Home » Posts tagged 'alasdair macleod'

Tag Archives: alasdair macleod

This article looks at the collateral side of financial transactions and some significant problems that are already emerging.

At a time when there is a veritable tsunami of dollar credit in foreign hands overhanging markets, it is obvious that continually falling bond prices will ensure bear markets in all financial asset values leading to dollar liquidation. This unwinding corrects an accumulation of foreign-owned dollars and dollar-denominated assets since the Second World War both in and outside the US financial system.

Furthermore, collapsing collateral values, which are increasingly required backing for changing values in over $400 trillion nominal in interest rate swaps are a new driver for the crisis, forcing bond liquidation, driving prices down and yields higher: we are in a doom-loop.

What action can the authorities take to ensure that counterparty risk from widespread failures won’t take out inadequately capitalised regulated exchanges?

It seems that they acted some time ago by giving central security depositories (The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, Euroclear, and Clearstream) the right to pool securities on their registers and lend them out as collateral. Your investments, which you think you may own can be absorbed into the failing financial system without your knowledge.

This seems particularly relevant, given the appointment of JPMorgan Chase as custodian of the large gold ETF, SPDR Trust (ticker GLD). In a test case in the New York courts concerning Lehman’s failure, JPMC was given legal protection should it seize its customer’s assets.

This important erosion of property rights is poorly understood. But as the financial distortions are unwound, leading to unintended consequences such as bank failures and ultimately the collapse of the dollar-based fiat currency regime, the implication is that holders of physical gold ETFs will be left owning an empty shell at a time when they might have expected some protection from the collapse of the value of credit.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Hedging the End of Fiat

August 28, 2023

Hedging the End of Fiat

It is slowly coming clear that the fiat dollar’s hegemony is drawing to a close. That’s what the BRICS summit in Johannesburg is all about — rats, if you like, deserting the dollar’s ship. With the dollar’s backing being no more than a precarious faith in it, it is bound to be sold down by foreign holders. Being only fiat, it could even become valueless, threatening to take down the other western alliance fiat currencies as well.

How do you protect your paper wealth from this outcome? Some swear by bitcoin and others by gold.

This article looks at what is likely to emerge as a replacement currency system, and concludes that from practical and legal aspects, bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency industry will fail with fiat, while mankind will return to gold, as it has always done in the past when state control over currency fails

Introduction

It is gradually dawning on market participants that the era of fiat currencies is drawing to a close. Monetarists, who first warned us of the inflationary consequences of the expansion of money and credit were also the first to warn us that the slowdown in monetary expansion would lead to recession, and since then we have seen broad money statistics flatline, with bank lending beginning to contract. This is interpreted by macroeconomists as the end of inflation, and the return to lower interest rates to stave off recession.

Unfortunately, this black-and-white interpretation of either inflation or recession but never both has been challenged by bond yields around the world which are rising to new highs. And the charts tell us that they are likely to go considerably higher. Consequently, conviction that inflation of producer and consumer prices will prove to be a temporary phenomenon is infected with doubt.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The global bank credit crisis

August 24, 2023

The global bank credit crisis

Globally, further falls in consumer price inflation are now unlikely and there are yet further interest rate increases to come. Bond yields are already on the rise, and a new phase of a banking crisis will be triggered.

This article looks at the factors that have come together to drive interest rates higher, destabilising the entire global banking system. The contraction of bank credit is in its early stages, and that alone will push up interest costs for borrowers. We have an old fashioned credit crunch on our hands.

A new bout of price inflation, which more accurately is an acceleration of falling purchasing power for currencies, also leads to higher interest rates. Savage bear markets in financial and property values are bound to ensue, driving foreign investors to repatriate their funds.

This will unwind much of the $32 trillion of foreign investment in the fiat dollar which has accumulated in the last fifty-two years. And BRICS’s deliberations for replacing the dollar as a trade settlement medium could not come at a worse time.

Global banking risks are increasing

Gradually, the alarm bells over credit are beginning to ring. Monetarist and Austrian School economists are hammering the point home about broad money, which almost everywhere is contracting. It is overwhelmingly comprised of deposits at the commercial banks. And this week, even China’s command economy has had credit problems exposed, with another large property developer, Country Garden Holdings missing bond payments.

A global cyclical downturn in bank credit is long overdue, and that is what we currently face. Empirical evidence of previous cycles, particularly 1929—1932, is that fear can spread though the banking cohort like wildfire as interbank credit lines are cut, loans are called in, and collateral liquidated…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Why the dollar is finished

July 23, 2023

Why the dollar is finished

Last week in my Goldmoney Insight, I analysed the rationale for a new gold backed trade settlement currency on the agenda of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on 22—24 August. This article is about the consequences for the dollar-based fiat currency regime.

There is strong evidence that planning for this new trade settlement currency has been in the works for some time and has been properly considered. That being so, we are witnessing the initial step away from fiat to gold backed currencies. Without the burden of expensive welfare commitments, all the attendees in Johannesburg can back or tie their currency values to gold with less difficulty than our welfare-dependent nations. And it is now in their commercial interests to do so.

We have been brainwashed with Keynesian misconceptions and the state theory of money for so long that our statist establishments and market participants fail to see the logic of sound money, and the threat it presents to our own currencies and economies. But there is a precedent for this foolishness from John Law, the proto-Keynesian who bankrupted France in 1720. I explain the similarities. That experience, and why it led to the destruction of Law’s livre currency illustrates our own dilemma and its likely outcome.

It’s not just a comparison between fiat currency and gold. America’s financial position is dire, more so than is generally realised. The euro is additionally threatened with extinction because of flaws in the euro system, and the UK is already in a deeper credit crisis than most commentators understand.

Introduction

On 7 July, news leaked out and was then confirmed by Russian state media that the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg would have a proposal on the agenda for a new gold-backed currency to be used exclusively for trade settlement and commodity pricing…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The bell tolls for fiat

July 16, 2023

The bell tolls for fiat

The importance of Russia’s announcement that a new gold-backed trade currency is on the BRICS meeting agenda for August 22—24 in Johannesburg seems to have gone completely over everyone’s heads, with mainstream media not even reporting it.

This is a mistake. China and Russia know that if they are to succeed in removing the dollar from their sphere of influence, they have to come up with a better alternative. They also know they have to consolidate their trade partners into a formidable bloc, so plans are afoot to consolidate BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the Eurasian Economic Union along with those nations who wish to join in. It will be a super-group embracing most of Asia (including the Middle East), Africa, and Latin America.

The groundwork for the new currency has been laid by Sergei Glazyev and is considerably more advanced than generally realised.

This article explains why Russia and China are now prepared to fully back Glazyev’s expanded project. For Russia, it is also now imperative to destabilise the dollar as a deliberate escalation of the financial war against America and NATO. China’s priority is no longer to protect her export trade, but to ensure that her African and Latin American suppliers are not destabilised by higher dollar interest rates.

Introduction

“The BRICS’s introduction of a gold-backed currency, which is supported by 41 countries with large and influential economies, will weaken the dollar and the euro and will benefit countries such as Iran, while Iranians in possession of gold will experience a wealth increase,” Mousavi added [the head of the South Asia Department at Iran’s Foreign Ministry]. The Russian government confirmed a day earlier that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa would introduce a new trading currency backed by gold.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Time to trash Triffin

April 12, 2023

Time to trash Triffin

The dollar-based credit bubble is imploding, and emerging economies are seeking protection by accepting trade settlement in other currencies. The US policy of threatening regime change, currency destabilisation, or other means of ensuring nations remain in its sphere of influence are now failing.

Mainstream economists in the West insist the dollar is irreplaceable, and that as a trade settlement medium China’s yuan is strictly limited. Referring to Triffin’s dilemma, China would have to run deficits to provide the necessary currency liquidity. But they ignore the role of bank credit, which can be expanded at will to meet trade settlement demand.

Furthermore, China’s exchanges offer hedging facilities into physical gold, attracting Middle Eastern energy exporters away from petrodollars, until the new trade settlement currency planned by Sergey Glazyev comes into existence.

For evidence of Russia’s intentions to reintroduce gold into trade settlement, a translation of the semi-official position penned by Glazyev jointly with his deputy is appended to this article.

Increasing systemic risk in US, European, and Japanese banking systems is accelerating the movement of international trade settlement away from fiat dollars into safer havens. These are or will be ultimately backed by physical gold.

The world is changing before our eyes…

Quietly, informed opinion is beginning to accept that America has lost its global influence. Even Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico are openly planning for a future where their international trade will turn away from North America and Western Europe to an Asia firmly bound into the rules of China and Russia — rules that insist on evolving payments away from the dollar to their own currencies or into trade settlement currencies being planned.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Gold’s return as money

February 18, 2023

Gold’s return as money

The consequences of Russia and her Asian allies embracing gold backing for their currencies are poorly understood in western capital markets. This move could lead to the destruction of the global fiat currency system.

According to evidence which is widely ignored in western capital markets, a move by Russia to put a new trade settlement currency and possibly the rouble as well onto a new gold standard is becoming a certainty. As a weapon of mass fiat currency destruction, the timing is probably bound up in on-the-ground military considerations, which are already showing signs of escalating in Eastern Ukraine.

As well as using gold to undermine the western currency system, a return to a credible gold standard has significant advantages for Russia and for her allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union, BRICS+, and all their commodity suppliers beyond Asia. At the same time, it would destroy the west’s fiat currencies and financial system.

This article explains how one part of the global economy can thrive while the other collapses.

Introduction

Recently, I have written about the signals emanating from Russia that President Putin is minded to re-adopt sound money by returning to some sort of gold standard. We do not yet know the details, but consider what he said at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in June last year:

“Caught in the inflationary storm, many nations are asking, why bother exchanging goods for dollars and euros when they are losing value right before our eyes? Indeed, the economy of imaginary wealth is being inevitably replaced by the economy of real valuables and hard assets.

“According to the IMF, today’s global foreign currency reserves contain 7.1 trillion dollars and 2.5 trillion euros. And this money is depreciating at an annual rate of about 8%…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

A tale of two worlds

February 5, 2023

A tale of two worlds

In the war between the western alliance and the Asian axis, the media focus is on the Ukrainian battlefield. The real war is in currencies, with Russia capable of destroying the dollar.

So far, Putin’s actions have been relatively passive. But already, both Russia and China have accumulated enough gold to implement gold standards. It is now overwhelmingly in their interests to do so.

From Sergey Glazyev’s recent article in a Russian business newspaper, it is clear that settlement of trade balances between members, dialog partners, and associate members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) optionally will be in gold. Furthermore, the Russian economy would benefit enormously from a decline in borrowing rates from current levels of over 13% to a level more consistent with sound money.

To understand the consequences, in this article the comparison is made between the western alliance’s fiat currency and deficit spending regime and the Russian-Chinese axis’s planned industrial revolution for some 3.8 billion people in the SCO family. China has a remarkable savings rate, which will underscore the investment capital for a rapid increase in Asian industrialisation, without inflationary consequences.

With a new round of military action in Ukraine shortly to kick off, it will be in Putin’s interest to move from passivity to financial aggression. It will not take much for him to undermine the entire western fiat currency system — a danger barely recognised by a gung-ho NATO military complex.

Introduction

In the geopolitical tussle between the old and new hegemons, we see the best of strategies and the worst of strategies, where belief is pitted against credulity. It is the season of light and the season of darkness, the spring of hope and the winter of despair…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The evolution of credit and debt in 2023

January 15, 2023

The evolution of credit and debt in 2023

The evidence strongly suggests that a combined interest rate, economic and currency crisis for the US and its western alliance will continue in 2023.

This article focuses on credit, its constraints, and why quantitative easing has already crowded out private sector activity. Adjusting M2 money supply for accumulating QE indicates the degree to which this has driven the US tax base into deep recession. And the wider effects on credit in the economy should not be ignored.

After a brief partial recovery from the covid crisis in US government finances, they are likely to start deteriorating again due to a deepening recession of private sector activity. Funding these deficits depends on foreign inward investment flows, which are faltering. Rising interest rates and an ongoing bear market make funding from this source hard to envisage.

Meanwhile, from his public statements President Putin is fully aware of these difficulties, and a consequence of the western alliance increasing their support and involvement in Ukraine makes it almost certain that Putin will take the opportunity to push the dollar over the edge.

Credit is much more than bank deposits

Economics is about credit, and its balance sheet twin, debt. Debt is either productive, in which case it can extinguish credit in due course, or it is not, and credit must be extended or written off. Money almost never comes into it. Money is distinguished from credit by having no counterparty risk, which credit always has. The role of money is to stabilise the purchasing power of credit. And the only legal form of money is metallic; gold, silver, or copper usually rendered into coin for enhanced fungibility.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Inflation, recession, and declining US hegemony

December 24, 2022

Inflation, recession, and declining US hegemony

In the distant future, we might look back on 2022 and 2023 as pivotal years. So far, we have seen the conflict between America and the two Asian hegemons emerge into the open, leading to a self-inflicted energy crisis on the western alliance. The forty-year trend of declining interest rates has ended, replaced by a new rising trend the full consequences and duration of which are as yet unknown.

The western alliance enters the New Year with increasing fears of recession. Monetary policy makers face an acute dilemma: do they prioritise inflation of prices by raising interest rates, or do they lean towards yet more monetary stimulation to ensure that financial markets stabilise, their economies do not suffer recession, and government finances are not driven into crisis?

This is the conundrum that will play out in 2023 for the US, UK, EU, Japan, and others in the alliance camp. But economic conditions are starkly different in continental Asia. China is showing the early stages of making an economic comeback. Russia’s economy has not been badly damaged by sanctions, as the western media would have us believe. All members of Asian trade organisations are enjoying the benefits of cheap oil and gas while the western alliance turns its back on fossil fuels.

The message sent to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and even to OPEC+ is that their future markets are with the Asian hegemons. Predictably, they are all gravitating into this camp. They are abandoning the American-led sphere of influence.

2023 will see the consequences of Saudi Arabia ending the petrodollar. Energy exporters are feeling their way towards new commercial arrangements in a bid to replace yesterday’s dollar. There’s talk of a new Asian trade settlement currency…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Geopolitics: the world is splitting into two

August 22, 2022

Geopolitics: the world is splitting into two

While we are being distracted by Ukraine, President Putin has advanced his geopolitical goals materially. Aided and abetted by President Xi, Putin is taking the Asian continent into his control. That mission is well on its way to being achieved. He now awaits the winter months to finally force the EU to reject America’s hegemony. Only then, will the western end of the Eurasian continent be truly free of American interference.

This article explains how he is achieving his strategic goals. It examines the geopolitics of the Asian landmass and the nations tied to it, which are commercially and financially turning their backs on the US-led western alliance.

I look at geopolitics from President Putin of Russia’s viewpoint, since he is the only national leader who seems to have a clear grasp of his long-term objectives. His active strategy conforms closely with Halford Mackinder’s predictive analysis of nearly 120 years ago. Mackinder is regarded by many experts as the founder of geopolitics.

Putin is determined to remove the American threat to his Western borders by squeezing the EU to that end. But he is also building political relationships based on control of global fossil-fuel supplies — a pathway opened for him by American and European obsessions over climate change. In partnership with China, the consolidation of his power over the Eurasian landmass has progressed rapidly in recent weeks.

For the Western Alliance, financially and economically his timing is particularly awkward, coinciding with the end of a 40-year period of declining interest rates, rising consumer price inflation, and a deepening recession driven by contracting bank credit.

It is the continuation of a financial war by other means, and it looks like Putin has an unbeatable hand. He is on course to push our fragile fiat currency based financial system over the edge.

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

The evolution of credit

March 19, 2022

The evolution of credit

After fifty-one years from the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement, the system of fiat currencies appears to be moving towards a crisis point for the US dollar as the international currency. The battle over global energy, commodity, and grain supplies is the continuation of an intensifying financial war between the dollar and the renminbi and rouble.

It is becoming clear that the scale of an emerging industrial revolution in Asia is in stark contrast with Western decline, a population ratio of 87 to 13. The dollar’s role as the sole reserve currency is not suited for this reality.

Commentators speculate that the current system’s failings require a global reset. They think in terms of it being organised by governments, when the governments’ global currency system is failing. Beholden to Keynesian macroeconomics, the common understanding of money and credit is lacking as well.

This article puts money, currency, and credit, and their relationships in context. It points out that the credit in an economy is far greater than officially recorded by money supply figures and it explains how relatively small amounts of gold coin can stabilise an entire credit system.

It is the only lasting solution to the growing fiat money crisis, and it is within the power of at least some central banks to implement gold coin standards by mobilising their reserves.
Evolution or revolution?

There are big changes afoot in the world’s financial and currency system. Fiat currencies have been completely detached from gold for fifty-one years from the ending of the Bretton Woods Agreement and since then they have been loosely tied to the King Rat of currencies, the dollar. Measured by money, which is and always has been only gold, King Rat has lost over 98% of its relative purchasing power in that time…

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

When normality is exposed as a Ponzi

March 5, 2022

When normality is exposed as a Ponzi

Putin’s hubris, yes-men for generals, lack of fighting conviction among the men, poor logistics and strong Ukrainian leadership and determination have combined to turn the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a military quagmire.

Meanwhile, the West has upped the stakes in a financial war. The underlying assumption is that the Russian economy is weak and those of the Western allies are stronger. A few key metrics shows this is incorrect. The underlying resilience of the Russian economy and its financial system is not generally understood, and instead EU sanctions could end up undermining the whole euro system and the euro itself.

This article looks at how errors on the battlefield are likely to bring the financial and economic war between the West and Russia out into the open. By suspending access to them, the West has made the mistake of proving to Russia (and all other national central banks) the ultimate uselessness of currency reserves and the benefits of gold. As well as leading to the likely collapse of the entire euro system, this article explains how this financial war could end up with a de facto gold standard for the rouble and call an end for the entire fiat currency Ponzi scheme.

The destruction of the global fiat Ponzi scheme is a step closer

Being increasingly debased, western currencies serve to conceal deteriorating economic conditions, particularly in the US, EU, UK, and Japan. In China, less so perhaps. But China faces an old-fashioned property crisis which is sure to lead to further currency expansion and therefore, debasement of the renminbi. In this article about the state of the financial war between the US, UK and EU on one side, collectively the West, and Russia on the other, we focus on how the invasion of Ukraine is evolving into open financial warfare.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Money supply and rising interest rates

January 8, 2022

Money supply and rising interest rates

The establishment, including the state, central banks and most investors are thoroughly Keynesian, the latter category having profited greatly in recent decades from their slavish following of the common meme.

That is about to change. The world of continual Keynesian stimulus is coming to its inevitable end with prices rising beyond the authorities’ control. Being blinded by neo-Keynesian beliefs, no one is prepared for it.

This article explains why interest rates are set to rise substantially in this new year. It draws on evidence from the inflation crisis of the 1970s, points out the similarities and the fact that currency debasement today is far greater and more global than fifty years ago. In the UK, half the current rate of monetary inflation for half the time — just for one year — led to gilt coupons of over 15%. And today we have Fed watchers who can only envisage a Fed funds rate climbing to 2% at most…

A key factor will be the discrediting of this Keynesian hopium, likely to be replaced by a belated conversion to the monetarism that propelled Milton Friedman into the public eye when the same thing happened in the mid-seventies. The realisation that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon will come too late for policy makers to stop it.

The situation is closely examined for America, its debt, and its dollar. But the problems do not stop there: the risks to the global system of fiat currencies and credit from rising interest rates and the debt traps that will be sprung are acute everywhere.

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

Gold and silver prospects for 2022

December 27, 2021

Gold and silver prospects for 2022

It has been a disappointing year for profit-seeking precious metal investors, but for those few of us looking to accumulate gold and silver as the ultimate insurance against runaway inflation it has been an unexpected bonus.

After reviewing the current year to gain a perspective for 2022, this article summarises the outlook for the dollar, the euro, and their financial systems. The key issue is the interest rate outlook, and how that will impact financial markets, which are wholly unprepared for the consequences of the massive expansions of currency and credit over the last two years.

We look briefly at geopolitical factors and conclude that Presidents Putin and Xi have assessed President Biden and his administration to be fundamentally weak. Putin is now driving a wedge between the US and the UK on one side and the pusillanimous, disorganised EU nations on the other, using energy supplies and the massing of troops on the Ukrainian border as levers to apply pressure. Either the situation escalates to an invasion of Ukraine (unlikely) or America backs off under pressure from the EU. Meanwhile, China will continue to build its presence in the South China Sea and its global influence through its silk roads. Less appreciated is that China and Russia continue to accumulate gold and are ditching the dollar.

And finally, we look at silver, which is set to become the star performer against fiat currencies, driven by a combination of poor liquidity, ESG-driven industrial demand and investor realisation that its price has much catching up to do compared with lithium, uranium, and copper. The potential for a fiat currency collapse is thrown in for nothing.
2021 — That was the year that was

This year has been disappointing for precious metals investors. Figure 1 shows how gold and silver have performed since 31 December 2020.

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

Tag Archives: alasdair macleod

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts