Pierre Mahon

Statistical Engineer
Risk and Compliance Manager at NCM - investing

[Erik Townsend 🛢️ @ErikSTownsend]

Some light reading on $GC_F Gold while you wait for the 6pm ET Sunday futures market open. Link to substack post in first reply...

[Will Denyer @willdenyer]

In 1973, the US Treasury issued gold certificates against its gold holdings, valued at US$42.22/oz, and sold those certificates to the Fed for freshly printed money.

[Lyn Alden @LynAldenContact]

The Epstein stuff is so bad that it basically gave all conspiracy theorists a pass for the next couple decades.

They can say the craziest stuff and you have to be like, “yeah, maybe.”

[Louis-Vincent Gave @gave_vincent]

It’s always a pleasure to catch up with @ErikSTownsend and the crew at @MacroVoices - as always, I really enjoyed our chat and walked away from it with a bunch of new ideas. Thanks for having me on

[Luke Gromen @LukeGromen]

Sorry if you sold gold last week based on people that told you China was selling gold.

China imported 1,384 tonnes of gold in total last year; at $22,000/oz, those 1,384 tonnes balance China's trade surplus.

"China's over-exporting" is just a symptom of overvalued USD v. gold.

[In Gold We Trust @IGWTreport]

🚨The #IGWT25 featured interview is out!
▶️Watch it on YouTube!
🔔Subscribe to the IGWT channel to get the latest content!
https://t.co/zelWmRlU8H

[Richard DÉTENTE @RichardDetente]

https://t.co/Tg0yInKmc4

[Vincent Deluard @VincentDeluard]

The government paid $72 bn in federal salaries in 2025, 14% more than last year and 22% more than in 2023

Similar growth rate in defense spending, social security, and Medicare.

Bond market selloff and gold spike are not "the basis trade blowing up", but the realization that WE ARE NOT SERIOUS PEOPLE

[Pierre Mahon @MahonPierre]

@business @markets Pointed: The News Quiz for Risk-Takers by Bloomberg https://t.co/dLBi2ixd1t

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Boston Fed president Collins now WSJ interview, and FT just an hour ago.

Fed in full CYA mode.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is batshit insane, no other way to call it.

We now have the first attempt by the White House—specifically by Steve Miran, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers—to justify the tariffs based on economic "theory", and it's without a doubt the most dishonest piece of economic reading that's I've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

The gist of Miran's argument is to reposition the global reserve currency status of the dollar not as an exorbitant privilege (as erstwhile French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once characterized it), but as somehow a "burden" that the rest of the world needs to compensate the US for bearing.

As Miran explains it, having the dollar as a reserve currency "has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed, along with other countries’ unfair barriers to trade, to unsustainable trade deficits" which "have decimated our manufacturing sector."

So he wants to give up the reserve currency status of the dollar, right? Wrong. He wants to have it both ways.

He says that America's "financial dominance cannot be taken for granted; and the Trump Administration is determined to preserve [it]" but this same financial dominance "comes at a cost" and "other nations" need to pay for it.

And he means this literally. He made a list of what exactly he means by "burden sharing" and one of the forms it can take is countries "simply writ[ing] checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods."

Let's pause a moment here to contemplate the sheer insanity of this: the U.S. is literally suggesting that countries should mail checks to the US Treasury as tribute for the 'privilege' of maintaining the dollar as a global reserve currency, when it is this very reserve status of the dollar that is the cornerstone of US power.

It's the equivalent of Samson asking everyone to pay him to keep his hair.

Because that's what Miran is conveniently not mentioning in his text. The reason Giscard d'Estaing called it an "exorbitant privilege" is that it allows the U.S. to quite literally have its way of life subsidized by the rest of the world.

Miran (and Trump) complain about the trade deficits, but they are the very manifestation of this subsidization: countries normally cannot run a permanent trade deficit because they'd one day face a balance of payments crisis.

It's like a private individual: you cannot indefinitely buy more from others than what you yourself earn. At some point you'll have to pay up. Unless, that is, you're the issuer of the currency everyone uses, in which case the normal rules of economic gravity are suspended.

While other nations must balance their books eventually, the dollar's reserve status gives America the unique ability to consume more than it produces perpetually, with the world eagerly accepting dollars that cost nothing to create in exchange for real goods and services. That's not a "burden", it very much is an "exorbitant privilege".

So yes, sure, because America can effectively buy most of what it needs from the rest of the world for "free" (by printing dollars), this situation doesn't exactly create incentives to do the hard work of manufacturing goods domestically. But framing this as other countries taking advantage of America rather than America taking advantage of its currency dominance is an astonishing inversion of reality.

And even more astonishing is Miran's ask that countries now compensate the U.S. for this. Some people mention that it's like asking vassals for tribute but it's actually even worse than this. The tribute is already embedded in the global reserve currency status of the dollar: other countries work hard for the U.S. while they can just issue IOUs that never come due.

What Miran is thus proposing is effectively demanding vassals make payments for the privilege of already making payments—a double tribute system where countries first subsidize American living standards by accepting dollars as reserves, and then must pay an additional fee for the 'burden' this supposedly places on the US.

Miran's piece is replete with other complete inversions of reality. For instance, he now blames China for the 2008 crash because "their holdings of U.S. mortgage debt helped fuel the housing bubble, forcing hundreds of billions of dollars of credit into the housing sector without regard as to whether the investments made sense."

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the 2008 financial crisis would have their breath taken away by such brazen revisionism. Not only is the crisis universally known to have been caused by US regulatory failures and the reckless securitization of subprime mortgages by Wall Street firms, but China in this instance literally saved U.S. markets from complete meltdown after Hank Paulson personally appealed to Beijing to continue purchasing US Treasury bonds during the height of the crisis, which they did.

To now blame them for the very crisis they helped mitigate and played no part in creating is beyond dishonest—it's gaslighting on a geopolitical scale.

All in all, it's clear what the US is trying to achieve here, they effectively want to have their cake and eat it. They want to keep the privilege and want the rest of the world to pay for the downsides that come with it.

Which means we're truly at a crossroad in history where nations must make an immensely consequential choice: acquiesce to this insane double tribute system or stand against it. There are very few precedents in world history for such a nakedly exploitative power play, but history is very clear on two things: submitting to extortion only invites more of it, and collective resistance is the only effective response.

[Pierre Mahon @MahonPierre]

@IGWTreport @LukeGromen @gave_vincent I’d be very interested to hear their thoughts on who is behind the recent surge in gold imports into the U.S., and what strategic reasons might be driving this accumulation.

[In Gold We Trust @IGWTreport]

We are excited to announce that next week, we will be having a conversation with @LukeGromen and @gave_vincent!

This is your chance to ask a question or suggest a topic for us to discuss. Post in the comments below!!!

[Gavekal @Gavekal]

As other formerly hot asset classes have rolled over, gold has continued to advance through February and March, setting a new record high above US$3,050/oz. In this video, Gavekal founding partner Louis-Vincent Gave (@gave_vincent) examines the fundamental drivers of gold’s rally, considers the metal’s valuation, and asks whether the run-up can continue: https://t.co/zd1GcQomAU (no paywall)

[Pierre Mahon @MahonPierre]

@NCheron_bourse Plutôt que d’anticiper un retour à l’ancienne tendance haussière, les investisseurs devraient peut être chercher la prochaine vague gagnante

[Pierre Mahon @MahonPierre]

@NCheron_bourse Initialement logique, cette tendance mène souvent à des valorisations extrêmes et déconnectées de la réalité. L’histoire montre que les marchés baissiers, bien que désagréables, servent à redistribuer le leadership entre actions.

[Pierre Mahon @MahonPierre]

@LukeGromen The video is indeed interesting. Do you think US government is behind the ongoing flow of gold from UK to US in anticipation of a potential USD devaluation?

[Nicolas Chéron @NCheron_bourse]

💶 Montant de la dette mondiale : 102 000 milliards.

Pas de soucis, no worries, kein problem, todo bien 😅