Tag Archive: Finance

“Bank walk”: The first domino to fall?

2023-05-11

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2023-05-11

In early May, Reuters published a report that truly captured my attention. “European savers are pulling more of their money from banks, looking for a better deal as lenders resist paying up to hold on to deposits some feel they can currently live without,” the article reported. Over in the US, we see a very similar picture. As the FT also recently reported, “big US financial groups Charles Schwab, State Street and M&T suffered almost $60bn in...

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France on strike

2023-05-02

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2023-05-02

The roots of the injustice that brought over a million to the streets  It is the core of a long running joke that the French love to strike more than they like to work – and for good reason. Demonstrations, strikes and even riots, have been a common occurrence for decades. However, this latest round seems to be interestingly persistent, despite the fact that it’s receiving increasingly sparse media coverage.   The last time that the French...

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A bank is a bank is a bank – Part II

2023-04-20

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2023-04-20

Part II of II by Claudio Grass A real systemic crisis If there was one thing more telling than the bank failures themselves, it was the governments’ reaction to them. The sheer panic that shook US, Swiss and Eurozone officials was almost pitiable to behold. The way they all rushed to make statements denying that this would be a repeat of 2008 was alarming instead of reassuring. And their apparent, urgent desperation to be believed was perhaps...

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A bank is a bank is a bank

2023-04-18

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2023-04-18

Part I of II by Claudio Grass It might sound like an old-fashioned notion, the sort of thing that one reads about in period novels and romantically sighs “oh, the good old days”. It might sound like old timely advice, perhaps of the kind that our grandparents would have given to our parents: “It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, even if you lose everything, as long as you still have your honor”. Sure. But in our cynical, jaded and largely...

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Banking crisis: The new bailout strategy

2023-03-29

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2023-03-29

Part II of II To be fair, it is true, this time is different. Indeed, this time the rescue plan for the bust banks is not comparable to what we saw in 2008. In the US, the guarantee for deposits up to $250.000 comes from funds that are maintained by participating banks and not from the taxpayer. The official answer to how they’re going to pay everyone back is also plausible and possible: Some, or even most, of the money can and will be recovered...

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Banking crisis: The new bailout strategy

2023-03-27

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2023-03-27

Part I of II The recent turmoil that has roiled the global banking sector has placed central bankers in an impossible position: Cut rates and avert a domino-style disaster in the industry and a possible deep and prolonged recession in the wider economy or stay the hiking course to combat the still untamed inflationary pressures? Arguably the great losers in both cases will be the taxpayers and the average working household.  The recent...

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Modern Monetary Theory: Reality check

2023-03-10

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2023-03-10

I’ve written extensively over the past years about the rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and all the terrible dangers it entailed from its very birth, not just for our economies, but for our societies too. Although it captured media interest and monopolized a lot of “expert” debates at the time, one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking it was merely a “flash in the pan”, just another crazy idea that the establishment entertained for a while to...

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The “great Ponzi scheme” coming to an end?

2023-03-04

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2023-03-04

In a recent conference, the EU’s Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, gave a dire warning: “We have a shrinking workforce all across Europe, all countries are losing their workforce.” Indeed, in just 10 years, the EU lost 5 million people in the working-age population, as the most recent report on demographic change by the Commission showed. The report revealed other interesting data and trends too. For example, it showed that...

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Switzerland: Still a bright beacon of freedom

2023-02-27

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2023-02-27

Switzerland’s long-standing and well-deserved reputation as one of the last bastions of individual and financial liberty has been recently vindicated and reaffirmed. It was a much-needed boost of confidence for Swiss citizens like myself who had come to worry over the last years whether the governmental trespasses of our neighboring nations and the way they rule their people might one day come to influence or even corrupt our own system of...

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Davos Man Will Fail, World Will Move Toward Decentralization

2023-02-10

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2023-02-10

I truly enjoyed the conversation with Hrvoje Morić. I hope you will enjoy it 2. Happy Weekend! In liberty, Claudio Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Therefore please feel free to share and you can subscribe for my articles by clicking here

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“Fundamentals and technical analysis are two sides of the same coin”

2023-02-07

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2023-02-07

Interview with Laurent Halmos For most die-hard physical gold investors and students of history like myself and most of my readers and clients, technical analysis is often seen as a bit of a taboo, or at best something irrelevant to our worldview and investment approach. Nevertheless, to paraphrase the old saying about politics, just because you are not interested in the charts doesn’t mean that the charts are not interested in you.  I met...

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2022 is the end of big tech and the beginning of the 11 years commodity cycle from 2023 – 2033

2023-01-29

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2023-01-29

Don’t miss my latest talk with my “political incorrect” friend Jeremy on TNT Radio – about the World Economic Muppet-Show called WEF and much more Click on the below link, to listen to the show. https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/e/claudio-grass-on-jerm-warfare-with-jeremy-nell-24-january-2023/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Therefore please feel free to share and you can subscribe for...

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The death of the middle class is the death of civil society

2023-01-27

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2023-01-27

Part II of II by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland The blame game  As we know from every crisis in human history, and especially the more recent ones, the most important item on any politician’s agenda is to find someone else to blame for it. It can be a foreign foe in the form of a hostile state, it can be an “enemy within”, usually long-standing political opponents and their supporters, or it can even be some invisible villain like...

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China and the US at sovereign debt war

2023-01-27

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2023-01-27

US dollar hegemony has long been a standard feature of the global financial and economic system. But developments in recent years and months (weeks, even) suggests there are more than a handful of countries who are looking to rely less on the US dollar. Instead countries who have long been at the mercy of the US dollar are looking to take their finances into their own hands…and gold is set to play a key role.

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The death of the middle class is the death of civil society

2023-01-25

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2023-01-25

The middle class in the West has been shrinking for years, but after the covid crisis and especially after the inflation explosion, whatever was left of it is now basically under threat of extinction. This has immense sociopolitical implications.

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“Markets and civil society are win-win institutions, government and politics are zero-sum.”

2023-01-03

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2023-01-03

Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions.  

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A grateful goodbye to 2022, a hopeful hello to 2023

2022-12-30

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2022-12-30

Even though what we saw during the height of the pandemic was shocking enough for most people, what we saw during 2022 was arguably even more astonishing. During the lockdowns and quarantines and the forced business shutdowns, the sheer number of all the rights and freedoms that were coercively “suspended”, as though that’s a thing one can do with true liberty, left so many fellow citizens in disbelief. However, what many people found even more...

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Gold is money – everything else is credit!

2022-12-14

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2022-12-14

What physical precious metals investors can expect 2023 and beyond Throughout the better part of 2022 there has been one question that has consistently, and predictably, popped up in conversations with my friends, clients and readers. Those who know me and are familiar with my ideas are well aware of my position on precious metals and the multiple roles they serve, so I can’t blame them for them for being curious whether I still “stick to my...

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“It begins”: The rise of the digital dollar

2022-12-05

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2022-12-05

In mid-November, while the whole world was focused on the Ukraine crisis, the US midterms or whatever other “big story” the media decided was more important, a truly momentous shift took place in the global financial system. It might seem like a small step on the surface, but it has the potential to bring about a real and possibly irreversible sea change in the way we use money; or better said, the way it uses us.  As Reuters reported on the...

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The way forward: 

2022-12-01

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2022-12-01

A practical roadmap to reclaiming individual and financial sovereignty – Part II of II Essential ingredients There have always been people with a passion for liberty. Since the earliest historical records, we can find questioners, dissenters, “trouble makers”, contrarians and all kinds of free and inquisitive minds. In this day and age, however, technology has played a decisive role in the influence they can have. Sure, the “bad guys” might...

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