August 28, 2023 | Inflation: Out of Control?
The strongest run of “Inflation” in more than forty years is underway, and pundits claim that it has much further to go. Indeed, popular and highly regarded financial talk shows are reporting that “All paper currencies have eventually gone to zero”. Inevitably, such would indeed be catastrophic.
August 20, 2023 | Credit Crisis: Curve and Spreads: Both Now Warning
In March the Yield Curve inverted as short rates rose above long rates. We use the 2s to 20s and the inversion has always been followed by a recession, without exception. The warning becomes more acute as the Curve reverses, which it is doing now. A slowing economy reduces the ability to service debt with […]
May 8, 2023 | Climate Hysteria: Greatest Mistake Since Witches Were Executed for Causing Bad Weather
Yes, during the prolonged starvation and famines caused by the cooling trend during the Little Ice Age learned magistrates burned witches at the stake. In Northern Europe during the 1500s, thousands of innocent women were legally executed. Nowadays, the blame game for “threatening” weather is more democratic, with all women, men and children right down to […]
April 8, 2023 | Global Warming Confusions
That Trudeau is determined to reduce domestic production of crude oil and natural gas is difficult to accept. Particularly during the discomforts of government’s essential role in imposing price inflation and still having the hatred on for fossil fuels. Sadly, the delusion extends to nitrogen which for a thousand years farmers have been replacing what […]
April 5, 2023 | Climate Update
Headlines screeching about the “Earth Frying” are still being published, despite the 0.75 C drop since 2016. Which with the general flat-lying trend for almost twenty years is refuting the dogma about “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”. The Satellite temperature record follows:
December 30, 2022 | Outlook for 2023: Sort Of
Decades ago, when we were retained by major mining companies for our studies on metal prices there were varying views. Guys in the market-finance department wanted to know price trends for metals. Using supply/demand analysis they were experienced at extrapolating trends. Actual reversals in price typically lead key changes in the supply/demand equation, which makes […]
December 29, 2022 | Princely Finance and Taxation For More Than Twenty Years an Annual Piece
One would have hoped that financial rip-offs committed by medieval princes would have been permanently shelved when liberal enlightenment ended the divine right of kings. Instead, the divine right of bureaucrats has forced too much in-your-face and in-your-wallet government. Today’s supposedly classless version of greedy royalty.
December 1, 2022 | Real Estate: The Post-Bubble Bear Market Could Run For Years
A great mania in real estate erupted with the financial bubble and will likely be followed by a lengthy decline. Previous post-bubble contractions have prevailed for some twenty years, with the usual 3 to 4-year business cycle coming and going. The following chart shows the outstanding rally in the S&P Real Estate Sector peaked in […]
September 29, 2022 | Worst Treasury Rout in Decades
Indeed, whether looking at price or yield, there has been panic-selling which has been feeding upon itself. News or opinion sites that pay little attention to interest rates posted a piece on the alarm and another on “Inflation”, which is the obvious explanation.
September 7, 2022 | Aggressive Fed-Rate Increases: Is Powell Doing A Volcker?
After being arbitrarily accommodating, then in a relatively sudden fit of increasing administered rates, is the current Fed Chair, Powell, trying to replicate Chairman Volcker’s “success” in ending inflation in 1980? Perhaps, but since the Fed opened its doors in 1914 the US dollar is only worth, well, 3 cents on the dollar – which […]
August 24, 2022 | The Collapse of Bullying Authoritarians: Leaders and Regimes
It seems that a severe financial contraction could materially reduce China and Russia’s totalitarian ambition. And as the urge for political reform is being threatened, loss of funding for deliberate mayhem could be in the “nick of time”. As they occurred in the senior economy, there has been three great experiments in authoritarian government that […]
August 9, 2022 | Insane Governments Ruining Agriculture: 1930s Suffered Lysenkoism and in 2022 Nitrogen is Suddenly a Threat
As an historian of governments going from authoritarian to the even more regrettable totalitarianism, one wonders “Why?” harm agriculture. Sadly, that governments get into the mode of declaring war on countries as well as upon their own citizens can be criticized, but no amount of research can explain why.
July 6, 2022 | Climate Update Global Temp Continues Flat – Be Alert to “Tropical Coolness”
On the UAH Satellite Temp record, the global anomaly for June was +0.06 C, down from +0.17 C in May, which compares to the +0.26 C on the April posting. The high with the El Nino of 2016 was +0.70 C, essentially offsetting almost half of the hysteria about a 1.5 C increase.
June 14, 2022 | Eventually The Bear Gets Everything: Including Energy Prices
Before getting to the price action in Crude Oil and Gasoline, it is worth emphasizing that once a great financial mania completes the business cycle almost immediately turns down. This combined with the usual strength in the senior currency forces a bear market for most commodities.
May 27, 2022 | VSE Vignette
The old Vancouver Stock Exchange started in 1907 and has been the focus of Western Canada’s speculative financial market. It generated a lot of “stories” as well as some important mines, that otherwise might not have been discovered. While the trading floor is long gone, some of the characters that floated around Vancouver’s financial center […]
April 30, 2022 | Financial Nightmare? Broker/Dealers: Where Dreams Are Exchanged For Commissions
Broker/Dealers (XBD) is an index representing the mechanics of the financial markets. After an outstanding run it has rolled over and is breaking down – taking three months.
April 11, 2022 | Three Ways to The End of The World
“Green Radicals Claim Humanity Has Only 3 Years Left To Stop ‘Climate Apocalypse’: Fast Track To Disaster”
March 29, 2022 | Political Calculation: Economic Calculation: Science Calculation
Political Calculation has been overwhelming sound Economic as well as Science Calculation and dictatorial distortions are leading to widespread hardship. This contrasts with the Platonic notion that government being run by the genius of a philosopher-king can know what you need tomorrow and can provide it.
March 7, 2022 | Russia’s Financial Panic
To begin, Russia’s stock and bond markets that were vulnerable to any financial setback have suffered a remarkable crash, as a reformed country in an instant becomes a lesser country. Due to a rogue leader.
March 6, 2022 | Common Sense Political Revolutions: Always Inspired By Tyrannical Duncery
For thousands of years, voluntary markets have provided basic needs at economical prices. Otherwise, when authoritarians impose their will in inflating the price of everything while denying goods and services results in hardship. Let’s call it enforced hardship. Such intrusion occurred into the early 1600s when veteran merchants in London called it Tyrannical Duncery and […]
February 28, 2022 | Climate Update: March 2022
The best way to refute ardent but unfounded belief systems is with the reality of solid evidence over a long time, best presented by charts. Charts that have not been altered to fit today’s powerful political persuasions. Actually today’s trashing of science has been unseen since the Vatican condemned anyone who showed that the Universe […]
February 27, 2022 | Three Would-Be Dictators Have Blown It
Canada and the US are not used to dictators, even would-be ones, but the hitherto free countries through a fluke of political history allowed Trudeau and Biden to assume unprecedented powers. By promoting hysteria about climate and COVID both politicians have declared war upon ordinary people. While Putin has invaded an essentially benign neighbor that […]
February 4, 2022 | Profoundly Important Marches And Now Truck Convoys
In March 1965, a university friend was driving his small economy car from Vancouver to Toronto and while crossing the Great Plains and in listening to radio reports of the march from Selma to Montgomery he turned south to participate. The 54-mile route to the state capital of Alabama was not lengthy but inspired a […]
January 17, 2022 | Flattening the Curve: Global Temps
The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga Volcano is noteworthy. Both in its size and in the video of satellite images, with the ejection of ash and aerosols sending columns of material to some 60,000 feet, or almost 20 km. This has the potential to contribute to climate cooling over a couple of years.
December 1, 2021 | British Columbia: Climate, Dreadful Weather and Politics, Plus Geology
Canada’s West Coast has been hit by storms resulting in alluvial flood plains being flooded, roads built on alluvial benches being eroded and major highways on alluvial flood plains being covered by debris torrents adding to naturally occurring alluvial land.