Precious metals news

Fed Governor Lael Brainard pressed the case for a digital dollar, saying a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank could provide a variety of benefits.

As detailed here back in January 2021, the movements of gold prices tend to get echoed about 20-1/2 months later in the movements of long term interest rates. The replication of gold’s movements is not perfect, and we really should not expect perfection almost 2 years later. The fact that gold’s movements have any correlation at all to interest rates 20-1/2 months later is a pretty amazing discovery.

The Fed sees itself as trapped by the incompetence and greed of the other players and by its own policy extremes that were little more than expedient "saves" of a system that is unraveling due to its fragility and brittleness. .

An ideal way to invest is to identify an asset that is both undervalued and poised to rise. Easier said than done, but if an investor can find an opportunity that meets those two criteria, they can put the odds greatly in their favor.

When the facts change, even central banks should be willing to change their minds.

The Incredibly Shrinking Credit Card Debt; the New & Used Car Fiasco; and Can the Fed Crack Down on Inflation?

Let's discuss the meaning of stability and how it should be achieved.

I had an excellent conversation with Jeremy Grantham last week. By excellent, I mean terrifying. Grantham thinks we are in a big, multi-asset market bubble and there is going to be a monstrous crash. Getting off the phone with him, I had a strong urge to shift my retirement accounts into cash, have a large whiskey, and hide under the bed.

Today we’ll consider the arguments for higher inflation in the near future. As you will see, they are serious and convincing. But there are equally serious and convincing points on the deflationary side as well.

The Chinese are trialling it. The UK Treasury and the Bank of England have a task force on it. So, after years of talk, central bank digital currency has suddenly become serious business.

China’s efforts to restrain cryptocurrency trading and mining are roiling bitcoin and other markets, as major digital-currency exchanges suspend some activities that targeted users in China.

A key selling point that made solar energy the fastest-growing power source in the world—rapidly decreasing costs—has hit a speed bump.Solar module prices have risen 18% since the start of the year after falling by 90% over the previous decade. The reversal, fueled by a quadrupling in the cost of the key raw material polysilicon, threatens to delay projects...

China stepped up its fight against soaring commodities prices, summoning top executives to a meeting that threatened severe punishment for violations ranging from excessive speculation to spreading fake news. The government will show “zero tolerance” for monopoly behavior and hoarding, the National Development and Reform Commission...

It was past 9 p.m. on Financial Street in Beijing by the time the figure inside Huarong Tower there picked up an inkbrush and, with practiced strokes, began to set characters to paper.Another trying workday was ending for Wang Zhanfeng, corporate chairman, Chinese Communist Party functionary—and, less happily, replacement for a man who very recently had been executed.On this April night, Wang was spotted unwinding as he often does in his office: practicing the art of Chinese calligraphy, a form that expresses the beauty of classical characters and, it is said, the nature of the person who writes them.Its mastery requires patience, resolve, skill, calm—and Wang, 54, needs all that and more. Because here on Financial Street, a brisk walk from the hulking headquarters of the People’s Bank of China, a dark drama is playing out behind the mirrored façade of Huarong Tower. How it unfolds will test China’s vast, debt-ridden financial system, the technocrats working to fix it, and the foreign banks and investors ...

Even by the standards of a record-breaking global credit binge, China’s corporate bond tab stands out: $1.3 trillion of domestic debt payable in the next 12 months.That’s 30% more than what U.S. companies owe, 63% more than in all of Europe and enough money to buy Tesla Inc. twice over. What’s more, it’s all coming due at a time when Chinese borrowers...

Airfare and hotel rates are rising as more travelers take vacations.

Deep in the flatlands of South Carolina, along a dusty road rung by pine trees, the wood-saws at the Charles Ingram Lumber Company whir day and night, cranking out the two-by-fours that have become the essential, and suddenly hard-to-find, ingredient of the great pandemic housing boom...

Inflation is landing in America’s refrigerators -- and it’s hitting meat-eaters most of all.About one in three U.S. adults say they’re spending more on groceries than they were at the start of 2021, according to a Morning Consult survey of 2,200 U.S. adults conducted May 17 to 19 for Bloomberg News. Red meat was the ingredient cited most often for its higher prices...

With the world barely through the worst of an unprecedented crisis, central bankers are already wondering if the next one is around the corner.From Washington to Frankfurt, what began months ago as a murmur of concern has morphed into a chorus as officials ask if a risk-taking binge across multiple asset markets might presage a destabilizing rout...

Corporate bond sales have held up despite recent market volatility, and high-grade issuance is anticipated to be busy next week with a potential jumbo offering in the works.