“We Should Be Happier To Have A Job Than To Have Savings”
– Christine Lagarde, 2019.
Thank you, Christine. Your quote is the main reason why “How to Invest in Gold and Silver” got revisited 13 years after the original publication. Gold had underperformed for many years after attaining an all-time high in 2012, and gold mining companies had declined massively. Meanwhile, stock markets were apparently flying along and hitting new highs daily. Commodity prices were now lower than ever, in many cases and there was doubt in the premise of that book still being valid. Perhaps the 2008-09 crisis and fallout really was over?
When Christine said that, though, it was time to wonder. For those who don’t know Christine Lagarde, she makes big decisions on finance at the ECB (European Central Bank). The ECB is the banking facet of the European Union, and she was appointed to lead it in 2019. It doesn’t seem to matter that she was convicted of a financial crime 4 years earlier, nor did she seem to suffer any penalty for the conviction. Christine attends many events where big-ticket items are discussed, but no agenda or minutes of meetings are made public – think Bilderbergs and the World Economic Forum, for example. Christine even has Hollywood links – she was interviewed in 2010 as part of the documentary “Inside Job,” helping explain how those awful banks played roulette with our mortgages, savings, and investments, and it was all their fault. Lone financial gunmen, acting alone.
In summary, Ms Lagarde is a big cheese – or fromage grande to use her own language. When she says something, you can believe it may not just be her own words and possibly comes from somewhere deeper.
So ask yourself now, what does this quote mean to you? Images of savings being destroyed and life being a treadmill of working to earn enough to survive? Working on this premise, but not knowing what was coming or how that would be achieved, it was hard to know what to do except ensuring you have some diversification, then watch and wait.
In early 2020 it began to be clearer.