Collecting
Going for Gold – Part 8
Prior to becoming interested in precious metals I had never visited the inside of an auction house, let alone placed a bid. However, during the last lockdown I discovered that auctions can be a rich [more…]
Economics
Authoritarianism
Denying Reality Leads to Tyranny and Societal Failure
The common thread that connects failed societies, from Weimar Germany to the Soviet Union, is an almost pathological insistence on denying reality. Weimar Germany denied that masses of printed money would destroy civilized society. The [more…]
Arts
Memories of Japan, Centre Point to Osaka
In 1985 I worked for Mitsubishi Electric and that gave me the privilege of visiting Japan three times and getting to know something of the Japanese working and business psyche. It introduced me to Japanese [more…]
Economics
Get real, be real, and buy real – Part II
Claudio Grass (CG): During the first wave of lockdowns and travel bans we saw a lot of disruptions in the physical precious metal market. With delivery delays and logistics problems, has the situation fully normalized [more…]
Economics
Government’s Wayward Spending – It’s Our Money!
Expenditure by “Big-government” is not readily susceptible to economic calculation. Therefore it’s impossible to know whether citizens would support central or local spending proposals – and they are never consulted anyway. The result is often [more…]
Economics
What is Money?
Introduction Everybody knows how to use money, but very few people understand what it really is, or how it works. You might think people who work in finance and banking understand money, but I’ve not [more…]
Collecting
Going for Gold – Part 7
I had vaguely heard of the Latin Monetary Union and decided to do some research for this article after viewing some gold coins from this period on an auction website. The Latin Monetary Union (LMU) [more…]
Economics
Get real, be real, and buy real
The past year has been a remarkably interesting time for precious metals and especially for silver. The metal had spent many years in the shadow of its “big brother”, but it made an impressive, roaring [more…]
Authoritarianism
A Rights and Logic Based Approach to Pandemics
We all are too familiar with the approach to pandemics taken by governments at all levels in the US. In the name of “public safety” governments assumed “emergency powers” to restrict the citizens’ right to [more…]