From the category archives:

US debt

With the US dollar increasingly perceived to be walking on shakier ground, and no significant signs in sight that the US will be able to pay off its debts without radical quantitative easing (i.e., effective devaluation of the dollar); continued unemployment levels near 10% and no short-term fix in the ongoing housing slump (more foreclosures [...]

{ 6 comments }

With the phenomenal growth in sovereign wealth funds over the past thirty or so years – but especially in the last ten – it’s good to stop and take a look at where this new investment phenomenon is at today in 2010.
Here’s a list of the current top 10 sovereign wealth funds around the world.* [...]

{ 5 comments }

The Obama administration sits between an economic rock and a political hard place.  Others might call it a contradiction.  Obama needs to cut spending, but he’s doing this at the same time that more spending is being introduced (on job creation, more troops in Afghanistan).  Slight cuts in some areas are supposed to offset increased [...]

{ 2 comments }

Aside from American financial institutions and the Fed (the buyer of last resort), the largest buyers of US Treasuries and notes are all Asian countries.  You can probably guess which ones.
#1 – China
.
China, more than anyone, is probably most concerned with the value of the US dollar and the stability of their US dollar investments.  [...]

{ 5 comments }

It wasn’t surprising at $1000/oz, but even at $1100/oz this week, the naysayers are still in full force.  What’s to deny about the trend in gold prices?  You don’t have to be a gold bug to see what’s happening.
Here are the six main factors causing the price of gold to continue to rise.  In some [...]

{ 15 comments }

There are two short-term advantages to a weak US dollar.
The primary advantage of purposefully driving the value of the US Dollar down, as Bernanke and Geithner both know, is that it makes US exports more attractively priced for foreign buyers.  This, of course, helps the US economy in theory (if more goods are purchased as [...]

{ 0 comments }

Each month, the US Treasury holds a week-long auction of US notes and bonds to foreign investors and the Fed.  In the past two years alone, there has been a record increase in monthly amounts of debt auctions from $18 billion to $44 billion a month.  But this is still nothing compared to this week’s [...]

{ 0 comments }