News story of the Day: Precious metals, particularly gold, had a tremendous first half in 2016. Not only have prices gone up, but the demand for gold, silver and other bullion has been soaring because of volatility in the financial markets, global economic uncertainty and accommodative monetary policies from the central banks.
According to a new report from the World Gold Council (WGC), investment demand for gold, which included bars, coins and ETFs, reached 1,063.9 metric tons. This is up 19 percent from the previous record set in the first half of 2009.
At the same time, gold prices surged 25 percent, while silver prices went up more than 40 percent.
Is this a result of a bubble? Not so says, Alistair Hewitt, head of market intelligence at the WGC. He believes that the foundations for precious metals are sound.
“The global picture for gold is dominated by considerable and continued investment demand driven by the West as investors rebalance their investments in response to the ever-expanding pool of negative yielding government bonds and heightened political and economic uncertainty,” Hewitt said in a statement.
At the time of this writing, gold is trading at around $1,347, while silver is just above $20 per ounce.
Chart of the Day: Switzerland is still at risk of a housing bubble, warns the UBS Group. The chart below shows that risks to the real estate market in Switzerland continued to be high in the April-to-June period this year because of subzero interest rates. Here is the chart via Bloomberg:
Illustration of the Day: the year 2016 has been a very interesting one. Not only because it has produced two terrible candidates for the presidency, but also because it has proven a few things: the election system is rigged, the media outlets are rigged and politics (no surprised) is rigged. Here is a perfect illustration summing up the year so far:
Quote of the Day: legendary free market economist Murray Rothbard was very anti-war. He was quite articulate in explaining the dangers of war, the unintended consequences. Rothbard was also quite perceptive in the latest trends the government was embarking upon. Here is Rothbard discussing the Somalian invasion and a “new kind of army.”
The Somalian intervention was a perfect case study in the workings of this Wilsonian dream. We began the intervention by extolling a “new kind of army” (a new model army if you will) engaged in a new kind of high moral intervention: the US soldier with a CARE package in one hand, and a gun in the other. The new “humanitarian” army, bringing food, peace, democracy, and human rights to the benighted peoples of Somalia, and doing it all the more nobly and altruistically because there was not a scrap of national interest in it for Americans. It was this prospect of a purely altruistic intervention — of universal love imposed by the bayonet — that swung almost the entire “antiwar” Left into the military intervention camp. Well, it did not take long for our actions to have consequences, and the end of the brief Somalian intervention provided a great lesson if we only heed it: the objects of our “humanitarianism” being shot down by American guns, and striking back by highly effective guerrilla war against American troops, culminating in savaging the bodies of American soldiers. So much for “humanitarianism,” for a war to impose democracy and human rights; so much for the new model army.
Video of the Day: Hillary Clinton, politicians, voters and media outlets are upset because Republican nominee Donald Trump supposedly called for the assassination of the Democratic nominee. They are in full upheaval mode and are demanding Trump apologize. They weren’t upset when Joe Biden said in 2008 he would pull out his Beretta if Obama took his guns. Clinton also said in 2008 she wouldn’t drop out because Obama could be assassinated. But those are other stories.
The same people who are outraged by Trump’s comments are the same people who wanted to kill Julian Assange of Wikileaks without due process because he’s apparently a terrorist. The remarks made by Democrats and Republicans alike as well as media officials in regards to Assange were odious. Assange is more of a hero to humanity than Clinton ever will be.
Wikileaks has compiled a video of these statements:
“You don’t publish a million secrets a year without making a few enemies” #WikiLeaks https://t.co/MsNZhrBYvb pic.twitter.com/H7ujQAFErm
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 7, 2016
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