Are we witnessing a movement of European bank mergers? Rumors have been circulating for several years about a merger between Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank or with BNP Paribas, between Société Générale and Unicredit, but nothing has happened so far. But lately several mergers have taken place.

The main factor is the distrust of currencies; central banks are running their money printing presses at full speed, whereas with the recession due to the coronavirus, the production of real goods is falling. In this case, what is money worth? What are the major currencies, the dollar, the euro, the...

The ECB is substituting for the market. It's simpler that way, no need to convince investors, you print money and it's done. In this scenario, we are de facto witnessing the merger of the Treasury and the Central Bank: the financing of the government's deficit is directly connected to the printing p...

Even the central banks are looking at the return of inflation, that's who should alert all savers and investors around the world. As a reminder, central banks were created in the 19th and early 20th centuries (for the Fed) in order to guarantee the value of the currency, i.e. to combat against price...

I mean, what if the debt wasn't serious? What if the explosion of its amount all over the world since the coronavirus crisis had no harmful consequences? What if we could even get rid of some of it without incurring any damage? This is the little tune we hear from those who want more and more public...

To the question that some will inevitably ask ("Isn't it too late to buy gold?"), the answer is clearly no. It is even becoming urgent in the face of the risk of mistrust towards currencies brought about by the crazy policies of central banks.

After several days of negotiations, the twenty-seven leaders of the European Union have finally reached an agreement on a €750 billion recovery plan, comprising €390 billion in grants and €360 billion in loans.

As the Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw said: "You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, to vote for gold”.

By rolling over the debt of ailing banks (new loans to pay off old ones), the ECB is giving them a very bad habit, namely that of governments with perpetual deficits, which are thus exempting themselves from any budgetary effort. What is the point of cleaning up one's balance sheet if the ECB gracio...

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", sh...

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...

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 €75...

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...

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...

"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,...

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.