[photo] Mark Jeftovic

easyDNS CEO, Career Contrarian & AntiGuru

Category Archives: Armchair Analysis

“Everything louder than everything else…”

Just a quick observation on today’s new all time high in the price of gold on news that the IMF has sold 200 metric tonnes of gold to India’s Central Bank.

Usually, when the IMF sells gold, the price of gold goes down.

Historically, central banks sell their gold. (Tin foil hats aside on the reasons why)

Instead gold went up today, typically, when gold goes up, the US dollar goes down. Not today, it went up too.

Usually, when the USD goes up, the Canadian dollar goes down. Not today though, the CDN went up even more than … Read the rest

Canadian M3 Money Supply still going strong. (Is that good or bad?)

At least M3 is still reported here in Canada. The number is so politically indigestible in the US, they simply pronounced it “irrelevant” and stopped reporting it years ago. To get US numbers you have to use the non-official numbers over at ShadowStats.

Source: Statistics Canada
Canadian M3 Money Supply 2005-2007

Statistics Canada still reports it. In fact they seem to have updated the figures today. We see that M3 grew single digits from 2005 through 2007, the yearly YOY numbers were 9%, 7% and 9% again before flaring out to 12% from 2007 to 2008.

US M3 Tanked
What’s interesting is the seeming divergence between … Read the rest

Did the free markets fail us in this meltdown?

This morning on my way into the office, I was listening to CIUT, as I often do. Nena Baker was on Alternative Radio talking up her book The Body Toxic, and she cited the case of an herbacide called Atrazine. It seems to seriously mess up some frogs in lab tests, and from many indications is highly toxic. The chemical is already banned in European Union, where Syngenta, the company that manufactures it, is based.

It got me thinking. How on earth can anybody be expected to keep on top of this stuff? The next thought was “only a … Read the rest

Are economic cycles that easy to predict?

Ahead of the Curve

I’m currently reading Joseph H Ellis’ Ahead of the Curve – A Commonsense Guide To Forecasting Business and Economic Cycles. So far there are a couple of refreshing departures from conventional consensus, like his views on “recession”.

The idea of an economic recession should be an objective measurement of reality, instead, in today’s climate it simply isn’t discussed in polite company. According to the politicians, it’ll never happen.

Ellis argues that whether we are headed for recession is academic, because recessions are lagging indicators of a down cycle, not leading ones. By the time a recession hits, he says, … Read the rest

That comfy cozy Nanny State

A couple of recent developments have got me thinking about the nature of the socialist, nanny state, what it does to people’s self-reliance and the insidiousness of entitlement programs in general.

South of the border, a minimum wage raise has been passed while up here the airwaves are full of cheery ads from the CDIC that the amount of bank deposits covered by the CDIC has been raised to $100,000.

The Canadian implementation of deposit insurance is supposed to be funded by the premiums of its member institutions. Thus the CDIC is a Crown Corporation funded by it’s member banks … Read the rest

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