Free Republic

he Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening policy has led the US dollar to appreciate to multi-decade highs, squashing currencies around the world. Now, a United Nations agency is warning that its actions, along with those of other central banks, risk pushing the global economy into recession. What’s happening: In a new report, the United Nations Conference on Trade Development (UNCTAD) said that tightening monetary policy, meant to fight inflation, could inflict worse damage globally than the financial crisis in 2008 and the Covid-19 shock in 2020.

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is the world’s largest silver exchange. For the last nine consecutive months, the quantity of silver held in LBMA vaults have declined. The August 2022 report states that the vaults now hold only 916.5 million ounces of silver, the lowest total since July 2016. In November 2021, the LBMA vaults held 1.170.6 billion ounces of silver. Since then, inventories have fallen 21.7 percent. As dramatic a drop as that is, it becomes even more extreme when you consider only the LBMA inventories not owned by 13 silver exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the private...

WITH the recent death of Queen Elizabeth 2nd at the age of 96, I saw a few scattered social media posts discussing the brief "British Interlude in Manila" from 1762 to 1765. Of these, I encountered a few that imagined how the archipelago would have turned out had the British booted the Spanish out of the colony for good. Even as a counterfactual, this daydream would not pass. One thing needs to be emphasized, based on the studies of scholars on the subject: the British had no intention of seizing and taking the Philippines away from Spain. Historian Nicholas Tracy...

Fears of further Fed tightening continue to weigh on metals markets. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its most recent policy meeting. As CNBC reported, central bankers remain fixated on inflation. CNBC Reporter: The minutes of the latest Fed meetings show that officials agreed that another rate hike of 50-75 basis points would likely be appropriate at its meeting later this month. Officials also acknowledge that there could be an even more restrictive stance that could be appropriate if inflation remains high. Now, the minutes show that Fed officials were worried about inflation becoming entrenched, that was...

The race is on for One-Eyed Willy's treasure, as part of the shipwreck of the boat that inspired 'The Goonies' has been found. Marine archaeologists have recovered timbers from the hull of the 17th-century Spanish galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos in sea caves in Oregon, USA.

He was the only person to sign all four of these America's founding documents: Articles of Association, 1774; Declaration of Independence, 1776; Articles of Confederation, 1777; U.S. Constitution, 1787. Download as PDF ... Who was he? Roger Sherman. At age 19, Roger Sherman's father died and he supported his family as a shoe cobbler, helping his two younger brothers to attend college and become clergymen. Roger Sherman was a surveyor and merchant, but when a neighbor needed legal advice, he studied to help, only to be inspired to become a lawyer. Sherman was elected a state senator, a judge and...

(Richmond, Virginia - April 12, 2022) - By signing sound money legislation yesterday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has ended Virginia’s discriminatory practice of assessing sales taxes on smaller purchases of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins. Virginia’s House Bill 936, originally introduced by Del. Amanda Batten, was considered by multiple House and Senate committees before passing overwhelmingly out of both chambers and reaching the governor’s desk. Virginia had been one of only seven states in the United States maintaining merely a partial sales tax exemption on purchases of precious metals. Virginia’s regressive practice of taxing only purchases under...

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he was not “buying” former Gov. Sarah Palin’s political comeback bid for her state’s sole seat on the U.S. House of Representatives. Anchor Jon Karl said, “Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is attempting a political comeback nearly 14 years after Sen. John McCain made her the Republican Party’s first female candidate for vice president. She’s running for Alaska’s lone House seat following the death of longtime Congressman Don Young. Donald Trump has already endorsed her but does she have a shot at winning? Here’s FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver.

New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analyzed coins of the period and revealed a debasement [sic] of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 percent copper five years later...The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behavior...

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the suspension of Canadians’ rights last week in his invocation of the Emergencies Act to stop the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and elsewhere. Among the restrictions announced are greater controls over the online crowdfunding sites that help to fund the protesters and attempts to control the flow of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to news reports, “credit card processors and fund-raising services will be required to report any blockade-related campaigns to Canada’s anti-money laundering agency.” Canadian banks quickly fell in line with the decrees, with Toronto-Dominion Bank freezing two personal bank accounts...

Statistician Nate Silver said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Joe Biden had not fulfilled his promise to “return to normal.”

At year end I was asked for predictions of what 2022 might see? My #1 prediction was that 2022 would see several narratives collapse. It did not take long to begin! Yesterday, Boris Johnson ended ALL Covid protocols in Britain and was followed by WHO backing off boosters for youngsters. While still trying to discern what prompted BJ to do a 180 (other than trying to retain power?), we will wait to see if others follow suit? We will also wait to see further actuary numbers of deaths from the insurance industry. Raw numbers will be hard to spin …...

Inflation in the US is at historically high levels.(Peter Schiff and Tucker Carlson Discuss the Worst Inflation in US History)So, why hasn’t gold taken off? We hear this question over and over again. In this video, Peter Schiff answers this question and explains why the markets will eventually wake up to their misperception. That’s the key word – misperception. Taper tantrums and fear of Fed rate hikes have distorted perception in the markets. People are selling gold when they should be buying gold on the dips. And at the root of this misperception is the market’s focus on nominal interest...

...the sources of silver used to produce Roman coinage have largely been used up, making it difficult to determine which deposits Roman miners exploited...The Iberian Peninsula, which includes modern Spain and Portugal, is host to world-class silver deposits, especially in the southern region. These deposits contain galena, which is the main ore of lead and an important source of silver. To extract silver, the galena ore is smelted and purified, with refined silver for coin minting able to reach a purity of over 95%.To track the source of Roman silver, the team of researchers analyzed the silver and lead compositions...

Archaeologists in southwest Russia have unearthed a trove of medieval silver at a site where treasure was often hidden from an invading Mongol army in the 13th century — but oddly it seems to have been buried there at least 100 years before the Mongols swept through.The trove of silver pendants, bracelets, rings, and ingots was found during excavations earlier this year near the site of Old Ryazan, the fortified capital of a Rus principate that was besieged and sacked by Mongols in 1237.The Mongol attack was particularly bloodthirsty; historical accounts report that the invaders left no one alive in...

In the volume void that follows the resumption of futures trading, and which saw US futures trade modestly lower, a sudden burst of selling in the gold futures contract sent Gold futures plunged as low as $1,677.0 or almost $100 lower from the Friday close of $1,761.50. Together with Friday’s post-payroll plunge, this has been the biggest 2-day drop in gold (in dollar terms) since the March 2020 crash.

Reagan White House Budget Director and best-selling author David Stockman says, “This is not the time to be invested in the markets . . . . A reset is just a pleasant name or a clinical name for a crash of epic proportions, which we will have because the markets are so inflated. There are trillions of dollars that are at risk. To put a dimension on this thing or a way of sizing this, is we have a $60 trillion bubble on the balance sheets of 130 million people in American society, but especially in the top 5% to...

Silver sourced from the northern Mediterranean, as far away as the Iberian Peninsula, was used as a trade token throughout the region during the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods, with the supply slowing only occasionally.This, according to a team of French, Israeli and Australian scientists and numismatists who found geochemical evidence that allowed them to reconstruct the eastern Mediterranean silver trade over a period including the traditional dates of the Trojan War, the founding of Rome and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem....the researchers explained that they used high-precision isotopic analysis to identify the ore sources of minute...

Gold shed more than 2% on Thursday, precipitating a sell-off across precious metals with palladium set for its worst day in over a year, as the dollar gained ground after the U.S. Federal Reserve struck a hawkish tone on monetary strategy. Weakening physical demand and slowing speculative flows into gold, both of which began before the Fed meeting, could also help to drive a further pullback

US Mint Delays Silver Shipments Due To “Global Silver Shortage” Interest in silver is soaring (both for industrial use and financial investment), echoing 2013’s crisis, as a recent report from the Silver Institute, silver demand for printed and flexible electronics is forecast to increase 54% over the next 10 years. Demand for silver in this rapidly developing sector is forecast to come in at 48 million ounces this year. By 2030, the demand is expected to surge to 615 million ounces. And silver prices are back near recent highs as monetizing debt And according to the New York Times, the...