Off the Cuff: A Look Across the Pond

In this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and Alasdair Macleod discuss:

• Independence For Scotland
  • The implications of this week's historic vote
• Gold's Depressed Price
  • The establishment benefits from a low price
• Europe vs Russia
  • Why the EU holds a losing hand
• The Evils of Central Banking
  • Creating worse problems than they're supposed to solve

With the historic vote in Scotland (Alasdair's home country) and growing tension between the EU and Russia, we thought it timely to bring our European correspondent, Alasdair Macelod, back to the Off The Cuff program this week.

Alasdair predicts a "no" vote on Scottish independence. His preference would be to see the country secede from the UK, though he acknowledges doing so would usher in a very rough time for the Scots initially. But he sees it as a cost worth paying to get out from under the ticking time bomb that is Great Britain. The Kingdom is so over-indebted that any chance to insulate oneself from the inevitable day of reckoning is a change worth taking.

The discussion then ranges to gold (which Alasdair believes to be artificially depressed by the major central planners of the world), to the conflict over Ukraine (which he sees Russia winning), to the elevated level of today's financial markets (which Alasdair thinks is a massive bubble waiting to pop).