Free Republic

With Russia’s central bank having just profoundly altered the international trade and monetary system by linking the Russian ruble to both gold and commodities, journalists in Moscow asked me to write a Q and A article on what these developments mean, and the ramifications of these changes on the Russian ruble, the US dollar, the gold price and the global system of currencies. This article has been published on the RT.com website here.Since RT.com is now blocked and censored in many Western locations such as the EU, UK, US and Canada, and since many readers may not be able to...

Zoltan! (Forbes) – Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar argues Bretton Woods II crumbled when the G7 countries seized Russia’s foreign exchange reserves. Keeping money inside financial institutions like the IMF was considered risk free. That is clearly no longer the case. Similarly, Bretton Woods I collapsed when Nixon took the US of the gold standard back in 1971 when dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 an ounce. This led to Bretton Woods II, backed by “inside money” or the dollar, which itself is not linked to gold or any other commodity. Now the basis of...

Soft Red Winter (SRW) futures hit an all-time high Friday before retreating back, as consecutive limit up trading days meant wheat prices topped a previous high set in 2008. Earlier this week, prices had shot to a 14-year high. "On the continuous futures, the Chicago March winter wheat futures contract set a then all-time high of $13.34 1/2 cents on Feb 27, 2008. Today, the March 2022 has traded to $13.40. So on some continuous charts, a new record today," says Bill Nelson of ProFarmer. "The wonky part of this is that today's record is for wheat futures in delivery....

Ukraine is considered the “breadbasket of Europe,” and the Russian invasion is choking off grain exports, sending global food prices to record highs. Grain prices surged to record highs last week as world food prices are now higher than they were during the 2011 Arab Spring, leaving us with an abundance of caution that political uprisings due to food price shocks could be right around the corner. On Friday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Price Index (FFPI), a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, reported record-high prices for February....

Commodities markets from agriculture to energy to metals have been upended by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Bloomberg’s index of raw materials is set for the biggest weekly gain in nearly half a century. The invasion has sent commodity prices soaring as western sanctions force Russia into growing isolation. Banks, importers, and shippers avoid Russian exports as traders price in new fears of shortages in energy, grains, and metals, sending the Bloomberg’s gauge of raw materials to its largest weekly gain since 1974. The Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM), which updates at the end of each session, was up 8.6% on...

BP's decision to abandon its stake in oil giant Rosneft is the first high-profile example of the self-sanctioning by companies of their business links to Russia, a process likely to have major short- and long-term implications for energy markets. BP's dramatic exit of its 19.75% share of Rosneft could cost the London-listed oil major as much as $25 billion, a hefty price to pay in order to be seen to be doing the right thing in response to Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine. "I have been deeply shocked and saddened by the situation unfolding in Ukraine and my heart goes...

Goldman Warns Of Stagflationary Commodity Supply Shock On Ukraine, Raises Near-Term Brent Forecast To $115 One look at the surge in oil, gas and various other commodities like wheat, confirms what everyone by now knows: unleashing hell against Russia in the form of the nuclear SWIFT option coupled with central bank sanctions may crush the Russian economy but it will also will lead to a harrowing price shock for ordinary citizens across the globe coupled with the worst stagflationary episode in years. As Goldman writes in a late Sunday note, Western sanctions on Russia are set to tighten significantly after...

As first discussed last June in “Will ESG Trigger Energy Hyperinflation” and again today “Woke Capital Won’t Save the Planet – But It Will Crash the Economy“, the “green”/ESG shift in politician thinking has unleashed an epic surge in commodity prices, which are propelling inflation higher and will likely force central banks to keep tightening until they trigger a recession and/or a market crash (probably both). Unfortunately, as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid writes in his chart of the day, given the start seen in 2022, there is no simply solution to what has been a broad-based social shift toward environmental...

On episode XXIV of "In the Know," (January 7, 2022) ARK CEO/CIO, Cathie Wood, weighs in on the tech sell off, innovation stocks, autos, China, the tech & telecom bubble, and more. As always, she also discusses fiscal policy, monetary policy, the economy, market signals, economic indicators, and innovation. We hope you find this monthly series useful, especially during periods of heightened volatility. Stay Healthy. Stay Innovative.Tech Sell Off, Bubble Comparisons, China | ITK with Cathie Wood | January 7, 2022 | ARK Invest

We Have Less Than Two Weeks to Finalize PreparationJanuary 7, 2022 | sundance | 716 CommentsI do not know how better to emphasize the points other than to be direct and brutally honest. Sometimes you just have to call the baby ugly. The window to prepare for the incoming crisis of our lifetime is now down to two weeks. Hopefully, that is specific enough.As we have discussed on these pages, the interventionist policies and regulations from the people creating the COVID response (writ large) have been fubar from the beginning. {Go Deep} When they shut down the restaurants and hospitality...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Trump administration overpaid corn farmers by about $3 billion in federal aid in 2019 and farmers in the South were paid more for the same crops than those elsewhere in the country, a federal watchdog agency has found. The Government Accountability Office said in a report released Monday that international disputes resulting from tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump hurt farmers but that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s county-by-county methodology for computing the extent of damage was flawed, leading to overpayment....

With the price of gas hitting $7 a gallon and a package of Oscar Meyer bacon hitting $9.59 out in California, you can bet inflation is on consumers' minds, and 80% of them know who did it.Big government spending, the kind that requires the Fed to print more money than the economy can handle, is behind it. The U.S. has passed a helluva lot of gargantuan trillion-plus-dollar spending bills for things such as COVID relief, "infrastructure," bailouts of favored industries, stimulus payouts, and more in the last few years and the economy is still struggling to digest it.Inflation, according to...

Blessed are the cheese-makers? Bloomberg markets informs me this morning that “inflation, not stagflation” is back. As they put it: stocks went up again yesterday to match bond yields; both energy and broader commodities are spiking; and the US ISM services PMI was firm at 61.9, with prices paid at 77.5. To be honest, that view is similar to the one you get from the back of a large crowd when you can’t actually see or hear the speaker properly: (“Speak up!”) Market were likewise optimistic because Senator “Stonewall” Manchin –who is not the one to focus on, Senator “Bathroom”...

Inflation is making headlines all over the country, but the mainstream media is not being honest about the true severity of the crisis. We are being told that the official rate of inflation is still in single digits, but what we aren’t being told is that the way inflation is calculated has changed dramatically over the years. In fact, according to Forbes “the government has changed the way it calculates inflation more than 20 times” over the past 30 years. The rate of inflation directly affects so many other things in our system, and the government would like to keep...

As we know, history tends to rhyme. It’s never the same, but when you zoom out, the bigger picture often looks very similar. What does it mean for gold? Short-term implications With gold’s back-and-forth price action mirroring its behavior from 2012, the yellow metal is likely destined for devaluation. Back then, gold zigzagged with anxiety before suffering a material drawdown. In fact, in early October 2012, it moved slightly above the initial highs right before sliding. Moreover, while the yellow metal has bounced above its declining resistance line (the black line below), the price action mirrors gold’s behavior from early...

B of A: “Transitory” Inflation And Supply Chain Imbalances Are Hitting Autos Hardest The auto industry is already stuck between a rock and a hard place, as dealers struggle to get production up to speed despite an ongoing semiconductor chip shortage that has hamstrung production for some of the world’s biggest manufacturers. At the same time, the U.S. is letting the inflation genie quietly begin to slip out of the bottle. As rising prices take hold amidst supply chain imbalances, focus has turned to automobiles. With new car inventory crunched due to production constraints, used car prices have skyrocketed, as...

On the heels of record highs in Iron Ore and Steel earlier this week, as commodity demand soars on the back of economies emerging from COVID lockdowns (demand) and various supply chain/operational issues (supply); copper prices surged to an all-time high this morning as Chinese investors unleashed fresh demand following a five-day holiday.Source: Bloomberg Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone said that “the reaction of copper to $10,000-a-ton resistance may set the inflation vs. deflation tone for years” As Mining.com reports, the reopening of major industrial economies is sparking a surge across commodities markets from corn to lumber, with tin climbing...

Copper for delivery in July was up 1.71% by 1:42 pm (EDT), with futures at $4.6015 per pound ($10,123 a tonne) on the Comex market in New York, over the $4.58 per pound high reached in February 2011. The reopening of major industrial economies is sparking a surge across commodities markets from corn to lumber, with tin climbing above $30,000 a tonne for the first time since 2011 also on Thursday. Copper has gained 28.1% since the end of last year and is up 114.9% from its 2020 low, hit in March of that year amid the global economic fallout...

Did you know that the price of corn has risen 142 percent in the last 12 months? Of course, corn is used in hundreds of different products we buy at the grocery store, and so everyone is going to feel the pain of this price increase. But it isn’t just the price of corn that is going crazy. We are seeing food prices shoot up dramatically all across the industry, and experts are warning that this is just the very beginning. So if you think that food prices are bad now, just wait, because they are going to get a...

What will be the results of a Pelosi/Biden government? Many think there will be inflation. Milton Friedman taught us that “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” The $2Trillion Covid relief plus the !5% minimum wage plus the forgiveness of college loans all pump money into the economy. Those actions are the very definition of monetary phenomena. The Bureau of Economic Analysis keeps us informed on the inflation rate but fails in one respect. The inflation information provided leaves...