Kenneth Rogoff is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Harvard University. Rogoff calls critics of negative interest rates “ignorant” despite the fact that negative interest rates have been used since 2008 without any success. He had the audacity to say that people should not look at their short-term personal losses, but rather look at the long-term vision […]
QUESTION: Dear Mr. Armstrong As a long time reader I rarely see you mention the possible long term benefits of also holding corporate bonds. I understand the obvious down side to government bonds and the reason for stocks to move higher, but since bond holders get paid before stock holders when things go bad would […]
COMMENT: Martin, A few weeks ago (12/13/2016) my wife received a notice from her company about changes to her 401K and I thought I was in a Kafka film. The notice basically identified “the investment elections you can make and the actions that will occur if you do not make you elections by the deadlines […]
I took this picture at the beach. At first glance, it is hard to tell if it is a sunrise or a sunset. For the record, it was a sunrise – the dawn of a new day. What we face can be disastrous but it also can be the dawn of a new era. Government […]
As we approach 2017, the euro appears far worse than anyone could imagine. The biggest hypocrite is actually Mario Draghi who is outrageously managing the European Central Bank (ECB). To make this as plain as possible, the ECB is the largest individual creditor of the euro countries, and is thus a bank that is undermined completely by the poor creditworthiness of the […]
To make it clear, India is not going door to door to confiscate gold any more than FDR did. The reason so many $20 gold coins have survived is because there was no door to door confiscation. Banks and corporations who had records of gold were forced to turn their gold over and then FDR […]
The US government says it ran a $US587 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year, which was a 34% increase over last year. Deficits have simply become a standard way of life for Western governments as a whole. They see no problem with borrow more each year when they have absolutely no intention of ever paying […]
Greek Prime Minister Alexis has come out today and bluntly warned that failure to agree on a debt restructuring for Greece would push it into a perpetual spiral of borrowing from Europe. But it is actually much worse. Greece is being persecuted because its old debt was converted to euros and that made the debt increase. These […]
In Dresden, Germany, right-wing activists are retaliating against the Muslim refugees. They are said to be behind two huge terror bombs at a mosque. This is the first attack on Muslims using bombs. This will not be the last. What Merkel has unleashed on Europe will continue to escalate as the economy turns down. Anti-immigrant movements correlate […]
Canada has a different legal structure compared to the United States. Canada is one of the most decentralized countries in the world where provinces are actually responsible for most major social expenditures as a whole. The Canadian provinces receive large, unconditional transfers from the federal government whereby some provinces receive transfers from the federal government […]
