commodities

We are in a second synchronised global growth slowdown. Moreover, the policy response must be more muted this go round as the public sector is more indebted and has less policy space than in 2008 or 2009. Expect policy inaction followed by…

The “smart money” has been buying up farmland hand over fist for the past few years and you can see how they helped drive up land prices in the U.S. heartland. Some think this is the place to be if the shit really hits the fan. Not gold,…

Here’s a couple ugly charts we’re monitoring: China’s Shanghai Composite stock index and Commodity Research Bureau Index (CRB). Do you think there’s causality here? Remember the “China is buying/hoarding every commodity” story?

News links for 10 December 2011 on US politics, fracking, venture capital and technology

The most important debate of our lifetimes is now ongoing. The question: Should the ECB “write the check’ for the euro area national governments? In thinking about the answer to this all-important question, I prefer to shift the focus by…

With big oil's bank accounts full to the brim with cash, the stage is set for some significant acquisition activity... or, to put it another way, for a battle to buy producing assets. There are quite a number of contestants in the battle -…

The Ministry of Finance is pumping money like mad into the weakened Chinese financial sector, over 1 trillion yuan, in order to shore it up from the souring of loans from all of the malinvestment over the past few years. If the Chinese…

Another awesome piece of work from our friends over at The Chart Store. The chart below is a times series of the numbers of hours of work — based on the average hourly wage — needed to buy a barrel of crude oil. Given the current wage of…

Here is something brewing off radar. We’re wondering if this is a factor as to why crude is bid and gold is coming back?

Similar to holding a diversified portfolio at a bank without checking the institution's solvency, many investors keep their entire stash of precious metals inside one political system without considering the potential trap they've set for…