A global recession is on the horizon - please read OP for mod warning

Right but every goldbug sounds like this, they hold gold so have a financial incentive to convince people online to buy gold - often by predicting that there will be some unspecified economic collapse in the future

How are you any different?

Please note that central banks can't become insolvent.

They are very unusual institutions, the normal rules don't apply.

https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull68.pdf

Well, he is in better position than we in the Eurozone to discover his error sooner than you.

Better to be 12 months early than 12 minutes late my friend. I hope you didn't lose too much depreciating currency on my views.

Congratulations on your elevation to Mod.

Gold has been a slow burn. Although last year was 22%. Equivalent to a year's salary for me so I welcome it. More for me as I also had other tools to capitalise on the move.

You clearly know little of the commodities markets if you feel that gold is a get rich quick move?? Can you see how daft that remark is? Clearly a number of you are anti-gold for some unpragmatic reason. I am pro-gold since 2008, yes. And have amassed a retireable amount as a result. If you don't understand investing, buy an index and best of luck. If you do, you will know that there's a time for equities, bonds and yes even commodities. But you don't so I imagine your economics musings are not worth even skimming with a mindset like that.

I ma not pushing gold, or anything else on anyone. A pragmatic conversation would be useful. Not tired drawn out Keynesian claptrap interspersed by index buyers who haven't an iota about markets, value investing, speculating or how the financial systems really work.

An interesting thread nonetheless…

Money must be able to be used in shops.

Does your local Super Value take gold?

No.

Therefore, it's not money.

I'm not getting the argument really. Gold is an asset. Money is money.

You can exchange gold for money in the same way you can exchange all assets for money.

But it's not money. If it where, there'd be no need to exchange/convert it.

Yeah same as every other asset. It's a process to convert to money.

I'm not sure why the poster is insisting its money. It's demonstrably not money.

Governments seizing or banning assest sales etc is a different conversation imo.

I take it then you were opposed to reverting the very reasonable 37.5 hour week for nurses back to the current 35 hour week?

Just as I thought. You put your ideology and poison above the actual delivery of healthcare.

Thousands of hours taken out of the system, and you think that's OK. Stop with the crocodile tears. A 37.5 hour week was more than reasonable for health staff to work.

Yet, you're on these forums spreading poisonous ideology that the healthcare system is there for the benefit of the staff and not the patient.

Reducing hours for more pay, are you trying to make patients who can't afford private healthcare suffer at the hands of your ideology even more?

To be quite honest, I don’t think the HSE or health is a particularly useful bell weather for the Irish economy. The HSE is an awful employer and burns medics out. It’s reasonably well funded, but chaotic. It’s not typical of the employment situation here and the type of people who work in health are also highly mobile, and in demand abroad.

The HSE creates the classic “widow maker” jobs and then wonders why everyone leaves.

I’d apply a similar caveat to using sectors like the Gardai as any kind of indicator of anything. They seem to have a serious retention issue and it’s not all about economics, other than high housing costs being a factor.

If you look at pretty much any other sectors you’ll get a much better sense of the Irish economy.

Niall Ferguson was on David McWilliams' most recent podcast. Ferguson was suggesting a recession is in the wings and Trump may cop the blame for it, even if he is not at fault. McWilliams himself was recently discussing the flak he took for calling the previous recession years too early while the economy was still roaring - a stopped clock is right twice a day etc. But he is also signalling another one is on the horizon.

So the vibes are out there. As I've said in another thread, with Trump in charge - if there is a downturn, it could get very messy. Who knows what he would do if there's a proper recession - not just in terms with dealing with it specifically but also what he'll do to distract from it.

Absolutely there could be a recession. If Trump triggers a tariff war it's not going to be good for much of Europe.

I think the 2% is thought of as being an ideal level of inflation for expanding economies. As economies expanded demand driven inflation could be tempered by raising the borrowing rate and then lowered when demand contracted. This tightening and loosening of the money supply could be applied repeatedly as long as there was still expansion.

But what happens when an economy has peaked? Japan is often thought of as having expanded to its maximum in the 90s and since then has had bouts of deflation, more domestic savings than domestic demand and so the interest rates went negative. Many Japanese had to invest in foreign markets and currencies in search of financial returns, but otherwise inflation wasn't an issue for household budgets.

However now…….

We're used to hearing about Japan as a global exporter but in recent years it's balance of trade has been repeatedly negative, that is it imports more than it exports. Now that the demand for Japan's goods has declined so too has demand for its currency, so essential imports like fuel are more expensive which is driving up prices that had remained steady for decades.

Now Japan is recording a 30 year high inflation but it's not clear yet if raising interest rate will do anything to relieve import led inflation. Raising rates may actually do more harm than good and with a dependency ratio passing 70% fuel subsidies may be the more vital response.

Alot of you folks might like this US economic outlook video by Greg Weldon

https://youtu.be/zqZg7I2Hal8?si=UFb4pvOAMMLCg5Zc