I really do find it totally beyond belief how even Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, are coming out to criticize Trump saying Trump should have blasted Putin for interfering in the US election. He said, “There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the […]

During the 1980s, I was called in to create a hedge for a bank against the Turkish lira which nobody made a market on. I had to create a synthetic hedge for the currency was moving into what became hyperinflation.  The Turkish lira has begun to fall ever since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became the 12th president of […]

QUESTION: Hi, I am not sure if I understand how it would work but obviously, this is highly hypothetical today. If the reserve currency is SDR, we still need debt denominated in SDR and a very large and deep market accessible by investors to park money there. If individual countries have their own currency and issue […]

Nicaragua is in crisis and keeps spiraling toward a much more profound bloodier conflict and revolution. President Daniel Ortega is fighting intensely against the rising civil unrest and has lost control of the streets. We are witnessing how “confidence” is the most critical factor in holding governments in power.  Once the people lose that confidence in […]

  Perhaps the most interesting observation of how Trump handles negotiations is that he approaches them as a businessman rather than a politician. He certainly does not play nicely or puts on the pretense that everything is wonderful in the land of politics. Indeed, NATO officials were on edge and nervously welcomed President Trump who arrived […]

Just when the markets started to rejoice in the fact that there had been no recent escalation of trade wars and then the silence is broken. Early in the Asian trading day the US released a list of additional tariffs which are assumed to total close to $200bn. This number has wobbled equities and put […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I thought you would be wrong on the pound. I will yield to your forecasts. I do not know how you do it forecasting so many things around the world and getting them right no less. Reading between the lines who have written, on the one hand, you have said that Brexit […]

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, what were the gold custom units issued by the Bank of China with the image of Sun Yat-sen. PHR ANSWER: The Customs Gold Unit (CGU) was the first peg to the US dollar. Here we have China issuing currency backed by the US dollar. It was a currency issued by the Central Bank of […]

The question of money supply and inflation has been erroneously set in stone philosophically predominantly by the debasement of Spain and Britain during the period of Henry VIII. This was really a period where there were various countries and their currency completely relied on the exchange market in Amsterdam, which was based entirely upon their metal […]

  As we enter Q3 trading, markets remain nervous over trade and Europe. We still have QE disrupting bond markets and so it is not possible to acquire a clear view of risk. The ECB has been relentless in masking European government exposure and is even rumour they are participating in the FX market. New […]