Voima Weekly #14 – The Bill Comes Due at the End

Photo created with GPT.

In Weekly #10,¹ we sat around an imaginary economic council table where each country had its own coat of arms – and its own CFO. Every one of them was in debt, and none truly wanted to repay it. Then it was asked: which will prevail – discipline or political comfort?

Petri Sarvamaa, a member of the European Court of Auditors, recently warned that the EU’s debt is on track to reach around €900 billion by 2027, with annual interest costs potentially climbing to €70 billion.² He also noted that there is no clear record of what the €800 billion pandemic recovery package actually achieved—or how it will be repaid. The same pattern repeats across most central-bank stimulus programs (QE): once new money is created, few stop to ask how—or by whom—it will ever be paid back. This is not merely about debt, but about a kind of institutional ignorance. As Sarvamaa put it: “We don’t know what the money achieved.” A stopping sentence, indeed.

The European Commission has proposed a new €2 trillion budget for 2028–2034. Inside it sits a €400 billion crisis mechanism and the idea of creating “new common resources” — in practice, more shared debt. The structure already resembles the subprime model of the financial crisis: the good and the bad are mixed together. The problem is that there’s not much good dough left — a handful of countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and perhaps Austria — while the bowl is otherwise filled with debt, deficits, and political pressure. When these are baked into common debt instruments, the dough will still rise one more time — but the taste is familiar: too many rescued, too few rescuers.

The next fracture will not come from investors alone, but from a political unwillingness to fix the underlying structures — just as in 2010–2012, when market panic erupted and delayed decisions made it worse. France now runs a deficit of over 5% and debt of 114% of GDP, while Italy services more than €2 trillion in debt with negative growth. This is not a matter of faith, but of structure: the system rewards debt and punishes discipline — even though its survival depends on the latter. As prices rise and spreads widen, the ECB’s balance sheet becomes the firewall, and monetary policy steps in to cover for political delay.

The gold market now stands at the intersection of several currents. Structural demand — from central banks and households across Asia and the Middle East — already flows broadly in the same direction. In the West, institutional and market-driven money remains marginal, yet it has begun to move. The next question is whether Western households will join in — perhaps as Asian holders start releasing some of their reserves back into the market. Investors today are willing to pay more than 50 times earnings for Nvidia, because they believe in the future. Gold may soon carry a similar premium — not a speculative one, but a structural one.

The rise is inevitable; its rhythm remains to be seen.

–Marko Viinikka
Founder, CEO
Voima Gold Oy

1 Voima Weekly #10

2 Source: European Court of Auditors (2025), comments by Petri Sarvamaa, Joakim Kullas, Iltalehti, 11 October 2025; European Commission budget proposal 2028–2034, commission.europa.eu.

Disclaimer: Voima Weeklies are the personal writings of the undersigned. They do not necessarily represent the official view of Voima Gold Oy or any other company, nor do they constitute investment advice or a recommendation to purchase securities.