Mcleod takes on Macleod
Alasdair Macleod warns that a bond market crisis is building and could arrive within months, forcing investors to exit credit and move into gold to preserve what they already have.
In a recent interview with Investing News at the New Orleans Investment Conference, the head of research at Macleod Finance and senior strategic advisor to von Greyerz explained that gold’s purchasing power has remained remarkably stable over centuries while fiat currencies steadily lose value.
He illustrated the point with a 1750 London coffee house example. A cup of coffee then cost one old penny. Measured through gold and gold sovereigns, that same purchasing power equates to roughly £3.50 today, matching the price of a modern cup of coffee in the City. “Measured in gold prices have been remarkably stable,” Macleod said. “When you see prices rise, actually what’s happening is the purchasing power of imaginary money is declining.”
Macleod stressed the fundamental distinction between real money and credit. Gold is final settlement. Dollars, euros, sterling and yen are imaginary money, a concept he traces back roughly two hundred years. “Understand those differences and quite a lot of stuff begins to fall into place,” he noted. He sees the current Middle East conflict as an accelerator rather than a temporary disruption. Propaganda has obscured the real damage to oil flows, including through Saudi pipelines. Higher energy costs will drive higher prices measured in fiat currencies, which in turn will push bond yields higher.
“Higher bond yields are going to create crisis in the bond market. And that could be within the next month or two. Literally,” Macleod warned. A bond crisis, he added, will quickly spill into equities. Foreign holders of roughly $25 trillion in U.S. equities will flee, though they will only succeed in extracting a fraction of that amount before markets seize up.
The practical advice is straightforward. “We’re now moving into a period where, generally, I would say that unless you’re very, very smart, don’t try and accumulate yet more wealth out of stock market dealing. What you’ve got to do is preserve what you’ve got, and you can only do that really by moving into gold, and to a lesser extent silver.” Macleod expects mining equities to outperform in this environment and views the end of the fiat currency era as inevitable. Fiat currencies always end, and this cycle will be no exception.
These points line up closely with the case Macleod made on the SilverTrade Insider just before leaving for the New Orleans Conference. In that conversation he described an accelerating collapse of fiat currencies, a crack up boom already underway, and the risk that retail investors have lost hope in gold and silver at the worst possible moment. He discussed debt traps across the G7, bond market pressures driven by higher oil prices, and the possibility that strategic silver reserves could be built in response to Chinese accumulation.
The same emphasis on exiting credit, preserving purchasing power in real money, and preparing for a sudden rather than gradual breakdown of the system remains central. Viewers can revisit the full SilverTrade Insider discussion for additional context on those themes.
