Markus Krall and the Gold Price: Prophet of the System Crash Put to the Test
October 19, 2026
Dr. Markus Krall — born 1962, PhD in economics, former McKinsey partner, former CEO of Degussa — is everywhere right now. His conversation with Ben Unscripted is making waves: millions of views, thousands of comments. What is behind his theses on zombie companies, the petrodollar, and the end of the fiat money system? And what does this mean for the gold price?
Krall divides opinion. For his supporters, he is the courageous analyst who says what others only whisper behind closed doors. For his critics, he is a prophet of doom whose timing regularly fails. Who is right? The answer is more complex than both camps want to admit.
Krall is not a YouTuber without substance. His academic and professional biography is impressive: studied economics in Freiburg, postgraduate studies at Nagoya University in Japan, doctorate in 1993 on price formation in the Japanese stock market — specifically on the price-earnings ratio and its significance in international comparison.
Thereafter: A classic top consulting career at Allianz, Boston Consulting Group, Oliver Wyman (building up Germany). At McKinsey, he became a partner and led the risk management practice — specifically the topic of credit risk management for banks. According to his own statement on the Ben Unscripted podcast, he developed credit risk systems for banks that are used by around 80 percent of all German banks today. He knows the key figures from the inside.
It was precisely this deep insight into bank balance sheets that was the starting point for his later theses. His first book was published under the pseudonym Diogenes Rent — "Diogenes in the barrel and Rent from the English 'ranting'" — because as a consultant at the time, he was not allowed to publish under his real name. The second book, "The Draghi Crash" (2015/2017), was published under his real name. From 2019 to 2022, he was CEO of Degussa, one of the largest German precious metal dealers. Since 2024, he has lived in Switzerland.
In the viral podcast with Ben Unscripted, Krall explains how he made his most important discovery. As a risk management expert who developed credit risk models for banks, he needed a statistical basis: How many companies go bankrupt in an economy per year?
Historically, this value was between one and two percent of all companies — a biological cleansing function of the market, which economists call "creative destruction according to Schumpeter." Then something strange began. From around 2010/2011, the insolvency rate fell steadily: to one percent, to below one percent — until 2021, it was only 0.1 percent. Schumpeterian creative destruction no longer took hold.
The cause: Zero-interest and negative-interest policies keep companies alive that would have been insolvent long ago without this subsidy. Krall calls them zombies — effectively dead, but still running. And that means: If 1.5 percent more zombies are created each year than fail, an economy accumulates five, ten, fifteen percent of structurally ailing companies within a few years. Since 2021, insolvency numbers have been rising — exactly the pattern Krall had predicted.
In the podcast, Krall explains why he considers the 2021/22 inflation phase more dangerous than it appeared in public perception. Consumer price inflation — the classic basket of goods consisting of food, rent, energy — reached around twelve percent. Known, discussed, criticized.
Less discussed was producer price inflation: the price increases that arrived directly in production goods. Its peak was 47 percent. This is not just a statistical value — above a certain critical threshold, according to Krall, an economy can no longer carry out its economic calculations. Companies that buy raw materials, process them, and resell them lose their basis for calculation with such fluctuation ranges. They can no longer know at what price they are buying and selling. Then they stop production.
The world briefly observed this during the Corona lockdown, when global supply chains collapsed and global production temporarily plummeted by up to 50 percent. Inflation can do the same — just more insidiously.
To understand Krall's theses, a look at monetary history helps — which Krall explains in detail in the podcast. The history of money can be told simply: From bartering to gold, from gold to gold-backed paper money, from gold-backed paper money to pure promise.
According to Krall, the best gold standard existed around 1830: banknotes that were fully backed by gold. During the nineteenth century, this standard was diluted. 1914 — the start of the First World War — only one-third of banknotes were actually gold-backed. All warring countries abolished the redemption obligation on the first day of the war.
The result: The hyperinflation of 1923 in Germany. Krall explains the mechanics: The Reich government printed money for the Ruhr struggle, despite warnings. From a normal inflation value to 2,400 quadrillion percent in November 1923.
After the Second World War, the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) created a new system: 35 dollars per troy ounce of gold, all other currencies fixed to the dollar. The D-Mark started at 4.20 DM per dollar. This worked — as long as the USA actually had enough gold. After the Second World War, 22,000 tons of gold were stored in the USA, almost all the world's monetary gold — earned through arms deliveries to the British and Soviets, who had always paid with gold.
Then: Korea War, social programs, moon landing, Vietnam War. The gold flowed out. In 1971, 8,000 tons remained in Fort Knox. On August 15, 1971, President Nixon "temporarily" suspended the gold redemption obligation. Temporary remains the case today. The US Treasury Secretary formulated it precisely: "The dollar is our currency, but your problem."
A historical side detail from the podcast: Germany's Bundesbank gold, currently around 3,400 tons, does not come — as left-wing commentators sometimes claim — from the Nazi era. Nazi gold was confiscated by the Allies in 1945. The 3,400 tons are hard-earned trade balance surpluses of the Federal Republic, which were exchanged for gold under Bretton Woods.
After 1971, the dollar needed a new foundation. The solution — the petrodollar system: Oil-exporting countries commit to selling oil exclusively in dollars. In return, they receive US military protection. For all other countries, this means: Anyone who wants to buy oil needs dollars. Anyone who needs dollars must generate export surpluses with the USA.
In the podcast, Krall explains the geopolitical equation: Venezuela holds 18 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saudi Arabia 15 percent, Iran 13 percent — together almost half of global oil reserves. Venezuela tried to sell oil in Yuan to China. The consequence followed quickly. Iran is the missing link in the petrodollar chain.
Krall's thesis: The current Middle East conflict is less about nuclear weapons or Israel and more about the petrodollar. Whoever controls the petrodollar controls the global monetary order.
The BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — are discussing their own trade currency as a dollar alternative. The starting situation is clear: Russia and China no longer want their export surpluses paid in a currency that is systematically devalued.
The problem with a BRICS paper currency: It would be the same thing in a different color — the largest surplus country (China) would be the loser. So the solution: A gold-backed currency. According to Krall, the BRICS are actively working on this.
China is pursuing a strategy straight out of Sun Tzu's "Art of War": Hide your strength. Do not provoke a war you cannot win with 150 percent certainty. "The best war is the one you don't have to fight because the opponent surrenders to your strength" — this is how Krall explains the Chinese doctrine. China's gross domestic product (purchasing power parity) grew from 200 billion dollars in 1986 to around 40 trillion today. Through hard work, capital formation, and a market economy — not through saber-rattling.
Krall explains the mechanics of escalating central bank rescues in the podcast using the ECB balance sheet total:
The logic: Every rescue pumps twice as much liquidity into the system as the previous one. This liquidity seeks investment — and increasingly ends up in bad investments because risk aversion decreases. In the next crisis, twice as many bad investments have therefore accumulated. That is why the next rescue needs twice as much money. Krall's forecast for the next major crisis: around 8 trillion euros.
According to Krall, Corona was essentially not a health crisis, but a gigantic state and bank bailout — under the guise of the pandemic. "4 trillion in freshly printed money, that would never have been politically enforceable without the narrative."
Anyone who wants to judge Krall fairly must distinguish between timing and structural direction.
Where he was wrong — in timing: Krall predicted the major system crash several times for imminent periods. It was supposed to start in 2019/2020. For 2021, he predicted hyperinflation of the euro — that did not happen. Inflation rose sharply, at times to around eight percent in Germany, but there was no sign of hyperinflation.
Where he was right — structurally:
Krall himself is more direct in the podcast than ever before: "The problem can no longer be brought under control. The numbers are not such that there is still a mathematical solution without massive friction — either through inflation or through deflation."
According to Krall, there are only two ways out of an over-indebted world: inflation, which devalues debt — or deflation, which ends in sovereign defaults and corporate bankruptcies, which then also clear the debt. Both lead to the same result: destruction of debt. The only difference is who bears the costs.
In the podcast, Krall explains a problem that many Germans are not aware of: German nominal wealth — cash, savings accounts, life insurance, bonds — amounted to around 6 trillion euros in 2020. After the cumulative inflation from 2020 to 2025 of around 22 percent, the purchasing power of these savings today is around 4.8 trillion euros. 1.2 trillion euros in purchasing power has disappeared — without anyone stealing it. It was redistributed: to the debtors, primarily to the state.
Germans historically invest in nominal values, while the French, Italians, and Greeks invest in real assets (stocks, real estate, gold) — because they are used to the state expropriating them. The result: Germany ranks among the last in Europe in terms of average wealth per capita. Even Greek households have more wealth on average than German ones.
Krall's three-spoke principle — one-third each in stocks, gold, and real estate — is not an exotic outsider position. It corresponds to what many conservative asset managers have been recommending for decades. Investors who hold part of their portfolio in physical gold or gold ETFs are not following blind alarmism, but a robust diversification principle — which Krall himself codified.
Regarding structural gold demand by central banks: How central banks structurally support the gold price with record purchases.
Because gold is the only widely used means of payment that is not backed by a central bank. In Krall's scenario — banking crisis, loss of confidence in central banks, digital central bank money as a replacement — gold is the only form of asset that remains outside the state-controlled financial system.
Yes. Creditreform, the BIS, and the OECD have independently described the phenomenon of over-indebted companies. The fact that the insolvency rate fell to a historical minimum until 2021 and has been rising again since then is proven by statistics. The point of contention remains the extent.
Using Krall's forecasts as a timing instrument would be risky — he has been wrong several times about the "when." However, as a structural argument for a gold position, he provides one of the most coherent justifications in the German-speaking world: national debt, dwindling purchasing power of nominal assets, increasing global competition for the dollar's role as the reserve currency. Each of these arguments speaks for gold as a structural portfolio component.
Legal notice: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All information provided without guarantee. Please consult an independent financial advisor before making investment decisions.
