What Investors Can Learn From the Japanese Art of Kintsukuroi

– What investors can learn from the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi or Kintsugi – art of repairing broken pottery with gold
– Investors and savers can protect their savings with gold
– Savers and investors are being punished by negative to low interest rates
– Global debt levels, stock bubbles and reduced liquidity will lead to crisis
– Reinforce cracks with gold prior to money pot shatters

Source: Wikimedia

Editor: Mark O’Byrne

Kintsukuroi or Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver.

The Japanese like to consider it a way of not only repairing the item but also transforming it into something new which is pristine and has a new potential.

For the philosphers in the art world they like to ask how can something of such beauty be created from a shattered vase or bowl?

Our politics, markets and economy are broken. With each passing day we see more evidence of a globalised, interconnected world that is also increasingly politically and financially fragmented.

In turn this is raising tensions between and within countries. Especially between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’

We have seen this before, many times in history, when the greed of mankind and his belief in infallibility leads us to believe we can perform unprecedented financial experiments. The more we push on with the experiments, rather than learning from history, the bigger the cracks and damage.

Jim Rogers recently expressed his disgust at banks’s claims that had they not acted as they had in response to the financial crisis then things would be worse.

Rogers disagrees, all they have done is papered over and widened the cracks… “propping up zombie banks and dead companies is not the way the world is supposed to work. … It’s been nine years and we have nothing to show for it [economically] except staggering amounts of debt.”

In order for Kintsugi to transpire the artist must ‘see’ a cracked pot differently. A new perspective has to be taken. The pot is not broken, it is not useless instead it is something which has potential to become stronger and better.

We must begin to look at our economy in a similar light. Our savings are not useless, in the same way our economic system is not useless.

But they are weak in their current state, they should be made stronger rather than forced to take on more pressure.

The art of seeing differently

Last week, came the news that global debt levels were 327% of world gross domestic product (GDP), at $217 trillion in the first quarter of 2017. We have added over $120 trillion since the financial crisis.

In the weeks before the world’s top money managers had rung the warning bell that this pot was ready to crumble. Marc Faber told CNBC that ‘everything’ is in a bubble with the risk that:

“One day this bubble will end,” and as a result people will lose 50% of their wealth.

Mohammed El Erian, part of the global financial elite but someone who we should all listen to, has also expressed similar concerns to Faber.

He wrote on Bloomberg that because of reduced liquidity resulting from simultaneous policy tightening by central banks, he has some serious doubts about the sustainability of the current overextended bull market in stocks.

Meanwhile Bill Gross believes markets in the US are at their highest risk levels post-2008 as investors are paying a high price for taking chances.

The low (and negative) interest rates of central banks are artificially driving up asset prices. This is creating little growth in the real economy and as a result is punishing individual savers and businesses.