It was about 20 years ago when Wolfgang Schäuble, current German Finance Minister, wrote his paper on the danger in the Eurozone reflecting on European policies, even describing his tough behavior towards Greece. Schäuble is the politician who has done much to shape contemporary Germany, and his falling out with Helmut Kohl remains alive and well to this day.  The key point […]

No matter whom we spoke to today, the focus of the conversation has been on gold’s spectacular fall. There are many rumors floating around from China off-loading because wrong storage figures were released, to a large spec investor who sold 6 tonnes and has taken a huge loss on a leveraged trade! Whatever the excuse, we woke […]

Some people have a very hard time understanding that we are in a massive deflationary spiral; they think that rising prices simply means it is inflation and not deflation. They only see prices, not disposable income, and certainly not economic growth and unemployment. Prices rose sharply following the OPEC oil price hikes, but the sharp […]

Only an hour into this morning’s trading and the news broke of the possible Greek Deal. Bunds were hit hard (down over 170 tics) and BTP’s (Italian Govt. Bonds) rallied 2 full points, pushing all peripheral spreads tighter. Greek 2yr Govt. Bond traded down 600bp to 23.75%. Equities loved the news and have been in […]

Further evidence that 2015.75 is really the peak in a Massive Debt Bubble: The Middle East has always been on a cash basis as their revenues from oil exempted them from ever borrowing money – that is not the case today. As oil prices rose, spending programs also anticipated no end in sight. So as […]

Electric cars are rapidly entering the market. This is causing more than just a decline in the demand for oil. The i8 BMW is a hybrid that still has a combustion engine in the back and an electric in the front. This car gets 78 miles to the gallon. It has a purely electric top […]

La Liberté Speech Speech: delivered by Karl Marx on September 8, 1872, in Amsterdam; Source: K. Marx and F. Engels, On Britain, Foreign Languages Press, Moscow, 1962; Printed: September 15, 1872, in La Liberte. Also printed in Dutch, Belgian and German papers. In the 18th century, the kings and the potentates were in the habit […]

As you would expect ahead of July 4th weekend, volumes were a fraction of their norm – as if they were not poor enough! Asian equities were the early talk today and the possible investigation into the recent wild volatility of the Shanghai (SHCOMP) equity market – today closing down almost 6%. An interesting point of fact […]

Greece was not the main headline today, to no surprise. Obviously, it’s still all over the media, but the markets had the Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) to contend with instead. Not such a shocker at 223k (rate 5.3%) but the revisions (down 60k, putting April 187 and May 254) were mildly interesting.  Also, a point to note […]

The rise in extremism in the Middle East is becoming more widespread with the clash between Sunni (ISIS extremists) and the Shi’ite. In France, another shocking attack with a decapitated body covered in Arabic writing was found at an American gasoline company in the southeast after an assailant rammed a car into the premises. The […]