defeatism.  Or, like the purveyor of produce in Ayn Rand’s epic tome, “Atlas Shrugged” – when Dagny Taggart asked the grocery vendor why she didn’t move her product from out of the sun and into the shade and her reply was:  “Because it’s always been that way”.

Oh, the world sucks?  Of course it does.  Why bother.

It is what is.

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Jim Grant On Gold’s Liquidation Sale: A “Vexing But Wonderful Opportunity”

Via Valuewalk,

Don’t tell Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, that gold is a hedge.

The author and publisher said the metal is much more dynamic; providing a trifecta of price, value and sentiment, and investors should have exposure to it.

“[G]old is an investment in monetary and financial disorder – not a hedge. You look around the world and you see exchange rates are properly disorderly, when you look around the world of lending and borrowing — we are in a regime of price control by another name, so-called zero percent rates and quantitative easing by the world central banks – we are in one of the most radical periods of monetary experimentation in the annals of money,” Grant told Kitco News Thursday.

Grant added that it could be that it all works out, albeit a very “low probability.”

“You want to have exposure to the reciprocal asset of the paper assets that are the most popular – so gold, to me, is now the conjunction of price, value and sentiment, and I am very bullish indeed.”

Gold prices are on track for its longest run of losses since 1996. After reaching five-year lows this week, the metal was relatively quieter on Thursday with prices slightly rebounding on some bargain hunting in the spot market. Kitco’s spot gold was last up $0.60 at $1094.60 an ounce.

Grant summed up the gold selloff as “Mr. Market having a sale,” and added that the downward spiral is “terrifically vexing but a wonderful opportunity.”

He explained that no one knows the bottom for the metal and that should not be the sole focus.

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