Bill Bonner's Diary - BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Predictably… Ms. Janet Yellen was at the top of the news cycle yesterday. Portrayed in the media as the “voice of reason”… she is doing the same job as Secretary of the Treasury as she once did as head of the Federal Reserve. Ms. Yellen has spent her whole career in academia […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - Now on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor. – Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The end of last week brought joy – the debt ceiling was raised… the bars were open. And Republicans […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Today, we are looking more deeply at how the Federal Reserve’s fake money – approximately $8 trillion of it since 1999 – has fouled the economy and corrupted its major industries. And none has been more corrupted than the one that got most of the money – Wall Street. We are in […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Things go wrong. The Wall Street Journal published this alert last night: Democratic leaders are trying to shepherd two complicated legislative packages: a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sprawling healthcare, education and climate package whose proposed $3.5 trillion price tag and contents are still under intense debate within the party. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – What we’ve been looking at this week is “how the world ends.” And today, we meet a woman who intends to kill it – the exterminating angel herself – Saule Omarova. Born in Kazakhstan, educated in Moscow, Madison, and Chicago, and now nominated by the Biden Team to head up its OCC […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – This week, we’re exploring the idea of “truth.” What about crypto? What is true about it? What is false? At first, cryptos were thought to be new forms of money. Then, they were “assets,” a whole new “asset class” that was making people rich. And now the crypto riches are spilling out […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – New ideas come at you, whether you want them or not. Sometimes, they are as easy to understand as a Post-It Note. But sometimes, you don’t know what to make of them. Useful? Silly? Valuable? Time waster? The powers-that-be generally resist them. They fear the powers-that-will-be if they let things evolve freely. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Last week was a delight… at least from a cynical perspective. On Thursday, the U.S. president went on TV to announce that henceforth, people who work for businesses with more than 100 employees would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. CNN was on the story: “We’ve been patient, but our patience […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - They mainly attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America, I did not meet with a single individual, of the clergy or of the laity, who was not of the same opinion upon this point. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Our subject this week is freedom. “What is it worth?” is the question on the table. “Not much,” is the answer from most of America’s intelligentsia. The elite, that is. It maintains that freedom should not be allowed to get in the way of What It Wants Now. It wanted the War […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – This week, we are looking at some big dots… ruminating, really, about freedom and how it is connected to prosperity… vaccinations… the First Amendment… truth. What good is freedom, anyway? In our economy? In our lives? Here at the Diary, we don’t particularly care about freedom. We just don’t like anyone telling us […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - Let’s drink to the hard-working people Let’s think of the lowly of birth Spare a thought for the rag taggy people Let’s drink to the salt of the Earth – Salt of the Earth, The Rolling Stones YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Yes, today, we say an Ave Maria for the salt of the Earth. The poor folks are going […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - When I search the faceless crowd A swirling mass of grays and black and white They don’t look real to me In fact, they look so strange – Salt of the Earth, The Rolling Stones YOUGHAL, IRELAND – We saw yesterday that the feds “invested” more than $27 trillion between 1980 and today… in wars, bailouts, and boondoggles. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - Raise your glass to the hard-working people Let’s drink to the uncounted heads Let’s think of the wavering millions Who need leading but get gamblers instead Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows And a parade of the gray-suited grafters A choice of cancer or polio – Salt […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Some day in the future… we’re going to understand the world better. Among other things, perhaps we will have a clearer view of that wonderful, wacky world of cryptos… Are they investments? Are they alternative forms of “money”? Or are they more like an art-form… or just entertainment? Maybe they’re a kind […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – A great headline from yesterday’s AP: US troops surge evacuations out of Kabul but threats persist Yes, U.S. troops are launching a major “reverse assault”… surging out of Afghanistan like water down a toilet drain. But at least they tried! In some countries, women appear on the beach – in public – with practically […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters. – Genghis Khan, first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire POITOU, FRANCE – It’s easy […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - POITOU, FRANCE – We check the financial news… Both the $1 trillion “infrastructure bill” and the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget moved along in Congress… And stocks hit new record highs on Friday… after what was reported as a “blowout” jobs report. That is to say, we are making progress. The delusions grow more extreme. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - POITOU, FRANCE – We love a good parade as much as the next guy. And a good war. The sound of the trumpet! The shine of the medals! The thrill of the ranks… marching to victory! Out on the battlefield, the front-line troops give ‘em hell… while back at home, mom and dad follow the […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - POITOU, FRANCE – Last week, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell admitted that “inflation could be higher and more persistent than we expected.” Also last week, new inflation readings suggested that this time he is right. The Daily Mail reports: The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation has registered another jump, hitting its highest level in three […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - NORMANDY, FRANCE – The trip on the ferry passed agreeably. The sea was still and smooth… almost like a glass tabletop. We sailed along nicely, not noticing any motion. Arriving in France yesterday morning, we drove down to the Pays d’Auge to spend the night with friends. “You’ve come at a bad time,” said Jean-Paul. “France is […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - Liquidity… liquidity everywhere… and not a drop to drink. – The Lament of the Ancient Mariner (adrift on a sea of fake money) YOUGHAL, IRELAND – When the Nixon Administration cut the link between the U.S. dollar and gold, it didn’t write a new chapter in monetary history; it simply repeated a sad, old one. […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – As we saw yesterday, inflation has not gotten on the bus yet. At a 5.4% annual running rate, consumer prices are now rising about as fast as they did in the mid-1970s. Producer prices are rising at an even faster pace – 7.3% year-on-year. Here’s Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, speaking to the […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Picking up from yesterday… Ms. Rana Foroohar, writing in the prestigious Financial Times, proposed… …simply bringing a smidgen of strategic and long-term foresight to the way America’s economy is run. In a world in which we have to compete with state-run giants like in China, that think on 50-year time horizons, quarterly capitalism simply […]

Bill Bonner's Diary - YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Today, we’re still thinking about thinking, and how little of it the thinkers do. Later in the week, we’ll look at how they prevent others from coming to conclusions of their own. The Financial Times, like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, is a must-read for the economically literate elite. Princes and policymakers all over the […]