QUESTION: “If gold and silver are such a bad investment, why are there so many “we buy gold and silver” shops opening up in my town (Dallas, TX)? Shouldn’t they have gone out of business being on the wrong side of this trade?” ANSWER: No. That really has nothing to do with anything. Whatever they […]

QUESTION: Greetings from Iceland! Thank you for all the material you post on your blog! I wish I had come across your writings 40 years ago instead of just recently. Does your model include data and predictions for Iceland? Did it predict the collapse in 2008? What is the outlook for the next few years […]

  Year-End 2013 Number   The Year 2013 has been a great year for equities and a rough year for commodities. Gold has put in its worst performance since 1981 while the Nikkei has put in its best performance since 1972. As we look ahead, 2014 will begin the rise in Civil Unrest that will […]

  I have pointed out that making something criminal seems to increase the activity and it appears that one aspect behind the trend is you are exempting it from taxation. Therefore, prohibition funded the Mafia. There is another aspect to the Law of Unintended Consequences that answers the question WHY no empire has died of […]

Panic of 1907 The Panic of 1907 came after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and that exposed the entire problem of regional internal capital flows within the United States caused by the business cycle and the great variety of localized economies. Indeed, such a period of a temporary shortage burst forth during the Panic of 1907 and […]

This insane focus of the Fed’s options — “tapering” or not, misses the entire point. Most people admit that the whole quantitative easing has failed. True, the unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 10% in 2010 to 7% today and the Fed’s target it claims is to keep short-term rates a near zero until […]

Judge, Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, has ordered that the NSA collecting data on all phone calls is illegal violating the Fourth Amendment. Judge Leon was appointed to the bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush. He has stayed his injunction “in light of the significant […]

While the amount of bears in the stock market are truly amazing, there are simply countless economists and analysts all claiming this is the all time high and a crash is imminent. They claim the classic feature of a speculative bull market peak is identified by the margin debt on the NYSE. Tracking this indicator, […]

QUESTION: Martin – how should consecutive “Directional Change” indicators be interpreted? Regards, DR ANSWER: Normally this type of pattern produces just a sideways churning back and forth. This is why in the Euro there has been nothing to write about. It is just a deflationary contraction. The dollar rose sharply between 1980 and 1985 also 1929-1932. […]

Gold has made a sharp drop today as it still winds its way down. The concern that reaching a budget deal will also help the Federal Reserve to reduce its bond buying is on point. The budget agreement is another factor that goes to the heart of the gold propaganda machine that we would be […]