Germany’s success in 2010 has surprised most U.S. analysts, who tend to start every sentence about Europe with “sclerotic.” However it is by no means the only country which is recovering from the Great Recession in a remarkably healthy fashion. China, Chile and Singapore are also stand-outs in this respect, while the United States, Ireland […]

Global opposition to Ben Bernanke’s policy, World Bank president Robert Zoellick’s “trial balloon” and statements by some of the new Republican Congressional caucus have caused a modest revival in consideration of the Gold Standard. In my view, the chances of its revival by official means in the next ten years remain infinitesimal, but there is […]

As long-term U.S. interest rates rise and negative global reactions roll in to the Fed’s announcement November 3 of a further $600 billion round of “quantitative easing” purchases of Treasury bonds to the inquiring mind one question becomes uppermost: Even though there’s a huge amount of competition for this title, is it indeed possible that […]

It now looks as if 2011 will see a definitive showdown in which the Ben Bernanke Fed and its allies in sloppy monetary policy worldwide are finally forced to face up to the damage caused by their depredations. The new $600 billion round of “quantitative easing” by the Fed and the almost simultaneous Republican capture […]

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the “Bear’s Lair” column. The first such column appeared on November 6, 2000, the eve of the Presidential election, with the headline “Dow crashes, Bush/Gore stunned in polls.” Its central thesis was that whoever won the election the following day would be a one-term President because of the […]