Free Republic

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has said he won't step down because of pressure from Britain and other countries for a change in government. “You want me to retire? You do not talk of retirement when elections are coming, do you?” the 89-year-old president told Kyodo News in an interview in the Japanese city of Yokohama where he was attending and a thre- day summit on African development. Mugabe will lead his Zanu PF party in elections to choose a substantive government this year, replacing the coalition administration he formed with rival Morgan Tsvangirai after disputed polls in 2008. The Constitutional Court...

ALBERT EDWARDS: Stocks Will Crash, Hyperinflation Will Come, And Gold Will Go Above $10,000 Joe WeisenthalApril 25, 2013 This is always reassuring. SocGen strategist Albert Edwards remains an ultra-bear, and predicts everything will go to hell. In his new note he writes: We still forecast 450 S&P, sub-1% US 10y yields, and gold above $10,000 My working experience of the last 30 years has convinced me that policymakers’ efforts to manage the economic cycle have actually made things far more volatile. Their repeated interventions have, much to their surprise, blown up in their faces a few years later. The current...

A trip to the Iranian resort island of Kish illuminates the pressures, limits, and strange consequences of economic sanctions. For years, I have been advising my cash-poor friends: the secret to an ultracheap international holiday is a Google News search for the words runaway inflation. The place listed in the dateline of any recent articles including that phrase should be your destination. En route to your home airport, visit the bank and withdraw U.S. dollars in crisp hundreds and fifties. At your beleaguered landing place, the local currencyÂ’s value will be melting away like a snowman in July. Your greenbacks...

This Is A Recipe For Massive Hyperinflation Bankruptcy Economics / HyperInflationFebruary 27, 2013 - 12:25 PM GMT By: Money MorningMartin Hutchinson Nobody was really shocked when Venezuela devalued the bolivar earlier this month from 4.3 to the dollar to 6.3. When it comes to the currency wars, massive devaluations are simply one of the keys to this "race to the bottom" strategy. But Venezuela's bad behavior, and that of several other countries in the region, means that several Latin American countries are now likely to suffer hyper-inflation or declare bankruptcy. For investors in Latin America, that raises the risks for...

The Real Danger Of The Fed's Easy Monetary Is Not The Risk Of Hyperinflation Comstock PartnersFebruary 21, 2013, 2:56 PMThe Fed's current attempt to control long term rates, "QE to infinity", is based on the hope that by providing cheap money, banking and financial firms will lend and thereby stimulate the economy. This would be a sound plan if the problem with the US economy was a shortage of credit. With corporations holding back cash and depending on productivity gains to drive earnings, the typical recovery scenario where the private sector borrows money for investment and drives job growth and...

Why Inflation In 2013 Is Imminent Economics / InflationFebruary 14, 2013 - 03:48 PM GMT By: Money Morning Jeff Uscher writes: Is a spike in the monetary base - currency in circulation plus bank reserves at the Fed - the first sign of imminent inflation? Art Cashin, the well-respected director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange for UBS, recently told King World News the increase in the monetary base may well be a sign of impending inflation. Monetary base, sometimes called high-powered money, is the basis for the bank lending that drives our economy. When interest rates...

Art Cashin: A Dormant US Inflation Indicator Just Spiked, And It's Got Me Thinking Of Weimar And Zimbabwe Sam RoFebruary 13, 2013, 3:58 AM Veteran trader Art Cashin has been more concerned about the threat of inflation in the U.S. than most. In a recent interview with Eric King of King World News, he notes that the once dormant threat of inflation could be waking up. From King World News: ...That having been said, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis puts out what is called the ‘Monetary Stock.’ It is the ‘raw material’ of the money supply, and it...

John Williams: How To Survive the Illusion Of Economic Recovery Economics / Great Depression IIFebruary 09, 2013 - 01:40 PM GMT By: The Gold ReportJohn Williams There is no economic recovery, and there are no signs that a recovery is coming, says Shadowstats.com author John Williams. In this Gold Report interview, he blames mal-adjusted inflation statistics for creating an alternate reality that overestimates economic activity in a way that is unsustainable. Williams warns that eventually the painful truth will be so difficult that even government manipulation won't be able to deny it and that is when hyperinflation will take its...

Why There's No Real Inflation - Yet Economics / InflationJan 30, 2013 - 01:16 PM GMT By: Money Morning Martin Hutchinson writes: According to Milton Friedman, "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." If that is true, then you have to wonder where the heck all of the inflation is. Every central bank in the Western world is holding interest rates down, and almost all of them are printing money like it's going out of style. Five years ago, nearly every economist in the world would have told you this would cause inflation to skyrocket, and the big deficits...

John Williams Forecasts U.S. Dollar Hyperinflation Before End Of 2014 Economics / HyperInflationJanuary 29, 2013 - 12:46 PM GMT Anybody who thinks the U.S. is in a so-called recovery isn’t listening to economist John Williams. He contends, “We haven’t had a recovery and we’re not about to have one, and it’s getting worse.” Williams says it’s because, “The consumer is in very serious trouble. . . . The average guy is not making it. His income is not keeping up with inflation.” As far as Congress getting the budget and debt ceiling under control, Williams says, “Both sides are faced...

Gold Won't Save You From Hyperinflation According To A New Study James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise InstituteJanuary 24, 2013, 6:18 PM A new NBER working paper, “The Golden Dilemma”, looks at the investment history — and possible investment future — of gold. Many fascinating nuggets and charts in the research. Especially interesting is its negative take on gold as a safe-haven hedge against hyperinflation (or even regular inflation, for that matter) or other crises: We also parse the safe haven argument and come up empty-handed. We examine data on hyperinflations in both major and minor countries and find it is certainly...

Excerpt - Original at: Hyperinflation Signs: There are a few more signs of currency hyperinflation coming to the US and the world. First, from a global perspective, the Wall Street Journal says even the Swiss are printing money now: The nation’s central bank is printing and selling as many Swiss francs as needed to keep its currency from climbing against the euro, wagering an amount approaching Switzerland’s total national output When even the staid Swiss are printing money, this is a dark sign of not just US hyperinflation, but something we’ve never seen before – a global hyperinflation, with hyperinflation...

Contrary to popular opinion, U.S. tax rates aren’t low, says Edward Prescott, a Nobel laureate economist at Arizona State University. “Tax rates are already high, much higher than is commonly understood, and increasing them will likely further depress the economy, especially by affecting the number of hours Americans work,” Prescott and Lee Ohanian, a UCLA economist, write in The Wall Street Journal. …

There are limits to how much aid the Federal Reserve can provide to the U.S. economy, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned on Wednesday as he urged politicians to tackle a year-end fiscal cliff that could derail the country’s gradual recovery. … The U.S. central bank announced it would keep buying $85 billion of Treasury and mortgage-backed bonds a month until it saw a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market. Its balance sheet would increase to almost $4 trillion by the end of next year if it kept up that pace of purchases. … Critics of the central...

A currency war in the simplest form is basically when there is too much debt and not enough growth. - James Rickards, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis Currency wars are real wars. But they are waged with currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives, commodities, rather than guns and other kinetic weapons. In a currency war, countries try to manipulate their own currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. There is a currency war when one country tries to devalue its currency relative to others in order to promote exports and create jobs. Let's take an example. Some...

By Steve H. HankeMy October 2009 Globe Asia column was titled “Iran’s Death Spiral.” In light of the recent events that have transpired in Iran, I think I might have been onto something back in 2009.Since early September, there has been an accelerated slide in the value of the Iranian rial. This slide has been punctuated by dramatic collapses in the demand for the rial. With each collapse, there has been something akin to a “bank run” on rials – with a sharp rise in the black market (read: free market) IRR/USD exchange rate (see the accompanying chart). Ironically, Iranians...

UBS: 1000% Inflation Is Perfectly Acceptable... Sam RoNov. 10, 2012, 6:35 AM In a recent note to clients, UBS Chief Economist Larry Hatheway suggests that even 1000 percent inflation can be manageable as long as people see it coming. From his recent Macro Keys note: When 1000% inflation can be desirable In fact, the costs associated with inflation (price change) are less than commonly supposed. There is the famous “sticker price cost” – the cost of constantly changing price labels – but in a world of electronic displays and web based ordering this is not a serious economic cost (in...

New York state on Wednesday asked the U.S. federal government to pay all the costs of cleaning up and repairing damage from massive storm Sandy that tore through the Northeast this week and crippled New York City. Governor Andrew Cuomo said he is asking fellow Democrat, President Barack Obama, to pay 100 percent of the estimated $6 billion bill, at a time that state and local government budgets remain constrained by a weak economic recovery. … New York top finance official, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, said Washington should foot the bill, because of lingering financial pressures on state and local governments...

U.S. Dollar Hyperinflation by 2014 Says John Williams Economics / HyperInflationOct 25, 2012 - 03:06 AM Economist John Williams says the latest round of “open-ended” QE has set the table for a global “dollar sell-off” and “hyperinflation” no later than 2014. Williams says, “There’s no way the consumer can fuel the economic recovery, and there is no way we’re going to see one in the near future.” Williams predicts, “The Treasury is going to have funding problems, and that means the deficit gets a lot worse.” Now, there is talk the Fed might increase the money printing. Williams charges, “The...

Economist John Williams says the latest round of “open-ended” QE has set the table for a global “dollar sell-off” and “hyperinflation” no later than 2014. Williams says, “There’s no way the consumer can fuel the economic recovery, and there is no way we’re going to see one in the near future.” Williams predicts, “The Treasury is going to have funding problems, and that means the deficit gets a lot worse.”

Investors Should Fear The Moment When A Loaf Of Bread Costs $3 Billion David Zeiler, Associate Editor , Money MorningOctober 17, 2012, 11:54 PMFlickr / victoriachan BNY Mellon Outpaces by a Sliver – Analyst Blog QE Infinity Won't Work, But Here's What Will Romney Tax Plan Details Still a Mystery Despite All the Talk Too few understand just how disruptive hyperinflation in America would be. Truth is, it would be a nightmare. In an episode of hyperinflation, money loses value so rapidly that people spend it as quickly as possible, which only feeds the cycle of pushing prices higher and...

2.17 These interventions which were exactly in the mould of bail out packages and quantitative easing measures currently instituted in the US and the EU, were geared at evoking a positive supply response and arrest further economic decline. But even still, 2.20 Despite numerous intervention measures undertaken by Government through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, economic activity continued to decline progressively with inflation peaking at 231 million percent by July 2008. Other challenges that affected the economy include the following:

The picture below shows $15 trillion dollars worth of $100 bills on $10 million dollar pallets stacked on top of each other over an area that is one third larger than a regulation football field. An electronics van is parked between the stack and the Statue of Liberty. A single $100 million dollar pallet rests in front of the truck’s cab. See it?Recently, I reported that the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) secretly gave ten trillion dollars of interest-free loans to over a dozen European banks to shore up the Euro and keep them financially solvent. I later found out that...

Against a deflationary environment of austerity-driven wage and pension cuts combined with rising unemployment; food, commodity, and fuel prices continue to surge in Greece. The government has taken an unusual step - allowing the sale of expired food at lower prices. As Voz Populi reports, this act means the government has 'virtually admitted their inability to control prices" as the worst aspects of stagflation crush the Hellenic Republic. The regulation (allowing from one-week to one-month extensions of foods for sale post their eat-before-this-day-or-you'll-get-Salmonella date) has existed for many years, according to a ministerial decree and this action merely states that...

A Year’s Supply Of Rice By Addison WigginOctober 8, 2012 “Better buy now,” advised the rice merchant in Tehran. The retired factory guard took him up on the advice, buying 900 pounds of the stuff to feed his extended family for the next 12 months. “As I was gathering my money,” the retiree told The New York Times, he got a phone call. “When he hung up, he told me prices had just gone up by 10%. Of course, I paid. God knows how much it will cost tomorrow.” Iran’s currency, the rial, collapsed 40% last week under the pressure...

Why You Should Be VERY Afraid Of Inflation Stock-Markets / InflationOct 07, 2012 - 09:52 AM By: Graham Summers For the last 80 years or so, financial theory has held that inflation and deflation were mutually exclusive events. We’ve now seen that idea go up in smoke as deflation affects home prices and incomes in the US at the very same time that we experience inflation in energy and food prices courtesy of the Fed’s insane money printing. Indeed, Ben Bernanke is a disciple of the belief that to battle deflation, one must inflate the financial system/ economy. Never mind...

The oil embargo against Iran has worked, assuming one defines "work" as a destruction of the Iranian riall which has fallen 33% in a week, 57% in three months and 75% in a year vs. the US dollar. On Wednesday, the Tehran bazaar closed in turmoil and police used teargas and batons on demonstrators protesting the currency crisis. Please consider Iran currency crisis sparks Tehran street clashes Hundreds of demonstrators in the Iranian capital clashed with riot police on Wednesday, during protests against the crisis over the country's currency. Police used batons and teargas to try to disperse the crowds....

While negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are at a standstill, news this week indicates that Iran is clearly losing the economic battle. As in other cases, currency problems in Iran may contribute to an unpredictable and destabilizing political outcome. Iran’s currency fell by more than 18 percent against the dollar on Monday and another 8 percent on Tuesday, marking a new low in Iran’s continuing economic crisis. The figures are grim: a sheaf of rials worth ten thousand dollars a year ago would be worth about $3,750 Monday and $3,500 Tuesday; on Wednesday, there were protests in the bazaar.Short of...

A currency disappearing in value and hyperinflation as a result. Not surprisingly, people don't like it very much when they go to sleep with their money being worth one amount and then wake up the next morning to find their money worth a lot less. New York Times: The first outbreak of public anger over Iran's collapsing currency and other economic maladies jolted the heart of the capital on Wednesday, with the riot police violently clamping down on black-market money changers, hundreds of citizens marching to demand relief and merchants in the sprawling bazaar closing their shops in protest. Iran's...

Since the U.S. and E.U. first enacted sanctions against Iran, in 2010, the value of the Iranian rial (IRR) has plummeted, imposing untold misery on the Iranian people. When a currency collapses, you can be certain that other economic metrics are moving in a negative direction, too. Indeed, using new data from Iran’s foreign-exchange black market, I estimate that Iran’s monthly inflation rate has reached 69.6%. With a monthly inflation rate this high (over 50%), Iran is undoubtedly experiencing hyperinflation. When President Obama signed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, in July 2010, the official Iranian rial-U.S. dollar...

Hyperinflationary Currency Collapse Is Leading To Big Anti-Regime Protests In Iran Joe WeisenthalOctober 3,2012 Earlier this week we wrote about how Iran's currency (the Rial) is in a state of total collapse, in part due to oil sanctions. It's obvious that the spiraling cost of things is having a major destabilizing effect. The BBC reports on protests: Riot police in Iran have clashed with protesters in the capital over sharp falls in the currency, the rial. Tear gas was used to disperse the demonstrators, some of whom were setting fire to tyres and rubbish bins. There were many arrests, reports...

Hyperinflation Is Virtually Assured – John Williams Economics / HyperInflationSep 13, 2012 - 01:41 AM By: Videos The Federal Reserve is talking about “unlimited QE,” or money printing, to boost employment. Economist John Williams says, “That’s absolutely nonsense. The Fed is just propping up the banks.” Williams says, “You’re likely going to see a dollar sell-off . . . That should evolve into hyperinflation.” Williams, “Doesn’t see the current system holding together without hyperinflation beyond 2014.” He contends the real annual deficit is “$5 trillion per year” and says, “That’s beyond containment.” Williams predicts, “Hyperinflation is virtually assured because the...

The mainstream media in the United States is almost totally ignoring one of the most important trends in global economics. This trend is going to cause the value of the U.S. dollar to fall dramatically and it is going to cause the cost of living in the United States to go way up. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world. Even though that status has been chipped away at in recent years, U.S. dollars still make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. Most international trade (including the...

Martin Armstrong is an iconic investor who has called more market tops and bottoms than just about anyone else out there. He believes that hyperinflation will not occur in the US so long as there’s a functioning bond market. He believes that the government will be forced to drastically cut spending and cut back benefits. Social security will be cut, along with all major government programs. The bond vigilantes won’t have it any other way. This will lead to a lost decade, with price inflation starting in 2014 and a real collapse occurring after 2015. Whether his vision will come...

When, Not If, Inflation Returns By Jeff ClarkSeptember 10, 2012 The cheek of it! They raised the price of my favorite ice cream. Actually, they didn’t increase the price; they reduced the container size. I can now only get three servings for the same amount of money that used to give me four, so I’m buying ice cream more often. Raising prices is one thing. I understand raw-ingredient price rises will be passed on. But underhandedly reducing the amount they give you…that’s another thing entirely. It just doesn’t feel…honest. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, how much gasoline is going up. Food...

Hyperinflation – Still More Than A Monetary Phenomenon 08/17/2012 1:15 PM Cullen Roche One of the bigger myths in the world of economics and finance remains the cause of hyperinflation. As I’ve highlighted many times over the years, hyperinflation is more than just a monetary phenomenon (and misunderstanding this led to many incorrect hyperinflation predictions in the USA in recent years). In fact, the monetary explosion is almost always the result of some other rare or extreme exogenous factor. My original conclusions on this found that hyperinflations tended to occur around the follow events: * Collapse in production. * Rampant...

PETER SCHIFF: We Are Sailing Right Into The Perfect Storm Sam Ro Aug. 9, 2012, 9:26 AM Peter Schiff of Europacific Capital continues to sound the alarm on the risks of the government's mounting debt load and the Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy. Like Roubini and some other doomsayer, he employs the "perfect storm imagery." From a piece in King World News: The perfect storm is the real fiscal cliff that we’re going to go over. The real fiscal cliff is when we can’t borrow any more money because our creditors wake up to the fact that we’re no...

Shouting matches and even physical fights break out each time a minibus pulls up to drop off passengers at a crowded bus stop in downtown Harare. It's all about not getting short-changed. Hyperinflation forced Zimbabwe to trash its worthless local currency three years ago in a move that brought much needed relief to the crippled economy but created a surprising new headache: a lack of coins. "Change is a big problem, and at the same time passengers are impatient with us. I have been slapped a few times for not having change for them," said a bus conductor Walter Chakawata....

Britain’s pension system is in meltdown, with retirement payouts slashed 27 percent in just four years. Experts say the Bank of England’s policy of printing money to ease the country through the recession has destroyed the pensions industry and “impoverished more than a million pensioners”. And yesterday, in a fresh blow, the Bank’s policy makers agreed to more quantitative easing (QE), pumping an extra £50 billion ($77.4 billion) into the economy and boosting the money supply to £375 billion ($580 billion). William Hunter, director of Hunter Wealth Management, said: “The economy may need more QE, but pensioners need it like...

It is worthwhile noting that inflation as a factor of global economic security has the innate capacity to upend carefully laid plans and further upset the equilibrium, being a source of economic hardship that only a limited number of state actors can affect via their national policies argue former Reagan advisor Dr Norman Bailey and Dr Alexander Mirtchev Governments everywhere are responding by devaluing currencies, applying price restrictions, raising interest rates or imposing currency controls — in a way, true to the legacy of Diocletian. In some cases, they are attempting to obfuscate price increases — by changing definitions, altering...

The Anatomy Of Sovereign Debt Default Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis 2012 Apr 17, 2012 - 12:47 PM By: Michael Pento The three primary factors that determine the interest rate level a nation must pay to service its debt in the long term are; the currency, inflation and credit risks of holding the sovereign debt. All three of those factors are very closely interrelated. Even though the central bank can exercise tremendous influence in the short run, the free market ultimately decides whether or not the nation has the ability to adequately finance its obligations and how high interest rates...

www.financialsurvivalnetwork.com presents: Max Yemets was back on talking more about hyper-inflation and how debts get destroyed. He told the story of how his father took out a loan to purchase a bicycle back in Soviet controlled Ukraine. It was a large loan by their standards; but when hyper-inflation hit, his father was able to repay the loan for virtually nothing. There's something instructive about this scenario, and history could very well repeat itself. Imagine having a large mortgage that you get to pay back in greatly depreciated dollars. Max believes that if you aren't buying metals now, you should be!...

If you are looking for the most nauseating cover possible on Ben Bernanke, please consider the April 2012 issue of the Atlantic. The cover asks the question "Ben Bernanke saved the global economy. So why does everyone hate him?" For starters Ben Bernanke did not save the global economy. Making such a proclamation is like a football fans proclaiming victory at the end of the third quarter with the score 54-24 following a 24 point rally after being down 54-0. Simply put, it is far too early to make a presumption the Fed "saved" anything given the global economy remains...

The Fed's Inflation Target; QE3, QE4, QE5, Etc. Are In The Queue Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing Jan 29, 2012 - 11:26 AM By: David Knox Barker The U.S. Federal Reserve policy announcement on Tuesday, January 25, 2012 marks an important moment in monetary history. The forecast by a majority of the members of the FOMC for interest rates to hug zero until late 2014 was of interest and points to the FOMC conviction extended global economic stagnation at best, reflecting the long wave forces at work in the global economy. However, more importantly, it was the first time that the...

Southern Europe Permanently Crippled, The Only Tool Left Is Hyper Inflation Economics / HyperInflation Jan 20, 2012 - 11:24 AM By: Jim Willie CB Any perusal around the world these days features Southern Europe crippled, preparing for the inevitable Greek Govt Bond default. It features a crippled US housing market, a mockery of statistical accounting in the US Gross Domestic Product, the plight of the COMEX with established veterans clearing out desks (not trading), the extreme physical demand reported by the London Trader, and the indictment of the SLV iTrust Silver Fund tool used by the cartel. The survey does...

I have received a few emails asking if I was still content with my decision to shut down my brokerage. Not only am I content, but after seeing the news that broke over the weekend, I am of the considered opinion that the entire financial blogging community should formally call for a general financial market strike. And I’m not kidding. A couple of things have happened regarding the MF Global mess that I don’t think got the attention they should have because they broke over the weekend. So let me fill you all in. First, all notions of personal property...

Global Economic Crisis: The U.S. An Insolvent And Ungovernable Country Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2012 Dec 18, 2011 - 11:57 AM By: LEAP As announced in previous GEABs, in this issue our team presents its anticipations on the changes in the United States for the period 2012-2016. This country, the epicentre of the global systemic crisis and pillar of the international system since 1945, will go through a particularly tragic in its history during these five years. Already insolvent it will become ungovernable bringing about, for Americans and those who depend on the United States violent and destructive economic,...

Perpetual Q.E. Without The Billboard, Hyper Monetary Inflation Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing Nov 30, 2011 - 08:15 AM By: Jim Willie CB The US Federal Reserve has fooled a lot of people into believing that the grand monetary pump and debt monetization project has been put on hold. The only thing that changed was their talking publicly about it. The money press has been working to the limit, never stopped. The discussion has been kept quiet, but the machinery still makes a lot of shrill noise. The proof is not movement of lips by central bankers, but the data from...

As expected, the Fed has just bailed out the world once again: FED, ECB, BOJ, BOE, SNB, BANK OF CANADA LOWER SWAP RATES - BBG ECB, FED other major central bank to lower the pricing of existing USD liquidity swaps by 50BPS And as we have been writing every single day, the worldwide dollar crunch is now confirmed: At present, there is no need to offer liquidity in non-domestic currencies other than the U.S. dollar And finally, a promise to bailout Bank of America when it hits $4.00 again: U.S. financial institutions currently do not face difficulty obtaining liquidity in...

The U.S. Federal Reserve, acting with five other central banks, took steps Wednesday to boost the troubled global financial system by making it cheaper for banks to trade in U.S. dollars. The Fed -- along with central banks of the eurozone, England, Japan, Switzerland and Canada -- announced a coordinated plan to lower prices on dollar liquidity swaps beginning on December 5, and extending these swap arrangements to February 1, 2013.