Business

While it may come as a surprise to the current crop of 17-year-old hedge fund managers, the current period of persistently low long-term interest rates and plunging, near reocrd volatility in the face of a  hawkish Fed and rising short-term rates, is hardly new: exactly the same happened from 2004 through 2006, despite the Fed's continued rate hikes and jawboning. Alan Greenspan, the Fed's Chair at the time, called this phenomenon a "conundrum" and blamed it on many things, including the global savings glut. 

Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

Silver futures prices on the COMEX futures trading platform briefly plummeted at approximately 7:06am Singapore time yesterday, with the price for the front month (most active) September silver contract falling from a US$16.06 quote down to a low of US$14.34 all within  a 1 minute interval. The futures price then recovered nearly all of its losses in the subsequent 2-3 minute period. High to low, this COMEX silver futures contract saw its price fall by just over 10.7%, before rebounding nearly 11%.

We've spent a fair amount of time discussing Canada's housing market over the past several months as Chinese money laundering operations have sprouted up bubbles all over the place.  Here's a modest sampling of our recent work:

An advisor to China's central bank, Sheng Songcheng, said that virtual currencies like bitcoin are assets but do not have the fundamental attributes needed to be a currency that could meet modern economic development needs. Speaking in an interview with financial magazine Yicai, the PBOC advisors said that the adoption of Bitcoin as a national currency by a country "could lead to its economic collapse."

We've written frequently about the pending collapse in used car prices that will inevitably be brought on by a surge in leases over the past 5 years.  With wages stagnant and car prices rising, the only way Americans could 'afford' those brand new BMWs and Mercedes was to lease them.