Being able to get financing entirely from one’s central bank – at zero cost and without any outside constraint – is the dream of any spendthrift State... until bankruptcy (either by default or by hyperinflation).

Since the two coalitions that won are euro-sceptic, very critical of the euro and against immigration, this means that 70% of Italians are dissatisfied with Rome and Brussels policies.

The planet’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater, which manages more than $160 billion, just bet $22 billion on a decline of stocks in the banking sector and other large corporations.

The stock markets are being shaken these days, indexes are in the red, and months of gains have disappeared in a few sessions... Are we witnessing a temporary correction or is this a deeper and lasting crisis? It’s too early to tell, and we’re not going to play the guessing game. However, if we step back a little, we can acknowledge a deeply changing financial landscape, a historical changeover: it has to do with interest rates.

Clearly Europe is fragile – this is where one has to look for risks of price slips, sudden interest rates hikes, overblown balance sheets...

Monetary tapering from the Fed and the ECB, blaringly announced in the media, are thus without any effect; they will not help in emerging from the lethargy of zero or negative rates.

The French like to denounce American capitalism and mock its excesses and instability, especially in the financial sector. Nevertheless, when one looks at the data from the large banks on both sides of the Atlantic, it becomes clear that the most risk is actually with France.

The ECB wants to prevent bank runs by allowing banks to block deposits and authorise limited withdrawals, like they did in Cyprus in March, 2013. According to the institution, the deposit protection scheme is no longer necessary.

With Bitcoin, more and more people are questioning what real money is and, slowly, the whole world will jump in, and gold will benefit from it. And that is good news.

Stuck in its own petard, the ECB doesn’t believe in a vigorous and durable economic recovery anymore – the only thing that would allow it, as well as over-indebted countries, to fall back on their feet.

“Europe’s bank sector has grown too big and may need to shrink, possibly through mergers or failures (...) many banks in the euro area do not earn their cost of capital.” In other words, they are zombie banks, bankrupt and only kept alive by the liquidity flowing from the ECB.

We seldom hear about the risk of a major financial crisis if rates were to rise – almost never within the official networks and mainstream media. One has to listen to independent “marginal” economists outside the banks or universities, such as our own Egon von Greyerz, or Olivier Delamarche, Bill Bo...

Getting one’s money out of the bank – at least a large portion of it – is one thing, but what is one to do with it? The preferred investment, the most reassuring, according to observations and some polls, is real estate.

A new nail should be driven in the savers’ coffins, according to the very serious Reuters press agency: the freezing of bank accounts in order to avoid any bank run.

The trillions of dollars, euro, yens, Yuan etc. created by the central banks since the 2008 crisis haven’t triggered any wave of inflation, contrary to what history has been teaching thus far. But should we underestimate the risk? Of course not.

According to Goldman Sachs, central banks now hold a full third of the world’s bond market.

Let’s ask for ECBexit! Not to get out of the euro (and get back to manipulated national currencies... no, thanks!), but to drastically reduce the power of the European Central Bank.

Banks are definitely no longer the sanctuaries they once were. Following the threats of draining bank accounts (BRRD, Sapin Law 2), cyber threats will make headlines in the years to come.

Savers are often quite confused about gold and real estate.

The “Japanisation” of banks is the new illness of contemporary finance. Stemming from Japan, it is expanding progressively, especially in Europe. How does this disorder translate?