Business

Authored by Carmen Reinhart, originally posted at Project Syndicate,

On Christmas Day, 2015, we told our readers the fascinating tale about the Turkish-Iranian gold smuggling ring - perhaps the biggest and most brazen in history, one which lasted for years, which saw billions in gold transported out of Turkey and into Iran to allow Tehran to circumvent the western financial sanctions using gold as a medium for bater, and which was all made possible thanks to the tiny Emirate of Dubai. 

What made this particular instance of gold smuggling especially memorable is that it reached to the very political top in both Turkey, and Iran, and Dubai.

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

As we wrap up 2015, we again pause to reflect on the noteworthy events that took place across the financial markets this year.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

If you have forgotten your Gulliver’s Travels, recall that Jonathan Swift described the people of Brobdingnag as being as tall as church steeples and having a ten foot stride. Everything else was in proportion - with rats the size of mastiffs and the latter the size of four elephants, while flies were “as big as a Dunstable lark” and wasps were the size of partridges.

One of the classical refrains for buying stocks is that they preserve purchasing power and add value, even under such extreme monetary conditions as hyperinflation, or in other words, on a relative basis, local equities when denominated in a stable currency, will increase in value even as the local currency disintegrates.

As one example of this phenomenon, historians and equity bulls provide the widely referenced example showing that during the Weimar period, even as the mark lost all of its value, the stock market in USD terms actually rose during the parabolic phase.