Author Archives for admin
Flight to gold as investors lose faith in money
The last time gold touched $850 an ounce, the world was visibly spiralling out of control. Soviet tanks had just rolled into Afghanistan. The Mullahs had seized US hostages in Iran. Pax Americana was on the ropes, and so was capitalism. Inflation had reached 14 per cent in the United States.
The final spike in […]
Bush can buy time as property bubble bursts
Bears beware. The New Deal of 2008 is in the works. The US Treasury is about to shower households with rebate cheques to head off a full-blown slump, and save the Bush presidency. On Friday, Mr Bush convened the so-called Plunge Protection Team for its first known meeting in the Oval Office. The black […]
Gold breaks (non inflation adjusted) all time high (for any reason other than monetary inflation).
Gold struck a new all-time peak of almost 868 dollars on Thursday as the precious metal benefited from its safe-haven status amid record high oil, a struggling dollar and Pakistan tensions.
The price of gold reached a historic 867.90 dollars an ounce on the London Bullion Market. It later slipped slightly to stand at 866.90 […]
Recruitment battle for commodity traders
Banks are pulling commodities traders out of retirement and doubling their salary guarantees as they fight for business in one of the few booming areas in Wall Street and the City of London.
The hiring spree comes after the S&P GSCI, the most popular commodity index, surged this year by almost 29 per cent – […]
Crisis may make 1929 look a ‘walk in the park’
As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control
Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central […]
Credit Crunch Fallout…..UK Remains More Exposed than Most
The UK looks more like the US than any other European economy (maybe more like the US than any other economy, period). It has:
1. An exceptionally low household savings rate – not far from zero if you exclude savings done by companies on behalf of households when they pump more cash into corporate pension […]
Central Banks Are Getting Desperate in Dealing with the Liquidity Crunch and Resorting Again to Stealth Reductions in Policy Rates
Central banks are obviously getting frustrated and effectively desperate in dealing with a most severe liquidity crunch that has gotten significantly worse since August. Even last week’s coordinated announcement of central banks monetary injections has done little so far in reducing the Libor spreads (at maturities from two weeks to 3 months) relative to […]
Soaring US Debt Threatens Dollar
What else should we be worried about in 2008?
Else? Haven’t the headlines already been filled with enough fearful forecasts from financial experts apparently keen to outdo each other in their expectations of Armageddon?
Correct, but unfortunately it never rains, but it pours…
…and Yes, there’s another nasty out there, a time bomb waiting to nuke […]
Weak data undermine Brown’s stance on economy
A wave of bad economic figures swamped the government on Thursday, a day after the prime minister and the chancellor insisted the UK economy was fundamentally strong and would “weather” global financial storms.
None of the economic data published contained Christmas cheer for the Treasury. The credit squeeze has contributed to the worst public finance […]
Every worker in the UK chips together to buy bank
Everybody’s decided to chuck in a couple of grand for a one thirty-one-millionth share in the moribund Northern Rock bank [story]. So far the government has surprisingly been unable to attract substantial interest from private investors, although the chancellor is set to present a case on BBC2’s Dragon’s Den next month. Personally I’m hoping […]
