currencies

Markets stable but tone remains fragile. SNB expanded its sight deposit target; no EUR/CHF peg. BoE’s decision to stay on hold was unanimous. New measures announced by China boost CNY internationalization and integration with HK.

Andy Lees takes a sceptical view of fiat currency and the excess credit it has created over the past forty years and uses a few charts to demonstrate his points.

In characteristic form, the currency traders and those who trade in what is dubbed "financial news" woke up last week and discovered, à la Rip Van Winkle, that the Swiss franc was a haven currency charging higher. Never you mind that it has…

Previous Modern Money primer blog posts were quite general and apply to all countries that use a domestic currency. It does not matter whether these currencies are pegged to a foreign currency or to a precious metal, or whether they are…

As usual, I find Felix Zulauf’s commentary very perceptive. He has been right consistently for the whole of 2011 in predicting where things have gone. What he is saying is that the fundamentals in the west are weak and now that growth is…

The point is EMU is a political construct and unworkable in its present state. The question is whether the Europeans want to take the political steps like Eurobonds or fiscal integration that are necessary to support a stable currency…

Richard Nixon unilaterally closed the gold window 40 years ago today. No longer would the U.S. permit other countries to exchange their dollars for gold and by breaking that link, he ended the Bretton Woods international financial regime…

The first is the size of the ECB bond purchases. Second, the Franco-German summit tomorrow attracts attention. Third, the market continues to pare long Swiss franc positions with the local press suggesting the SNB and government may take…

Last summer I wrote a post clarifying some points that I have learned about Modern Monetary Theory. The genesis of the post was a gross mischaracterization of Modern Money Theory (MMT) by Paul Krugman in a piece called “I Would Do Anything…

Two charts showing the latest trends in markets around the world