Sierra Madre Precious Metals

Our standard of living is being systematically destroyed, but for a lot of years many Americans didn’t fully understand what was taking place because it was happening so slowly. But now we have reached a stage where the purchasing power of our money is collapsing and the cost of living has become exceedingly painful. Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, the middle class is becoming “the impoverished class”, and the poor are increasingly being pushed out into the streets. If we do not find a way to turn these trends around, it won’t be too long before we have tremendous societal turmoil on our hands. Continue reading →

Leading Economic Indicators See Us on Cusp of Recession Yet Again

By many of the most reliable leading indicators of the U.S. economy, we are long overdue for a recession. Yet the economy stubbornly refuses to cooperate.

The Conference Board released its latest index of leading economic indicators on Thursday. It declined for the seventeenth consecutive month, dropping an additional 0.4 percent in August. That’s an acceleration of the pace of decline since July, when the index fell 0.3 percent.

The Conference Board’s index is a composite of ten so-called “leading indicators.” These are gauges of economic activity and sentiment that tend to move up or down several months before overall economic growth indicates an acceleration or a slowdown. Continue reading →

As I read about the demise of the U.S. dollar’s status in world trade, I’m struck by the misdirection and irrational “thinking” employed by our politicians and bureaucrats. In this article, legislators think another law, rule or regulation will solve the underlying problem.

Going back on the gold standard is not a bad solution. Had we been on the gold standard in 2008, the Fed Reserve could not have printed 8 trillion U.S. dollars and driven us into such extreme debt, resulting in dollar devaluation and inflation. In fact, the gold standard is a good way to limit the Federal Reserve’s ability to print dollars, but this is not the long-term solution. Continue reading →

America’s middle class is being systematically eviscerated. When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them. That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us. So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive. In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade… Continue reading →

Many historians labeled the twentieth century as the American century, with many metrics used. The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1991 changed world affairs: several new countries formed, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the economy of China rose, and many US military bases shut down.

The twentieth century wound down with the US as the world superpower, and yet the vision of the 1990s was not clear for our political and military leaders going into the twenty-first century. Continue reading →

What it looks like when the financial walls close in…

Image Credit: Ron Cogswell

For “Ask an Economist” this week, I have two questions from J.R. He says,

“My question is what happens when the government continues to spend out of control where it potentially out spends its ability to pay its bills/debt?

With the national debt over $30 trillion and climbing when do you think we will hit the tipping point and what do you think will happen?”

So what happens if we can’t pay our debts? To understand, we need to think about where the government’s money comes from. Continue reading →

Since its founding in 1913, the unelected central planning bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve have been given the incredible privilege of legally creating money out of thin air, which mere mortals like us are not allowed to do. They have also been given the tremendous responsibility of maintaining (1) maximum employment, (2) a stable price level, and (3) low interest rates.

How have they done so far?

Since 1913, the bureaucrats at the Fed have helped cause… Continue reading →

August 23rd was a big news day all over the world. The western media’s focus on the events of that day was solidly on the unproven claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the sabotage or shooting down of an executive jet that killed his former associate Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In reality, however, there was a far more important story that was coming out of South Africa. In fact, Putin had a far more important job to do on that day due to his desire to make progress in stripping the United States of its dollar hegemony. Putin was engaged by videolink in the discussions taking place in Johannesburg regarding expanding the so-called BRICS monetary union, in part to include measures that would diminish the dominance of the dollar in the world economy. Continue reading →

How far would you go to feed your family? Hopefully that is a question that you will not have to answer any time soon, but right now we are seeing millions upon millions of people become more desperate as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate and food costs soar. At this point, most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month, and in poorer countries on the other side of the world there are people that are literally starving to death. As I have detailed previously, the UN has reported that 2.4 billion people did not have enough food to eat last year, and 900 million of them were facing severe food insecurity.

Sadly, those numbers will inevitably be even higher for 2023. A global rice crisis has erupted, and the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal has greatly restricted the flow of agricultural goods from that part of the globe. Food costs are spiking all over the planet, and that is really bad news for all of us.

For those of us that live in the United States, the good news is that nobody is starving at this stage. Continue reading →