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The Financial Times recently reported that “Chinese consumers helped drive an unprecedented boom in the global luxury sector in recent years but a deepening slowdown in the crucial market is now taking its toll on some of the sector’s biggest names. Shares across the industry dropped this week after Dior owner LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury…
The inconvenient truth is that An Unprecedented Monetary Destruction Is Coming. In democratic societies, people love everything that causes inflation but hate the consequences, which are among others rising consumer prices. It is therefore, no coincidence that debt-to-GDP has increased in all western democracies over the last 40 or so years. Marc…
For the last few months, I have been going after work (that is for me around 3 am in the morning) to a rather unique place in the world, which to my knowledge only exists in Chiang Mai. It is the Muay Thai Loikroh Boxing Stadium, which consist of an elevated boxing ring that is not surrounded by ascending spectator galleries, which are common…
In Singapore, the Government Investment Corporation (GIC) acts as a sovereign fund (it manages close to US$ 800 billion.) It just reported its 5-, 10- and 20-year returns. Its annualized 20-year nominal return dropped to 5.8% from the 6.9% return it reported a year ago. “On an inflation-adjusted basis, the GIC’s 20-year return fell to a four-year…
To my surprise, the Bangkok Post published in early May 2024 a reader’s letter entitled A failed State? The letter to the editor of the Post referred to a column written by a professor entitled: “Thai police graft highlights bigger issues.” The failed State letter to the editor stated that, “The characteristics of a failed state include, but are…
The late Kurt Richebächer addressed the subject of inflation and deflation in a 2006 newsletter. Among others, he quoted J.M. Keynes who in his A Treatise on Money, first published in 1930, commented on a table about bank credit, the wholesale price index and stock prices thereof as follows: “Anyone who looked only at the index of prices would see…
For a change, Fox Business recently reported about an interesting legal case under the title Dancers sue strip club claim it ‘forced a socialist economic system’ by forcing them to share tips (April 10, 2024). Not that this case is terribly relevant for us, nevertheless it is still interesting as an experiment as to how far we do or don’t lean to…
In August 2022, Henry Kaufman (the original Dr. Doom) wrote an article and gave an interview for the Financial Times, which was published under the title: Shock the market’: Wall Street’s original ‘Dr Doom’ tells Fed to toughen up. At the time, Kaufman feared that the Fed under Jay Powell was failing to combat inflation with the resolve displayed…
The British composer and conductor H. T. Leslie (1822 – 1896) wrote that, “The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well.” This is how investors in financial assets should feel about the current market conditions. At present, most assets are relatively expensive. With a few exceptions (gold miners, oil stocks…
At the 2024 WEF in Davos about Rebuilding Trust (who on earth would ever trust the Davos crowd?), the newly elected President of Argentina Javier delivered a speech, which must have made the majority of the attending Elite rather uncomfortable because of its simplicity and clear libertarian message: capitalism over the last 200 years lifted the…
Marc Faber