One of the characteristic traits of an economy that is circling the drain is one in which the central bank directly monetizes the debt issued by the government. Once that starts to happen, there is no check on the government’s ability to spend money, and the currency unit quickly becomes more and more worthless. We’ve […]
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It’s perhaps every person’s greatest fear: getting senselessly gunned down on a Sunday morning at church. While Americans don’t have to deal with that scenario to the same extent that Christians in, say, Iraq or Syria do, it’s still something that can and does happen from time to time. Shootings in churches often result in […]
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The overall amount of money owed by Americans on their student loans has more than doubled over the past decade, from $772 billion to $1.6 trillion. While student loans have always existed, and many Americans have benefited from taking out loans to finance their studies, the extent of that borrowing has never been greater. More […]
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After the massive Bitcoin price rise in 2017, many financial analysts have categorized Bitcoin’s performance since then as disappointing. What they fail to understand is that Bitcoin was by far the best-performing asset of the last decade. And even its performance in so-called off years has been remarkable. After what for many investors was a […]
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The coming of the new year has traditionally been a time for people to make resolutions about how they’ll improve their way of living in the year ahead. It’s become famous in some circles to joke about those resolutions, and how few people stick to them. That’s particularly true when it comes to exercise and […]
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The slow-motion crisis brewing between the US and Turkey continues to fester, as Turkish President Erdogan has threatened to boot US troops from military bases in Turkey. The major US presence in Turkey is at the Incirlik Air Base, built by the United States after World War II, which houses both US and Turkish forces. […]
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In a sign that high housing prices are here to stay, the average American can’t afford the average American house. In over 70% of counties in the US, median home prices are more expensive than the average wage earner can afford. And with home prices having risen 9% year-on-year, that lack of affordability looks set […]
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One of the dominant themes in markets today is the vast amount of near-junk grade debt that’s floating around out there. Corporate debt levels are nearly double what they were during the financial crisis, and in terms of corporate debt to GDP, we’re at levels that we last saw at the top of the last […]
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If you needed more evidence that California is going down the toilet, recent news has publicized the fact that the city of San Francisco spent more than $94 million in 2019 in a failed effort to keep its streets free of human feces. More than 30,000 instances of public pooping were reported to authorities, and […]
Continue ReadingNow that we’re entering the 2020s, financial news websites are full of analysis of the previous decade’s market performance. And much of the coverage focuses on what were the best-performing investment assets of the past decade. But while most mainstream news sources are focusing on stocks, the best investment of the past decade was something […]
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