Archives
NatWest fined £264.8 million for anti-money laundering failures
December 14th, 2021
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the conduct regulator in UK for around financial services firms and financial markets, has issued an announcement to inform that National Westminster Bank Plc (NatWest) was fined £264,772,619.95 following convictions for three offences of ...
Banking faces seismic changes
July 13th, 2021
The role of commercial banks in the global economy is changing, with lending to governments and their agencies now more important than lending to goods and services industries. It is a trend which is due to continue. The ...
Inflation, asset and consumer prices
June 25th, 2021
“The Fed finds itself between a rock and a hard place: either it keeps inflating or the whole confidence-based valuation of financial assets collapses. Either it raises interest rates or the dollar collapses.” There has been occasional speculation ...
Technical analysis and market psychology
June 16th, 2021
This article examines the relevance of technical analysis to today’s financial markets. Its genesis springs from two branches, Dow theory and the Elliott wave principal. Originally, Dow theory sprang from an attempt to discern the state of the ...
The Geopolitics of Gold
June 10th, 2021
A number of events are coming together which are set to push gold prices higher. Besides a combination of continuing inflationary policies and massive future budget deficits undermining the dollar, by closing down derivative market activities new Basel ...
The end of the LBMA is nigh
May 20th, 2021
Basel 3 is on course to regulate the LBMA out of existence. And with it will go all the associated arbitrage business and position-taking on Comex, because most bullion bank trading desks will cease to exist. The only ...
Why interest rate management fails
April 23rd, 2021
This article explains why attempting to achieve economic outcomes by managing interest rates fails. The basis of monetary interventionist theories ignores the discoveries of earlier free-market thinkers, particularly Say, Turgot and Böhm-Bawerk. It also ignores Gibson’s paradox, which ...
The global debt problem
April 15th, 2021
It has been recently estimated that global debts stand at $284 trillion equivalent, representing 355% of global GDP. Estimates such as these must be treated with caution, and they probably underestimate financial sector debt. Furthermore, no allowance in ...
Say’s law and the destruction of savings
April 2nd, 2021
This article explains the fundamental mistake behind Keynes’s General Theory, the vade mecum for all macro and mathematical economists today. It is no exaggeration to say that his casual rejection of Jean-Baptiste Say’s economic theories in his off-hand ...
The ECB’s financial suttee
March 22nd, 2021
The European Commission is failing. Its response to Brexit and the pandemic, where it is now threatening emergency powers in order to secure vaccines is a latest throw of the political dice. Even before this development markets were getting ...