John Rubino
John Rubino Articles
This year’s recovery in precious metals prices – and the sudden spike in gold/silver mining stocks – convinced a lot of people that a new bull market had begun. Last week’s brutal smack-down scared the hell out of many of the same folks.
These are great times for financial assets — and by implication for finance companies that make and sell them, right? Alas, no! Just the opposite. Each part of the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) economy is imploding as “modern”...
For most of the world, the past decade’s monetary and fiscal experiments are viewed as failures. See, for instance, French support for the EU project crumbling on both left and right and Why were smart people suckered by Abenomics?
Some asset classes in normal times are expensive while others are cheap, making it easy to use historical relationships to decide where to invest. That's not the case today. Every major asset category, including stocks, bonds and even...
Negative interest rates are an existential threat for insurance companies, pension funds and other financial entities that need positive investment returns to survive. As rates on government bonds have gone negative in Europe and Japan,...
For an example of how far we've fallen from the old days of free-range First World entitlement, consider the fact that investment analysts are now judging companies by how well they cater to the needs of the terrified:
Pretend you’re running a corrupt government and something big and scary happens in another part of the world. Brexit, for instance. You’re quite naturally worried about the impact on your local economy and political system. What do you do?
Two short months ago it was generally expected that US interest rates would rise for the balance of the year — a move made possible by steady economic growth and general global stability. Here’s a representative piece of reporting from...
Now the real ‘fun’ begins. Last night Britons voted to leave the European Union, sending shock waves around the world -- though not directly or immediately threatening the concept of European integration.
Somewhere back in the depths of time the world got the idea that easy money — that is, low interest rates and high levels of government spending — would produce sustainable growth with modest but positive inflation. And for a while it...
