The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
How do you turn a mundane $20 bathroom appliance into a luxury item that will set you back $500?
Put some gold on it.
That’s exactly what Dyson has done. No joke. The iconic (meaning overpriced) vacuum cleaner company has developed a hairdryer gilded with 23.75-karat gold leaf.
A Russian lawmaker has suggested his country should develop a gold-backed cryptocurrency for payment of arms exports and other goods as a way to circumvent Western sanctions and limit his country’s dependence on the dollar-based global banking system.
Vladimir Gutenev serves as first deputy head of the economic policy committee at the State Duma – the Russian Parliament’s lower chamber. He suggested Russia should develop a gold-backed cryptocurrency as he called for a suspension of treaties with the US, including the non-proliferation of missile technologies agreement.
The US stock markets had another big day Wednesday with a number of the indexes, including the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, in record territory. So, what’s with the recent move up in US stock markets?
Donald Trump and a lot of Republicans have been taking credit for it, saying their economic policies are causing a boom. But in his latest podcast, Peter Schiff thinks the real impetus for this leg up is the dovish tone of recent Federal Reserve comments.
Investment and commodities guru Jim Rogers says we’re heading toward the worst bear market in his lifetime.
Rogers recently spoke a the MoneyShow in San Francisco. He said the first thing we need to understand is that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve “came to the rescue” and drove interest rates to the lowest level in recorded history.
Never in the history of the world have interest rates been this low. In some countries, they were actually negative. This has never, ever happened in the history of the world. Some Federal Reserve governors, when they think nobody’s listening, they acknowledge that this is an experiment. They don’t know how it’s going to wind up.”
But Rogers said he knows how it’s going to wind up.
SchiffGold’s It’s Your Dime features “straight talk” interviews with movers and shakers in the world of precious metals, investing and economics.
In this episode, I talk with Mises Institute president Jeff Deist about Austrian economics, the Fed, Trumpanomics. the biggest threats to our freedom, and of course, gold.
Indians are buying gold.
Imports of the yellow metal into India jumped for the first time in seven months in July and the trend appears to be carrying forward into August, according to a report in the Times of India. Gold sales have surged 15% by volume over last year as Indians took advantage of soft prices and kicked off the wedding and festival season early.
According to jeweler associations in India, demand could finish up as much as 20% in August compared with 2017.
It’s all capitalisms fault!
What is?
Well, everything.
At least that’s the narrative you get from the political left, and quite frankly, not infrequently from the political right.
There are signs that the air may be coming out of the subprime credit card bubble.
According to numbers recently released by Federal Reserve, delinquency rates on credit card balances at commercial banks other than the largest 100 rose to 6.2% in the second quarter of this year. These are credit cards issued by the nearly 5,000 smaller banks in the US. According to Wolf Street, this actually exceeds the peak during the financial crisis and represents a better than 2% jump from a year ago.
Friday was an active day in the markets. The S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq all hit record highs. The Dow Jones didn’t quite crack into record territory, but it was up over 100 points. Meanwhile, the dollar fell and gold was up more than $20.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks the dovish speech by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole drove all of this. And it could have longer-term ramifications.
