Claudio Grass

The Fascist Boogeyman awakes again The threat of a far-right takeover has been around for at least three decades in Europe and Italy has been one of the best “candidates” for the “beginning of the end” since the last European crisis ten years ago. Back then it was the Lega, led by Salvini, that fueled the scaremongering campaigns of the mainstream press, labeling every conservative policy point as basically pure fascism. Of course, none of those grim scenarios actually...

In the case of Italy, it will take a whole lot more – Part I of II When the collapse of the Italian government was officially announced, on July 21, many political observers both in Europe and across the rest of the West, were aghast. If Mario Draghi, the central banking messiah of the entire Old World, the man, the legend, the hero who rescued the Eurozone and its precious made up currency from the brink of complete annihilation, failed to govern Italy, then those “crazy...

Part II of II, by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland “Reverse currency wars”? Although the parity event may have captured the attention of the mainstream financial press and most western citizens, there’s a much bigger shift that has been going on in the background, which received much less coverage. We are all familiar with the concept of a currency war. In essence, it is basically one of the most crude examples of governments colluding with their central banks (the...

Part I of II, by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland There’s been a flurry of articles, news stories and headlines lately over the developments in the FOREX market, specifically over the moves of the EUR/USD currency pair. As headwinds on all levels, economic, geopolitical and social, got a lot worse in recent months for the Eurozone, the news-breaking, headline-dominating “parity” event finally came about, with the euro even breaking below parity on July 13, and it seems to...

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Part II of II, by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg, Switzerland An astonishing acceleration Even though the downhill trajectory we saw over the last decades in terms of property rights was bad enough, nothing could have ever prepared us for what the covid crisis would bring. Even those of us who have read enough history to know that there’s really no line that the State will not cross in its fervent pursuit of absolute power were sincerely surprised; how could it be that the ruling...

Part I of II, by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg, Switzerland It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to argue that private property rights, as understood by classic liberal thinkers, by those who embrace Austrian economic theory and by all member of an enlightened society, are not only the cornerstone, but also the last defense of human civilization and the Western way of life in particular. Nothing stands a chance without this premise. No prosperity can ever come about or even maintained, none...

This not the first time that Václav Klaus’ astute observations and experience-based predictions turn out to be shockingly accurate years later, and I’m pretty confident it will not be the last. Even before the examples that follow and that he clearly laid out in his address at the Marmara Forum, the former President of the Czech Republic has repeatedly proven to be quite prophetic in his assessment of the future.  From his critique and his warnings about the many vulnerabilities...

The great Ludwig von Mises first described the concept of a crack-up boom as part of the Austrian business cycle theory, based on real life events that to an unsuspecting bystander might have appeared unconnected, or perhaps even quite bizarre and counterintuitive. Indeed, such a bystander might think the same of today’s economy and would likely have trouble making sense of the picture painted by stock markets, by our monetary and fiscal policies and their inflationary impact and by...

After months of consumer price increases and after countless working households found themselves in dire financial straits struggling to make ends meet, in the late May, President Biden finally revealed his grand plan to fight inflation in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. The much-anticipated response to the cost of living crisis that has been ravaging the nation sadly did not contain the silver bullet that so many Americans were hoping for. Instead, it consisted of obvious...