John Rubino and Patrick Highsmith of Firefox Gold return as guests on this week’s program

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) loaded up on some of the largest cap stocks in the world like MSFT, GOOG, AMZN, TSLA, XOM and many more in order to weaken the Swiss francs vis-a-vis the Euro and the Dollar.  But these purchases have now resulted in a 132 billion Swiss francs loss in 2022, the biggest annual loss in the SNB’s history. The total amount of “Foreign currency investments” on its balance sheet, including its U.S. stock holdings, by the end of December 2022 had plunged by 176 billion CHF, or 18%, to CHF 801 billion from the peak in February 2022, the lowest since October 2019 and just a hair above December 2017. But the SNB is not alone.

The Fed, the European Central Bank and the BOJ all have seen their net worth positions head to negative territory as the bonds they bought to manipulate interest rates lower and pump artificial buying into economies are now underwater as interest rates rise. Should these losses matter to the average investor? What ramifications might this turn of events have on money markets and the global economy? Banks of nations friendly to the western alliance generally have engaged in QE while banks considered hostile to the NATO alliance have been stocking up big time on gold as those countries desire to detach themselves from the dollar. What is there to be learned by the average investor from the way central banks are allocating resources? We will ask John to opine. 

Firefox Gold Corp has had some fantastic drill results on its Finland project in its early 2022 drill program portending for some exciting upside potential from the company’s current 10 cents share price. We will talk to Patrick Highsmith about what potential share price catalysts might be expected in 2023.

John Rubino is the founder of the popular financial website DollarCollapse.com. He is co-author, with GoldMoney’s James Turk, of The Money Bubble: What To Do Before It Pops, and author of Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green-Tech Boom (Wiley, 2008), The Collapse of the Dollar (also with James Turk), How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust (Rodale, 2003) and Main Street, Not Wall Street (Morrow, 1998). After earning a Finance MBA from New York University, he spent the 1980s on Wall Street, as a Eurodollar trader, equity analyst and junk bond analyst. During the 1990s he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and a frequent contributor to Individual Investor, Online Investor, and Consumers Digest, among many other publications.

Patrick Highsmith is Chairman of Firefox Gold Corp. A professional geologist and mining executive with 29 years of experience in exploration, operations, business development & leadership roles for companies, including: Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Newmont, Lithium One, Pure Energy Minerals, and Fortescue Metals Group. Mr. Highsmith has worked on more than 250 projects around the world, leading teams through creative transactions, new discoveries, scoping, and prefeasibility studies. He is experienced in the capital markets, having been associated with all manner of financings and transactions. Patrick has been targeting gold in Finland since 2005, and has been integral in building FireFox. He is also the Pres.& CEO of Timberline Resources, a mineral exploration and resource development company focused on gold and copper discoveries in north-central Nevada, USA.