Golden Sense in a World of Nonsense

By Matthew Piepenburg

Partner

April 30, 2025

David Lin joins VON GREYERZ partner, Matthew Piepenburg, to make sense of the current debt nonsense and help place markets, economies, US bonds, currencies, BTC and, of course, physical gold into sober perspective.

Piepenburg reminds, once more, that every historical market crisis, and hence geopolitical crisis, is the derivative of an openly ignored yet otherwise obvious debt crisis. We see this playing out in US stock volatility, media-downplayed recession facts and desperate policies out of DC. For Piepenburg, the tariff headlines, though absolutely critical to triggering the dysfunction at home and abroad, are missing the skunk in the woodpile: A self-inflicted debt cancer that ripples into every corner of our lives.

Lin and Piepenburg discuss the fate of the USD as the Trump administration seeks to restore dollar hegemony and the re-shoring of US manufacturing through intentional policy shocks. Like 1971, DC still thinks we can run a world wherein it’s “our dollar, and the rest of the world’s problem.” But in the backdrop of a rising BRICS, clear de-dollarizing trends, central bank gold stacking, gold’s Tier-1 status at the BIS, a drying COMEX, IMF gold telegraphing, a neutering petrodollar and failed US Treasury auctions, the world is no longer willing to be the dog wagged by the tail of the USD. 

This is not a fable but a fact. The evidence is literally everywhere.

The conversation ends with a brief discussion of the politicization of BTC and the ironic yet deliberate use of this so-called “anti-fiat crypto” to support the greatest fiat fiasco of all time – the USD.

In short, the ironies (and lies) abound, but this is no surprise when desperate nations are forced into desperate measures. In a world of daily nonsense, gold is at least one asset which makes objective sense. Piepenburg makes this very, very, very clear…