Financial crisis

With most asset classes falling rapidly, the world is now approaching calamities of a proportion not seen before in history. What few investors realise is that this is the mere beginning. Before this bear market is over, the world will see 75-90% falls of stocks, bonds and other assets. For the f...

Egon von Greyerz and Matthew Piepenburg, swap thoughts on the bearish decline of U.S. risk assets along side an equally painful rise in inflationary forces.

The intensity of the bond market's decline is unprecedented. Bloomberg's Aggregate Index, which measures a basket of more than 28,000 bonds, has lost more than 15% since the beginning of the year, a drop not seen since the 1970s.

Gold is known for its rarity and reliability. However, the usefulness of gold has not ceased to evolve over the last few centuries. Both an object of desire and speculation, gold has experienced several panics synonymous with crashes or price explosions. In the 19th century, financial markets wer...

Inflation is here to stay. But the question now is: can it degenerate into hyperinflation?

Gold is logically regaining its stable monetary value in an increasingly tense geopolitical context, at a time when the energy future of the European continent poses many questions and when the risks of stagflation have never been so great since the Second World War.

The risk is there: "the most fragile countries are not Italy or Spain, but France, Greece and perhaps Portugal." What the Greeks experienced in the 2010s - and they are still paying the bill - could soon happen to the French.

Monetary policies are often analyzed in terms of their impacts or correlations with macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP, unemployment or the balance of payments. They are more rarely analyzed according to the consequences they generate at the individual level.

Christine Lagarde's denial, its refusal to raise the key rate, and its apathy towards inflation, will prolong the weakening of the euro against the dollar, thus creating an additional cause of inflation (raw materials being paid in dollars, the fall of the euro mechanically increases their price)...

Inflation figures will probably still be very high in Europe and the United States, especially because of record high fuel prices. But it is the Japanese inflation numbers that now need to be scrutinized.