The Future Of Currencies

In an earlier post I wrote about the likelihood of continued market volatility as asset prices veered back and forth between the effects of monetary stimulus and the deflationary forces unleashed by a generational deleveraging event. In this tug-of-war between the forces of inflation (money printing) and deflation (deleveraging) the dollar is the medium through which […]

The Unintended Consequences Of Human Action

With QE3 the Federal Reserve has initiated another massive round of money printing, buying $40 billion worth of mortgage securities while continuing to reinvest its income from the securities  purchased during QE1 and QE2. In addition the Fed has changed the emphasis of its mandate, from targeting price stability to making itself responsible for employment, promising […]

Bond Buyers Beware

Interest rates fell earlier this month to the lowest level in U.S. history.  The fall in the rate of the 30-year Treasury bond since 1990 alone is 65%. This has happened despite record money printing by the Federal Reserve, which many predicted would lead to rising rates.  However, in an uncertain world, U.S. bonds have […]

Platonic Dialogues For Our Times: Part II

Optimistopheles: Pessimisticles, you’re so negative. At the party this evening I’ve told all my tech friends not to talk to you about the economy because you will ruin their festive mood. They all work in Silicon Valley, at cutting edge companies, and are convinced that technology is the solution to most of the world’s problems. […]

Platonic Dialogues For Our Times: Part I

Inflacionatus: How on earth can you continue to hold on to your deflationary views Deflaticus? The monetary base has exploded, inflation is rising and while the dollar has not fallen over the last 12 months, it has not risen much either, as one would expect during a deflation. Deflaticus: The monetary base may have exploded, […]

A Meditation On Forgiveness

I upset a very old friend the other day with something I said in an email. When I sent the email I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but I was mistaken. Re-reading the email I can see exactly why he was upset. I had acted foolishly, rushed the email and used the […]

Hayek, Candies and Keynes

The debate between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes over the nature and future of economics, spanned momentous times such as the Great Depression and the age of dictators, and it continues today posthumously in the discussion of how best to nurse back to health a wounded world economy.  Keynes, the optimist, believed that solutions […]

The Plus Side Of Debt Default

Back in September, 2008 Professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel gave an online presentation to Sterling Futures’ clients and friends on the state of the economy. In 1993 Hummel was the first economist to go on record predicting that the U.S. government will default on its obligations. At that time the prediction was considered extreme but now […]

The Fed: Money Wizard Or Wizard Of Oz

In November, 2010, George Selgin, an economist at the University of Georgia, gave a presentation on the Federal Reserve System, in which he concludes that in virtually every conceivable respect, the economy performed as least as well pre-1913 (the year the Fed was created) than post-World War II, and usually better. He also finds that there […]

Society At The Edge Of Chaos

We tend to assume that history moves slowly and cyclically. For example, it is commonly thought that empires grow old, over extend themselves and finally collapse and that this will eventually happen to the United States just as it has with every other empire. Similarly, most people believe that global warming will eventually have serious […]

The Rise And Fall Of Empires

In his eminently readable book, Empires of Trust: How Rome Built – and America Is Building – a New World, historian Thomas Madden, compares the United States with the Roman Republic and argues that what is unique about both states is that they acquired their empire, not by conquest but by a series of alliances […]

Touching A Sacred Cow

With federal, state and municipal services in retrenchment mode perhaps it’s time to explore some alternatives, even it means challenging some sacred cows. For example, those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, have become virtually inured to the sight of homeless persons on our streets, but how many of us have […]

The Dishonor Of A Rhodes Scholarship

Rhodes Scholarships are one of the oldest and most prestigious awards worldwide for graduate study at Oxford University. Win a Rhodes Scholarship and you are set for life. The scholarships are funded from the estate of Cecil John Rhodes, who was founder of the De Beers diamond mining company, as well as founder of the […]

The Backpacker’s Guide To Wealth

Having just returned from a few days backpacking in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness in Arizona, please forgive me for waxing lyrical about the unlikely connection between backpacking and wealth. The primary goal of backpacking is to survive a trip to places that are often difficult or impossible to get to by any other means than […]