Financial crisis

Central banks have since then frenetically kept the party going by manufacturing worthless paper money. The music should have stopped in 2008 but the participants are still dancing on the grave of a system that is about to succumb.

By rolling over the debt of ailing banks (new loans to pay off old ones), the ECB is giving them a very bad habit, namely that of governments with perpetual deficits, which are thus exempting themselves from any budgetary effort. What is the point of cleaning up one's balance sheet if the ECB graciously provides the necessary liquidity? The intrinsic situation of the large European banks is therefore not going to improve, at the greatest risk to savers...

In the next few years, the world will learn that the printing of money can never create prosperity. That is the time when the masses will turn to gold and silver. At that point, there will be virtually no physical precious metals to buy at any price.

On June 3, 2020, at the World Economic Forum, Kristalina Georgieva, the current director of the IMF, gave a conference untitled "The Great Reset". During her speech, she referred to the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which had set the monetary rules for the following decades and she declared that this epidemic is an opportunity to change the world.

This chart shows a comparison of Gold, Silver, VIX and HUI in 2008 and now. The extreme movements of volatility (VIX) have often accompanied movements of opposite sign in the precious metals. If we review the phase of extreme volatility seen in 2008, we find several similarities with the current phase.

Despite the clear “suckers rally” in risk assets, Egon discusses the relative outperformance of gold vis-à-vis exchanges like the DOW while warning of the inevitable (hyper-) inflation to come, using none other than the “Big Mac Indicator” to make this reality all-too clear.

Egon von Greyerz and Grant Williams address global market risks, the now total disconnect between the recent price rise of risk assets and the current collapse in economic and social signals. They obviously also cover the role of gold as a historically consistent solution to both inevitable market volatility and the declining purchasing power of fiat currencies around the globe.

Why gold? That’s a question I’m asked frequently. It’s usually followed by a comment along the lines of, “I don’t get it. It’s just a shiny rock. People dig it out of the ground and then put it back in the ground. What’s the point?” I usually begin my reply by saying, “It’s not a rock, it’s a metal” and then go from there.

History repeats itself with staggering similarity. The Crises of the 3rd Century and today have much in common. All empires have the seeds of their own destruction within them. So if we look back almost 2000 years to the Roman Empire we will find exactly the same symptoms as today.

Richard Detente explains the huge mistake that the economists make when they talk about the value of gold. This value is indeed much more a matter of human psychology before being a matter of economists.