Derivatives

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.

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.

We are now in the very final stages of the most remarkable era of alchemy in the history of finance. This cycle started in 1913 with the creation of the Fed and had its death knell in 1971 when Nixon took away the gold backing of the dollar. It has been a long and slow 50 year death of the world economy and the patient has only been kept alive due to the creation of fake money, fake assets, fake (paper) gold, fake wealth, fake valuations, fake balance sheets, fake bankers, fake politicians all built on a colossal mountain of fake debt.

The German government, usually against any form of interventionism, is pushing toward a merger between Deutsche Bank and the country’s second largest bank, Commerzbank.

The imminent secular downturn of debt and asset markets as well as the world economy will reveal how unreal these profits were as 90% or more of all the paper wealth in the world will go up in smoke. So investors should now prepare for the biggest wealth destruction in history and also the biggest wealth transfer.

The time of easy gains in markets is now over. With the Fed and other central banks tightening and with the 35 year interest cycle having turned up, the party is over.

In a recently published article, Nouriel Roubini, one of the most trusted economists on the planet, predicts: “By 2020, the conditions will be ripe for a financial crisis, followed by a global recession.” He states ten reasons for his prediction.

The end of an empire is a dramatic but also drawn out event with very few willing to face the facts. As the end is getting closer, denial is at its peak. We can probably figure out how it will end but not quite when. Looking at the facts, the beginning of the end is here.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Ray Dalio, Jeffery Gundlach and Nouriel Roubini all share pessimistic views. Let’s examine together the basic economic reasons for their thinking.