![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pgm-blog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Repsol.jpg\" "\\"Repsol")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pgm-blog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Bolivia.jpg\" "\\"Bolivia\\"")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pgm-blog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/60067500_hollande_ap.jpg\" "\\"Holande\\"")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pgm-blog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/greece-flag.jpg\" "\\"greece-flag\\"")
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Dear PGM Blog<\/strong> readers, Today, Sunday May 6th<\/sup>\u00a02012 will go into history as the day that Greece and France shifted politically from the center to respectively extreme left to left from the center.<\/p>\n The big questions Investors will be asking\u00a0themselves\u00a0are:<\/p>\n Without\u00a0wishing\u00a0to\u00a0meddle in\u00a0internal politics and political decisions in the above-mentioned countries, we should agree with each other that the above-mentioned four events are consequences of populism.<\/p>\n History has proven that populism<\/a> and populist decisions will trigger the opposite reaction\u00a0from\u00a0the outside world.<\/p>\n In the sense that it will scare (foreign) creditors & Investors, which will result in isolation and a downward spiral for the countries with a populist leadership.<\/p>\n What most populist leaders forget are\u00a0two very import rules of life\u00a0namely:<\/p>\n The basic message in today\u2019s election in Europe is that\u00a0voters in both Greece and France refuse to take more austerity measures and want to\u00a0reduce\u00a0the power of Germany in the Euro debt crisis.<\/p>\n What these voters forget is that Germany and German voters and population are the ones who are now paying for these\u00a0countries to stay afloat and due to this logically demand from both Greece and France to take austerity measures in order to reduce their budget\u00a0deficit\u00a0and to bring it in line with\u00a0the\u00a0\u201cMaastricht Treaty\u201d.<\/p>\n A tough stance in both these countries might\u00a0lead to Germany no\u00a0longer willing to\u00a0finance their deficits any longer, which will lead to a break-up of the Euro and Euro-zone as we know it today.<\/p>\n This will lead to the second rule, namely <\/strong><\/p>\n birds of the same feathers will always fly together<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If this is the case, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy (and eventually Malta) will either go back to their former currency or will form a so-called \u201cSouth Euro Zone\u201d.<\/p>\n On the other hand Germany, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia, with eventually Slovenia and Slovakia, will form the so-called \u201cNorth Euro Zone\u201d<\/p>\n You don\u2019t need to have a PhD degree in Economics to draw the conclusion that the\u00a0Southern\u00a0Euro will become a ‘loser’\u00a0<\/strong>currency with down-grading\u00a0of credit-rating and devaluation against major foreign currencies<\/p>\n On the other hand the \u201cNorthern\u00a0Euro\u201d will be a very strong currency of Europe’s\u00a0major\u00a0export champions and solid economies, with the chance that Norway, Denmark and Sweden\u00a0may join them\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n This will send a very strong signal to Euro-zone countries like Belgium & Ireland to choose position. \u201cNorth or South\u201d (“Loser<\/strong> or Winner<\/strong>\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n We foresee that the markets will dump the Euro against all mayor currencies and that French as well as Greece capital markets will go through very difficult times in the near future. The VIX or FEAR index might spike to levels comparable with the ones of the fall of 2008 or summer 2011.<\/p>\n Chances are that Investors who dump the Euro will flee in the short term into the USD and US-Treasuries and by doing so will send the yield of the 10-year note to a record low.<\/p>\n But it will be only a question of time before people will start seeing that the USA and the USA-Dollar are more or less in the same financial and debt mess as the Southern European countries, with the consequence that investors then flee into the ultimate safe-haven which is GOLD and other precious metals.<\/p>\n We believe that this growing populism will hasten the West going into a severe Kondratieff Winter or Depression, which due to the demography and entitlement programs in the West might be much worst that the great depresssion of 1930.<\/p>\n For the sake of humanity we hope and pray that we are wrong but, if after reading the above you (partially) agree with the content of this blog post, we advise you to start putting a great portion of your savings into GOLD, hold \u00a0on to \u201cAsset Protection\u201d vehicles, stored in low-debt, good-governed countries, with a history of asset and investors protection.<\/p>\n Last be but not least, before following any investing advice, always take your investment horizon and risk tolerance into consideration and keep in mind that the price of Commodities as well as the stocks of their producers can be very\u00a0volatile and that sharp corrections might may in the short term.<\/p>\n Yours sincerely<\/p>\n Eric Panneflek Dear PGM Blog readers, If you have watched the headlines lately, the following news headlines of the last two weeks should have captured your attention: Argentina Nationalizes\u00a0\u201cREPSOL-YPF\u201d Bolivia Nationalizes\u00a0Electricity Company \u201cREE\u201d Today, Sunday May 6th\u00a02012 will go into history as the day that Greece and France shifted politically from the center to respectively extreme left[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,11,19,20,13,27,15,1,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debt-crisis","category-eric-panneflek","category-euro","category-financial-news","category-general-information","category-market-volatility","category-news","category-pgm-capital","category-uncategorized","category-us-dollar","category-world-economic-outlook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pgmcapital.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf you have watched the headlines lately, the following news headlines of the last two weeks should have captured <\/strong>your attention:<\/p>\n\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pgm-blog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/kondratieff-wave-1789-2000.jpg\" "\\"kondratieff-wave")
<\/p>\n
\nChairman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"