Tag Archives: economy

Reflections Over 2025

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I know I was busy this year. But now I see that the last piece I wrote for the blog was Reflections Over 2024! And I did almost no writing for Monetary Metals either. I will try to write more this year.

Aside from not writing, it’s been a very good year for me and for Monetary Metals. Lots of growth, brand awareness, liquidity, press, customers, etc.

I spent less time in airplane seats this year, compared to last year. But more time in hotel rooms. I was parked in Dubai for months at a time. Like it, or hate it, the opportunity for innovation in gold is much larger in that part of the world than it is at home in the US. And like it, or hate it, America will not be the vanguard of a new gold standard movement.

Don’t get me wrong. Some Americans get gold—as in they have bought some. But when they buy gold, a funny thing happens on the way to the races. They cheer for a higher price. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do, when you own an asset? What else is there to do?

And what are they going to do with that higher price? It’s either pay higher storage costs or sell. Gold becomes like any other asset in the (dollar-denominated) portfolio. A thing to buy when it’s “low” and sell when it goes “up”. Oh, that story about the dollar going to sh*t, and the US government having intractable exponentially rising debt? That was just the Narrative!

If you sell your gold, you show that you didn’t really believe it. You didn’t want $100,000 falling fast, so you bought 50oz gold. But now that gold is up, you’re happy to sell it for $200,000 falling fast… right?!

In the Middle East, in India, in Turkey, people are not so currency centric. They realize that it’s not gold that’s going up. A rising gold price is just a reflection of their inflationary currencies going down. They don’t think of selling on every blip in the price. Gold is a permanent holding, not to be sold except at the utmost end of need (sorry, Denethor, for stealing your most epic line). And in India, everybody buys jewelry. There are 5 million people employed in the jewelry sector there.

And in all these places, the wealthier, more sophisticated people seek a return on their gold.

So I am spending my time and energy in that part of the world. And, yeah, I won’t deny that life is pretty good in Dubai. Not the primary reason for me to be there, but this is important too.

Last year, I said I was asked to write the monetary chapter for a book on free trade. It is published by Springer: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Trade-Twenty-First-Century-Political/dp/3031676556. Now I am working on a chapter for a new book on the next monetary system. Interest is the key to the transition to a new monetary system, or indeed to any monetary system.

In between building a company (currently up to 46 full-time people), working on personal fitness, and finding a few moments to enjoy, it’s made it easy not to write.

My day in Dubai begins with an early start (some days very early, if I go to do weight training), and a few calls to the US to catch the end of their day. Then an early lunch, and walk while I do my morning calls first to Asia and middle east, then Europe and UK. Then maybe some sleep, before getting up for some focus time, then dinner, then my calls to the US begin. They go as late as I will tolerate, sometimes 2am or more. It’s a 24-hour revolving world! I find two separate sleeps is sustainable, provided I get 4 plus 3 hours. If I get less then it can be a real struggle.

That said, I have something to say. I estimate that I have put in writing, perhaps, half my economic thinking. I need to get the other half out!

So my New Year’s Resolution is: I will resume writing. Not the 1-2 articles/week I used to do back in 2012, but at least one piece a month. God knows, there is enough monetary dysfunction and related fiscal incontinence to be worth writing about!

Commodities, Consumer Goods, Prices, and Time

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Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley, at the Cato Institute, write about the Simon Abundance Index. SAI is named for Julian Simon, famous for his bet with the Malthusian Paul Ehrlich (infamous for writing The Population Bomb). Simon bet Ehrlich that commodity prices would fall from 1980 to 1990. Simon won the bet, but the whole exercise did not prove what he thought that it did.

I wrote about basic error in the methodology of “adjusting” for inflation. In brief, the error was in “adjusting” the dollar using the Consumer Price Index. This “adjusted” dollar is used to measure commodity prices. Thus showing that commodity prices fell.

The flaw is that consumer goods are made from commodities. Thus the whole calculation is circular!

This is not measuring commodity prices objectively, as Simon supposed. It does not show that commodities fell in absolute terms. Only relative to consumer goods.

What this wager actually measured, is the spread between commodities and consumer goods. This spread widened.

Is this a good thing? Perhaps, if the ultimate consumer good consists of more and more other things than raw materials, such as technology, manufacturing process, engineering, etc. Or perhaps not, if it merely shows the exponential growth of mandatory “useless ingredients” constantly imposed by government.

Enter the Simon Abundance Index (SAI). Thankfully, this index does not use consumer price index adjusted dollars to measure commodities. Instead it uses what the authors (who created the index) call “timeprices”. In brief, this is how many hours one must work to purchase something.

This is a lot better than “adjusted” dollars, because the time spent working to earn a consumer good is not directly subject to monetary policy.

It is indeed good that the timeprices of commodities have fallen dramatically (though not for long periods like 2003-2008, or during the Covid lockdown).

However, what is not shown is the timeprices of consumer goods. More importantly, the ratio between the two. It would be very instructive to see this ratio, because this ratio would show us the clearest picture of the impact of the Regulatorium.

Suppose the ratio of consumer timeprices to commodity timeprices doubled. Perhaps both timeprices fell (i.e. one’s labor buys more commodities or more consumer goods). But the timeprices for consumer goods fell less. What would that be telling us?

That the consumer good – commodity spread is widening. This means that more and more cost is being inserted somewhere in the process of converting raw materials to consumer goods and/or distributing those goods to consumers.

As I explain in my dissertation, a widening spread is proof of a decrease in coordination. This decrease is caused by the chronic, relentless addition of more regulations and compliance enforcement, as well as taxes.

In other words, the price of a 25,000 pound lot of coffee in Jakarta may drop. While the price of a coffee in a downtown cafe only gets a bit cheaper (or actually gets more expensive).