Matthew Piepenburg - Gold Matters: Real Solutions To Surreal Risks

Grant Williams ( RealVision TV Co-Founder and publisher of Things That Make You Go Hmmm )

When looking up the definition of matter, one finds two very distinct assessments. The first pertains to the realm of physical property:

Matter: physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.

The second, deals with more ephemeral issues:

Matter: a subject or situation under consideration.

In this important and entirely timely book, Egon von Greyerz and Matthew Piepenburg take the former and place it under the latter, dissecting the history of the precious metal which has been used as money for thousands of years but which, in an age of infinite fiat currencies, remains understood by too few and disregarded by far too many.

As the era of quantitative easing and extensive monetary accommodation on the part of central banks reaches the end of its useful life, rising inflationary pressure is demanding a different set of solutions to the very different set of problems it poses.

Sadly, the worlds central banks have created a set of conditions whereby the entire global financial system has become reliant upon the maintaining of historically low interest rates via the over-creation (and hence debasement) of fiat currencies. This has become necessary as a means to refinance the inordinate amount of debt the world has taken on in order to forestall a series of rolling crises - each more dangerous than the last.

In Gold Matters , Egon and Matthew help the reader easily understand golds history as money, its critical place in the present-day financial system and its potential role as the post-Bretton Woods era comes to a close.

From its earliest days as the fulcrum of innumerate local currency systems to its role as the anchor of the modern-day global monetary system when the Gold Standard allowed Western society to be built from the ground up, Egon & Matthew will take you on a journey through time, explaining how and why gold became the most important monetary metal of all, showing you the risks that have multiplied in the financial system as gold has been marginalized over the last half-century and outlining the threats faced by the pension system, the banking system, the currency system and a series of bankrupt Western governments

From the monstrous leverage provided by the gold futures market as a means to suppress the natural price of the metal to the methods used by policymakers to suppress and underreport inflation calculations, Egon and Matthew lay bare the manifold ways in which the publics understanding of both the monetary system and money itself are deliberately manipulated in order to mask the damage done to many developed nations finances by decades of financial mismanagement and promise-and-spend politics.

Amidst all this, gold stands stoic and immutable as the purest representation of financial independence in a world filled with reliance and fragility. Gold has preserved and protected wealth and purchasing power for centuries - characteristics that, while under-appreciated in an age of FOMO and manic speculation in risk assets, are about to be proven once again as essential to the protection and preservation of capital.

Gold Matter s .

Ronni Stoeferle (Incrementum, AG, Managing Partner and author of the In Gold We Trust report)

Back in September of 2008, I was a newbie in the gold world. My second In Gold We Trust report had just been published, I was a junior analyst at Erste Bank, and had a limited understanding of the monetary system, Austrian Economics, and the stock market. It was during this month that I attended the Denver Gold Show in Zrich and met Egon von Greyerz for the first time. The two of us clicked, and it quickly became clear that we had many shared passions. We ended up diving into a long conversation about gold, entrepreneurship, values, family and more. I was impressed that such a star of the gold scene was humble enough to take time to talk at such length to a young analyst.

A few months before, gold had broken through the USD 1,000 mark for the first time. Egon and I shared a fascination with the precious metal, and our enthusiasm was strengthened by that recent price milestone. Over the subsequent 14 years, Egon and I have developed a close personal friendship, and he has become something of a mentor to me. I remember fondly many conversations with Egon in periods of market turbulence, over a period where we have seen the gold price double in USD terms.

In 2013, when I took the leap into self-employment and co-founded the Liechtenstein-based Incrementum AG, Egon was always ready to provide advice and support. In the concluding chapter of this book, Egon quotes Confucius, who states that gold possesses the outstanding qualities of loyalty and good faith. Over the years of our friendship, Ive come to appreciate that the Confucian sentiment about gold very much applies to Egon himself!

With Gold Matters , Egon von Greyerz and Matthew Piepenburg present a comprehensive work on gold that looks set to become a standard text on the subject. The authors display a deep understanding of both economic history and present market conditions: Indispensable prerequisites for making sound investment decisions. The result of their efforts is a tour de force that is both enlightening and entertaining.

Today we live in a world of economic turmoil where Covid-19 looks to turn endemic. It should be remembered, however, that Covid-19 was only an accelerant rather than the root cause of our present troubles. After all, even before the outbreak of the pandemic, the unprecedented rise in global debt had already started to cause economic difficulties for governments, companies and households alike. For this reason, we should not regard central banks reckless monetary policies as being recent and temporary. Rather, we should see them as an expression of a fundamental Monetary Climate Change, a phrase that we chose as the theme of our 2021 In Gold We Trust report. This monetary climate change is threatening the wealth of large sections of the population, and the rise of inflation in recent months to multi-decade highs could just be a taste of the economic turmoil to come.