While silver has traditionally exaggerated gold’s upward and downward moves, the roles have been reversed over the past six months. While gold has seen its worst start to a year in three decades, the other precious metal has held up well until recently. As with gold, silver rose dramatically from March lows, peaking in early […]
Continue readingInternational Man: Rare-earth elements (REEs) were in the news recently. What is the significance of these 17 obscure elements from the periodic table? Doug Casey: Obscure elements seem to come into public view every few decades, typically during a commodity bull market. I remember the so-called “strategic metals” boom, back in the early 1980s, when […]
Continue readingFor many years, I’ve been predicting the coming of a crisis of epic proportions. I’ve focused on the economic and political aspects, although the social aspects will be no less severe. This is not the stuff of crystal balls, nor is it mere guesswork. The fundamentals for economic crisis have remained essentially the same for […]
Continue readingDoug Casey’s Note: It was good to hear from my old friend Francois. He sent along this stream-of-consciousness piece touching on a few African countries. I promise it gives a lot more of the flavor of backward parts of the Dark Continent than reading some report put out by the IMF. — by Francois Houdain […]
Continue readingInternational Man: President Biden’s Treasury Secretary—and Obama Fed Chair—Janet Yellen recently floated the idea of taxing unrealized capital gains through a “mark-to-market” mechanism. What is going on here? Doug Casey: When you tax unrealized capital gains—as they do with foreign stocks in a number of countries, like New Zealand, where it made my life expensive […]
Continue reading“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants […]
Continue readingIf you could design the ideal business structure, it would look nothing like mining, where there are large upfront costs, many years before any revenue, and a highly cyclical product that determines the type of revenue. Having built your factory (in this case, the mine), you know it cannot simply be moved if the host […]
Continue readingInternational Man: We seem to be entering a new paradigm in the financial markets. Social media has allowed a large number of small investors to band together and move markets in ways that were previously inconceivable. What are your thoughts on this and what lies ahead? Doug Casey: To start with, most of the people […]
Continue readingThe Mandarin word for “crisis” is weiqi. But weiqi is actually two words – the first, “wei,” meaning disaster and the second, “qi,” meaning opportunity. For thousands of years, the Chinese people have understood that disaster and opportunity come in the same package. Whenever a period of dramatic change is unfolding, the Chinese people recognise […]
Continue readingInternational Man: The Federal Reserve has made it clear that it will continue to print trillions of dollars, and the Biden administration is committed to increased spending and creating new programs to address everything from racial inequality to climate change and more. This is bullish for precious metals like gold and silver. Beyond getting the […]
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