Posts by James G. Rickards

We’re not a political newsletter service. Our focus is firmly on the economy and finance and what works best for investor portfolios. Still, politics affects economics, especially in an election year. Candidates make all kinds of promises. When the candidate actually wins, they are expected to follow up on those promises (not many do), so…

The Federal Reserve prides itself on transparency. They are determined not to surprise markets with rate hikes or rate cuts the market doesn’t see coming. The same goes for quantitative easing (QE) and quantitative tightening (QT). Of course, policy changes are needed from time to time. Once the Fed decides on a policy change, they…

Nuclear war-fighting is not a topic that has been much discussed in the past thirty-five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It’s certainly not a topic that non-experts want to think about because the implications are both horrific and existential. Still, no…

Victor Davis Hanson is one of our favorite writers. In addition to being a fine writer, he’s a historian and philosopher and brings great learning to the topics he addresses. He has also written over twenty books (I’ve read five of them with more on my reading list), all of which are highly regarded and…

This sums up Fed policy. Rate hikes will sink the economy, but they will continue until inflation is subdued. This year will be a challenging voyage with Captain Jay at the helm.

Investors were bombarded with headlines last week about a new gold standard in Russia and the beginning of the end of the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency. The real story was an interesting one but didn’t quite live up to the headlines. Still, it’s worth a close look as described here. As reported,…

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the official slogan of the Washington Post. Of course, that’s a bitter joke because few news outlets have done more to destroy democracy than the Post. They continually run stories that are outright lies, while ignoring stories that really matter to Americans such as Joe Biden’s criminal dealings through his son…

For most consumers, inflation hits home based on the prices they pay at the pump and the grocery store. When you see gasoline going from $2.50 per gallon to $5.00 per gallon (and more in places like California), you don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand inflation. That’s true as far as it goes,…

We all understand that putting your money in the bank is not safe. Once you do that, it’s not your money anymore, it’s the bank’s money. They’ll give it back to you if they feel like it, but sometimes they don’t feel like it. If you want more than $10,000 in cash, the bank will…

Investors are familiar with the breakdown of global supply chains and the impact this is having on both availability of goods and services as well as prices. We see it in the form of empty shelves in the supermarkets. It’s not that all shelves are completely bare as they were in East Germany in the…