Regular readers know I take a dim view of cryptocurrencies. They are not all the same, so one has to consider the differences in algorithms, governance and ceilings on issuance before making determinations on specific cryptos. That said, cryptos are generally nonscalable, nonsustainable and badly flawed from a monetary perspective. The coding and math can
Most people who have heard of the huge gold depository buried under the Federal Reserve Bank of New York assume that’s where most of the U.S. gold hoard is stashed away. That’s not true. It is true there are 6,000 tons of gold at the New York Fed, but that gold does not belong to
The biggest news in cryptocurrencies lately has been the announcement by Facebook of a new cryptocurrency called libra. With billions of Facebook users worldwide and established communications channels, Fakebook’s libra seems well positioned to succeed where other cryptocurrencies have failed. Libra is envisioned as a “stable coin,” which means that the value of one libra
There are currently two vacancies on the powerful board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Those vacancies have persisted since the Obama administration. Obama thought Hillary Clinton would win the election in 2016 and fill the seats with reliable global elitists. Instead, Trump won and had the vacancies handed to him on a silver
The dollar price of gold has been on a roller-coaster ride for the past six years. But the past six weeks have been a turbocharged version of that. Investors should expect more of the same for reasons explained below. The six-year story is the more important for investors and also the more frustrating. Gold staged
He is apparently declaring a currency war on the rest of the world. Trump resents China and Europe cheapening the yuan and the euro against the dollar in order to help their exports and hurt ours. He says it’s time for the U.S. to cheapen the dollar also. Trump has a point. If you put
Dear Friends, Greg Parsons, CEO of Semper Capital, is a former US Marine and a friend of ours who I would like to introduce to you. Greg and his firm have focused their philanthropic/charitable efforts around our Military Veterans. One of the groups they work very closely with is The Heroes Journey, founded by a
The G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, came and went on June 28–29 without much substance except for the meeting on the sidelines between President Trump, President Xi of China and their teams of advisers. Of course, the subject was the ongoing trade wars between the U.S. and China. Trump was poised to raise tariffs on
A lot of Americans breathed a sigh of relief after the recent attack on a U.S. drone by Iranian missiles. The world expected a swift counterattack by President Trump, perhaps in the form of a cruise missile aimed at the Iranian command center that conducted the attack on the drone. This could easily have escalated
