Free Republic

One week ago, Bank of America hinted at the unthinkable: the tsunami of monetary and fiscal stimulus, coupled with the upcoming surge in monetary velocity as the world’s economy emerges from lockdowns, would lead to unprecedented economic overheating… or rather precedented as BofA’s CIO Michael Hartnett reflected back on the post-WW1 Germany which he said was the “most epic, extreme analog of surging velocity and inflation following end of war psychology, pent-up savings, lost confidence in currency & authorities” and specifically the Reichsbank’s monetization of debt, and extrapolated that this is similar to what is going on now.There is, of...

Right now, one of the biggest threats to our Second Amendment rights doesn’t come from Congress, but from the financial industry. Banks are cutting ties with gun stores and manufacturers unless they comply with certain insane rules that have no basis in reality but lets the CEO of the bank get invited to certain parties. To make matters worse, pretty much everyone needs banking of some type. It’s how the world operates these days. So how, as gun rights supporters, can we navigate the waters of the activist financial industry? Luckily one group is helping with that, though I don’t...

Yes. We are in a stock market bubble. The only question is, what will be the issue that eventually pops it? We alluded to this answer in Friday’s #MacroView discussing why more “Stimulus Won’t Create Economic Growth.”As discussed in our previous article, if market bubbles are about “psychology,” as represented by investors’ herding behavior, then price and valuations reflect that psychology.In other words, bubbles can exist even at times when valuations and fundamentals might argue otherwise. Let me show you an elementary example of what I mean. The chart below is the long-term valuation of the S&P 500 going back...

The GameStop hearing on Capitol Hill was a chance for elective leaders to challenge Wall Street hedge funds on the ethics of taking large short positions on struggling stocks.However, viewers of the highly anticipated hearing were left with plenty of questions and few answers. In fact, the only clear answer from Thursday’s hearing was the majority of politicians on Capitol Hill seem to favor the elites on Wall Street over working class Americans. ...While committee members seemed to completely dismiss the idea that Melvin Capital and other hedge funds conducted an illegal naked short on GameStop, one person who did...

It's no secret that BofA's Chief Investment Officer has been warning that 2021 - the year of the vaccine - is one where real inflation (as opposed to financial) will run amok sooner or later, and in his latest Flow Show he repeats his two main contentions about how events will play out in the coming months, namely "the velocity of people will rise" and "the velocity of money will (also) rise". Addressing the first, Hartnett writes that since the core 2021 trends will be "vaccine>virus", and "reopening>lockdown", this means that human mobility will rise & macro data will surge...

OSLO - Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, wants the companies it invests in globally to boost the number of women on their boards and to consider setting targets if fewer than 30% of their directors are female, top fund officials told Reuters. Boards where either gender has less than 30% representation should consider setting targets for gender diversity and report on progress, the fund said in a position paper shared with Reuters ahead of its publication later on Monday. “We may phrase it politely, but it is pretty clear what we think,” Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen...

The oldest bank in America will now be storing Bitcoin on behalf of its asset-management clients, according to the Wall Street Journal.“Digital assets are becoming part of the mainstream,” said Roman Regelman, chief executive of BNY Mellon’s asset-servicing and digital businesses.BNY Mellon’s announcement marks the first time one of the big custody banks has unveiled a road map for treating digital currencies as any other asset.Decrypt reports that the bank plans to enable cryptocurrencies to flow through the same systems that it uses for its traditional currencies and stocks.It has created a prototype for doing this and is engaging with...

Whatever your opinions on cryptocurrencies — from a dyed-in-wool fanatic to utter skeptic — the fact remains that these digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world. We are seeing this fact play out on the Mastercard network, with people using cards to buy crypto assets, especially during Bitcoin's recent surge in value. We are also seeing users increasingly take advantage of crypto cards to access these assets and convert them to traditional currencies for spending. To be clear, this data is not of any individuals — it's anonymized and in aggregate — but the trend...

I’ve said the U.S. is caught in a debt death trap. Monetary policy won’t get us out because the velocity of money, the rate at which money changes hands, is dropping. Printing more money alone will not change that. Fiscal policy won’t work either because of high debt ratios. At current debt-to-GDP ratios, each additional dollar spent yields less than a dollar of growth. But because it must be borrowed, it does add a dollar to the debt. Debt becomes an actual drag on growth. The ratio gets higher, and the situation grows more desperate. The economy barely grows at...

When lockdowns first happened, my initial thought was geeky, and only later did I begin to realize the implications for human rights and liberties. My thought was: this is going to be devastating for future capital investment. The basis of my fear was the knowledge that in almost all poor countries, property rights are insecure, particularly for capital goods. These are goods that are produced to make other goods (the “produced means of production,” in the classic formulation by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk). Their existence and protection is a key to prosperity. They enable more complex economic structures – the extended...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday acknowledged the increased risk of inflation should Congress move forward and pass President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. According to Yellen, the benefits outweigh the risks, especially as Americans continue to suffer from the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.The secretary said that with 10 million Americans unemployed and another four million dropping out of the workforce, relief is needed to help them make ends meet. She also pointed out that a number of women who have dropped out of the workforce have done so because of childcare issues, which is another reason kids need...

When Jimmy Carter came into power inflation was 5.7%, by the time he left inflation more than doubled to 13.5%. Now Joe Biden appears to be going down the same track. Massive government spending and a stimulative monetary policy was the heart and soul of the Carter regime and now Biden’s regime is working on doing the same.

APMEX prices started rising by the minute two hours ago and they are now out of stock on all significant silver coins. Available rounds if you can find them are now priced at double to triple the spot price. A coordinated attack against JP Morgan and other silver market manipulators was proposed on Reddit on Friday. The link above goes to junk silver. BullionUS MintThe action now appears to be spreading to Gold somewhat

The rules here are simple: Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose.For those who haven’t heard, there’s a bit of a brouhaha brewing with the video game retailer GameStop, which is publicly traded. Much of Wall Street soured on the company, believing it to be the next Blockbuster or Radio Shack: a dinosaur from a bygone era that has no hope of succeeding in the increasingly internet-run future. As a result, a major Wall Street hedge fund worth billions decided to make a bet that the company’s already low stock price would just keep going lower. The traditional way to...

Jon Stewart was prompted to join Twitter on Thursday to defend the renegade Reddit traders who turned Wall Street upside down this week. The former “Daily Show” host hit back at critics of the rogue day traders who used WallStreetBets to send GameStop’s stock skyrocketing in defiance of large hedge funds shorting the business. “This is ********. The Redditors aren’t cheating, they’re joining a party Wall Street insiders have been enjoying for years,” Stewart tweeted.

Even in Washington, hardly anyone understands what the Office of Management and Budget does. Yet buried in the 2½-foot stack of President Biden’s first-day executive orders is hard evidence that someone in the new administration not only understands the OMB but knows how to use it. As a result, the business climate in this country will be made dramatically worse. Forget reregulation; this is the beginning of hyperregulation. You probably didn’t pay attention to “Modernizing Regulatory Review,” a presidential memo released Jan. 20. Regulatory law is arcane and generally boring, but its effects can be monumental. Congress defers much of...

Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in videogame retailer GameStop Corp., CNBC reported Wednesday. Fund manager Gabe Plotkin told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin that the position was closed out Tuesday afternoon following a huge loss. Shares of GameStop have soared more than 600% in January after retail investors, organized via Reddit's WallStreetBets forum and other platforms, sought to push up a handful of heavily shorted stocks. Hedge funds Citadel and Point72 infused nearly $3 billion into Melvin Capital to shore up the fund, news reports said earlier this week. Plotkin told CNBC that speculation the fund would...

“The big boys are no longer bullish,” bellowed Biggie Too in baritone. “The big boys are now bubble bullish,” continued the chief investment strategist for one of Wall Street’s Too-Big-To-Fail affairs. “They ask Biggie, why can’t the S&P trade 5,500?” said Too, easing into third person. “And Biggie asks ’em back: We got 6% GDP and 1% rates, who’s gonna short this?” he said. “You do the math, you gonna tell Biggie to short this thang?” asked Too. And I shrugged, having long since learned to recognize when Biggie’s question is the answer.“No one’s gonna short the S&P unless 6%...

A Florida bank announced on Thursday that they have closed President Donald Trump’s bank accounts. Trump’s money-market accounts at Banks United held between $5.1 million and $25.2 million, according to his financial disclosures. We no longer have any depository relationship with him,” Banks United told the Washington Post. Professional Bank also announced that they will no longer be doing business with the former president or his organizations in a statement last week. Additionally, Signature Bank in New York and Deutsche Bank have also said that they have cut ties with Trump and his businesses. “Signature Bank notably took a strong...

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