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 China officially has gold fever. Chinese demand for gold in 2011 is being called "explosive" and "voracious". China imported five times as much gold in 2010 as it did in 2009, and this year gold sales in China are projected to easily set another new all-time record. China produces more gold than any other nation on the planet and last year the Chinese consumed more than twice as much gold as Americans did. Yes, the Chinese are officially in love with gold. But why is that? Is it because they are concerned about inflation? Is it because the Chinese are losing faith in paper currencies? Are the Chinese looking to diversify? Has gold become a "trendy" status symbol in China? Or is something else going on here? (Read More.....)
 People need to wake up - 2011 has just begun and yet we are already seeing significant price shocks and serious food shortages in many areas of the globe. In fact, violent economic riots are now being reported in Algeria, in Chile and in Mozambique. Food shortages and price increases are also causing political unrest in other nations such as India, Bangladesh and Indonesia. This is a very serious situation, and if the major food producing nations of the world do not have another record harvest this year there is very likely going to be an incredibly serious global food crunch. According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, the global price of food hit a new record high in December. The previous record high for food prices was in June 2008, and we all remember what happened during the summer of 2008. Massive food riots erupted in countries such as Cameroon, Haiti and Egypt. So with price shocks and food shortages already being reported all over the globe, will we see even worse global economic riots in 2011? (Read More.....)
 There have been so many attacks on the Federal Reserve recently that the mainstream media now feels almost forced to try to defend their actions. The most blatant example of this recently was an article in the Washington Post entitled "Five Myths About The Federal Reserve". The article was authored by Greg Ip, the U.S. economics editor of The Economist. According to Wikipedia, the Rothschild banking family is a partial owner of the firm that operates The Economist. You would have thought that they would have gotten someone a whole lot less obvious to produce this propaganda piece, but apparently they did not think anyone would notice. Of course an economics editor of The Economist is going to defend the Federal Reserve. He would be fired if he didn't. The Economist is well known to be a mouthpiece for the international central banking establishment. But what is really sad is how poor a job Greg Ip did in defending the Fed. If these are the best intellectual arguments they can come up with then they are in huge trouble. (Read More.....)
 Today there is a great debate in the economic community about whether we are going to have crippling deflation or unprecedented inflation in the years ahead. For decades, a never ending spiral of debt has fueled the almost unbelievable prosperity that Americans have enjoyed. We have lived way beyond our means, and in the process we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Now, the fourth branch of the U.S. government (the Federal Reserve) has a decision to make. Will the Federal Reserve allow the U.S. economy to deleverage, thus setting off a deflationary nightmare worse than the Great Depression, or will the Federal Reserve attempt to crank up the debt spiral one more time by flooding the U.S. economy with another giant wave of paper money? (Read More.....)
 Do you believe that you will always be able to run out to Wal-Mart or to the local supermarket and buy massive amounts of inexpensive food? If so, you might want to think again. During 2010, agricultural commodity prices have absolutely exploded. Nearly every single important agricultural commodity has seen a double digit percentage price increase. In fact, the S&P GSCI Agriculture Index recently surged to a fresh two year high. Now food producers and retailers are starting to pass those commodity price increases on to consumers. Today when I went to the supermarket I was absolutely startled by some of the price increases that I witnessed. On some of the items that I most commonly purchase, prices were up 20 or 30 percent. So just what in the world is going on here? Well, it turns out that there was a lot of bad weather around the world this year, so many harvests were worse than projected. In addition, the growing population of the world has an increasingly voracious appetite for food. When supply gets tighter as demand continues to go up that means that prices are going to increase. (Read More.....)
 As the U.S. media trumpets the arrival of a great "economic recovery", the vast majority of the American people are completely unaware that the entire U.S. financial system is caught in a hopeless death spiral. The cold, hard reality is that any temporary "green shoots" that we are seeing in the economy are there not because our politicians have figured out a way to deal with the financial problems of the United States. No, the "green shoots" are there because our politicians have flooded our economy with a whole bunch more debt. Debt will stimulate an economy for a little while, but the truth is that any new debt just makes our long-term economic problems even worse. But now we are caught in a never ending cycle of debt, and there is no hope that we will ever be able to pay if off. Most Americans do not understand economics, but if they did, they would realize that the American Dream is literally being destroyed right in front of their eyes. Not only have we squandered the vast amounts of wealth that our forefathers left us, we have also piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. We have created an economic nightmare from which there is no escape. Our children and our grandchildren will be trapped in it for their entire lives. What we have done to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal. (Read More.....)
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