BALTIMORE – Finance or politics? We don’t know which is jollier. The Republican presidential primary and Fed monetary policies seem to compete for headlines. Which can be most absurd? Which can be most outrageous? Which can get more page views? Politics, led by Donald J. Trump, was clearly in the lead… until yesterday. Then, the money world, with Janet L. Yellen wearing the yello... read more

The pension crisis is brewing and the one state that appears to be heading toward a complete bankruptcy is Illinois. Clients should not own ANY debt from Illinois, be it city, municipal, or state. Just get out before the curtain falls. The Illinois Constitution plainly states that pension benefits, once granted, “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Thus, taxpayers are absolutely screwed a... read more

With so many voices streaming at us through our televisions and computers, a person can’t be blamed for tuning out. For the most part, tuning out is exactly what we should do. But sometimes it is very important that we pay attention… By listening to Jeremy Grantham, Jim Grant and a host of other investors, a person could have avoided and profited the crashing of the tech bubble of th... read more

We have entered a new and unprecedented phase in monetary policy. Central banks in Europe and Japan have now implemented Negative Interest Rate Policies (NIRP) to counteract deflationary pressures and, in some cases, currency appreciation. Amid higher market uncertainty, the price of gold is up by 16% year-to-date – in part due to NIRP.* Investors, including central bank managers, should a... read more

Buy Silver With Both Hands On This Manipulated Sell-Off  The monthly non-farm payroll report has become a fraud of epic proportions. The Government is claiming that 215k new jobs were created in March. In the goods producing category it claims that 37k jobs were created in construction. But there’s a problem with this – it doesn’t correlate with construction spending and hous... read more

SEOUL, South Korea - Global stocks fell sharply Friday ahead of the monthly U.S. jobs report, which will shed light on the health of the world's largest economy -- and the likely pace of further interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve. Asian markets were weighed by a downbeat Japanese business survey. Britain's FTSE 100 was down 1.4 percent to 6,090.00 while Germany's DAX dropped 2 pe... read more

With many people wondering what’s next for the markets, today a famed short seller warned that the nightmare outcome will occur in the blink of an eye. Overnight equity markets took the night off from the recent partying and were slightly lower. After the recent rampage here the market was back to dull nothingness, as the indices meandered around unchanged all day… Bill Fleckenstein... read more