Philippe Herlin

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 t...

"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...

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 2...

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 ce...

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.

The question is not a crazy one: GAFA are investing in banking services, as well as a lot of FinTechs.

Will the date of March 29, 2019 remain in the history of gold? Certainly, because it marks the resurgence of precious metals in the banking and financial system.

Here are the numbers: France’ public debt has reached €2,299.8 billion, the equivalent of 99% of its GDP. Public debt keeps growing year after year since deficits – State ones being the largest – persist.

Do not believe anyone telling you the European banking sector is healthy. None other than the European central bank, the ECB, is aware of the problem, having just confessed to it.

The media outlets didn’t go with this news, probably fearing some fake news or another conspiracy theory, while examining the sources in my articles would have reassured them immediately. But did they bother?

My last article on the end of sanctuarization of the Banque de France’s gold grabbed a lot of attention. However, this news hasn’t made it to the main stream media. So let’s get back to this important issue.