My God, things are bad behind the scenes. I wouldn’t want to be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump – the collapse might officially skip Obama’s final months in office, but it is coming, with mathematical surety – it is coming. Cleaning up our cratering financial system is going to be a thankless task for whoever is in office. And things like unemployment rates… inflation… hunger… Tougher to tackle at scale if it all unravels at once, even for the world’s most powerful governments. They won’t be able to pick up the pieces fast enough when the financial system falls apart. Over the last six to twelve months, a stunning array of billionaires, funds, and institutions have come out in favor of gold ownership – and to a much lesser extent, other alternatives including cryptocurrency. What does this tell us? Nothing good, that’s for sure: in “good times,” there are better places to park your money than gold. High yield tech stocks, a promising small business idea or family start-up, emerging markets, etc. The fact that the world’s savviest have been quietly piling into gold – a mere money supply , albeit humanity’s oldest and most stable money supply – is simply not good. It is not good. They are preparing for something. And the negative interest rates are here. Why haven’t we seen a mass depositor exodus and bank failures as a result of the negative interest rates hitting major world economies? I’d argue because the public is stunned, in disbelief – “negative” interest is not something you learn about in school. Math teachers don’t give you problems to solve where “the bank takes your deposit, and offers you a tempting -1% annual yield.” Economists don’t teach negative interest rates as serious or viable things, because they are not. […]
