12/28/2004 - The Bulls and Bears of Precious Metals
By Pinank Mehta
A lot of views are expressed about the recent fall in the prices of gold and silver. Linking the arrest in the fall of the U.S. dollar to the fall in the price of gold and silver is a popular view. The arrest in the fall of the dollar is apparently considered more of a "technical" necessity than a fundamental move. 12/24/2004 - Risk, Bonds, and Fannie Mae: A Very Funky Christmas
By Dan Denning
The principle behind the Bowie Bonds is straightforward, albeit derivative. You are buying a stake in the future income of David Bowie. The problem, from a risk-assessment point of view, is how much dare you assume about the present value of David Bowie's future income? Music is a fickle business. 12/17/2004 - Whiskey Taxes: The Real Thing
By Byron King
Yes, indeed, things could be very different. Except that Mr. Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, levied a tax on whiskey. If you taste the whiskey first, it helps to understand (and at the end of this article, I will tell you how to do just that...). 12/15/2004 - US Interest Rates: Double-Shot Endgame
By James Ferguson
So far, dollar weakness has been good for the US. It's made exports cheaper, and started to cut the value of the record trade deficit. But the falling dollar also threatens US Treasury prices. Falling bond prices would result in rising yields - and higher interest rates usually prove disastrous for a debt-fuelled economy. 12/07/2004 - Then and Now: Making Money in Early America
By Byron King
You would have been hard put to find much in the way of real money in colonial America. The Eastern regions of North America had no mineral districts that yielded precious metals, hence gold and silver were scarce in the best of times. 12/01/2004 - The Titanic: Ten Gold Dollars from the Bottom of the Sea
By Byron King
The Captain of the Titanic, a skilled mariner named E. J. Smith, once said: "I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." But on the night of April 14, 1912 Captain Smith said something else. He gave an order: "Prepare the lifeboats." And later, in the wee hours of the morning of April 15, he shouted as the water lapped over the bridge: "Every man for himself." 11/28/2004 - Nuclear Weapons: The Birth of Cultural Siege Engines
By Dan Denning
Substitute nuclear weapons for gunpowder and civilization for chivalry in the quotations above, and all of a sudden you have a modern re-enactment of the same violent dynamic that defined so much of Europe in the 16th century. 11/27/2004 - The Ghost of Colonel Drake
By Byron King
He was not really a colonel. He was certainly not commissioned in any military organization. His most recent occupation was that of a train conductor on the New York, New Haven and Long Island Railroad, a high-tech kind of job in the late 1850s. | 
