About the U.S. Money Reserve Team

The FOMC meeting convened today with two big questions casting shadows over the Fed's policy: what are the unintended effects of QE and what will be the consequences of unwinding the $3 trillion (and counting) in assets the Fed has added to its books under QE?

What’ll the Fed do about QE3 when it meets next week? I've said before the numbers to watch are those related to employment and the two forces that have driven our anemic recovery—housing and consumer spending. If those numbers indicate the economy is gaining steam, the Fed will start tapering this month. If the numbers…

The story lines I've seen in the last 48 hours in articles and opinion pieces about the recent rise in gold prices all support the notion that gold prices are being driven by a variety of short-term circumstances. This point-of-view reflects our failure to see the forest for the trees. While the specific events are…

It’s official. After breaking $1416, the new bull market is underway. So as an obituary for the recently interred bear, here is a look at how it stacked up against others of the recent past.

Volatility is inevitable considering the importance of QE3 to the course of both the U.S. and world economy, but it has been amplified by a misunderstanding of statements by Chairman Bernanke and other members of the Fed about how they’ll make decisions to taper. I’ll offer an interpretation in this post.

This is the first in a series of posts in which I’ll discuss the supply and demand forces that will drive the next bull market in gold. I’ll start by addressing the supply side of the equation. The market receives gold from four sources: mining, recycling of jewelry, sales by central banks, and sales by…

Read Part I In my last post I painted a dystopian future for the NFL as as a metaphor for our current banking system. You might take a look at it before proceeding. It can’t really be THAT bad. The stars of today’s too-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks are the elite financial product innovators and traders who earn huge…

A reader recently asked why I have an axe to grind for the big banks and how it has anything to do with gold. I’ll explain with a sports metaphor. Imagine the NFL in a dystopian future   The major stars are in an unrestrained PED (performance-enhancing drug) arms race, raising their incomes to astronomical…

In my last post, I described how Goldman Sachs used its position in aluminum warehousing to manipulate prices, and I posed the question, What can we learn about the gold market from Goldman’s actions in aluminum? Let’s look at SPDR Gold, the largest gold ETF in the world. At the center of SPDR Gold is HSBC,…

Aluminum warehousing Two weeks ago I wrote about why gold is making a rally. In that post I discuss Goldman Sachs's manipulation of prices in the aluminum market and what it tells us about how gold ETFs might be influencing the gold market in a similar way. The Goldman story is developing quickly so it’s worth taking…

The U.S. Department of Labor released the latest unemployment numbers on Friday, as it does the first Friday of every month. I’ll be writing a short post after each of these releases to explain what they mean for gold prices. Why? Because monthly unemployment rates will have a significant short-term effect on gold prices over the next several…

I'm still boggled by the Fed's June economic forecast, the one that led analysts to conclude the Fed would begin winding down QE3 this fall. Markets around the world, including the gold market, reacted so negatively to this news that Chairman Bernanke was forced to give reassurances that an end to QE3 was not imminent. This is a very…