Tag Archive: Monetary

The demise of the dollar: What comes after that?

2023-07-03

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2023-07-03

Part I of II Endless ink has been spilled by economists and financial analysts in their efforts to predict the impact of de-dollarization. As might be expected, most of those who embrace a US-centric view of the world and who defend the status quo paint a gloomy picture. They warn of the nightmarish consequences of a Russia- and China-dominated world order, of the threats to freedom and to human rights that this could pose and of a potential...

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A conversation with Prince Michael of Liechtenstein

2023-06-26

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2023-06-26

On November 15th, 2021, almost 20 months ago, I once again had the rare and delightful opportunity to have a conversation with Prince Michael. His insights, and especially his directness and unequivocal honesty, have frequently provided me with a lot of food for thought in the past. This interview was no different. His candid and unfiltered responses to a wide variety of questions and topics made this conversation as illuminating as it was...

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Debt cancellation: the new panacea?

2023-06-09

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2023-06-09

There is clearly a common denominator in the kind of “solutions” that the State comes up with to deal with the problems that it caused (and that’s most problems). Not only are these remedies worse than the disease, but they are always extremely simplistic, reductionist and they never, ever, take into account anything else apart from the political “optics” and the populistic value of each new measure or piece of legislation. There is no...

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“Inflation it is not an act of God”

2023-06-05

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2023-06-05

INTERVIEW WITH GODFREY BLOOM:  Over the last couple of years, the UK has been increasingly in the news – for all the wrong reasons. The cost of living crisis, in particular, has been monopolizing headlines at home and abroad. Of course, inflation is by no means unique to the country. To the contrary, it has been hovering at similar or higher levels in virtually all advanced economies for quite some time. What is unique to the UK though, is that...

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“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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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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CEO Keith Weiner Quoted in Barron’s

2023-02-03

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2023-02-03

Published February 2nd, CEO Keith Weiner’s commentary was featured in a Barron’s article discussing “Why Silver is Outperforming Gold” written by Myra Saefong.

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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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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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