I’ve written countless articles on the topic of central planning and its failures, practical, economic, political and moral. In some cases, the arrogance of the central planners results in real devastation, often in actual loss of life and property, and the price for their mistakes is paid by not just the people they directly hurt but even by the generations to come. In other cases, their blind ego and their unshakable belief that they can do no wrong, for they know better than...
Read More »Greetings from Switzerland
I’m back from Geneva where, among other things, I briefly visited the headquarter of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to express my appreciation for this organization. Check out my picture :-). In addition I enjoyed a conversation with Jose El Niño – you will find the podcast under the below link. Claudio Grass, Switzerland If you want to listen, please click on the following link to the podcast:...
Read More »“Gold is an insurance policy against the stupidity of governments”
Interview with Bob Moriarty As I mentioned many times before, trying to accurately forecast economic events or to “time the market” is a fool’s errand. To the chagrin of all central planners, mainstream analysts and all kinds of “experts”, the economy is a vastly complex, living organism, with too many parameters and too many moving parts to make it predictable or tamable. That being said, understanding monetary and geopolitical history certainly helps spot larger patterns and...
Read More »The rise of the Anti-Work movement
Campaigns to improve working conditions, union-led protests, strikes for better wages and tensions between workers and employers have always been part of our social, political and economic reality and are really nothing new. After all, the relationship between a person who sells their time and skills and the one who “buys” them is by nature a competitive one, though it doesn’t have to be as contentious, toxic and hostile as we’ve come to know it. There is always fine balance to be...
Read More »Government interventions and the Cobra effect – Part II
Part II of II Unsound money, unsound society Of course, one of the most important and consequential parts of the incredibly complex organism that is the economy is money itself. It is its lifeblood and as the song goes, “it makes the world go round”. Therefore, manipulating the currency itself is one the most dangerous and hubristic things a central planner can do, which probably explains why it’s their favorite pastime. Ever since the gold standard was officially...
Read More »Government interventions and the Cobra effect – Part II
Part II of II Unsound money, unsound society Of course, one of the most important and consequential parts of the incredibly complex organism that is the economy is money itself. It is its lifeblood and as the song goes, “it makes the world go round”. Therefore, manipulating the currency itself is one the most dangerous and hubristic things a central planner can do, which probably explains why it’s their favorite pastime. Ever since the gold standard was officially abandoned,...
Read More »“The bank and the government have essentially blended into one entity”
Interview with Karim Taleb Part I of II: A lot has been said and written about the impact of the Covid crisis on the global economy and on the prospects of a strong recovery in 2021. Especially since the start of the year, there seems to be a consensus among government officials, institutional leaders and mainstream market analysts and pundits, pointing to an extremely positive outlook. And yet, many investors and market observers who understand monetary history, who have...
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