The stock indices, having vaulted the ramparts of their previous peaks even as the CNN Fear Index incongruously registers in the ‘Fear’ zone, a testament to the market’s politically-induced vertigo. To observe the confluence of four major events crammed into the next two weeks is to understand that this financial...
The recent, almost parabolic ascent of gold has confounded conventional analysis. For too long, the price action of this storied metal has been assayed against familiar, if increasingly frayed, metrics: the immediate pressures of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy or the immediate vigor of the U.S. Dollar. Yet, in recent...
At the speed of a social media impulse the financial markets endured a perfect micro-storm brewed from Beijing’s resource nationalism and Washington’s penchant for trade-war brinkmanship. The temperamental vagaries of Trump’s Twitter feed sent the stock market down 3% from record highs, its deepest single day drop since April 21st....
America’s constituional founders created a masterpiece of instructions for running a Republic with checks and balances. President Trump’s usurpation of tariff powers from the Legislative Branch strain against constitutional confines. The framers, ever vigilant against concentrated authority, entrusted Congress with the prerogative to impose tariffs. Thus it should not be...
The battle for rare earth minerals, though less fantastical than the struggle for Tolkien’s Middle Earth, holds no less consequence for global dominion, with China wielding a near-monopoly that looms over the United States’ industrial and military might. This contest is a high-stakes poker game where both nations—China and the...
In life we often hear that acheivement entails short-term pain for long-term gain. Donald Trump’s trade strategy—a calculated plunge into uncertainty, is predicated on the notion that short-term dislocation can yield enduring prosperity. Like a poker player pushing all chips to the center, Trump wagers that America’s unmatched consumer might...
In the half-century since the United States abandoned the gold standard, that lustrous metal has stood as a bulwark against financial tempests. Conventional wisdom ties gold’s price surges to erratic inflation or an obese money supply, yet its truest dance partner remains the inverse of the U.S. dollar’s value. Today,...
In the annals of American economic policy, few gambits have rivaled the audacity of President Trump’s tariff offensive, and the high-stakes poker of modern geopolitics. With a flourish of rhetoric at his second inauguration that most felt was replete with hyperbole, Trump pledged to exact a toll on the world’s...
Uncertainty, that boogeyman of commerce, has descended upon the American psyche with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Investors and entrepreneurs, those intrepid navigators of risk, recoil from ambiguity as though it were a contagion. And yet, ambiguity is precisely what President Trump has delivered in spades with his latest trade...
Polls are basically saying that Trump is seen as the change-agent for our economy and immigration compared to Biden. But let’s be real, giving all the credit or blame to just one person for how things turn out economically ignores the enormous power of central banks monetary policy, economic cycles...
