Economic Trends Archives - Financial Trend Forecaster

The Modern Day Wild West: Crypto Scams And Opportunities

Leave a Comment / Bitcoin / By Tim McMahon

We’ve all heard that the Crypto landscape is much like the “Wild West” with very little regulation. But along with risk comes opportunity. One of the reasons the “Wild West” was so wild was because “Boom towns” would spring up in the middle of nowhere due to the discovery of gold nearby. The gold would attract not only hard-working prospectors and pioneers, but also promoters, grifters, and outright crooks. Sometimes a “Lawman” such as Wyatt Earp would show up and try to enact some sort of system of Law and Order.

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Global Debt Levels Are a Ticking Time Bomb

Leave a Comment / Economic Trends / By Daniel Lacalle

The relentless increase in global debt is an enormous problem for the economy. Public deficits are neither reserves for the private sector nor a tool for growth. Bloated public debt is a burden on the economy, making productivity stall, raising taxes, and crowding out financing for the private sector. With each passing year, the global debt figure climbs higher, the burdens grow heavier, and the risks loom larger. The world’s financial markets ignored the record-breaking increase in global debt levels to a staggering $313 trillion in 2023, which marked yet another worrying milestone.

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America’s Fiscal Collapse Accelerates

Leave a Comment / Economic Trends / By Peter St. Onge

In case you thought anybody in Washington was driving this thing, they are not.

It’s official: the Department of Treasury is now issuing debt at pandemic levels. It’s worth noting the pandemic record was double the previous record, which had stood for 231 years.

In raw numbers, the latest numbers for Q4 2023 show Treasury issued $7 trillion in new debt. For the entire year, it came to $23 trillion.

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Crypto 2.0, A Whole New Ballgame

Leave a Comment / Bitcoin / By Tim McMahon

It turns out that Crypto is much more than just Bitcoin. In October 2008, when a person (or anonymous group) named Satoshi Nakamoto created the code for Bitcoin it opened the door to more than just a currency. It introduced the concept of a “Blockchain” to the world. Since then there have been literally thousands of Cryptos created, most of which ended up totally worthless. Some were simply jumping on the Blockchain bandwagon, just as companies added “.com” to their name back in the Dot com mania of the 1990s, people began creating mostly worthless cryptos in the 2010s. But not all the cryptos were worthless. Some were new currencies but others were new and innovative ways to use blockchain.

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Argentina Sees First Monthly Budget Surplus in 12 Years

Leave a Comment / South America / By Peter St. Onge

Argentina’s Javier Milei is racking up some solid wins, with the fiscal basket case seeing its first monthly budget surplus in 12 years. Apparently, it took Milei just nine and a half weeks to balance a budget that was projected at 5% of GDP under the previous government. In US terms, he turned a 1.2 trillion-dollar annual deficit into a 400 billion surplus. In 9 and a half weeks.

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America’s Fiat Money Gestapo: The Untold History of the Secret Service

Leave a Comment / Dollar / By Tim McMahon

There is an untold story in American monetary history. Some are reluctant even to discuss it. I’m referring to the US Secret Service’s very own role in the destruction of sound money in America.
As constitutional, sound money in the form of physical gold and silver coins—whether minted privately or not—became an annoying impediment to expanding the size and power of the federal government, central planners began circulating unbacked paper proxies and formed a Gestapo-like police agency to enforce the scheme.
Founded in 1865, toward the tail end of the American Civil War, the Secret Service originated as a branch of the US Treasury Department.

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Argentina Mulls Dollarization- What is it?

Leave a Comment / South America / By Tim McMahon

As the new President of Argentina mulls the idea of dollarization to reduce Argentinian inflation we look at “What is Dollarization? ” and “Will it help Argentina?”.
According to Reuters, “Argentina’s annual inflation rate hit 161% in November… the monthly inflation was rate 12.8% in November alone”. Argentina’s new President Javier Milei campaigned on the promise of fixing Argentina’s economic crisis, and on Tuesday his government announced a more than 50% devaluation of the local peso currency plus sharp spending cuts. One of Milei’s ideas for reducing inflation is “Dollarization”. So, what is Dollarization? And how does it work?

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If the Economy Is So Great, Why Are Tax Revenues So Weak?

Leave a Comment / Economic Trends / By Ryan McMaken

It seems pretty obvious that when the economy is weak individual’s earnings go down, and unemployment goes up, consequently tax revenues go down. After all, if people aren’t making any money they can’t give it to the government. So, it seems logical to ask about falling tax revenues and rising deficits. In today’s article, Ryan McMaken looks at the current situation.

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Could a Hamas vs. Israel War Trigger a Worldwide Recession?

Leave a Comment / Economic Trends / By Tim McMahon

According to a recent article by Bloomberg entitled, Wider War in Middle East Could Tip the World Economy Into Recession, it is a distinct possibility. The article presents 3 possible scenarios, i.e., Confined War, Proxy War, and Direct War. Confined War Scenario In the confined war scenario conflict is limited to Gaza, Israel, and the Palestinian

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The Dangerous Myth of a “Soft Landing”

Leave a Comment / Economic Trends / By Daniel Lacalle

Despite elevated inflation, the United States government is spending more than ever, which means consuming more units of issued currency. Tim Congdon at the Institute of International Monetary Research shows how the inflationary burst was directly linked to broad money growth due to rising government deficit spending. Market participants and economists like to believe that the central bank will manage the economy as if it were a car. The current optimism about the U.S. economy reminds us of the same sentiment in 2007 when no one seemed to worry about rising imbalances.

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