This week I will discuss Fed bubbles and a potential imminent major market event, including an extremely important chart and also the safest private gold vault in the world. But first, last week was overshadowed by Iraq and Iran, which again has reminded us of terrorism in various forms.
Terrorism is not just an act of violence. Cyber attacks can have devastating effects like paralysing air traffic or making all your digital assets disappear.
The killing of the Iranian General Soleimani reminds us all how near the world is to a nuclear war. The shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane “by mistake” in Teheran also tells us how easy it is for a country to press the wrong button. If that happens to be a nuclear button, the consequences would be catastrophic.
FINANCIAL CYBER TERRORISM – A MAJOR RISK
Most of us have no influence over wars or terrorist attacks and therefore we only have limited means to protect ourselves from these events. But a terrorist event that we are all exposed to on a daily basis is financial cyber terrorism.
Most financial assets today are digital. Whether you have a bank account, stocks, bonds or any other financial asset, all you have is a digital entry. In 2018 in the UK financial companies saw a fivefold increase, compared to 2017, in data breaches or cyber attacks.
Just in April 2018, seven UK retail banks, including Santander, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Tesco Bank, had to limit or shut down their systems after sustained attacks. Losses are major and the cost to repair the systems are substantial.
And it will get worse. Executives at leading UK banks and payment companies say that they are under constant fire from attackers.
For most investors this is a risk area that virtually nobody understands or worries about. Just imagine, a major cyber attack can wipe out your assets totally or at least make them disappear for a very long time before the total position of the bank can be reconstructed.
In our company, we worry about risk on a daily basis. We worry about market risk, financial and economic risk and security risk including cyber attacks. Investors who keep the majority of their assets in the financial system are not protected properly against these risks. Any one of these risks can totally wipe out your paper fortune.
YOUR BEST RISK INSURANCE – PHYSICAL GOLD
This is why it is absolutely essential to keep an important part of your wealth in a form and place that protects you from risks that can bankrupt you. We spent quite some time analysing these risks already over 20 years ago. The consequence of our analysis was that physical gold stored outside the financial system was the best insurance against financial risk, including currency debasement...
- Source, Egon Von Greyerz, read the full article here
