Current levels of equity markets are not only divorced from their underlying economic and business realities but are repeating the madness of crowds that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929—1932. The obvious difference is in the money: gold-backed dollars then compared with unbacked fiat today.

We can now begin to see how markets and monetary events are likely to develop in the coming months and this article provides a rough sketch of them. Obviously, the financial asset bubble will be burst by rising interest rates, the consequence of rising prices for consumer essentials. Fiat currencies will then embark on a path towards worthlessness because the monetary authorities around the world will redouble their efforts to prevent interest rates rising, bond yields rising with them, and equity values from collapsing; all by sacrificing their currencies.

The ghost of Irving Fisher's debt-deflation theory will soon be uppermost in central bankers' minds, preventing them from following anything other than a radically inflationary course regardless of the consequences.