Debt

Once the Maginot Gold Line is broken, that creates the conditions for the Chinese Gold Line which means a panic to get hold of gold and permanent shortages. So the current complacency in the West that gold has lost its lustre and serves no purpose is extremely dangerous.

The Chinese government saw already 48 years ago that Nixon’s decision to end the gold backing of the dollar would be the end of the dollar and the Western monetary system. No one believed their prophecy at the time. But they are being proven right.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday that the idea of plugging budget holes by using the country’s gold reserves, which are held by the Bank of Italy, could be a good idea.

Gold is a highly liquid yet scarce asset, and it is no one’s liability. It is bought as a luxury good as much as an investment. As such, gold can play four fundamental roles in a portfolio: a source of long-term returns, a diversifier that can mitigate losses in times of market stress, a liquid asset with no credit risk that has outperformed fiat currencies, and a means to enhance overall portfolio performance.

Many people use goldbug scathingly as a pejorative as they have never bothered to understand the significance of gold. So why have I, and a few others, been advocating the ownership of gold for the last 17 years without being goldbugs?

Anyone who wants to protect their wealth should not be invested in any of the bubble asset markets. But to also avoid counterparty risk is a lot harder.

Venezuela’s gold holdings in the Bank of England have jumped after it closed out a gold swap deal with Deutsche Bank, according to two sources, as Britain remains reluctant to release gold held for the troubled OPEC nation.

What makes gold the most obvious wealth preservation investment and insurance against a false financial system is its permanence. The proof of this is indisputable since gold is the only money that has survived for 5,000 years. Ephemeral financial systems and currencies come and go, so do empires. But gold survives them all. As JP Morgan stated: “Money is gold and nothing else”.

Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, must be thinking that one can’t get anything for 2.6 trillion euro, nowadays! This astounding amount is the ECB’s QE or, in other words, all the bonds it has bought since March 2015 – with a printing press.

We are now at the end of an era which has created unreal wealth for a few and massive debt for most of the world. As all the bubble markets in stocks, bonds, property and other financial assets implode, together with the debt that has fuelled it all, 100s of trillions of dollars will just vanish and never return.