My latest interview about Corona, Liberty, Private Property, Authoritarism, and a fear-mongering global media campaign, which I call borderline criminal [embedded content]
Read More »Corona crisis: the cost of the response – Part II
Responding to the response This time around, both central banks and governments have gone “all-in” in their response packages and the scale of the support and liquidity provided dwarf the measures that we saw in the 2008 crisis. Of course, the question remains whether this will all be enough to help save the economy from these massive self-inflicted wounds. However, one thing is clear so far and that is the uniformity of the political handling of the economic crisis. All...
Read More »Corona crisis: the cost of the response – Part I
The absolutely unprecedented wave of shutdowns, new restrictions and regulations that the coronavirus epidemic has triggered on a global scale is truly hard to quantify. We’ve simply never seen anything like it before. Never in the history of mankind have countries all over the globe intentionally hit the kill switch on their own economies and simultaneously pulled the brakes on anything even remotely resembling productive activity. Some of the consequences of these radical...
Read More »Is gold still a safe haven?
There have been moments in recent months when many gold owners, myself included, have asked themselves whether gold might have lost its safe haven status, at least in the western world. Was it enough for two generations, who grew up in a paper money system, to forget the history and the 5000-year-old status of gold as real money? And yet, just as these doubts began to arise, reality struck back and decisively dispersed them. A few hours prior to writing this, a surprising number...
Read More »A crisis is a terrible thing to waste – Part I
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” -Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010. Only a couple of weeks ago, if anyone told you that your entire country would be basically shutting down, that events and public gatherings would be outlawed, that you’d be looking at empty shelves in your local supermarket and that the global stock market would...
Read More »A crisis is a terrible thing to waste – Part II
“Trust the state. Do what they say. They’ve never lied to us before, have they?” – Daniel McAdams, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Central bankers are washing their hands too Looking at the carnage that stock markets have suffered, it’s not surprising to see central banks jumping in to save the day. It’s even less surprising to see them all deploy the very same remedies that have long stopped working, only in astronomically higher doses. Of course, rate cutting and...
Read More »A crisis is a terrible thing to waste – Part I
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” -Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff from 2009 to 2010. Only a couple of weeks ago, if anyone told you that your entire country would be basically shutting down, that events and public gatherings would be outlawed, that you’d be looking at empty shelves in your local supermarket and that the global stock market would be on the brink...
Read More »Media hysteria: Lessons from Brexit for citizens and for investors
The coronavirus epidemic has instilled real terror in the hearts of many investors, triggering a rude awaking to the actual state of the economy and panic unseen since 2008. This fear, that has spread among investors as it has among the general public, has been largely fueled by the coverage of the threat. Mainstream media, having themselves been threatened with extinction over the last decade, due to rising public mistrust, irrelevance in the age of the Internet and social media,...
Read More »Socialism and Gold
Most people assume that the central bank prints money when it buys bonds. They further assume that this increase in the quantity of money causes an increase in the general price level. And, this leads them to assume that the value of the money is 1 / P (P is the general price level). Therefore, when the central bank prints money to buy bonds, it is diluting the value of the money held by everyone—in proportion to the amount printed divided by the total amount in...
Read More »Silver and Platinum: buying opportunities gone unnoticed
Gold has been making headlines in recent days, as its price skyrocketed close to $1,700, a rise that most analysts have attributed to the spread of the coronavirus. The fears over its economic impact have sent global stock markets tumbling and, as is usually and reliably the case, panicked investors rushed to the safe haven of gold, en masse, cause a surge in demand. While the spike is indeed noteworthy and while it does, once again, confirm the fact that gold remains a dependable...
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