A crack-up boom in the making

The great Ludwig von Mises first described the concept of a crack-up boom as part of the Austrian business cycle theory, based on real life events that to an unsuspecting bystander might have appeared unconnected, or perhaps even quite bizarre and counterintuitive. Indeed, such a bystander might think the same of today’s economy and would …

Is gold too expensive?

Over the last couple of years we witnessed quite an extraordinary ride in gold prices. An impressive ascent until the last quarter of 2020 was followed by a pullback that scared many speculators away, which in turn transformed into a period of strength and then came another ebb… And recently, once again, we saw the …

Corona crisis: the cost of the response – Part I

The absolutely unprecedented wave of shutdowns, new restrictions and regulations that the coronavirus epidemic has triggered on a global scale is truly hard to quantify. We’ve simply never seen anything like it before. Never in the history of mankind have countries all over the globe intentionally hit the kill switch on their own economies and …

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. The Trump impeachment, the US-China trade war, more recently the tensions …