We don’t have to kill the king, if we just can ignore the king

Looking at the damage inflicted upon supply chains, production facilities and global trade in particular, how quickly could these operations snap back even if all COVID-related restrictions were lifted tomorrow? Do you think we’ll eventually get back to business as usual, or have we now experienced a permanent shift to a “new normal”?

Outlook and wider impact. As showcased during the debates and in the entire campaign rhetoric, politicians in the US but also in Europe, are solely focused on promoting solutions that only serve to paper over the problems and address the symptoms of the disease.

Claudio Grass (CG): Overall, apart from the obvious economic consequences of the crisis, do you also see geopolitical and social ones, on a wider scale? Given all these “moving parts”, from the upcoming US election and internal frictions in the EU to the Hong Kong tensions and the rising public discontent in Latin America, where do expect the chips to fall once this is over? 

After intense negotiations, long days and nights of clashes and a distinctly sour note underlying the entire summit, European Union leaders finally agreed on an unprecedented 1.82 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) budget and COVID recovery package.

While the economic forces that drive this rush to precious metals are clearly understandable, there are other, deeper and less obvious factors that must also be taken into account. This “fear of uncertainty”, which pushes demand for gold higher as it has done so many times in the past, is different this time.

As we move deeper and deeper into this covid crisis, more and more people understand that there’s a lot more to fear besides the disease itself. As the economic impact and the full scale of the damage caused by the lockdowns and the shutdowns become undeniable, there are too many questions lacking any sort of convincing answer and the future for so many employees, business owners, investors and ordinary savers seems bleak and uncertain.

In this surreal policy environment, how has the role and the investment process of the value investor evolved, especially over the last decade?  How can one still identify value in a world of subsidized binge borrowing, extreme indebtedness, and stock buybacks? 

As [D] Mayor de Blasio shuts down schools and restaurants in NYC yet AGAIN, and as cops in Australia arrest women on beaches for traveling outside of 5 KM from their homes, it’s clear that tyrants around the world are openly waging war against their own people. Claudio Grass joins me to discuss.