The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more Dominic Frisby

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Cards on the table: A Western fiat money collapse, along the lines of Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or Weimar hyperinflation, despite unsustainable deficit spending and un-payable government debt, is not something I think we are likely to see.
Many more knowledgeable souls than myself deem it inevitable, but more probable in my view is just the continued debasement of currency and the erosion of its value, so that, with the incremental effects of compounding, a generation from now fiat will have lost another 90% or more of its purchasing power.
Heck, the pound has already lost a third of its value just this decade. Since the beginning of the century, it has fallen by over 90%.
I guess that constitutes collapse. It all hangs on how you define collapse, I suppose, and over what timeframe.
Yet, there's one scenario I can envision that could lead to a more rapid collapse, and it's one we might even be careering towards: war.
If tensions between East and West escalate into full-blown conflict, you can be sure the East will attack Western currencies, just as the US weaponized banking and the dollar following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
China has lots of gold, as we know, much more than it says it does. Russia has plenty. Shanghai Cooperation Nations are all accumulating. US gold has not been audited for decades, casting doubts over whether it even exists. As for British gold, I wonder what happened to that! In short, Western fiat money is extremely vulnerable should the East decide to attack it. (For the time being at least, I don’t expect it to: China has some $3.25 trillion in reserves, and another $800 billion in US Treasuries. Why collapse their value?)
But whether Biden or Trump wins in the US elections this autumn, neither is going to balance the books. Nor will Labour here in the UK. So you know that both the pound and the dollar are going to see their value steadily eroded for the next five years. Deficit spending will continue and debts will increase.
Indeed, outside of a full-on deflationary tightening or collapse - I mean Paul Volcker in 1980 scale tightening - it is impossible for fiat money to see its purchasing power grow. Supply is going to increase, and purchasing power will decline. This is built-in, inherent, and inevitable. Hence why I advocate owning alternative, non-government money - gold and bitcoin.
Today, I want to explore a scenario in which Western currencies come under attack and are forced to back their currencies with gold. I understand Russia briefly did this in March 2022. In other words, what happens to the gold price if gold gets remonetized?
Similarly, we’ll explore potential bitcoin prices in the event of hyperbitcoinisation (where bitcoin becomes the dominant global money).
The Remonetisation of Gold

I have a friend from school who is obviously gay. We’ve all known it for a long time, yet, for whatever reason, he has never been able to come out. He has never been able to admit to himself what is so apparent to everyone else. He’s miserable. Has been for years.
I’m not sure if I were gay, if I would be able to come out.
I have actually tried to be gay. Well, sort of. In the dark years of my late 30s and divorce, I thought a couple of times being gay might save me from having to deal with the alien species that is woman, so I tried watching gay porn. I was just bored by it. Within a few minutes I was looking at second-hand cars on Autotrader. I have never found men remotely attractive, even if I can admire a beautiful male physique. The only time I might possibly waver is if they are all dolled up in drag, with glamorous dresses, heels, breasts, makeup, wigs, and all the rest of it. But take the wig off and any spell is broken.
In any case, to come out as gay requires coming to terms with the truth. I think it is a very brave thing to do.
I think that’s why so many great social commentators and comedians are gay. Never mind the obvious love of performing and attention; why, for example, a disproportionately large number of actors and dancers are gay. (By disproportionate, I mean the ratio of gay to straight increases in acting and dancing relative to what it is across the broader population). I mean, because of this phenomenon, whereby gay people are able to speak truths; in many cases, truths that straight people are unable or too shy or polite or repressed to express. How often, for example, when watching a gay performer, does the word “outrageous” burst out of the mouths of those watching, often accompanied by a gasp and the hand going over the mouth? Yes, what they are doing or saying may be outrageous, but it is usually outrageous because it is an unspoken truth.
The act of coming out is enabling because it requires tremendous honesty. That honesty is then carried into other areas of life. I’m sure that’s why, for example, Douglas Murray, is able to say the things that many of us are thinking, but few of us dare articulate. Coming out teaches you to be truthful, and truth is power.
Even an entertainer like Kenny Everett was so baring of his soul, thereby revealing his vulnerability; I’m sure that is one of the reasons he was so loved. Also, because he was so funny; but often being funny is just being truthful where a subject is taboo.
In my immediate circle, it is usually my gay friends who are the boldest. I immediately think of comedian Scott Capurro, who has been in the news quite a bit recently for upsetting people. The reason Scott upsets people so regularly is that so much of what he says is so close to the bone. If it were me, I would pull back. But Scott, like so many gay people, is fearless.
Many of the greatest warriors in the ongoing culture wars are gay. I’m sure it is for the same reason: in this age of increasing censorship, the importance of speaking truth is ever more needed, and gay people are not scared of the truth. They have learnt to come to terms with it
What’s more, a lot of gay people feel like outsiders, even if we live in much more inclusive times compared to say a century ago. So perhaps, by speaking truths, they do not feel there is as much risk to them as to someone on the inside. Or maybe, by being an outsider—whether by sexuality, or by something else (race, political belief, whatever)—you are forced out on a limb, and that in itself is bracing.
They say the fool was often the only one who spoke truth to Power. I bet a lot of the time the fool was gay.


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I wanted to take a look at the gold price today. As I'm sure you are aware, it has been extraordinarily strong in recent weeks.
$2,100/oz, or just below, was resistance for four long years. Each attempt - and there were at least three - to get through that level stuttered and stalled. Then, last month, after a false break late last year, we broke out. Gold has not looked back, suddenly putting on over $200 and behaving like something out of the spivvier end of the cryptocurrency markets.

All four of my children were born at home. I feel extremely fortunate about this - they should too. Four wonderful experiences. I will forever be in debt to Louisa and Jolie.
When, twenty-four years ago, my then wife, Louisa, told me she wanted to give birth to our first child at home, I thought she was off her rocker, but I gave her my word that we would at least talk to a midwife, and we did just that. Within about five minutes of meeting Tina Perridge of South London Independent Midwives, a lady of whom I cannot speak highly enough, I was instantly persuaded.
Ever since, when I hear that someone is pregnant, I start urging them to have a homebirth with the persistence of a Jehovah’s Witness or someone pedalling an upgrade to your current mobile phone subscription.
I even included a chapter about it in my first book Life After the State - Why We Don’t Need Government (2013), (now, thanks to the invaluable help of my buddy Chris P, back in print - with the audiobook here [Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books]).
I’m publishing that chapter here, something I was previously not able to do (rights issues), because I want as many people as possible to read it. Many people do not even know home-birth is an option.
I’m fully aware that, when it comes to giving birth, one of the last people a prospective mum wants to hear advice from is comedian and financial writer, Dominic Frisby. I’m also aware that this is an extremely sensitive subject and that I am treading on eggshells galore. But the word needs to be spread. All I would say is that if you or someone you know is pregnant, have a conversation with an independent midwife, before committing to having your baby in a hospital. It’s so important. Please just talk to an independent midwife first.
With that said, here is that chapter. Enjoy it, and if you know anyone who is pregnant, please send this to them.
We have to use fiat money, we have to pay taxes, most of us are beholden in some way to the education system. These are all things much bigger than us, over which we have little control. The birth of your child, however, is one of the most important experiences of your (and their) life, one where the state so often makes a mess of things, but one where it really is possible to have some control.
The State: Looking After Your First Breath

The knowledge of how to give birth without outside interventions lies deep within each woman. Successful childbirth depends on an acceptance of the process.
Suzanne Arms, author
There is no single experience that puts you more in touch with the meaning of life than birth. A birth should be a happy, healthy, wonderful experience for everyone involved. Too often it isn’t.
Broadly speaking, there are three places a mother can give birth: at home, in hospital or – half-way house – at a birthing centre. Over the course of the 20th century we have moved birth from the home to the hospital. In the UK in the 1920s something like 80% of births took place at home. In the 1960s it was one in three. By 1991 it was 1%. In Japan the home-birth rate was 95% in 1950 falling to 1.2% in 1975. In the US home-birth went from 50% in 1938 to 1% in 1955. In the UK now 2.7% of births take place at home. In Scotland, 1.2% of births take place at home, and in Northern Ireland this drops to fewer than 0.4%. Home-birth is now the anomaly. But for several thousand years, it was the norm.
The two key words here are ‘happy’ and ‘healthy’. The two tend to come hand in hand. But let’s look, first, at ‘healthy’. Let me stress, I am looking at planned homebirth; not a homebirth where mum didn’t get to the hospital in time.
My initial assumption when I looked at this subject was that hospital would be more healthy. A hospital is full of trained personnel, medicine and medical equipment. My first instinct against home-birth, it turned out, echoed the numerous arguments against it, which come from many parts of the medical establishment. The

As promised, here is my updated guide to buying and investing in gold. I really think it is important that you own some, given what governments are doing to currency.
I have also made this available as a PDF, which you can download here:
(If that PDF doesn’t work, try this link)
Also, there are still a couple of tickets for my musical comedy show this Friday April 5 in Guildford. And on Tuesday April 9, I’m talking money, tax, gold - all that stuff - at the IEA with Tom Clougherty. Entry is free. If you fancy it, here is the link).
We are living in a world of uncertainty. There is inflation, war, political discontent, financial instability and, perhaps most concerning of all, state incompetence everywhere you look. The case for owning gold, for having wealth stored outside the system, where it is nobody else’s liability, is as strong as it has ever been.
There is old Wall Street adage: “Put 10% of your net worth in gold, and hope it doesn’t go up.” If gold is going up, it usually means there are problems elsewhere.
The adage applies now, as much as it did when it was first coined many decades ago.
How to invest in gold.
There are five ways:
* You can go old school and buy bullion - coins or bars.
* You can buy gold stored in vaults in places like London, Jersey, Zurich or Singapore. This gold is allocated to you.
* You can buy ETFs via your stock broker. These are funds that store gold. The price of the fund tracks the gold price, and you own shares in the fund. (See footnote 1, if you need to understand what an ETF is).
* You can buy gold companies - refiners, royalty companies, miners and so on.
* You can buy futures, options, CFDs or spreadbets.
I’m not talking today about buying mining companies (if you are interested in mining companies, consider a paid subscription, as gold mining companies are one of my areas of expertise). Nor am I talking about futures, options, CFDs or spread betting the gold price. Neither is safeguarding your wealth. They are speculation. In the right market they can make you a lot of money. In the wrong market, they can also lose you a lot.
Upgrade your subscription here.

Today we are talking about old school, physical gold
I’ll put to one side arguments about whether gold is a good investment or not (I think it is), and whether I think it is going up or down. I’ll simply explain what is the easiest, cheapest and, perhaps above all, safest way to buy gold.
A note on ETFs
ETFs are a simple way to get exposure to the gold price. It’s not really the same as owning actual metal, so the purists tend to veer away from ETFs, though institutions like them, as do traders. ETFs are easy to buy and sell. You buy an ETF just as you would buy any stock or share through your broker. London-listed gold ETFs include RMAU.L and PHAU.L. The world’s biggest is the NYSE-listed GLD. Costs - for example storage - are baked into the price.
To buy an ETF, you need an account with a broker, such as Hargreaves Lansdown or Interactive Investor. You deposit money and buy through them.
I steer away from ETFs mainly because they are too easy to get shaken out of. When you buy physical gold, to sell can be a bit of an undertaking, so it’s less likely to be done on a whim. Owning physical turns you into a long-term investor. It may be that you never sell at all and end up passing the gold on to your heirs.
So where do you buy gold from?
I’ve used many bullion dealers over the years. The dealer I like most, and with whom I have an affiliation deal, is the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low. Quality of service is high. You get to deal with a human being. You can take delivery of your gold or store it online with them in their vaults. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe. (If you speak to them, tell them I sent you).
In theory, there is not a great deal of difference between an ETF and storing your gold online with a bullion dealer. Both are extremely convenient, whether for buying or selli

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With gold hitting new highs yesterday and the importance of owning some, in my view, as paramount as ever, I am going to send out my report on how to buy gold later today or tomorrow. If it is old hat to you, please just ignore the email.
If you prefer, you can also download the PDF version here:
(If that PDF doesn’t work, try this link)
In the meantime, today I want to take a look at oil. It is having a nice, quiet run.
What fossil fuels have made possible
There were some really interesting comments following this week’s Sunday morning thought piece about declining birth rates. You lot are clever.
My argument is that unaffordable housing has been a major cause of declining birth rates: people are having smaller families later in life, for the simple reason that they cannot afford anywhere to live. Dan Shaw replied as follows:
For the housing cost argument to be credible, it needs to explain what has changed. Basic necessities, including housing, have consumed the vast majority of people’s incomes until very recently in the developed world. They still do for most people today in the global south (where birth rates are also falling). Fiat inflation is undoubtedly eroding real income in the developed world, but it is only regressing disposable income towards historic norms when people were happy to start families. Why will people not start families when they have roughly the same wealth, in real terms, as their greatest generation (great) grandparents? Why are people in the global south, who have never seen Western wealth, also not having children?
Let’s put aside the issue of birth rates - they is not the focus of today’s piece, but Sunday’s. Instead let us ask: what was it that created this unique period in the 20th-century West, when ordinary middle-class people could afford housing and other basic necessities, and still have plenty of income left over for cars and other luxury items? It goes against almost all of history.
The answer must surely be fossil fuels. The energy they granted made us incredibly productive. It made 20th-century progress possible.
Today a variety of factors are undermining that: fiat money and the debasement of currency; restrictive planning laws and overregulation; and of course, a needless focus on other, more inefficient and wasteful energy sources.
The world seems to be slowly coming to its senses regarding fossil fuels, thank goodness, and, like them or not, they are clearly going to have an enormous role to play in powering economies for, at a guess, at least a hundred more years or until a superior form of energy is found. This is why they make up a core 10% of the Dolce Far Niente portfolio.
Whether it’s mines, farms, or factories, trucks, cars, boats, trains, or planes, or heating and cooling, we need fossil fuels, and they are going to make life a lot better for a lot of people.
Global economies seem to be ticking over reasonably well and finding their feet again. In particular, Chinese manufacturing data seems to be quietly improving. China and India are certainly growing consumption. Attempts to electrify western economies, well-meaning though they may be, seem to be coming apart, meanwhile. In short, oil demand is on the up.
This is confirmed by the  latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency, which says: “Global oil demand is forecast to rise by a higher-than-expected 1.7 mb/d in 1Q24 on an improved outlook for the United States and increased bunkering” (refueling of cargo vessels). Meanwhile: “World oil production is projected to fall by 870 kb/d in 1Q24 vs 4Q23 due to heavy weather-related shut-ins and new curbs from the OPEC+ bloc.”
The combination of falling production and increased demand is what has led to higher prices.
Here’s Brent crude over the last two years, and you can see that nice solid low around $72.50, and the recent run from December to