Today’s complacent markets are faced with a number of potentially destabilizing shocks. Any one of them could potentially lead to another financial crisis. And the next crisis could see draconian measures by governments that most people are not prepared for today. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. But first, what are the catalysts that possibly trigger the next financial crisis? F... read more

Hedge-fund managers including billionaire John Paulson are being rewarded as investor worries over everything from uneven economic data to U.S.-North Korean tensions fuel a rally in bullion. At the end of June, Paulson & Co. owned 4.36 million shares of SPDR Gold Shares, a U.S. government filing showed Monday. That’s unchanged from the three months through March. Bridgewater Associates,... read more

The Coming Gold “Break Out” Gold has conducted what some are calling a “stealth rally” over the past month. After bottoming at $1,206 per ounce on July 10, gold is at $1,286 this morning, a healthy 6.5% gain in just over one month. The has been welcome relief for gold investors after a series of “flash crashes” on June 14, June 26 and July 3 contributed to a gold drawdown f... read more

As we continue to see some fascinating trading in the middle of August, it’s all about the Fed’s conundrum, QT, and gold. – Here is what Peter Boockvar noted as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness:  If you had doubts about whether the Fed would begin quantitative tightening in September because of the recent inflation figures, NY Fed President Bill Dudley, a key m... read more

Massive money printing to restart the global economy after the financial crisis has blown an even bigger bubble. Ten years after the last financial crisis, is the world due another one and will it be worse? Despite US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen saying last month that another financial crisis on the scale of the crash that enveloped the world in 2007/8 was unlikely “in our lifetimes... read more

This was the week that the logic of war collided with the illogic of bubbles. So far, the bubble is winning, but that’s about to change. The “logic of war” is an English translation of a French phrase, la logique de la guerre, which refers to the dynamic of how wars begin despite the fact that the war itself will be horrendous, counterproductive, and possibly end in complete defeat.... read more

The world is edging closer to the final moments after which everything will be forever changed. Grand delusions, perpetuated over decades, will finally hit the limits of reality and collapse in on themselves. We’re over-budget and have eaten deeply into the principal balances of all of our main trust accounts. We are ecologically overdrawn, financially insolvent, monetarily out past the Tw... read more

Simon Black August 11, 2017 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile A few weeks ago the Board of Trustees of Social Security sent a formal letter to the United States Senate and House of Representatives to issue a dire warning: Social Security is running out of money. Given that tens of millions of Americans depend on this public pension program as their sole source of retirement income, you’d thin... read more

On the heels of the Dow hitting a new all-time high, one of the greats in the business just released this fantastic piece which covers the all-important question, is a stock market crash really coming soon? Commodities!  – The call for this week: The D-J Industrials have made new all-time closing highs for eight straight sessions and have made 34 all-time highs year-to-date. Still we ke... read more

Major U.S. stock-market indexes are trading near record levels, but does that statistic simply mask an ominous picture that’s being painted behind the scenes? Market breadth, a measure of how many stocks are rising versus the number that are dropping, has turned “exceedingly negative,” according to Brad Lamensdorf, a portfolio manager at Ranger Alternative Management. Lamensdorf writes... read more