The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut the official cash rate for the second month in a row to 1%. As we head into the turning point of the Economic Confidence Model come January 2020, the unemployment rate increased to 5.2% in April. GDP growth remains very low at 0.4%, wage growth is sluggish, inflation […]

QUESTION: Martin: You have occasionally made short-quick comments that have made me loose sleep ! One of your past comments quipped that we equity/bond investors should entertain the idea of having the actual certificates to our stock/bond investments (which are typically digital entries held at brokerage houses) mailed directly to us instead of having them […]

QUESTION: Hi, Enjoy your blog. Can you explain the cause of homelessness in the US and what should be the cure? Thank you Brian ANSWER: Many of the homeless are not exactly social. Every time I drove into Philadelphia, I always saw the same man on the street with a sign saying he was homeless. […]

  The idea of some Universal Basic Income has been around for a long time. Here is Milton Friedman on his proposal of a Negative Income Tax. There will always be welfare for there are people who cannot work for some disability and others who prefer not to work and game the system. Even programs […]

ASIA / AUSTRALIA: The US has added five more Chinese companies to a US blacklist that restricts US companies from dealing with the companies on the list. Of those included on the list is a Chinese government-owned supercomputing company, with military applications and dealing with national security. The companies “pose a significant risk of being […]

QUESTION: Dear Mr. Armstrong, You very recently pointed out that Switzerland is a country to avoid if it comes to foreign “Tax Refugees”. Because it signed, like many other countries, the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) agreement. But how do you rank Switzerland as a country to live in permanently? I mean living there with a […]

The Fall Army Worm (FAW; Spodoptera frugiperda) is a crop-eating pest that was first detected in China back in January 2019. It has now spread across China’s southern border and currently impacts about 8,500 hectares (127,000 mu) of grain production in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hunan, and Hainan provinces. Officially, Chinese authorities have employed an […]

QUESTION: Hi Marty, Knowing that the financial capital will likely move to China after 2032, since that would be the peak of the public wave, where will someone in the US put their capital? Usually, the move from public to private would result in a move into sovereign debt and cash, but will the move […]

  The Bank of International Settlements under Basel-III changed the status of gold as a reserve asset effectively on April 1, 2019. Gold used to be viewed by the banks as a risky asset and classified under “Tier-3”, which meant it was considered risky and could only be carried on the books at 50% of […]

QUESTION: Hi Martin, You have mentioned repeatedly that gold is a hedge against political uncertainty. For the past several years the price has hovered at the cost of production and exploration is virtually non-existent as capital has dried up. Nevertheless, the world is a political mess as far as the eye can see. So, it […]