Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. In this column, JWR also covers hedges, derivatives, and various obscura. This column emphasizes JWR’s “tangibles heavy” investing strategy and contrarian perspective. Today, we look at some market moves triggered by the Jackson Hole, Wyoming conference.
Precious Metals:
Ex-JPMorgan Gold Traders Get Prison for ‘Prolific Spoofing’.
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Efforts To Protect US Intensify Amid Global Shift From Dollar.
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Kelsey Williams: Gold And The Shrinking Money Supply.
Economy & Finance:
France24: BRICS summit of emerging economies gets under way without Putin.
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David Haggith: It’s Happening: Bond Yields Soaring, Banks Sliding, BRICS Busting. Haggith’s article includes these cogent points:
“As the Fed continues quantitative tightening, the amount of money held in bank reserves automatically lowers because the Fed is no longer refinancing US debt. Therefore, the government has to find other buyers. The money those buyers commit to government bond purchases gets transferred from the barks’ reserve accounts directly to the government’s Fed bank account to buy the bonds. Banks have to either sell bonds or use cash they hold in reserves to make those transfers.
At the same time, the government has to attract a lot more buyers to replace the Fed who is out of the Treasury scene for a good while to come. That typically means paying higher interest rates to expand the buyer pool unless a flood of buyers comes along for other reasons (such as flight of capital all of a sudden from other nations). Those rising rates further devalue the existing bonds banks hold in their reserve accounts at the Fed.”
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Linked over at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: The Drunken Sailor Economy/ America gets a downgrade courtesy of President Biden.
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At Zero Hedge: Solid 20Y Auction Prices At Highest Yield On Record.
Commodities:
Gas Reaches $7 a Gallon in Florida, $5.36 in LA; Most Expensive Prices in 2023.
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At Seeking Alpha: Commodity Roundup: Gold, copper gain over 1%; oil prices slip.
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What’s next for commodities as traders await Fed’s annual Jackson Hole meeting?
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WTI Extends Losses After API Reports Smaller Than Expected Crude Draw.
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And over at OilPrice News: Graphite Wars: The Trillion Dollar Battery Race Has A Big Problem.
Inflation/Deflation Watch:
The Housing Market Resurgence and Its Impact on Inflation.
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Nick Giambruno: How Inflation Destroys Civilization… and What You Can Do About It.
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Zimbabwe heads to elections as it sees some of the world’s highest inflation.
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Behind the ticking time bomb – should we fear China’s slide into deflation? This Guardian article begins:
“When two core indicators of Chinese inflation turned negative this week, alarm bells rang as the world’s second-largest economy started sliding into deflation. According to Joe Biden, China’s economy is a “ticking timebomb”.
The US president’s comments followed official data from China showing that July’s consumer prices index fell by 0.3% compared with 2022, while the producer prices index fell by 4.4%. It is the first time that both figures have been negative since November 2020, when the global economy had all but juddered to a halt during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Forex & Cryptos:
De-dollarization “Irreversible” – Putin Tells BRICS Summit In Remote Address.
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Ruble Plunge Sends Waves Across Central Asia’s Economies.
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Crypto entrepreneur faces potential prosecution in Israel related to $290M scam: Report.
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FBI says North Korea hackers looking to sell $40M in Bitcoin.
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BlockFi challenges FTX and Three Arrows Capital’s $5 billion recovery claims.
Tangibles Investing:
These Drilling Stocks Could Be Gushers as the Oil Industry Rebounds.
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This five-year-old article offers some good advice:
Provisos:
SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for our detailed disclaimers.
News Tips:
Please send your economics and investing news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) These are often especially relevant because they come from folks who closely watch specific markets. If you spot any news that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers, then please send it in. News items from local news outlets that are missed by the news wire services are especially appreciated. Thanks!