Changing Dollar, Competing Currency Blocks and Golden Common Sense

By Matthew Piepenburg

Partner

June 1, 2023

In this latest conversation with Elijah Johnson of Liberty & Finance, Matterhorn Asset Management Partner, Matthew Piepenburg, addresses the most recent trends in the global market and gold space—from debt ceiling drama to an ever-changing and debt-soaked macro landscape.

Piepenburg begins with the inevitability of a debt-ceiling “solution” characterized by ever-more debt, as the US and global markets, so chained to the UST, cannot realistically allow for a public default on US IOUs. Piepenburg then addresses the complex ironies of the Fed’s “war on inflation,” whose very policies are in many ways: Inflationary.

Toward this end, Piepenburg discusses the crippling effects of rising rates on the US middleclass and small businesses, and makes an equal case for new-home price inflation alongside the pains of failing bond, stock, and banking sectors.

Turning from the US to global geopolitics, Piepenburg soberly addresses the previously-warned yet now undeniable trend away from the USD as a settlement currency, which, he reminds, is not the same thing as the end of the USD as a reserve currency. Nevertheless, the trends and evidence are clear that competing currency and trade blocks (East & West) are growing at a size and pace which are now irreversibly altering the hitherto hegemony, trust and strength of the USD as BRICS and other EM GDP percentages outpace those of the G-7 nations.

Ultimately, all of these accelerating changes lead to changes in global currency markets and hence serve as long-term tailwinds for physical gold, a topic Piepenburg addresses with common-sense simplicity and historical context.