One of the first things I learned as a registered Washington lobbyist, (yes, I admit it, I was a lobbyist in the 1990s), is “you can’t be something with nothing.” That’s a Washington insider’s way of saying that if you don’t like an opponent’s policies, it’s not enough to moan and complain about them and
I’m more of a fundamental and macro analyst than a technical analyst, but I do pay attention to charts and patterns. Charts have low predictive value in my view, but they are information-rich and are great tools for examining multiple data sets in one glance. It’s not news that gold has been trading in a
If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve. The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system. The Fed uses the Phillips Curve to
I’ve been writing lately about something called “GBI” which stands for guaranteed basic income. GBI goes by other names including universal basic income, UBI, or just basic income, but the policy is the same regardless of the name. The idea is that governments will guarantee every citizen a certain basic income as a matter of
Readers are familiar with our thesis that currency wars lead to trade wars, which lead ultimately to shooting wars. Currency wars begin in the condition of too much debt and not enough growth. Countries try to steal growth from their trading partners by devaluing their currencies. The problem is that this doesn’t work because the
There’s never a shortage of pundits and TV talking heads who are willing to tell you what stocks and bonds are going to do next. They use fundamental and technical analyses to chart and explain every wiggle in stock prices all day long. But, what about currencies? There are far fewer experts who are
We’ve had some good news on North Korea lately. As of last October, the U.S. and North Korea were on a definite path to war. Beginning with a thaw in relations around the time of the Olympics last February, the situation has improved to the point where President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong
At the end of 2017, the historic Trump tax bill made it through Congress and was signed into law by President Trump. The new law cuts taxes on individuals and corporations, increases the standard deduction, provides incentives for multinational corporations to bring offshore earnings back home and creates other incentives for business investment. The impact
