Brexit, Quitaly and Grexit. Debt Defaults, Stock Shocks, Bond Bubbles, Properties Popping, Derivative Defaults and Banks Busting. Well that is just some of the events that twill take place in the next few years. But the world is living in ignorant bliss of what is coming next. As the song tells us:

“In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy
Don’t worry, be happy now
don’t worry”

Well this well-known song says it all. Risk in the world is growing exponentially but no one is worrying.

The ECB (European Central Bank) just had its 20th birthday. But there is really nothing to celebrate. The EU is in a total mess and the Euro which was launched on January 1, 1999 is a failed currency. Every President of the ECB has had to deal with fires that had very little to do with price stability but were more a question of survival. Most of these fires were a lot more serious than the candles in the Euro cake on the left which Draghi is trying to blow out. During the French ECB Trichet’s watch, he had even bigger fire to blow out which was the Great Financial Crisis that started in 2006.

In 1980, global assets, including property, were less than $20 trillion. Today almost 40 years later they have grown to $524 trillion. That is a compound annual growth rate of 9% which is quite remarkable for a 38 year period. Global assets have gone up 26 fold during this period. In the same period, gold went from an average price of around $650 in 1980 to $1,300 today.

There are 51 million American households that cannot make ends meet. This means that 43% of American households can’t afford a basic middle class life. Of these, 35 million are dubbed ALICE which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed with a further 16 million households living in poverty. It is absolutely remarkable that in the world’s biggest and “richest”country, just under 50% of the households are struggling to afford a basic middle class life and that 50 million people live in poverty.

We are now in the final stages of a journey which by future historians will be seen as unreal as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Just like Alice called the “Mad Tea Party”, “the stupidest tea party she had ever been to”, the last 100 years could be called the Craziest Extravaganza in history. At the end of the story the Queen of Hearts shouts “Off with her head”. But Alice is not afraid and calls them all “A pack of cards” before she wakes up.

It can’t happen here! What is happening in Venezuela and Argentina cannot occur in Western economies. That’s at least what markets believe with stocks and most bubble assets remaining in cloud cuckoo land. Rates in Argentina have just gone to 40% to protect the currency. Anyone who believes that rates in the US will remain at current low levels or that German and Japanese rates will remain negative has a massive shock coming.

Strategic investments are made for the long run and with no intent of short term gains or concern of short term fluctuations. This kind of investing is based on buying undervalued and unloved assets and holding them for a very long term. This is what we did with gold in early 2002 for our investors and ourselves.

The coming hyperinflation will start slowly and few people will realise what is coming. But once the first real inflation signals are appearing, the process will speed up fast as the currency debasement accelerates. Right now we are most probably seeing the first signs of inflation. The rising CRB index, together with rising oil, silver and interest rates are all telling us that inflation is coming. Initially, we will see a gradual increase but soon inflation will accelerate until we in the next few years reach hyperinflation.

The super powers in the West are doing what they can to provoke Russia and indirectly China and Iran into a world war. Most people alive today were not adults when WWII started and therefore did not follow the lead up to the war. But today the whole world can watch how the West has chosen to attack a country which has no major significance geopolitically and does not threaten any other country. Still the West clearly knows that bombing of Syria can start a global conflict with potentially horrendous consequences.

As the world is standing on the precipice of a total breakdown, both economically and geopolitically, an obvious question is: “Where is the money coming from” to save the world from perdition. The same question was asked to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1970s when he was starting a global spiritual project. Maharishi was the founder of Transcendental Meditation and known as the Guru of groups like the Beatles and Beach Boys. When asked “Where is the money coming from”, he replied “from wherever it is now.”

Between today and 2025, the world will be a very different place. We can learn nothing about the next 4 to 7 years from government, central bank or media propaganda as they neither understand what will happen nor tell the truth. But we can learn a lot from history. Most people rely on the internet for information or news but most of it is either indigestible, misleading, fake or just too overwhelming to comprehend.

Is this it? Is the bull market finished and the good times over? Well, they could very well be. We are looking at a world which is rotten to the core, a world which is built on debt which will never be repaid. And a debt which is artificially supporting $100s of trillions of assets and quadrillions if we include derivatives. The supposedly most powerful economy in the world (the US of course) is now so indebted that it needs to fight the whole world in all kinds of different wars for its survival, with the latest being a trade war.

In the US, fake gold is now a growing problem that is not being tackled. Congressman Alex Mooney (not Money!) has just written to the US Mint of the growing problem of high-quality counterfeits. He also wrote a letter to the Mint in November 2017 but the Mint responded that the problem was not significant. But the US Secret Service has since briefed the office of Congressman Mooney about the extent of the problem and the lack of supportive actions of other agencies. There we have it – a complacent Mint on the one hand and a Secret Service which is involved in fake gold on the other hand. So this is clearly a major problem.

Gambling is according to Wikipedia the wagering of money (or something of value) on an event with an uncertain outcome. Three elements are required for gambling, Consideration, chance, and prize. Thus, you make a bet and if you are lucky you win a prize but you can also lose it all. Gambling has been around for thousands of years and maybe longer. The first 6-sided dice dates back 3000 years. Eventually gambling became more organised as casinos were established. The first well known casino was set up in Venice in the early 1600s.

Central bank heads have been at it again last week. And they have clearly all been singing from the same hymn sheet. The messages have been very similar from the bosses of the Fed, ECB and BOJ. The head of the Swedish Riksbank had a different and much more interesting message. More about that later.

In the old Greek mythology, the opening of Pandora’s box unleashed many evils on the world. Within the next few years, we will see a modern Pandora’s box being opened that will lead to events in the world which will be as devastating as when the ancient box was opened. The very big difference is that this time the consequences will not be part of historical mythology. Instead they will be real and catastrophic for the whole world on a scale never experienced in history.

Virtually no investor studies history and the few who do always think it is different today. The most important lesson is that people never learn. If they did, they wouldn’t be invested in a stock market that on any criteria is now at a bubble extreme. And they wouldn’t be invested in a global debt market which has grown exponentially in recent decades and which will become worthless in the next few years as debtors default. Nor would anyone hold paper money which is down 97-99% in the last 100 years and which is guaranteed to soon fall the final bit to take the value to zero.