 Thank you and thank you to all of you for your great speeches today. I really enjoyed all of them but if I could just pick on Andrew to start because of Yeah, I think it's great that the PFS gets what's going on in Asia. I think it's really important and and moving to Hong Kong has been a big experience for me. I was wondering if you could continue With what you were saying and also talk about the fluctuations in the Chinese market Because Guido had mentioned a politically induced Expansion of the money supply, which I think in China is just a case study in that and the fact that and you correct me if I'm wrong But I believe that 95 percent of that market is retail investors Which is very very different to what it is in the west where it's mostly institutional Do you think that there are some really great opportunities say for western asset management firms to get in there and perhaps Act as a stabilizing force in the markets If if they we know that their money supply expansion can't continue without consequence You know the whole eternity of monetary policy, right? You know the car is halting and you know the driver has been driving in a certain style for a long time The question is what he or she does next If they choose to step out of the car Stop the money expansion Then the currency exchange rate would hold but there will be internal devaluation You know, but if they continue the money supply expansion, then there's going to be capital flight. There's going to be increasing capital controls and at the end either the exchange rate collapses or Money just stops flowing out. So it depends on what their policy move is going to be But you know that they're going to have to make a choice very soon So I would make the analogy Of if you ask me for a prediction, all I can say is that the car has a completely cracked windscreen I'm not going to be arrogant enough to say that I know exactly what's going to be lying ahead But because I know that my screen screen is completely cracked. I can take the safety precautions required for it. So That'll be nice I'm going to keep it on Andrew once more with thanks For your earlier comments and that you mentioned energy security as one of their primary Imperatives right now and also the importance of the malacca straight and energy security as it moves through those particular territories with what you've predicted earlier and mentioned to us How does that square with increasing aggressiveness With china further expansion into the south chinese sea The the view from hong kong is that there the the mainstream view is that they are sort of expansionistic their national pride but I believe that it could be a count kinesian counter cyclical spending because The early parts of reforms in china Deng Xiaoping purposely starved and embarrassed the people's liberation army because if you take north korea as an example If suddenly the kim family was to open up north korea The final and probably strongest resistance would come from the army because they are the strongest rest of interest So they starved the army for quite a quite a long time maybe even over a decade until the late 1980s and then the defense spending went up but I don't know. I mean you take the soviet case, you know with all their submarines You don't want you don't want anyone to completely control your trade channels And that is what the chinese commerce is always thinking about but they know that they can't really challenge the american hegemony either So I think it's going to be that you know having control of the south china sea Within threat in japan is it's a really delicate counter game going on. I think in in the a region But they would try to gain more energy from russia I used to be a oil oil company analyst analyst I study all the chinese oil companies as a profession and the question that I boggled my mind was you have the biggest energy exporter well Producer next to the second largest energy importer of the world I mean they share a land border russia and china and yet there was no direct oil pipelines going through those two countries and it's only now You know nearly eight years after I've stopped being an oil company analyst that I found out the corruption was so endemic in china that The official in charge of the oil industry could extract more bribes if there were smaller deals all around the world Instead of one mega deal with russia You know so that that is that is the that is the dynamics going on in china right now, which is which is uh I mean we have Government officials at the highest rank who would self enrich Going back to the you know Doing harm to the nation or doing harm to the greater good But for the self enrichment so it is it is a very delicate situation in china right now so Yeah, hi, thank you all for for the speeches There is always a lot of demonizing of the bankers or the commercial banking system when we talk about gentle banks and and the inflation And maybe I should be a little bit worried about my safety because I have a banking background myself So please don't leave me behind at the beach today, but I I have I have two questions mostly And to the old panel I'm curious about the case of european central bank is it also Like a product of evil bankers like the fedas rothbart Showed us pretty successfully by following the money Or is it something all together like for example a Political tool or just a tool to achieve some political aims like the eu project in general And my second question would be that is the idea of honest banking Lost forever or under this kind of fiat monitor system that we have or is it possible for some entrepreneurs to start competing with current banking system to Just to balance it out or just to just to have an honest banking system Okay, I'll start first. Well to answer this letter question first. I think of course it's always possible It's difficult to imagine right now, but that's precisely what entrepreneurs should do right come up with a solution that nobody right now can imagine I certainly such an entrepreneur would face very strong headwind And because the bets are against him, but on the other hand we have a fragile situations traditional banks are not very well So it might be a very propitious time for innovation um and then as far as uh Well, the nature of the euro system is concerned. I think one would have to state that They're in fact very different traditions of looking at the monetary system right in countries like france, but also britain The monetary system banking was always conceived to be a prolonged arm of the state Was really never different the the british have been more successful in making everybody forget this And the french because the french are always more blatant and they insist right so But in other countries like germany and also italy Let's say italy before world before world war two The monetary system had a different role because Centralization occurred much later political centralization occurred much later than in the other countries So for german the monetary system was supposed to be an arbiter a neutral arbiter Between the different banks and different sectors of the economy So therefore germans have great difficulty accepting this vision of the central bank as an instrument of Pro-government policies that now comes from from from other countries. So we're having great difficulty getting accustomed to this May I perhaps uh, I do have my own okay um I don't want to go back to the analysis of why they created the european monetary system But if you if your question addresses The issue of what is the political say goal? Or what is the political manipulation behind the european central bank the answer is straightforward The overall desire is to centralize More power in brussels and at the moment more power means um Bring to brussels the responsibility of fiscal policy which means taxation and expenditure One way of forcing the member countries to transfer Sovereignty in these two areas taxation and expenditure To brussels is to say you want to be bailed out? Well, the price to pay is Give me part of your fiscal sovereignty So the political link between frankfurt and brussels Is this one? uh brussel says you want the money Give me your sovereignty And this is going to happen sooner or later the reason why it hasn't happened so far is that people would resent Well, there are two things The european authorities screwed it up I mean they are so incompetent and so clumsy That they failed to obtain legitimacy so people would resent This transfer of sovereignty and the other thing is the taxation is so high that A european tax on top of the local taxes Would be a resented so they are they're waiting for the right moment, but sooner or later The deal will come through mean we give you new newly printed euros you give us sovereignty This is the link The other question about which was about your money in the banks and whether there is an opportunity for Say honest banking well the opportunity for honest banking is the same as the opportunity for honest people competition Would be the solution if you have bad bank in a competitive Context it would be marketed out Uh by consumers. So the point is that this is not a competitive market The uh banking industry is highly regulated Entry Is highly regulated if you want to go out and say now I start the colombato bank You can't do it you have to go to frankfurt or to rome or to istanbul Well, I don't know about istanbul, but if you're in the european union, you have to go first to rome and then to frankfurt Ask for permission permission denied And we're back to square one so You have an incentive to misbehave So if you have your money in a bank But watch out Because one day they will tell you i'm sorry the time of bailout is over now we have moving we're moving forward Which means bailing Your 100 000 euro deposit is still guaranteed That's what they're going to tell you But it doesn't mean they're going to give you 100 000 euros I mean what's happened what's going to happen once you have a bank run in europe is everybody is guaranteed And they will tell you come back to money If you want to cash your money And if it's not the money it's going to be dopo the money So you have a claim to that guaranteed, but you don't have the cash So they're really Fooling you in a way so keep your liquidity low keep it in your mattress Um Keep it in the garden, but don't keep it don't keep too much of it in the bank and Run fast When the wind blows maybe I Should add another line of explanation maybe maybe first the bitcoin might be An example where people are trying to set up a monetary system uh Where the government has no influence Um, we we have to see whether that will be successful, but this is I think a practical example of an alternative uh monitor system and the the second issue which is on our mind is I would say the Existence of national fiat money monopolies does not represent a so-called stable equilibrium The government starts cooperating with with each other trying to replace the Trying to reduce the competition of currencies I think in europe that has been successful national current is so to speak national currencies have been replaced by single currency So there's no longer any currency competition in europe And I think that will continue or efforts will continue to install such a Reduction of the competition of currencies on an international global level On the question of honest bankers an honest banking system We have a in hong kong a half a million hong kong dollars, which is about 80 000 euros deposit guarantee And I spoke to the to the one of the people over at the government I said he obviously has failed in instilling this health into the banking system They were like why and I said People who have cash more than that amount Do they split up their deposits in different banks? If only they actually go out there and take a two million dollar deposit and deposit into four banks At half a million each Do you have a healthy banking system? If the proposters have no fear and they keep it in all one bank Knowing that they'll be bailed out or have a have a rational expectation that they will Then bankers will be will will misbehave I don't know it would be as bad as the the case both in china and I guess in I heard in italy as well Whereby you have a certain amount of bank account, but they said you can only take up that much cash There's an upper limit It's happening already. So as I always say only if the depositors are fearful no regulators no bankers no Shareholders can ever make a banking system honest If only there are banking failures would the banking system be healthy, so But For excellent presentations Working today and I have a host of questions for everybody, but I just rationed myself to two One is to andrew Over the last several years china appears to be trying to diversify its reserves From almost exclusively dollars and to other Investments and and also into gold, but there's a lot of mystery and secrecy around what? China is actually doing with gold. Do you have any indication of how much the gold reserves? How much are china's gold reserves and What has been the pattern over the last few years? To what extent china has been part of what seems to be a manipulation of the gold price Supposedly a lot of these Chinese gold our gold being perturbed by chinese government goes through hong kong And hence the dealers the physical gold and silver dealers of hong kong should have a nice pulse I simply I mean all the statistics coming out from china I think is dubious the second least reliable set of statistics after the american ones That's what we say in hong kong So, I mean I call down to my dealer if only I mean if only when Uh Taken to the extreme my dealer actually calls me because she knows how much physical silver or gold I have She actually calls me and say we I am willing to pay you say double or triple Whatever paper gold is paying you because there is now a global shortage Otherwise is all a guessing game and you know, I think it's only until a few years ago Chinese government gold holdings are actually a state secret in which anyone discussing it can be executed for treason So it's all a big mystery. I mean I rely on the price signals only if and when physical gold and physical silver prices start spiking in hong kong Would I know that this highly? Fluid asset which flows around the world finally have a shortage. I have no idea How much gold china has I mean everyone here who who has an account with an investment bank Even if they tell you they're physical gold holdings and this is from Morgan Stanley a few years ago They cheated 16,000 gold depositors Saying that they have what they were holding physical gold charging them Volt rent and at the end it was just paper in the file, you know So, uh, it's isn't it's a state secret. I have no idea. I'm still waiting for the price signals to to happen in work But uh, which we shall see we shall see My second question if I may permit you to answer Diana Um The history of violence in American trade union is quite well documented. I'm a huge fan of morgan rendels And what he has written on on the unions The the impression I had as an outsider is that the powers of of american unions over the last several years Since the reagan years has declined considerably and we even get articles by krugman lamenting the fact that workers are now defenseless because collective bargaining has has uh Has been emasculated The stories you told us about the culinary union. Are they something specific to las vegas or is there the pervasive strength of unions that there used to be in in the states is or is there a sort of Backlash against union unions and there's violence Well, I think reagan was demonstrating for the the labor movement in the united states because he replaced all the air traffic controllers And sent a big message to organize labor saying, you know, this isn't going to work, you know Your walkout isn't going to work. We're going to replace you and and we'll break your union So there was a big decline, but I mean since The union membership has declined in the united states just steadily, you know since its peak and probably the the fifties and sixties But it's exceptionally strong in las vegas as I said because you can't offshore that hospitality industry But I think membership declining membership is declining, you know steadily across the united states But it's growing in the in the public sector So in the private sector, it's declining, but but growing massively in the public sector This afternoon has been really interesting discussion I just wanted to kind of come back to a couple questions that have been asked here and at the back And about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs addressing the the issues with it that we're facing and honest banking and so on There are really really fascinating developments in this area You mentioned bitcoin, for example, there's a lot more than bitcoin the whole crypto finance space This is a space that I have a lot of Experience in if there are people interested I could give a presentation tomorrow during lunch Just to cover some of the main points on that So just come to me afterwards and we could arrange something We all know that war is the health of the state Endless wars on on on poverty and drugs and terrorism and recently I've been seeing News items about the war on cash I would like to hear your views on that Especially Gido and and torsten Outlawing cash is a very convenient Intervention for the government and for the banking system in the current situation because Holding cash is one way to prevent that your Liquid wealth will simply be confiscated if all wealth is that you hold in the form of money is on a bank account Then it's a simple accounting adjustment that can be made by the banks To just half or whatever To a tenth the amount of money that you have on your account. So it's a bail in So rather from from becoming a debtor of the bank become only one tenth of a debt Of the amount that you had before to the bank if you hold cash, that's not possible They would have to come to your house and take away the cash and there's a very convoluted very unpleasant process And then of course it also becomes much easier to simply increase the money supply Fine but simply Again accounting adjustment. So, uh, yeah, I mean we can Understand the motivation for the banks. It has the additional additional advantage that the demand for bank Created money rather because nodes are not created by by banks in most european countries But by the government so by the euro system whereas Checking accounts are created mostly by the the banks are only as far as Retail customers are concerned only by the banking system. So would represent a huge increase of demand for their services So would prop up immediately the health of the banking system So you can strike you can smash out several flies with one Coup so it's very interesting for them But of course politically and also economically and further path further step on the path to devastation Yeah, I may add this is the idea now that the so-called neutral interest rate would be Zero or even negative and once central banks push interest rates into negative territory What happens is what giro said? You're losing your wealth. You're getting taxed and the only way is to take your Money out of the bank in the form of cash once they abolish cash. You cannot have this kind of exit No more and on top of that This is of course A measure allowing the government to track all your financial Activities they can know what you eat and where you travel to and at the same time at some stage They can prohibit you to travel to Bodrum because your credit card doesn't work At the airport etc. So This is an outright attack basically on our freedom Because we have a monopolized monetary system where you're just just one provider for cash A competitor is not allowed as we've just heard And so I would say this is a very dangerous development It's but it's a logical consequence of the continuation of this fiat money regime And I would say they're they're working on it To get it done May I add just one little thing? It's me Don't forget tax evasion. I mean, I think you're overestimating the Skills and far sight of our rulers I don't think they really care much about money supply if you think of politicians in rome, madrid or whatever They look for the quick grab and by forcing you To get out of cash and register all your operations through credit cards Checks and whatever they think that they can track you your transactions And that tax evasion is going to be crushed Don't forget the tax evasion is luckily Wide spread It is estimated to be about 15 18 percent in germany 25 to 30 percent in italy the others are somewhere in between So it's a big amount of money and since they're thirsty for money because they have Budget holds everywhere if they can if they think that they can eliminate Even just one third of tax evasion by forcing us not to use cash They're going to boost the tax revenues massively and kill the rest of the economy. But this is something that Does not come into their mind. So I was saying that the prime reason why there is a war on cash is a war on tax evasion I have a question for andrew You mentioned Interest in austrian economics in in hong kong and china and you mentioned interest from the leaders I find what I found interesting myself Is that all the austrian books are published the road to serfdom socialism and i know the control of media is very Strong and everything is censored and everything is watched All of the Very powerful books are all published in chinese even man economy and state just got published in chinese So what's your comment on it? I had a feeling too that there were people in power that Someone likes these books what that's high up. I mean, uh, if you ask most libertarians Their conversion their road to the vascular Started because they themselves were coerced into a Involuntary position that turned out to be bad And you got to understand someone like dung xiao ping He was thrown Down. Well, what was the term he was demoted three times I mean, he was like, you know, virtually the prime minister of china All right, and then he got demoted to become a factory manager You know the factory manager was not glorious in the in the planned economy You know, so he himself have tried, you know three times this kind of treatment And when you have a personal experience like that, you know mao is good in this way because he mistreated everyone So, uh, so all these literature was floating around but my you know The friend peter from you know also from the lion rock institute loves to say that a lot of austrian school economics Unnaturally acceptable to people of china because You know, we had the first hyperinflation during the mongol's rule right of the world And you know, they had the first fiat currency that's massively printed And it was just natural that we was it was just common sense things that were passed down from generations to generations But of course not it wasn't, you know collected succinctly like, you know, the writings of mises and Rothbard But um, we do have a natural inclination to these things You know, um, we I always love to tell people that The crown colony of hong kong in 1900 The single most freely circulate what widely circulated currency was actually the mexican peso Because it was a silver standard back then, you know So we have a tradition you look our bank notes in hong kong right now It's still issued by private banks nominally backed by the u.s. Dollar You know, so the government is actually nominally not in the currency Issuing business in hong kong, but it is these kind of old stuff That the chinese rulers of today they have read all of them I have full faith that they've read all of them and they believe in that stuff and they know According to austrian, you know, according to the tainzians according to the monstrous you move around the interest rates You move around, you know aggregate demand and you save all the banks But the chinese rulers know that as long as you don't have competition as you say competition in the banking sector You will have mal investment that eventually leads to a banking crisis And when that hole appears on the balance sheets of banks, you have to figure out a way to fill it And that is where they get creative so But I I I do think that the austrian school economics will have more and more disciples, you know One of the most shocking thing to chinese people is that it took them what 10 years To accumulate 4 trillion dollars in reserves And it took the federal reserve a couple of presses of a keyboard to replicate the same amount On their balance sheet in the central bank. So, um, you know to the chinese people that's like It's time to learn about austrian school economics I was very interested to Hear about the violence in the american trade unions because I think in south africa often we think It's only in south africa that some of our As they would say comrades in the trade union movement because I work for a trade union But in a more european style of unionism where we do not use violence Very interested here about this, but i'm actually more interested here about the you could call it violence From the side of the court against private property in that ruling Um, why would you say the court made that ruling was it in alliance with the unions or more with the central government? Well in in my view it it was a very political decision In my view it was a very political decision. I mean, I think that um They strained I think the court strained to come to the the finding that they made And I think they drew it out of thin air because they wanted the union to win They have that much influence even with the federal courts where the judges aren't elected in nevada. They they still have amazing influence The thing that's baffling is why the supreme court wouldn't take that case. It's just really that's the worst part of it Because I expected the ninth circuit in the u.s. District court nevada to rule in the union's favor But I really had confidence that the supreme court would would reckon the whole situation and they wouldn't even take the case So that's the baffling part Okay, um, I have a question for the whole panel actually But my question was triggered by the presentation of andrew and I already talked to andrew perfectly What I'm interested in is is the geopolitical aspects of monetary policies We don't know how much gold there is in china, but at least The annual production is 406 tons and you can also calculate what flows in through the commercial circuit And if you do that the researcher koosiansen from holland has determined that there's about 9 000 tons at least in china So according to non-official statistics, that's already more than the purported 8 350 tons that would be in fort nox You you tend you tend to Describe politicians as as stupid not knowing but maybe they just act like that. Maybe there's a there's a higher plan to come to A bigger consolidation of debt and I'm from belgium So we had the belgium frank and if the euro would not have come all the southern countries would already have failed So it couldn't it be that that the the large amassment of debt Globally is just a means to consolidate politically on an ever higher level Uh, so I would like the panel maybe each one of you one minute or something to comment on that On the question of gold chinese gold mining, uh, honestly, no statistic I mean, we would probably only know first of all if physical gold prices start spiking Or second, uh, which leads to the great reset of money I mean when the great reset comes Then maybe every single government's going to wheel out their gold and show the world how much gold they have But then of course, we don't know if it's just led with gold plating, right? And we need to drill So that would be the first question the second question about the consolidation of global power Okay, I always take pride in the fact that edward snowden first point of call after leaving america was hong kong You know because we have a high degree of respect for privacy But if you ask a hong kong banker, uh, you want you want to walk into a bank you want to open a You know your rich person you want to have a trust fund. That's fine. We have financial services They trace through your family your children your children's spouses And then your grandchildren and then they discover that one of your grandchild was born in america Automatically the bank could reject you from being a client You know, so the reach of the american government is now even into the hong kong banking sector You know one that takes pride of being one of the original offshore banking centers of the world you know There is now current legislation that the Securities and futures commission in hong kong can share without the knowledge of the person investigated Everything the trading activity of this person in hong kong with quote-unquote foreign jurisdiction We are fighting it by saying that they are going to share with the mainland But my guess the pressure is coming from the american councilman You know, so I mean it is it is coming we are talking about Even if government nominally have sovereignty, you know They will still be subjected to the same political power coming especially from washington dc Well, if your question is about Is there a global strategy behind general indebtedness The short reply is you don't need a global strategy to be responsible So you can be Irresponsible unaccount on unaccountable And engaging in widespread Prophetic profligacy Even if you don't cooperate with the others The only thing you need is a creditor if you go into debt Now europe found plenty of creditors in the past now. They have a simple creditor, which is the european central bank The americans they have found china So, you know, and this is not a global strategy. You just need a creditor and regrettably We found them you know During the conversations at this conference we we talked already about the fiat money system one Characteristic of the fiat money system is that the debt load Grows stronger over time than output increases So sooner or later you're running into a situation of over indebtedness and that's the point where You know There's danger for this House of credit cards to collapse But central banks can step in lower interest rates and you know provide any struggling Bank of government with additional with additional money and that has been happening already without this With this kind of interventionism, you know, I would say the fiat money system would have collapsed already but It doesn't collapse or it hasn't been collapsing so far because the money the demand for fiat money is holding up fairly well People don't have lost their trust in holding fiat money And it's very very hard to unhinge This demand for fiat money takes a lot and that may explain why you know The systems keep going One quick comment of fiat money people always say fiat money is backed by nothing From from someone from hong kong's point of view The american dollar is actually backed by the coercive force that can be generated by the american military When the when iraq got invaded the the logical conclusion was well Then there'll be force to produce oil and therefore leading to a fall in oil prices Which then of course is the increase in the purchasing power of the american dollar, you know in the old age when you can flee Uh a certain area under you know the coercive force or wherever nowadays you have drones flying over your head, right? And you can they can be assassinated anytime, you know, so Maybe fiat money has the ultimate backing now of coercive force Instead of whatever we used like gold before So maybe you know and I always say that gold and silver Holds value throughout all cultures throughout all ages of humankind because it Well, the biggest use of gold and silver is jewelry. So it unleashes that primal urge perhaps to breed and uh in men So, uh, therefore it's uh Therefore it's so valuable over time The drones right but yeah, that's my that's my comment on fiat But that's why it's so hard to get rid of fiat money because you'd be coerced into using it You'd be taxed in fiat money, you know that alone is 50% of gdp in france, right? So That is why it's so hard to kick the addiction of fiat money. I think Can can I go back to the war on cash and in rico's point about Taxation and and to make a las vegas comment, which i'm sure diana will know Um, obviously there's a lot of anti-money laundering Um processes around casinos on reporting suspicious transactions But perhaps what some people don't know is that The institution to which you support you report those transactions is not the fbi. It's the irs Which I think demonstrates exactly your point about taxation being the aim And it seems to me that that where there is global coordination around the g20 at least It's it's on this it's on crushing any money which is outside the system and cannot be tracked but my question for Enrico in particular is that if the success of that Kills the black economy across europe What happens to gdp growth? The real gdp, which is both outside the measurement system and inside How how negative would that be? For true economic activity in europe, okay Well, there is a statistical issue and there is a real issue so to speak the statistical issue is minor in that The black economy is already included in the official statistics I know this sounds counterintuitive, but basically the idea was to say well Uh, the official economy produces 100 euros of gdp. We know that there are say 25 euros in the underground economy So we claim that the real gdp the real gdp is 120 so to speak, okay But we can't count it, but we know it's there. So we introduce it into the statistics. So this is the statistical say Substantive story is that if they kill The black economy, especially in southern europe, they're going to create millions of people unemployed Because you cannot kill the black economy have a regulated labor market and Hopefully and believe that everybody who was working in the underground economy will flock To the regulated official economy. So You're going to lose production Because the production of the underground economy is not going to be replaced by the official economy So we're going to lose a massive amount of wealth of say production capacity And uh, this is once again irresponsible because in order to get A few more pennies in tax revenues Which is debatable because once you have a gdp drop, I mean we know Since laffer de puy and all the others That you're going to lose both the tax revenues And gdp and you're going to get a lot of social tensions Because millions of people on the dough overnight they're going to create trouble So it will be suicidal Uh, I think today's hot topic is currency wars and monetary policy So my question is going to be a follow-up on that to Andrew and other economists in the panel Torsten polite has just escaped the question, but uh The global investors and the financial system around these days are Waiting for The fed to announce something and the ellen How if she is going to talk next day, etc, etc, and are they going to raise the interest rates or keep it at the same level? Uh, when we look at the war between chinese monetary policy and the u.s. Monetary policy China practically reversed the quantity easing into quantity quantitative tightening For the last couple of months. So what do you think? about those Monetary policy policymakers Do they see what they are doing or they have no idea what's going on or they just take a random shot or In the short term or in the medium term in and in the long term. How do you see the how do you foresee? What's going to happen in the currency wars? I'm on the rico side on this one, you know, do not overestimate the competence of Do not overestimate the competence of government officials I mean ben benanke was the one that came out that says house prices are normal in 2006 You know, so, uh, but then I used to work in investment bank You know if you believe the central bankers are chosen by investment bankers to be placed into those positions Then the practice of say Hiring if the bank wants the business of a certain company Was to hire a analyst that would bullish Highly predictable in what they're going to be writing and therefore place him in supposedly impartial An analyst post and generating all these positive reviews of a certain company And therefore the investment banking side can get the business so I you know the place the ben benanke was most famous for his 2002 speech about You know throwing money off a helicopter and yet he was appointed at the eve of the biggest housing bust in the u.s So people in power if you subscribe to the conspiracy theory knew that something was going to happen And therefore might as well put the most dovish guy possible into that position and when the situation came They can start printing money But as the currency was I everyone wants to be the reserve currency But the american Dollar the american as I say military It's so powerful the reach to power projection. You know, it gets unrivaled. You know, I think of a uh, well Rogue say arab nation suddenly saying i'm going to start accumulating more gold I got a feeling that that particular our ruling Family or whatever will be removed in no time, you know, the joke in hong kong is that not even six months after sarah who's saying Ordered all oil trades to be settled in the euros. He got removed You know, so I mean you can get really conspiratorial on these things But I would say that uh, you know, you just observe whatever people use at the end at the point of purchase And to see who is winning the currency wars So I would say that the only strategy they have is to avoid the blame For what might happen in the future. So Uh, you have to think of what they can be blamed for if you look at european central bank Draghi does not want to be blamed for recession Or for Bankruptcy public debt bankruptcy. So he's going to keep interest rates low Not because he has A strategy about interest rates, but he has a strategy about his own reputation And that leads him to keep quiet Flood the markets with liquidity It's better to be blamed in his view For inflationary policies in in the austin since then for recession or massive bankruptcy across the board In the u.s. It's different because the debt problem is not felt as much as in europe And perhaps Janet yellen is afraid of being blamed if there is a Crash in the stock exchange So that when you raise interest rate people panic The dow goes down to 12 000 and they blame her so She she's very cautious But I think that the only they don't have a monetary strategy They have a strategy about their say alleged reputation I don't like the word currency wars Okay I mean the only weapon that central banks have Is the printing press The printing press is always you shoot yourself into the leg Well, as you use the printing press the value of your own currency diminishes What kind of war is this? Monty python style of war Okay, so Of course in the short run right that they there might be a conflict of interest between Different currency areas because they all want to attract as much money as possible Into their own financial markets, but the long run interest is harmonious It's the perverse logic of a fractional reserve fiat money system They can't expend most if they expend all together in unison Therefore their real interest long run interest is in stabilizing exchange rates Now they cannot always do this because sometimes you have a crisis situation Sometimes they're troubled on the real economy side and so on But as far as the pure financial issues are concerned, they all want to expend together All right, so we shouldn't underestimate this. There might be some short run Conflicts of interest, but these are temporary I have a question for Andrew Andrew, how is the private gold holding in China? Because in Turkey it is very widespread because we have a long history like you were mentioning of That you simply don't trust the money So also very poor people have a lot of gold and My brother was joking when a distant relative dies In Anatolia immediately every relative has to go And the guy who comes first Because all his money is kept under the mattress and Whoever is first gets the mattress money, you know So in Turkey it is the way that nobody trusts the government and especially also the money I mean it's it's I I honestly have no idea how much gold there are in private hands In in in China I I suspect that during the first era of communist rule a lot of it was shipped out You know the one of the last thing that the previous regime the nationalist government did before they retreated to Taiwan Was to force everyone to hand in their gold In in in a return for some worthless paper that was hyperinflated at the end So I really have no idea. I mean I I asked the same question about India You know if there was going to be a great reset in currency Perhaps India would be emerging as the superpower of the of the of the next currency reset Sorry People keep a lot of gold in India as well. Yes And and so therefore we don't know how much gold there are but Also, I mean if you want to have a functioning credit system, I understand as a gentleman It's on a bitcoin, you know, I'm still waiting for the emergence of the first bitcoin bank Where by loans can be taken on bitcoin deposits can be, you know did done in bitcoin So you have to have that function as well for the capital allocation process. So I don't know. I mean the the the short answer is I have no idea how much I hope there is a lot Maybe there is some private, you know mining going on in China like all kind of things So I don't know But hopefully there are sufficient amount when the great reset comes and it will come so Not to know how much really private gold there is In any country So I think that's a good thing My grandma In communist china, my dad told me she still had a bag of gold That she fed her 10 children with for maybe five years When I ran out she started exchanging corduaries or silk What women did they saved fabric as a alternative reserve assets When I ran out they just went to their cousins in the countryside started begging for reserve food and luckily they live right next to a Cabbage market that they all survived But I think it's a good thing that nobody really knows how much real assets