Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom Of course they won’t call it that. But the media and the protesters will. And it’ll feel like one. The countdown to our next lockdown has already begun. That’s…
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GET FREE ACCESS NOW!Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom Of course they won’t call it that. But the media and the protesters will. And it’ll feel like one. The countdown to our next lockdown has already begun. That’s…
Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom Yesterday’s Fortune & Freedom explained how central bankers have managed to avoid acknowledging the side-effects of their misbehaviour for so long. But the trends which kept a lid on…
Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom What happens when you mistake a symptom for a disease? Because that’s just what central bankers are doing right now. And their mistake is all that’s keeping stocks afloat….
Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” explained Yogi Berra. But it’s been a good run for Fortune & Freedom so far. The bitcoin price boomed after…
Capital & Conflict – brought to you by Fortune & Freedom It may well be that lockdowns are a good idea, that nations should theoretically open up after reaching some vaccine threshold, that track and trace will prevent outbreaks according…
Property in Japan is considered a depreciating asset, like a car. When young people inherit property in Japan, it is seen as a burden because of the costs of upkeep or demolition. Arson by the owner to escape tax and insurance fees is a real problem.
The first idea is simple. For a few weeks, markets have been worrying about whether the central banks will taper, meaning they will begin to withdraw their quantitative easing (QE – the creation of money to buy government bonds and other securities) and other forms of loose monetary policy.
Now you might think that we are finally getting somewhere when it comes to this pandemic thing. Perhaps we’re even getting towards the end of it. But I’m not so sure that the vaccines will save us and unlock the global economy.
On Friday, I ask Nigel Farage about whether the mess in Afghanistan would lead to a repeat of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis. He said something which shocked me about the connection between that crisis and Brexit.
I’m getting worried the global economic recovery from the pandemic is about to go very sour. And with it, asset prices. In fact, a recession may well be on the horizon. The reason is simple. Economists might be able to count the amount of economic activity, but not whether it’s worth it.
In keeping with what Boaz Shoshan and John Butler spoke about, let’s kick off today’s Fortune & Freedom with a clever point made by a reader about the collapse of the global reserve currency, the US dollar…
If you liked the tech bubble and the housing bubble, you’re going to hate the consumer price inflation bubble.
My daughter, much like the stock market, is at that age when she can’t quite communicate what she wants, but all hell breaks loose if she doesn’t get it.
In fact, inflation is now so bad that the Bank of England and the House of Lords got into a public spat about the central bank policy of quantitative easing (QE – creating money to buy government bonds).
If you believe the market’s prediction is wrong and you know better, well, you can make money on the difference. But only on the difference.
Is the Bank of England addicted to QE? Or did the pot call the kettle black?
The UK’s exports to the EU have surged well above pre-referendum and pre-Brexit averages. What does it mean for UK politics going forward if Project Fear is vanquished?
The claim that cryptocurrencies are connected to fraud is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, says Sam: “The traditional system continues to have lost far, far more to scams and fraud than crypto ever has.” It reminds me of the stories about cash being used for illegal purposes. But more on the banking system’s culpabilities in a second…
In yesterday’s letter, reader J.B. reported on some difficulties he was having with buying more cryptocurrencies. His bank was making life difficult. Today, the tale turns epic.
It’s time to dig into the mailbag today. Your demands for a virtual conference on escaping financial repression have been heard, loud and clear, by the way.
And so, for today, let’s look into the damage done by financial repression in the form of low interest rates, what happened when one reader attempted to buy cryptocurrencies to escape financial repression, and more…
Find out what Nigel Farage has to say about the backlogs, the future of the NHS and the potential crisis that awaits Britain as it tries to save those the NHS was supposed to, in this video…
I’ve always known different nations’ news channels report the same news entirely differently. I follow the news from the UK, Germany, Australia and the United States each day. And they’ve offered completely different facts and “science” throughout the pandemic.
House prices around the world are booming in the midst of a pandemic, not to mention despite Brexit. But why? And will it last?
As you’re about to discover, I believe this goes beyond the usual housing bubble. But first, the data…
But consider this. Your definition of the word “risk” and the definition used by the financial industry serving you is completely different. And the gap is the source of rather a lot of anguish, if you ask me.
Your regular editor Boaz Shoshan is otherwise incapacitated today. So it falls to your former editor Nickolai Hubble to offer up some words about our favourite subject, cryptocurrencies gold. The gold price is posed to surge in coming years as…
Ever wonder who founded our newsletter publishing company? Not Southbank Investment Research, but our friends in the US who preceded us. Well, it’s time to meet him. Bill Bonner and his wife, Elizabeth, have spent much of 2020 hunkered down…
“Where the bloody hell are you?” was the slogan in an Australian tourism campaign in 2006. It got banned in the UK… Today, the Aussie tourism industry doesn’t have to wonder any more. The country simply shut down one of…
Kodak has joined the growing list of companies with spiking stock prices and is perhaps the most surprising of all. What these companies share is a good story, not a great business. In this episode, Boaz Shoshan, Kit Winder and…
I was thinking about how it’s a shame we don’t have a new North America to discover. We could send the Royal Navy off to colonise it and then sell it off like John Law did, thereby solving the problem of the national debt. And then it hit me. The world does have such a place…
With Boaz Shoshan otherwise occupied, Southbank’s tech expert Sam Volkering and macro-strategist Nickolai Hubble talked about the news this week. UK GDP plunged by a quarter, before bouncing back less than expected. But what does that really mean? Will gold’s…
What made Russell Napier so interesting is that he stuck with his prediction of prolonged deflation in the face of QE1, QE2, QE3 and so on and so forth. While many financial analysts were worrying about hyperinflation, let alone inflation, Napier said we’d see a lack of inflation. And he was right.
Presumably you are older now than you were in the 70s… Well, in today’s podcast, we explore what a return to inflation would mean – whether its effects on your life would differ to the last bout Britain went through….
Your regular editor Boaz Shoshan remains on holiday. And Kit Winder is busy researching the stocks you’ll want to buy in coming months. So it falls to me, Nick Hubble, to carefully avoid talking about Brexit today. Was yesterday the…
Boaz Shoshan is putting the finishing touches on this month’s Zero Hour Alert this morning. So I’m back in the hot seat at Capital & Conflict. But you know what, this morning I really don’t need to give you much…
It’s finally ready… I spent most of last week getting a high-level security pass – submitting my passport to the authorities, getting an endorsement from senior political figures and even passing through airport style security. It was the culmination of…
Let’s do the maths. The total value of non-performing loans in the European Union is valued around €900 billion. Banks have made provisions, meaning set aside money, for about half of that. Leaving about €450 billion in questionable loans. The…
Nick Hubble here. I wasn’t quite finished with you on Monday, so Boaz Shoshan let me elbow back in with more today. Two days ago I showed you how the high priests of Europe’s monetary experiment are abandoning ship. The…
A “suicide pact”. That’s what the famous Australian economist Steve Keen called the euro in a recent interview. And his views are catching on. But not where you’d expect. Back in 2011, Jacques Delors told the Telegraph, “Everyone must examine…
It’s the last day of 2018. I hope it’s been a great year for you personally. Because it wasn’t for financial markets. But there’s no point reliving what made markets tank in 2018. It’s probably still fresh in your mind….
Today is my last day as your editor of Capital & Conflict. I’ve been here since February 2017. Let me know what you think of my scribbles by emailing [email protected]. But don’t worry, I’m not leaving you completely. Just moving…
The forecasts are out and the headlines are in. Brexit will be an economic catastrophe – worse than the recession we didn’t have after the referendum. It’s encouraging to see the newspapers talking about the economic cost of government policy….
Have you ever wondered what our office looks like? Today’s Capital & Conflict comes to you from our newly complete recording studio. It was recorded on the day stockmarkets surged on the news Italy would back down in its budget…
My new book officially launches tomorrow. Not that you can’t claim a free copy here now, and start reading today. That’s probably a good idea given how fast my predictions about Italy’s budget battle came true. I’ve revealed a chunk…
I have a confession. The market crash in October wasn’t just about Italy’s budget debacle. It was also about the underlying force which is getting Italy into trouble right now. Here’s how I explain it in Chapter 5 of my…
It’s Thanksgiving in America. But before you can get to the festivities below, I wanted to make you aware of a shocking prediction. What if the market melts up before it melts down? What if stocks go for one last…
Bloomberg pulled no punches this morning: “One of the toughest years for financial markets in half a century got appreciably worse Tuesday, with simmering weakness across assets boiling over to leave investors with virtually nowhere to hide.” The strange thing…
A medical emergency left my keyboard out of reach yesterday. I was unable to write to you on one of the most interesting days in British politics for many months. After six attempts to take a blood sample by nurses…
Let’s start the day with a correction. And not just the stockmarket kind. In Monday’s Capital & Conflict I told you Italy’s Target2 balances had hit a record last month. But they only remained near record levels instead. Thanks to…
They’ve done it again. Italy’s Target2 balances hit -€489.5bn in October. That’s a new record low. Of any country, ever. Including during the European sovereign debt crisis. But very few of us know what it means. In fact, nobody knows…
Welcome back to the semblance of stability. After a terrible October, markets have stabilised. Even the Aussie dollar is doing well. Despite a consensus forecast among investment banks of a 20% decline in Sydney and Melbourne house prices. No worries,…
If you thought the last two years of American politics were entertaining, the next two will be spectacular. The Democrats have taken the lower house of US Congress. But Republicans gained seats in the Senate. Which ruined the Democrats’ narrative…
Do your remember Donald Trump’s upset win over Hillary Clinton? Of course you do. But do you remember the financial market fallout? Business Insider laid it out nicely at the time: US stock futures are plunging as well. As of…
I read a history of the Bank of England (BoE) last year. It wasn’t very exciting. Even when armed guards took up positions to protect the bank from riots and during the war, not much happened. But one thing did…
The world’s stockmarkets lost eight trillion US dollars in value in October according to Bloomberg. By that measure, it’s the worst month since 2008. Change in value of global stocks by month Source: Bloomberg October wiped out almost all of…
Jokes about there not being an EU to exit from next year are making the rounds in the papers. My book about exactly how this will happen hit the printworks last night. You can get a copy here. But today…
For all the talk of ending austerity, you might think there was any in the first place. But I can’t see any budget surpluses on any charts. Government debt to GDP flatlined for three years around 88%, it didn’t really…
My time off is over and I’ve finally made it into the UK, for good. Thank god you’re still here too. Because Bloody October was only just the beginning. As I warned about in August, October would be the beginning…
Yesterday, Nick O’Connor took you through my predictions about Italy that have come true. I called them “crisis triggers”. And so far, they’ve proven accurate. Two more clicked into place overnight. Which means the potential for a market crash is…
The financial news looks like my Netflix account after watching the wrong movie. The recommended viewing section has been invaded by zombies, bombs and vigilantes. The Bank of International Settlements is warning about “The rise of zombie firms”, which are…
Feedback loops are very important for survival. But what happens when they’re misleading? Or deliberately misinterpreted? Suddenly, the gullible emotion of self-preservation becomes downright dangerous to your health. Quicksand is the best example. It looks like sand, feels like mud,…
Boris Johnson is fighting for a harder Brexit. And he wants to use the UK foreign aid budget to save the elephants… Daniel Hannan says the EU is trying to call our bluff, but we’re not bluffing. We’re “bloody minded”….
Before we get to the Labour Party’s attempt to ruin Britain, overnight news confirmed yesterday’s Capital & Conflict. But in an interesting way. Finance Minister Giovanni Tria didn’t just bow to Lega and Five Star demands. He bowed out of…
It’s Giovanni Tria’s 70th birthday tomorrow. His political career might not last that long though. The Italian government budget proposal is due by midnight tonight. Sort of. The finance minister must submit finance and growth targets. As the Bank of…
On Monday we looked at the future of the UK and EU. Yesterday, my thoughts turned into front page news. Prime Minister Theresa May threatened the EU with its worst fear. Turning the UK into a low-tax and business-friendly environment…
The more power they get, the less popular they’ll be. That’s the inherent tension underlying the EU. But why is it true? When you can only choose one policy for all of Europe, then that policy will fit badly somewhere….
In their desperate scramble to find something to negotiate about, the EU and UK governments are turning to ever more ridiculous topics. The latest artificial disagreement is about deadlines. First Prime Minister Theresa May refused to extend the March Brexit…
You might notice you’re not mentioned in the headline. Which is the point of today’s Capital & Conflict. Policymakers and business decision-makers care about your vote and your money, not your interests. And, for some reason, most people are more…
It’s all so familiar. If I was you, I’d be thoroughly furious. Maggie seems to be absolutely fuming too. Let’s play a game so I can show you what I mean. Round 1. You have to guess which of the…
Back in May, the reality of Italy’s election struck home in bond markets. The two-year Italian government bond suddenly plunged. And Europe’s banks followed soon after. Each announcement about who would feature in the Italian cabinet either sent markets reeling,…
If the government set the price of coffee or coal, you’d know what to expect. A mess. There’d be shortages and surpluses, quality problems, questionable business practices in the industry, and suspicious links between politicians and big business. But even…
We’re edging ever closer to the financial crisis I’ve been investigating since 2012. I moved to four different cities in Australia to conduct my research, interviewing mortgage brokers and former bankers over four years. Over the last few months, a…
What do the US Open umpire Carlos Ramos, Australian Greens Senator Adam Bandt, and Brexit voters have in common? They might have plenty in common, as far as I know. But I’m going to write about the odd abuse they’re…
There is hope for Brexit yet. And I’m not talking about Tony Blair’s comment to delay it. Although that is still my preferred outcome. Continuing Brexit negotiations after the May 2019 European elections would make things very interesting. French President…
Do you remember when ratings agencies ruled financial markets? A 2010 BBC opinion piece started with, “Is there any more powerful and feared institution in Europe (or the world) than Standard & Poors?” Yikes. Today I explain why I think…
Nationalism or imperialism? Take your pick. These days, empires are called unions, but they’re much the same. The idea of ruling over areas greater than nation states remains. Sure, under an empire you might still have the semblance of nation…
You’ve lived through the tech bubble. And the housing bubble. So what’s next? Put it like this and the answer is obvious. There’s only one major asset class left. And its prices are near historic highs. The next bubble is…
Last year, the world looked set for a return to war in Korea. For the first half of this year, the narrative suddenly changed. But now the peace process is looking more like a short-lived peace performance instead. Today we…
The EU’s disintegration continues this week. The headlines don’t seem to change much. Unless you pay careful attention to where they’re leading. If you float above Europe and see Brexit as just another domino pushing at the EU’s foundations, you’ll…
Earlier this month I took you through the graveyard of Europe’s many monetary unions. We only had time for the old ones though. The eurozone system failed many times before it even began properly. The currency snake and the European…
If you haven’t been reading Capital & Conflict for long, add some sugar to your coffee before you read it today. Or something stronger. The newspapers are building their own Project Fear over a no-deal Brexit. You might call it…
The American stockmarket chalked up the longest rally in history yesterday. The former record bull market, from 1990 to 2000, delivered 417% in returns compared to today’s 323%. But we’re not finished yet. Market peaks tend to feature blow-off tops….
Do you remember Domino Day? That painfully iconic European event where students from across Europe tried to set records for how many dominos they could set up and knock over? Well, it’s back. Only this time, it’s emerging markets that…
“The Italian Horrorclown”. That’s what Germany’s mainstream Der Spiegel newspaper called Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini late last week. The picture to go along with the story wasn’t flattering either. Meanwhile, Der Spiegel also found a Greek economist willing…
Recessions happen. Financial crises happen. Markets crash. Currencies collapse. The odd thing, given how often it happens, is that people still don’t expect it. Are you expecting some sort of crash in coming years? A recession perhaps? This week’s The…
Since the Brexit negotiations began, I couldn’t work out why they were so acrimonious. Free trade is mutually beneficial. Restricting it is mutually harmful. What is there left to argue about? The answer comes from British intelligence. At least that’s…
Turkey’s crisis is nothing to worry about. Because if it wasn’t Turkey, it’d be someone else. What should worry you is the timing of the Turkish crisis. The world has barely embarked on quantitative tightening or interest rate increases. And…
My attempt to move to London continues today. We’re currently thwarted by a disappearing visa agent and a steady stream of stabbings in the news. But the marriage certificate is making its way through the Japanese bureaucracy. My surname has…
Sovereign debt, corporate debt, margin lending, household debt, mortgage debt, consumer finance debt, student loan debt, and so on and so forth. Do you ever need to repay any of it? There are interest-only mortgages. Equity release can fund your…
Yesterday we avoided the Boris Burka furore to talk about the mechanics of the Soviet Union’s internal trade settlement mechanism. Which is important because it explains how the eurozone will fail economically in the same way. Monetary unions may destroy…
Acting Man’s blogger Pater Tenebrarum summarised the eurozone’s Target2 system with words that doom the euro: “TARGET-2 is a settlement system without a settlement mechanism.” Understand this sentence is the key that unlocks the death of the euro. And the…
The Bank of England (BoE) raised interest rates by 0.25% last week. It was an unanimous decision by all nine members of the committee. The Telegraph called it the second rate hike in a decade, but the first real one….
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