Steve Saville

Just when we think that Bernanke has exhausted his ability to come up with harebrained schemes to distort prices, he proves us wrong.

“Is the Fed a Failure?” is the title of an article by Gene Epstein in the 27th February edition of Barrons magazine. The article draws on the work of economist George Selgin to argue that the answer to the question is yes, the Fed is a failure. Unfortunately, while this is the right answer the method used to come up with it is not persuasive.

Below is an excerpt from a commentary originally posted at www.speculative-investor.com on 19th February 2012. Although it is a long way from being a mainstream view, over the past two months we’ve read several comments along the lines of: the financial world will soon be immersed in another 2008-style crisis, only worse. In some cases … Continue reading

When reading stuff about the pros and cons of investing in gold we regularly come across two misguided assertions, the first being that changes in gold’s price in terms of a currency do little more than offset changes in the currency’s purchasing power.

Below is an excerpt from a commentary originally posted at www.speculative-investor.com on 29th January 2012. The three best ways to view the secular stock market trend are via: 1. A long-term chart of the market’s price/earnings ratio. 2. A long-term price chart with the price data adjusted for changes in money supply, productivity and population. … Continue reading