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Cervantes famous classic novel Don Quixote can in simple terms be described as a fight for liberty and freedom against oppression and against the state. This book is from 1605 and considered to be one of the best books ever written.

In the midst of market madness, risk doesn’t exist because lunatics neither see, nor worry about risk. And still, 2022 will be more about risk and survival than anything else. So I will obviously talk more about “The Triumph of Survival” which I discussed in a recent piece.

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies.” – Don Quixote

The year 2022 will most likely be the culmination of risk. An epic risk moment in history that very few investors will see until it is too late as they expect to be saved yet another time by the Fed and other central banks.

And why should anyone believe that 2022 will be different from any year since 2009 when this bull market started? Few investors are superstitious and therefore won’t see that 13 spectacular years in stocks and other asset markets might signify an end to the epic super bubble.

The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2006-9 was never repaired. Central bankers and governments patched Humpty up with glue and tape in the form of printed trillions of dollars, euro, yen etc. But poor Humpty Dumpty was fatally injured and the intensive care he received would only give him a temporary reprieve.

When the GFC started in 2006, global debt was $120 trillion. Today we are at $300t, rising to potentially $3 quadrillion when the debt and derivative bubble finally first explodes and then implodes as I explained in my previous article.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chaos and the Triumph of Survival

December 26, 2021

CHAOS AND THE TRIUMPH OF SURVIVAL

One of the most horrifying works of art is Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” painted in 1562. The painting depicts the end of life on earth.

I sincerely hope that this is not what the world will literally look like in the next decade or two but metaphorically this is not an unlikely depiction of the chaos that could hit us all.

For a detailed description of the grim painting see here

The Black Death plague of the 14^th century, which killed up to half of the world’s population, clearly had a major influence on the painter.

The moral message is that when chaos hits, the destruction will affect everyone, rich and poor, young and old. No one will escape by power or devotion.

The financial, economic and moral devastation which is about to hit the world will for more than 99.5% of the people come out of the blue like a flash from a clear sky.

For most people, coming events will thus be like the definition of the word CHAOS: “A state of total confusion and disorder”.

CHAOS NUMBER 1: COVID

Talking about disorder, just like the Black Death that inspired Bruegel’s painting, the world is now facing a global pandemic. But rather than the nearer 50% of global population that perished in the mid 1300s, today we are looking at total deaths from the current pandemic of 0.06% of the world population! And even that figure might be overestimated due to the classification rules applied.

For that minuscule percentage the world has now been paralysed for the third year soon.

There are lockdowns, quarantines, compulsory vaccines with unlined boosters, covid passports, closed schools, closed offices, major industries like leisure haemorrhaging, airlines going bankrupt, shortages of labour, components, products, closed borders, and for the few people who dare to and can travel across borders, more bureaucracy, paperwork and tests than in a police state…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Evil is the Root of All Fiat Money

December 4, 2021

EVIL IS THE ROOT OF ALL FIAT MONEY

“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”
-Ayn Rand

Money used to be a stable medium of exchange and a store of value but that was in the days when there were sound monetary principles, mostly backed by gold or silver.

Since 1913 and especially 1971 there is no discipline and no morals when it comes to the issuing of money as unlimited amounts of ~~fake~~ fiat money is printed at will.

In today’s fiat money world, there is only one answer to Rand’s question “What is the root of all money?”, namely:

“Evil is the root of all fiat money.”

– Egon von Greyerz

On the IMF (International Monetary Fund) website there is an article stating that “Money is something that holds its value” – Hmmm…..

The meeting of bankers and politicians on Jekyll Island in November 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve Bank. Three years later in 1913 the Fed was founded.

From that moment on, private bankers were running the US monetary system including the printing of money. But the British pound, backed by gold until 1931, was the global currency of choice until then.

CURRENCY SYSTEMS ARE EPHEMERAL

The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 established a new currency system based on the dollar. From that time, all major currencies were pegged to the US dollar and the dollar itself was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. The dollar thus became the world’s reserve currency bolstered by big gold reserves. These were accumulated gradually from the early 1900s to the late 1940s. The US received payment in gold during WWII from its sales of arms and other supplies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold-O-Mania is Coming

November 19, 2021

GOLD-O-MANIA IS COMING

The buoyancy of markets in recent years has lulled central bank heads into a false conviction that they had saved the world after the 2006-9 Great Financial Crisis.

But central bankers continue to navigate like drunken sailors between the evil forces of Scylla and Charybdis as in Homer’s Odyssey.

Few of the bankers have understood that printing unlimited and worthless paper money will not allow them a pass the strait of Messina without major, or more likely catastrophic, damage to the world economy.

As exuberance continues to dominate intoxicated stock market investors, they haven’t yet noticed that all is not well on the perilous seas.

Still, most markets continue to respond positively to the printing press rather than to the underlying fundamentals.

Printing presses don’t create real value, instead they create bubbles full of worthless air. But sadly intoxicated investors confuse air, which is free and has no value, with real, intrinsic values.

To take an example, what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin or BTC? How should BTC be valued?

Does the $60,000 price today reflect the real value or was the 10 cent price 10 years ago more correct?

BITCOINOMANIA

Are we today seeing Bitcoinomania similar to Tulipomania in the 1630s?

If not, can someone tell me at what price Bitcoin is fully and properly valued?

The Bitcoin aficionados will tell us that BTC is modern money and superior to any other currency. Well maybe they are right, but history must prove that. The 11 year history of Bitcoin is hardly sufficient to prove that it will fare better than any other money. We must remember that so far in history no currency has ever survived in its original form except for gold.

And the 5,000 year history of gold as money certainly makes it superior to all fiat currencies as well as cryptocurrencies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shortages & Hyperinflation Lead to Total Misery

October 23, 2021

SHORTAGES & HYPERINFLATION LEAD TO TOTAL MISERY

At the end of major economic cycles, shortages develop in all areas of the economy. And this is what the world is experiencing today on a global basis. There is a general lack of labour, whether it is restaurant staff, truck drivers or medical personnel.

There are also shortages of raw materials, lithium (electric car batteries), semi-conductors, food, a great deal of consumer products, cardboard boxes, energy and etc, etc. The list is endless.

SHORTAGES EVERYWHERE

Everything is of course blamed on Covid but most of these shortages are due to structural problems. We have today a global system which cannot cope with the tiniest imbalances in the supply chain.

Just one small component missing could change history as the nursery rhyme below explains:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Cavalry battles are lost if there is a shortage of horseshoe nails.

The world is not just vulnerable to shortages of goods and services.

BOMBSHELLS

Bombshells could appear from anywhere. Let’s just list a few like:

Dollar collapse (and other currencies)
Stock market crash
Debt defaults, bond collapse (e.g. Evergrande)
Liquidity crisis (if money printing stops or has no effect)
Inflation leading to hyperinflation

There is a high likelihood that not just one of the above will happen in the next few years but all of them.

Because this is how empires and economic bubbles end.

The Roman Empire needed 500,000 troops to control its vast empire.

Emperor Septimius Severus (200 AD) advised his sons to “Enrich the troops with gold but no one else”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Central Banks Are Now in the Endgame

August 19, 2021

Central Banks Are Now in the Endgame

The $2 quadrillion debt bubble will be the central bank endgame

Central bankers were handed the Midas curse half a century ago. Midas turned everything that he touched into gold– even his own food. Exactly 50 years ago (15 Aug, 1971) central bankers were handed a much worse curse by Nixon. But instead of turning everything into gold, their curse was to turn all real assets, including gold, into worthless paper, creating the perfect setup for this central bank endgame.

Nixon had of course not studied history. Because if he had, he would have understood that his lie was $100s of trillions worse than the Watergate lies:

“THE EFFECT OF TODAY’S ACTION will be to stabilise the dollar”

Hmmmmmm!

As the chart below shows the dollar has lost 98% in real terms (GOLD) since 1971. Just a one hour history lesson would have taught Nixon that no currency has ever survived in history since all leaders without fail have done what Nixon did.

Reminds me of the line in Pete Seeger’s song “Where have all the flowers gone”:

“WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN, WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN?”

The fall of the dollar after Nixon eliminated Bretton Woods.

Well, they will never learn of course. History has taught the very few who are willing to listen that there is no exception.

Every single currency throughout history has been debased until it has reached ZERO as I outlined here.

It seems incomprehensible that presidents and central bankers have not learnt they will all play the role that their predecessors have, in destroying the nations currency.

With their arrogance, they are all obviously hoping that they can pass the baton on so that it won’t happen on their watch. And because most leaders have a relatively short reign in relation to the lifespan of a currency, they often escape even though guilty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Paper Gold Tail Wagging the Golden Dog

July 23, 2021

THE PAPER GOLD TAIL WAGGING THE GOLDEN DOG

Investors may hope that the biggest financial experiment and debt bubble in history will last another 100 years. And they can pray that the currency system which has lost 98% of its value in the last 50 years will last another half century.

But that would be investing on a wing and a prayer with extremely poor odds of success.

Since neither the wing nor the prayer is likely to save investors from the greatest economic and financial collapse in global history, the need for protection or insurance is vital.

We are of course looking at probabilities and not certainties when we evaluate the risk of catastrophe.

With virtually all asset markets – stocks, bonds and property – at all time highs, investors are clearly judging the risk of failure to be nearer zero.

Personally I judge the risk of a collapse of markets and the economy to be between 95% and 99%.

So a risk range from 0% to 99% is quite a spread. An actuary would probably pitch it at 1 to 5 percent risk and sell catastrophe insurance on that basis.

Financial Insurance Dirt Cheap

With both investment markets and the insurance industry evaluating risk as virtually non-existent, that is the time when insurance is really underpriced or in simple terms dirt-cheap.

So what kind of insurance are we looking at here. The conventional investment market will look at hedging financial risk in all kinds of complex financial instruments in the form of derivatives.

What the so called “experts” don’t realize is that they hedge their investments with the same instruments that created the risk in the first place, such as paper gold. This would be a real financial tautology.

Or in other words: RUBBISH IN – RUBBISH OUT.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exponentiality Leads to Finality

June 4, 2021

EXPONENTIALITY LEADS TO FINALITY

As technological developments and markets go parabolic, we observe many market “experts”, even intelligent ones, forecasting that we are now in an exponential economic era. Thus many believe that this will go on forever. This is the typical attitude at market and economic tops and guarantees that THIS WILL NOT END WELL!

It is clearly absolute nonsense to believe that exponential expansion based on deficits, debts and fake money is the beginning of a new era. Anyone studying the economy and history of markets knows that exponential moves indicate the end of an era and not the beginning. As I have repeatedly said, history is our best teacher and it both rhymes and repeats itself. And history now gives us dire warnings.

ARE WE IN A PARADIGM SHIFT?

But for some reason, human beings always extrapolate current trends whether it is population growth or stock market rallies. We know from statements at historical tops like 1929, 1987 or 2000 that anyone, from politicians to investors at the time, believe that the trend will go on for ever and that the world has made a paradigm shift.

Many markets and investments are now going up exponentially and very few forecast an end to this euphoric state.

GLOBAL POPULATION TO HALVE?

Let’s start with global population. For thousands of years we saw a very slow and steady growth as the graph below shows. In the mid 1850s world population reached 1 billion.

Since the mid 1800s, we have seen exponential growth in population and we are now almost 8 billion people on earth.

Energy and oil in particular plays a major role in this growth, leading to increases in food production, industrialisation, better health care for people etc.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Everything is On Fire

May 20, 2021

EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE

“Everything is on fire” – Heraclitus (535-475 BC)

What Heraclitus meant was that the world is in a constant state of flux. But the big problem in the next few years is that the world will experience a fire of a magnitude never seen before in history.

I have in many articles and interviews pointed out how predictable events are (and people). This is particularly true in the world economy. Empires come and go, economies boom and bust and new currencies come and without fail always go. All this happens with regularity.

A GLOBAL FIRE IS COMING

But at certain times in history, the fire will be cataclysmic. And that is where the world is now.

Explosive fires have started everywhere already. Stock markets are on fire and so are property markets, as well as bond and debt markets. The problem is that fires are initially explosive but always end up implosive.

So right now we are in the explosive phase of the fires with markets all going parabolically exponential or should it be exponentially parabolic!

We are now at the end of a secular bull market in the world economy which on a global level has reached extremes never seen before in history.

Never before has the world seen an explosive fire of this magnitude, fuelled by uber-profligate money printing and credit expansion by central and commercial banks.

We have talked about inflation running wild and it is not just happening in stocks. Property markets are literarily exploding, especially the high end. We see this all over the world and not just in the US. In the UK for example, HSBC stated that March saw the highest number of mortgages EVER issued…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The $2.3 Quadrilliion Global Timebomb

April 19, 2021

THE $2.3 QUADRILLION GLOBAL TIMEBOMB

Credit Suisse is hours from collapse and the consequences could be a systemic failure of the financial system.

Disappointingly, my dream last night stopped there. So unfortunately I didn’t experience what actually happened.

As I warned in last week’s article on Archegos and Credit Suisse, investment banks have created a timebomb with the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives monster.

A few years ago, the BIS (Bank of International Settlement) in Basel reduced the $1.5 quadrillion to $600 trillion with a pen stroke. But the real gross figure was still $1.5q at the time. According to my sources, the real figure today is probably over $2 quadrillion.

A major part of the outstanding derivatives are OTC (over the counter) and hidden in off balance sheet special purpose vehicles.

LEVERAGED ASSETS JUST GO UP IN SMOKE

The $30 billion in Archegos derivatives that went up in smoke over a weekend is just the tip of the iceberg. The hedge fund Archegos lost everything and the normal uber-leveraged players Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Nomura etc lost at least $30 billion.

These investment banks are making casino bets that they can’t afford to lose. What their boards and top management don’t realise or understand is that the traders, supported by easily manipulated risk managers, are betting the bank on a daily basis.

Most of these ludicrously high bets are in the derivatives market. The management doesn’t understand how they work or what the risks are and the account managers and traders can bet billions on a daily basis with no skin in the game but massive potential upside if nothing goes wrong.

DEUTSCHE BANK – DERIVATIVES 600X EQUITY

But we are now entering an era when things will go wrong. The leverage is just too high and the bets totally out of proportion to the equity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Disoreder Will Come–As Confucious Warned

April 5, 2021

DISORDER WILL COME – AS CONFUCIUS WARNED

When bubbles burst, we will discover how very few superior men there actually are – as defined by Confucius:

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.” – Confucius

Superior man can exist at many different levels in society, not necessarily linked to money or investments. There will be many people without money who are prepared at an intellectual or psychological level. These people are probably the happiest since sadly many wealthy people worry about their money all the time rather than enjoy it.

In this piece I am talking primarily about preparedness in relation to one’s wealth.

PS Important Postscript at the end of the article.

FOCUS ON WEALTH PRESERVATION

The investors we meet in our business are people who are risk averse and therefore very much focus on wealth preservation. These investors buy physical gold because they are concerned about the excessive risks in markets. They want to protect and insure their wealth against unprecedented financial and currency risk. Like ourselves, these investors consider physical precious metals, stored outside a fragile banking system, as the ultimate form of wealth preservation.

But investment gold represents less than 0.5% of world financial assets. This means that a minuscule percentage of investors insure their wealth in gold. This is clearly surprising bearing in mind that over 5,000 years gold is the only money that has survived.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Egon von Greyerz, gold switzerland, inflation, risk, gold, precious metals, wealth, financial bubble, bubble, currency, banking system

Sisphean Printing Will Kill Dollar & Bonds

February 28, 2021

SISYPHEAN PRINTING WILL KILL DOLLAR & BONDS

Understanding four critical but simple puzzle pieces is all investors will need to take the flood that leads to fortune.

Why then will the majority of investors still take the wrong current and lose their ventures?

Well because investors feel more comfortable staying with the trend than anticipating change.

Understanding these four puzzle pieces will not just avoid total wealth destruction but also create an opportunity of a lifetime.

The next 5-10 years will involve the biggest transfer of wealth in history. Since most investors will hang on to the bubble markets in stocks and bonds, their wealth will be decimated.

As Brutus said in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves.
Or lose our ventures.”

FOUR PUZZLE PIECES TO CLARITY

So what are the four puzzle pieces that will lead to either fortune or misery.

They are:

1. Stocks
2. Currencies
3. Interest rates
4. Commodities

Just put these 4 pieces together and the conundrum of the direction of markets and the future of the world economy will be very clear.

But sadly most investors will find it difficult to join up the 4 pieces.

ETERNAL PRINTING

Have governments and central banks conditioned investors to eternal happiness by their profligate policies?

Yes, they most probably have. But happiness in this case is ephemeral and will end in “miseries”.

Central banks are now caught in Sisyphean task of printing money to eternity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Panicking” Central Banks to Power Gold Higher

September 23, 2020

“Panicking” Central Banks to Power Gold Higher

Panicking Central Banks to Power Gold Higher

This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: Institutions will be the drivers of gold demand, Ray Dalio issues warning about the greenback, and silver believers could soon be rewarded.

Institutional demand will power gold prices as central banks panic

As Egon von Greyerz notes via ZeroHedge, uncertainty has been the theme across the board this year, and it is unlikely to dissipate any time soon. von Greyerz believes that the uncertainty is tied to the end of a cycle, and while the full timeline of the cycle isn’t entirely clear, its social and economic aspects are directly tied to the abolishment of the gold standard in 1971.

This accelerated the precarious path that the Federal Reserve set for the U.S. when it was created in 1913, one of perpetually expanding debt and an economy based on faith. That there is no solution to the debt issue has been painfully demonstrated by various administrations. The Clinton administration from 1998-2001 and the current Trump administration have been among the most vocal regarding the issue, yet neither has been able to prevent the U.S. national debt from roughly doubling every 8 years.

von Greyerz sees central banks as being on exceptionally shaky grounds, as the aforementioned untethering started the fall of fiat currencies. Most of them have lost around 85% against gold since 2000, and all of them have lost upwards of 97% of their value since 1971. While the U.S. dollar stands out as exceptionally long-lasting, von Greyerz sees economic factors that are beginning to threaten it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Institutional Demand Will Drive Gold Ever Higher

September 18, 2020

INSTITUTIONAL DEMAND WILL DRIVE GOLD EVER HIGHER

Embrace uncertainty has long been one of my personal mottos. Because from this moment on, everything is uncertain whether it is your personal health, the stock market or the economy. Sure, we work with probabilities and the most likely is that the sun will rise tomorrow again and that I won’t die today. But we are now at a point in history when trend extrapolation is going to be not only precarious but also both foolish and impossible.

END OF A MAJOR CYCLE

That we are at the end of a major economic and social cycle is totally clear in my mind. But cycles don’t end overnight, if the world isn’t hit by a massive meteorite or nuclear bomb. Whether we are at the end of a 300 year cycle or a 2,000 year cycle, only future historians can tell the world. What is clear, at least to me, is that the end of this cycle started in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. Since then global debt has gone up exponentially and now we are in the very final stage of the cycle. This end of the end, that we are now in, was first evidenced by gold turning up at the beginning of this century.

This significant trend change in gold that started 20 years ago was a clear indicator that we are now seeing the end of the fiat money system. Even though manipulated through a corrupt paper market, gold still reveals the deceitful actions of governments and central banks. There is no better evidence than the fall of fiat in this century.

CENTRAL BANKS ARE PANICKING

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Buyer Beware–Gold ETFs Like GLD Own No Gold

August 15, 2020

BUYER BEWARE – GOLD ETFs LIKE GLD OWN NO GOLD

Two major asset classes are major beneficiaries of the unlimited money printing and credit creation that is now taking place globally. One of them will end in tears and the other one has just started a major secular bull market.

As the world economy and financial system is disintegrating, investors are under the illusion that all is well with many stock markets still not far from their all time bubble highs.

THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN STOCK AND THE REAL ECONOMY CONTINUES

Many companies and services are haemorrhaging cash and are not going to recover for years and some never. As very few people are travelling, many airlines, cruise lines, hotels and restaurants for example will not survive. This is a global industry that employs 330 million people and represents 10% of global GDP. International tourism could fall as much as 60-80% in 2020 according to some estimates. The car industry is 3% of global GDP and is expected to drop 25% in 2020.

Real and hidden unemployment is a major problem and if furlough or social benefits are stopped many people will not survive. As many can’t pay their rents they will also become homeless.

Currently 31 million Americans are on some kind of unemployment benefits. That is 20% of all workers.

But if we include workers who are not receiving any benefits the total unemployment is 30% according to Shadow Government Statistics. This is worse than in the 1930s depression.

DREAMLAND STOCK INVESTORS IGNORE DEFICITS

Stocks market investors still live in dreamland and translate all the bad news to good news as the continuous flood of printed money and credit inject liquidity. This has always worked before so why won’t it this time? No one knows what the US deficit will be at the end of calendar 2020 but it could easily be $10 trillion as the debt grows to over $30t and on to $40 trillion within a year or two.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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