To what extent will European banks withstand the current crisis? This is a crucial question because the recession we are experiencing could be followed by a banking crisis that would affect the whole economy even more severely. A CEPII study, entitled "European Banks and the Covid-19 Crash Test", sheds an interesting light on this subject.

Gold will be the only winner in the current crisis. This is the opinion of a bank's (Natixis) research department, which is not so common, it should be pointed out, as financial institutions rarely speak highly of the precious metal, as it is precisely because it allows one to free oneself from the financial system.

The progressive collectivization of our societies has been achieved through the alliance between the state and its central bank: from the end of the gold standard to today's dematerialized money, the power of the state grows as money loses its integrity and is increasingly subject to it.

With a sharp drop in GDP and an unprecedentedly high level of bank notes, we are entering the scenario we analyzed on February 6: money printing + fall in output = hyperinflation. Both mechanisms are, in our view, necessary for price slippage to occur, and here we are. Inflationavirus is coming.

Faced with the coronavirus crisis, the central banks went into "open bar" mode: in the United States, the Federal Reserve announced on March 3 an injection of $1.5 trillion coupled with a cut in its key rate to zero, while the European Central Bank followed with the announcement on March 19 of a €750 billion emergency plan. And it is clear that they can go beyond that, from now on it is "no limit".

We were looking for the weak point in the mountain of debt that was growing year by year, with global public and private debt at about three times the world's GDP. What would cause a crisis, such as the subprime crisis in 2008? As we can see, it was a Black Swan, external to the economy, that turned everything upside down: the coronavirus.

The economy is being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the risk of recession is looming, and now the central banks are rushing in like a white knight!

Here is a further illustration of the damage that zero rates cause to retail banking, in France and around the world. In 2000, when the Sino-British banking mastodon HSBC wanted to buy Crédit Commercial de France (CCF), it was in competition with the Dutch ING and had to put 11 billion euros on the table. Twenty years later, while it is trying to get rid of it, the sale price is "close to zero" according to Les Echos.

"Where could inflation come from?", we asked ourselves in our previous article on rising energy costs. Let's explore another possible cause, reactivated by current events. When we look around us and throughout history, it doesn't seem that monetary sentiment alone is enough to cause prices to go up, it also requires a drop in output. This is the thesis we will develop.

What could possibly restart inflation? This is THE question that financial market participants, major investors, monetary authorities, and basic savers are asking themselves. Because once inflation returns, zero interest rates would be over and the entire financial landscape would change radically.

There are now a few signs in OECD countries that could reveal an incipient flight from money: rising prices in real estate, unlisted equities, gold, bitcoin". Thus, "The limit is no longer inflation, it is confidence in money.

We are witnessing a major shift in monetary policy: against all expectations, the ECB decided, last month, to boost its Quantitative Easing (QE) by 20 billion euros per month, while last week, the Fed decided to do the same, at 60 billion dollars per month - at least until the second quarter of 2020.

Mario Draghi decided before handing off to Christine Lagarde on November 1: the QE will be relaunched! Quantitative easing, the sovereign debt buyback of eurozone countries, will restart at €20 billion per month, "for as long as necessary", he announced on September 12th at a press conference.

Expressed in euros, the price of an ounce of gold surpassed its historic record from October 4, 2012 (€ 1380). We are in Europe: prices, our salaries and our savings are denominated in euros, so it is the price of gold in euros that must be taken into account. So how do you explain this gold fever?

Christine Lagarde was appointed President of the European Central Bank (ECB) on July 2, replacing Mario Draghi. But what can we really expect from the former IMF President, who never headed a central bank, unlike her predecessors?

Judy Shelton has made a name for herself as a fan of the gold standard through several recently published articles.

We asked the question last May: will the GAFAs precipitate the collapse of the banks? Now, with the cryptocurrency that Facebook will launch next year, we must move to a new level: in addition to competing with the traditional banking sector, Libra risks accelerating the loss of credibility of central banks.

The Italian Parliament voted for a motion to create "mini-BOTs", i.e. ordinary Treasury bills of low unit amount, the level of a banknote, to be able to be used routinely. They would not offer interest and would have no maturity, which would assimilate them to traditional currencies.

A new theory is becoming increasingly successful in the United States, and it is starting to make people talk about it in Europe. Remember this name, you will hear it more and more: the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

According to a ranking compiled by Les Echos, among the seventeen largest European banks, Deutsche Bank has the largest number of employees paid more than €1 million per year - exactly 643 - ahead of Barclays (542) and HSBC (399), despite being the largest bank in the EU by balance sheet.