Precious metals news

New Zealand is considering distributing free cash directly to individuals as a way of policy stimulus to help boost the economy reeling from a COVID-19 pandemic driven contraction, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on Friday.

Just another macro data point for so-called investors to ignore...

Bank of Nova Scotia has set aside C$232 million ($168 million) to cover the cost of winding down its historic precious-metals unit as well as a potential settlement of U.S. investigations into the unit’s trading activities.

What do we need to know and understand about gold & silver manipulation, besides the $64,000 question, "when will it end"?

Swiss exports of gold to the United States leapt to 111.7 tonnes in April -- by far the biggest monthly total on record -- while shipments to other destinations dwindled, customs data showed on Tuesday.

The Fed's balance sheet is approaching $7 trillion dollars. This is what Bernanke meant by suspenders. On February 27, 2013, Ben Bernanke spoke to US Congress about how the Fed would unwind its balance sheet. Bernanke said, We Have “Belts, Suspenders” to Unwind Balance Sheet .

US Congress has authorized several trillion dollars in Covid-fighting stimulus programs. So what's holding the dollar up?I

For years, I have been warning that during the age of permanent stimulus (which began in earnest with the Federal Reserve’s reaction to the dotcom crash of 2000), each successive economic contraction would have to be met with ever larger, increasingly ineffective, doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the economy from spiraling into depression. I have also said that the enormity of the asset price gains over the last 10 years had increased the danger because reflating the bloated stock, real estate, and public and private debt markets would bring on doses of stimulus that could prove lethal for the economy. But even though I expected that the next financial crisis would be catastrophic, I thought that it would come into the world in the usual way, as a credit crisis triggered by over-leverage. But the Coronavirus ripped up those stage notes, and instead ushered in a threat that is faster and deeper than I imagined, and I imagined a lot. It’s a perfect storm, a black swan wit...

Holy cow, Los Angeles. The economy is gradually opening up. But the exodus has started hard and heavy. And the influx has stopped.

Never underestimate our ability to make a bad situation worse...

China's central bank on Monday lowered its official yuan midpoint to the weakest since the 2008 global financial crisis, reflecting losses in the spot yuan on Friday after Beijing proposed a new national security law for Hong Kong.

The hit to U.S. state and local finances from the coronavirus pandemic could be a drag on the nation’s economic recovery for years to come, if the past is any guide.

The biggest independent shale oil groups in the US reported a record combined loss of $26bn in the first quarter as the sector braces itself for a wave of bankruptcies over the next two years.

The U.S. should give up its “wishful thinking” of changing China, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, warning that some in America were pushing relations to a “new Cold War.”“China has no intention to change the U.S., nor to replace the U.S. It is also wishful thinking for the U.S. to change....

The more than a century old car rental firm Hertz Global Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday after its business was decimated during the coronavirus pandemic and talks with creditors failed to result in much needed relief.

Stock futures traded sharply higher early Tuesday to begin a holiday-shortened week, as optimism grew about the reopening of the economy and a potential coronavirus vaccine.

Housing is often the most immediate way the Federal Reserve transmits lower interest rates to the economy, as homeowners refinance to free up cash and as home buying spurs construction and spending. But the downturn and prepandemic regulations are making lenders skittish.

Global trade flows tumbled in the first quarter, a preview of what could be the largest contraction in international commerce in decades, as the coronavirus pandemic causes policy makers and multinationals to reconsider globe-spanning supply chains that have become a defining feature of the world economy.

The Federal Reserve and the US government are rerunning the exact same policies they turned to in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but on a much grander scale. We have bigger QE, more money printing, more government spending and bigger deficits. During his podcast, Peter Schiff said it was a mistake then, but they got away with it. They won't get away with it this time.

Governments have put forward swift and significant emergency lifelines to protect people in response to the pandemic. We measured these in the April 2020 Fiscal Monitor and as countries have stepped up their efforts, we have updated the numbers.