Tag Archive: Claudio Grass

The bitcoin surge in its proper context

Over the last few weeks we’ve been witnessing a historic surge in the Bitcoin price, a seemingly unstoppable ride that the mainstream media headlines can hardly keep up with. Especially following the news that Elon Musks’ Tesla bought $1.5 in the cryptocurrency, sending it to new record highs, most of the media coverage appears to be focused on all the wrong things.

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“The bank and the government have essentially blended into one entity”

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.

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Gold Is Money – Everything Else Is Credit – J.P. Morgan – Part II

Rafi Farber, pen name Austrolib, is the publisher of The End Game Investor, a daily market commentary written from an Austrian economics perspective focusing on precious metals, the Comex, and monetary analysis. His work is followed by leaders in the precious metals industry including Eric Sprott. He also writes a weekly column on the gaming industry at CalvinAyre.

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Unless the US stops printing money, the dollar will collapse

Claudio Grass (CG): This crisis has shaken a lot of industries and core functions of the global economy and international trade. How do you assess its impact on the most important part of the machine, the banking system? Do you see risks there that investors should be worrying about?

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“The U.S. economy felt like a balloon in search of a needle” – Part II

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? 

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“The U.S. economy felt like a balloon in search of a needle” – Part I

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.

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A blueprint for a European superstate

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.

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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? 

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What lies ahead for gold in 2020

Over the last few months, gold’s performance has been remarkable. Many market observers and mainstream analysts have pointed to various geopolitical developments in their efforts to explain away the bullishness as a reaction to whatever happens to be in the headlines at the time.

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Investing in crypto the sound way!

I have long been fascinated by the far-reaching consequences and the great potential of the wave of new technologies and ideas that emerged with the crypto revolution. While most of us first came into contact with these concepts in 2017, this tectonic shift that is only just beginning has been in the making for nearly a decade. Now, we begin to see the basic ideas and tools take shape and give rise to endless exciting possibilities that can affect...

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The destruction of civilization – implications of extreme monetary interventions

When I was asked to write an article about the impact of negative interest rates and negative yielding bonds, I thought this is a chance to look at the topic from a broader perspective. There have been lots of articles speculating about the possible implications and focusing on their impact in the short run, but it’s not very often that an analysis looks a bit further into the future, trying to connect money and its effect on society itself. 

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QE by any other name

“The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution. “ – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action In less than a year, we have witnessed an unprecedented monetary policy rollercoaster by the Federal Reserve, which began with a momentous U-turn in the central bank’s guidance in January, and has continued to escalate ever since.

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The Growing Opposition Against the ECB

Few investors and market observers were really surprised when Mario Draghi announced the ECB’s next massive easing package in mid-September. Cutting rates further into negative territory and the revival of QE were largely expected sooner or later, as the “whatever it takes” outgoing ECB President is now faced with a wide economic slowdown in the Eurozone.

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A buying opportunity in precious metals

After a remarkable run over the past few months, gold and silver now appear to have entered a period of consolidation. Many speculators and short-term focused investors have sold their positions fearing a correction, while mainstream market commentators fuel these fears, with analyses that proclaim “the end of the road” for gold and silver.

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A turning point in the bond market?

We’ve recently seen a lot of coverage and even more “expert analyses” on the state of the bond market, to the extent that the average investor, or the average citizen for that matter, is likely to be overwhelmed and very confused about what it all means. Experts from the institutional side and defenders of the current monetary direction argue that it is all the result of policy choices, that’s it’s all under control and that we really shouldn’t...

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Is it platinum’s time to shine?

Even with seasoned precious metals investors, it is often the case that platinum gets overlooked, while gold and silver dominate the conversation over which metal affords the best long-term protection of one’s wealth. Nevertheless, platinum has proved to be an excellent store of value, while it also offers a number of interesting advantages as a long-term investment that could play an important part in a conservative and proactive strategy.

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“The Eurozone faces the worst combination of economic and systemic risk”

The past few months have been an exciting time for gold investors, as the precious metal has seen a spike in demand after serious economic concerns and geopolitical tensions unsettled the markets. Many mainstream analysts have pointed to a number of recent events, from the US-China trade war escalations to the inverted yield curve, to explain the recent gold rally.

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“More of the same” at the ECB increases gold’s appeal

“The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization.” Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos. It took multiple meetings and over 50 hours of official negotiations for EU leaders to reach an agreement on the appointments for the top jobs of the EU and the ECB, but in mid-July the results finally came in.

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Gold is the secret knowledge of the financial universe

Every seasoned gold investor and every student of monetary history has likely stumbled upon various theories about institutional manipulation of the gold market. While it is true that rarely is there smoke without fire, it is still important to approach this matter rationally and form opinions based on sound evidence and solid research.

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THE CURRENT MONETARY ORDER IS NEARING ITS END

Interview with Dimitri Speck. Given the massive intervention and monetary manipulation experiment by central banks over the last decade, the amount of distortions created in the market, as well as the record debt accumulation at all levels of the economy, have given rise to considerable risks for investors. For a more detailed understanding of these issues and for his outlook, I turned to Dimitri Speck, a renowned expert in the development of...

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