by Contributor • • Comments Off on The Very Brief Phenomenon Of The Gold Standard
By Dr. Bryan Taylor: Europe was on a bimetallic standard, not a Gold Standard, from the Middle Ages until World War I. Gold triumphed in the 19th century because bimetallism had failed. This should have been taken as a sign that the gold standard too would inevitably fail.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Draghi’s Bold Push For Creeping Defaults And Real Wage Cuts
There is nothing like a wealthy central bank chief admitting that he wants to, one, help governments default gradually on their debts; and two, cut the real wages of workers. An honesty the Fed never dared to exhibit when it inflicted waves of QE on American workers.
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on “Uncreative” Destruction: The Troika’s Hostile Takeover of Europe
By Don Quijones: The story is now playing out across Europe’s bailed-out nations. The losers are by and large the poor and middle classes, while the beneficiaries are the same as always: the world’s largest multinational corporations and banks.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on What Happens When ‘All Assets Have Become Too Expensive?’
A report from the asset management and investment banking division of Groupe BPCE, the second largest bank in France, predicts what daredevil voices at the maligned margin of financial analysis have worried about for a while: another global financial panic.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on This Chart Shows When the Smart Money Saw The Abenomics Fail
This year has been lumpy for stocks around the world. Gone are the wild rallies followed by mild rallies interrupted by minor downticks, followed by more rallies. That’s so 2013. It’s as if on December 31, someone turned off the spigot. But in Japan, it turned into a rout.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Head of EU’s Newfangled Bank Regulator: Markets Are Dumb, Pumps Stocks Of Teetering Banks To Keep them From Toppling
It’s not often that a bank regulator proclaims stocks of teetering banks are undervalued because markets are too dumb to value them correctly. That’s what Danièle Nouy, chair of the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism just proclaimed. She has a motive.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Dollar Hegemony Under Attack By Export-Superpowers Germany and China
The word dollar didn’t even come up when the Bundesbank signed the agreement with the People’s Bank of China. President Xi Jinping and Chancellor Angela Merkel looked on. It was serious business. Everyone knew what this was about. No one had to say it.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Total Abenomics Fail Slams Japan Where It Hurts Most
Japanese corporations no longer even try to invest in Japan, but they’re falling all over each other grabbing the Bank of Japan’s freshly printed dough to invest it overseas.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on French Megabank: No “Drastic Crisis” in France, It Will Be “Slow And Over Time”
Finally we know why French government debt and French stocks have performed so well, despite the crummy economy, and why France has been spared so far the fate of Cyprus: the fiasco won’t happen suddenly in France, the bank reported. It will be slow and torturous.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Kremlin: If The US Tries To Hurt Russia’s Economy, Russia Will Target The Dollar
The first official warning shot was fired before an all-out assault on the dollar system begins. Not by a Putin advisor that can be brushed off, but by Alexey Ulyukaev, Russia’s Minister of Economy and former Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank. A major escalation.
