Economy

Not many people know much about Bitcoin but it is growing and seems set to take over the world of online gambling. Here's why & how.

Last month Americans bought 1.5 million vehicles, a 3.6% bump from a year ago, establishing a new record for April and eclipsing the old mark set 11 years ago for a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 17.4 million vehicles. That puts automakers on track for a second consecutive annual sales record and resultant strong profits could cause investors to pile into the stocks of major auto makers. Words: 537

If we could only show you one map to explain the economy of the Middle East, it would be the map below. In one fell swoop it tells us a lot about the wealth, geopolitical influence, and natural resources of the region as well as parts of Central Asia...

We have a crisis of trust in America and, as the charts below show, it has only accelerated with government policies of financial repression.

The rise of alternative payment methods like Bitcoin and Apple Pay has reduced our everyday reliance on cold, hard cash. With that in mind, we took a look at some of the weird and wonderful things that have been used as alternatives to money around the world, some of which are still in use today.

The ramp up in Chinese debt accumulation has been a leading concern of investors for years. The average total debt of emerging market economies is 175% of GDP, and skyrocketing corporate non-financial debt has launched China far beyond that number. The real question is: by how far? The answer is disconcerting, because nobody really knows. In today’s chart, we look at various estimates to the size of China’s debt bomb, its payload, and what might spark the fuse. Words: 354

By enforcing negative interest rates and fighting a War on Cash, the government will create a huge underground currency market - and the ultimate underground currency will be gold and its sister metal, silver...[which] could cause gold to double or even triple in value.

In the vast majority of longer-term periods, history has shown that a stronger dollar has been better for U.S. equities than a weaker one. This article presents 2 charts that show the interaction between the U.S. dollar and equity prices to support the aforementioned conclusion. Words: 422

I have long been a critic of government inflation statistics. Not so much with regard to the methodology they use, but because the measure of “average” inflation across the broad economy doesn’t really describe the inflation that the majority of Americans experience. I’ve written about that at length in several letters and now my good friend Ron Arnott, along with his associate Lillian Wu, presents us with a research paper that lays out what inflation actually looks like for most Americans – and the picture is not pretty.

To most people, a depression means '30s-style conditions, and since they don't see that, they can't imagine a depression. That's because they know what the last depression was like, but they don't know what one is. It's hard to visualize something you don't understand...Nobody can predict with absolute certainty what this depression will be like...[but one] can be fairly well-assured it won't be an instant replay of the last one...To define the likely differences between this depres­sion and the last one, it's helpful to compare the situa­tion today to that in the early 1930s. The results aren't very reassuring.