Will COVID-19 Lead To A Gold Standard?

Even before the coronavirus sprang upon an unprepared China the credit cycle was tipping the world into recession. The coronavirus makes an existing situation immeasurably worse, shutting down China and disrupting global supply chains to the point where large swathes of global production simply cease. The crisis is likely to be a wake-up call for complacent…

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Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, And An Epic Trail Of Destruction

The Institutional Risk Analyst, we review the new book by David Enrich, “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction.” Enrich is currently a financial editor at The New York Times and was previously an editor at The Wall Street Journal covering financial institutions. This important book puts in perspective the history of Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:…

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Will The Coronavirus Outbreak Cause A Massive Stock Market Crash?

Could it be possible that this coronavirus outbreak will be the trigger that finally bursts the biggest stock market bubble in U.S. history? As I have discussed previously, stock prices in the United States were the most overvalued that they have ever been during the month of January, and our stock market has never been more…

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The Dilemma Facing China Is Truly Awful

As has been the case since Monday’s sell-off, there is an attempt to try to look on the bright side of the virus headlines. Chinese officials are spreading the word globally that things are under control and that other country should not be closing their borders to China, in line with the WHO recommendations that…

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Coronavirus Triggers “Biggest Shock” To Oil Markets Since Lehman Crisis

Update: The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that the collapse in Chinese oil consumption is “the biggest shock to oil markets since the Lehman crisis.”  Evans-Pritchard said the plunge in consumption could be between three to four million barrels per day, adding that this amount is twice UK’s North Sea oil output.  We noted earlier (see below), OPEC+ couldn’t come to…

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Coronavirus And The “Unsinkable” Titanic Analogy

Unthinkable doesn’t mean unsinkable. As we all know, the “unsinkable” Titanic suffered a glancing collision with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. A half-hour after the iceberg had opened six of the ship’s 16 watertight compartments, it was not at all apparent that the mighty vessel had been fatally wounded, as there was…

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Fed Policy And The Wuhan Coronavirus

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Abe Maslow, the same fellow who developed the “hierarchy of needs” paradigm in human psychology, popularized that phrase to warn scientific researchers about the perils of using tools inappropriate to the task at hand. It is an especially relevant observation when it comes to…

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Congress gives America a special Christmas present: higher taxes

You’ve got to hand it to these people– Congress really knows how to bring out the holiday cheer. They have some sort of pathological need to pass the most absurd legislation at the VERY END OF THE YEAR giving people very little time to react. Two years ago, for example, they passed comprehensive tax reform…

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