The Scandinavian countries Sweden, Denmark and Norway are regarded as a pioneer in the the effort to eliminate money and move totally electronic. Denmark closed its final Mint outsourced the operation to Finland. This means that there is no coinage in the three states struck anymore. In this war on cash, about 20% of all transactions were […]

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; I am fairly new to your blog. I was told by two friends that you said not just that Trump would win and Brexit, but that the stock market would breakout to new highs and gold would decline for more than the last two years. I followed most of the big names […]

QUESTION: What do you think about Steve Mnuchin as Secretary of Treasury? He does have a beautiful Scottish fiancee. Bill ANSWER: Not a fan. Yes, Steven Terner Mnuchin previously worked for Goldman Sachs but he left them in 2002. That is really not an issue. It is good that he has real, live experience as an investment […]

Even with much of core Asia selling-off Japan managed a small positive return aided by the ever weakening currency. There was a similar picture painted in China where the Shanghai exchange managed a small gain but to the detriment of the Yuan. The PBOC set the currency at its weakest in eight years at 6.9508 […]

I have never seen in my lifetime the deep hatred that is emerging in politics. Obama is clearly getting his CIA cronies to stir the pot claiming that Putin hacked the DNC to seek revenge on Hillary. But exposing the corruption inside the Democrats is not justification to overturn the election. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) daughter and Clinton […]

The key conversation was always going to be surrounding the Federal Reserve rate decision today despite any data releases. In Japan we saw the release of the Tankan (sentiment survey) which, at 10, repeated the same level as previous release as the Nikkei closed almost unchanged on the day. The Hang Seng was a similar […]

The Fed raised the interest rate a quarter-point increase in the discount, or primary credit, rate, from 1 percent to 1.25 percent, and moved its target range from a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent to 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent. The overnight funds rate currently sits at 0.41 percent. The Fed was citing the […]

QUESTION: You always say the markets cannot be manipulated. Deutsche Bank is turning over the smoking gun. Any comment? ANSWER: It seems you are using the term “manipulation” extremely loosely. You are mixing this term up with collusion and coordination, yes with the intent to “move” a market within the immediate trend which is not […]

Jill Stein is really playing very fast and loose with this whole recount thing that serves no purpose. In Wisconsin, 95% of the votes were recounted, and as of December 11, Hillary Clinton gained just 25 votes on Republican Donald Trump. President-elect Trump won the state by more than 22,000 votes. This is some sort of publicity […]

This week will all be about the Federal Reserve and the outlook for rates into next. The strip is pricing in additional moves already but it is the long end that is having a worrying impact on many dealers. Obviously, the recent curve movement is music for the (US) banks and insurance companies but will […]