What Is The #1 Financial Risk Today? I was speaking to a European (Swiss) colleague recently. He was a top executive for Rothschild Private Bank and he is an FRM. He asked me a question, “What is the number one risk today?” He had a surprising answer. He explained his answer from his clients’ viewpoint on the subject.

He told me the answer is “CONFISCATORY RISK.” That is, the risk of government’s confiscatory policies. He went on to explain to me how I was viewing financial risk from a parallax view in that financial risk is in aggregate, the collective behavioral view of markets. He then educated me on historical occurrences of government confiscation. That led to a discussion of gold.

What may be a plausible event of confiscatory risk? In my view, a forced conversion of USD/Euro, et. al, would be an event, and is a likely outcome of a failed Euro leading to a USD death spiral. It must be occurring to ECB, the Fed, and other BIS constituents, that a new currency and a new monetary political authority is the answer to the threats of a debt collapse. In the face of a forced currency conversion, is the answer to pack suitcases with gold (the maximum is 40 lbs, about 1.5 million USD per suitcase per person)? Yes, if it weren’t for the threat that the new world currency would cause gold to be valued at its industrial use value.

A world currency would foster pro growth monetary policies, create trading markets, and lessen systematic and geopolitical risks. *.*