There is not much risk in betting that this number is cooked, largely under-estimated, and that the financial media will be out of superlatives when the next official announcement is closer to reality.

An article in the Swiss newspaper Bilan published last week states that the weight of gold in the global economy amounts to $172 billion. This is a relatively modest number, slightly lower than Apple’s annual turnaround, for example. Is that all that gold weighs?

“Financial repression” destroys the economy from within. When an over-indebted country is unable to reduce its deficit (or refuses to do it in order to continue financing its voting constituency) it exposes itself to market defiance and fleeing investors. In spite of that, in order to avoid this nightmarish scenario, it uses its sovereign power to force available monies to finance its debt at very low rates.

The media silence should be noted regarding those bankruptcies in Austria, Germany, Andorra (always coming with the risk of contagion) and maybe Greece...

No, the crisis is not over and, from now on, banks will be bailed out by shareholders, bond holders and savers, and it will all be legal. Be warned.

Let’s follow Alan Greenspan’s advice and be certain that, once the – very abrupt – exit from the QE plans is realised

The massive deluge of liquidity from central banks in Europe, Japan and the United States (more QE, albeit with zero interest rate) is provoking a general crash in the risk premiums, which renders the markets practically blind.

The sudden burst of panic provoked last week by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) reveals that we have all become so addicted to the central banks’ doings that it is turning pathological.

Greece is, once again, shaking the foundations of the Eurozone, and there is, again, talk of a “Grexit”. Stock markets are tumbling and fear the results of the January 25 anticipated elections.

Kudos to Shinzo Abe who just got brilliantly re-elected despite a largely negative balance sheet! His party took two-thirds of the seats of the House of Representatives, a clear victory. The moniker “Abenomics”, a contraction of his name and economics, is known all around the world. Wow, what a talented politician!

This news should have made the front page but it was hardly mentioned at all: Italy’s public debt is just a notch away from the speculative category!

A YES vote would have acted like a thunder strike and brought about a complete turnaround of the lax monetary policies of Switzerland, Europe (ECB), the United States and Japan. But, sadly, this won’t be the case. Let’s try to understand why.

Swiss bank accounts are not absolutely safe anymore, as several clients of the Portuguese group Banco Espirito Santo are finding out at their own expense.

In Luxembourg and Germany, some banks have started to apply negative interest rates on deposits: In other words, they are charging interest on deposits!

Download ebook for free. The goal of these economics detox chronicles is to propose another view and, first of all, counter the main discourse which permanently paints a rosy picture of the situation.

There is a new alert out for banks and this time, it’s coming from a regulating agency worried of their capacity to weather an eventual next crisis. The alert was sounded by the FSB (Financial Stability Board), the G20’s organism in charge of financial regulation.

Barak Obama and the Democrats just lost the mid-term elections. They were already in minority in Congress and now they are sinking even deeper, losing their majority in the Senate in favour of the Republicans.

Last Sunday, the European Central Bank announced its verdict on the stress tests it has been conducting for several months and, this time around, quite a few banks have failed them.

The United States’ public debt represents a large volume but, however, its absorption capacity is not infinite. And neither is its credibility. Even though the Fed is backing the whole thing and stands ready to print anything to meet payments, at one point defiance will be on the rise. We may not be there quite yet, but this is clearly the last rampart holding together the monetary and financial systems. If this starts to fail there will be a general panic.

An important agreement was signed on Saturday, October 11, between the large global banks “under pressure from regulators” and it relates to derivatives and, more specifically, the CDSs, or credit default swaps.