Inflation is coming...... Hey @federalreserve very nice job you did here.

“Paper money is now being created wholesale throughout the world. Stated simply, all paper currency is now valued against each other. But more important, ultimately ALL paper is ultimately valued against the only true, intrinsic money – gold. In world history, no irredeemable paper currency has ever survived. Since all the world’s currency is now irredeemable (in gold), this means that in the end, the only form of money that will survive is real intrinsic money – gold. It’s not a question of whether gold will survive, it’s a question of when the world’s current paper money will deteriorate and finally die. I can tell you that irredeemable paper will not survive – but obviously I can’t tell you when it will die. The timing is the only uncertainty.”

For the first time in history, a central bank has managed to print enough money to buy enough assets to surpass the nation's annual GDP.

A currency should be "basically something with a store of value," he said, adding that currencies need to be "elastic" to be able to support varying economic and financial conditions.

In some ways, Bretton Woods really might have evolved into the worst international deal America ever made.

So... let's end it by absolving the dollar of its role as international reserve currency and restoring the classical gold standard. This is something Donald Trump intuitively understands.

We think the final break with precious metal currency systems from the early 1970s (after centuries of adhering to such regimes) and to a fiat currency world has encouraged budget deficits, rising debts, huge credit creation, ultra loose monetary policy, global build-up of imbalances, financial deregulation and more unstable markets.

The various breaks with gold based currencies over the last century or so has correlated well with our financial shocks/crises indicator. It shows that you are more likely to see crises/shocks when we break from hard currency systems. Some of the devaluation to Gold has been mindboggling over the last 100 years.

China just announced that any oil-exporter that accepts yuan for oil can convert the oil to gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and hedge the hard currency value of the gold on the Shanghai Futures Exchange.

Gold ownership is traditionally a form of battening down the hatches against these recurring financial storms and, for the minority who adhere to it, is an effective and ever-ready defense. Nialls Ferguson, the economic philosopher, summed up what a good many were thinking in the wake of the 2008 meltdown when he said: "Those few goldbugs who always doubted the soundness of fiat money – paper currency without a metal anchor – have in large measure been vindicated. But why were the rest of us so blinded by money illusion?"

Why indeed. . and why, pray tell, are so many blinded by it now?

The US Treasury report on currency manipulation was ordered by Donald Trump to address the issue of countries manipulating their currencies, normally to devalue them and give an unfair advantage to their own exporters.

The report is expected to be published mid-April and it expected to have a strong impact on the currency markets.

Another market the findings may impact is that of Gold which is heavily influenced by sentiment flows as it is used as a safe-haven in times of stress.

Only lowering our living standards will achieve sustainable growth. That’s the message from Satyajit Das, a former financier who anticipated the GFC. Debt, energy consumption, housing affordability or superannuation – it’s all based on a financial system that’s in fact a completely fictional model. This model was always doomed to fail – eventually.