Eventually fiat-debt-blown bubbles pop, and down go bond, stock, and most other financial asset prices. One non-financial asset that will keep you in good stead will be precious metals. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:
The sense of general unease that I detect among those I meet and discuss economics and financial matters with is increasing —with good reason. Clearly, what everyone calls inflation, rising prices or more accurately currency debasement, will lead to higher interest rates, threatening markets which are unmistakably in bubble territory.
The consequences of rising prices and interest rates are still being badly underestimated.
In this article I get to the source of the inflation problem, which is the monetary debasement of the dollar and other major currencies. An important part of the problem is that mathematical economists have lost sight of what their beloved statistics represent —none more so than with GDP.
I explain why GDP is simply the total of accumulating currency and credit which is wrongly taken reflect economic progress – there being no such thing as economic growth. Once that point is grasped, the significance of this basic error becomes clear, and the fiat currency paradigm is revealed for what it is: a funny-money game that will go horribly wrong.
There is only one escape from it, and that is to own the one form of money that is no one’s counterparty risk; the one form of money that always comes to humanity’s rescue when fiat fails.
And that is gold. It is neglected by nearly everyone because it is the anti-bubble. The more that people believe in fiat-denominated assets, the less they believe in gold. That is until their funny-money games implode, inevitably triggered by sharply rising interest rates.
Introduction
Those of us with grey hairs gained in financial markets can, or should, recognise that after fifty years the funny-money game is ending. Accelerated money printing has led to what greenhorn commentators call inflation. It is not, as they claim, rising prices: they are the consequence of the monetary expansion which was the original and remains the correct definition of inflation.
