Voima Weekly #38 – When the Structure Pulls in Another Direction

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel (c. 1563). A classic image of a system that grows so large and complex that its original purpose begins to fade¹.

Over the past few weeks, many new readers have joined us. For that reason, I want to briefly restate what these letters are, and why they are worth your time.

If you want to understand the value of money, purchasing power, and the system we operate in, this is for you. Most decisions are still made on the assumption that money is a stable unit of measure. It is not - and that is exactly why this matters.

In the end, this is not about theory. It is about whether your work, savings, and decisions will be enough for what they are assumed to be enough for.

Purchasing power is the outcome. Behind it are structures: debt, taxation, regulation, liquidity, and the narratives used to justify change. That is why Weekly does not only deal with gold or currencies, but also with the broader environment in which value is built, transferred, and protected.

A good example of this same way of reading the world was visible this week in EU messaging across Helsinki’s streets, where freedom of expression was prominently highlighted through public posters.

At the same time, Europe is building a network based on age verification, digital identity, and platform responsibility, where access to content increasingly becomes a question of identification, approval, and risk management. In such a system, restriction does not necessarily arise through a direct ban, but through sanction risk. When a platform is forced to carry the risk of what spreads through it, it begins to limit visibility based on precaution. Gradually, the gap between “kitchen-table speech” and public speech widens: privately, people can say more than they dare to say publicly, because public speech increasingly passes through the terms of the system.

In this moment, that feels especially strange. Europe is in the middle of rising debt, deficits, weakening purchasing power, declining competitiveness, and migration-related pressures. Still, there seems to be political capacity above all for new structures of surveillance, identification, and moderation. That says something about the direction.

The purpose of freedom of expression is not to protect only approved speech. It is also meant to protect uncomfortable speech, speech considered wrong, and speech that is inconvenient to power. If the public space is built in such a way that platforms remove and hide things just to be safe, this is no longer the protection of freedom, but its quiet narrowing.

The same pattern appears in money, markets, and public decision-making: the message moves in one direction, the structure in another. Weekly’s task is to separate the two.

In these letters, I open this whole picture from different angles. Sometimes through markets, sometimes through individual phenomena. Sometimes on a practical level: how risk is built, how liquidity is managed, and what happens when theory meets reality. The topics may vary, but the core question does not: what is the real mechanism behind the headline, the price, or the decision?

I write these letters while we are building this in practice. The Voima companies have grown to the point where we now employ around 40 people and operate at the intersection of physical metal, market infrastructure, and the client interface.

This is an essential difference. We are not only observing changes in money, gold, and market structures - we are building services in the middle of them. The movement of physical metal, client decisions, pricing, liquidity, regulation, and operational risk give a view that cannot be obtained simply by looking at screens or reports. The gold market is much deeper than its daily price.

My own background in wealth management, and the experience of building Voima from nothing, have added another layer to this: a practical understanding of what capital, debt, cash flow, risk, turnaround, and growth actually look like. They are not abstract concepts. They either work in practice, or they do not. This is the perspective from which Weekly is written.

So far, 38 Weekly letters have been published. They have covered money, precious metals, the monetary system, debt, purchasing power, wealth management, market structures, and the building ofa business. The topics vary, but the basic idea has remained the same: to understand how value is created, how it moves, and how it can be protected in a world where the measuring sticks change.

This is not a question for a narrow audience. An institutional asset manager looks at it through risk, liquidity, and allocation. An owner managing significant capital looks at it through wealth preservation, counterparty risk, and the resilience of the system. A person building a business looks at it through the cost of capital, cash flow, and the operating environment. A saver looks at it through purchasing power. A student looks at it to understand the world they are stepping into.

Different positions, same underlying question: what happens when money no longer measures value as steadily as we assume?

That is why Weekly is an attempt to read the system a little more carefully — to separate price from value, message from structure, and short-term noise from the longer direction.

Previous writings can be found here². They are not yet updated in real time, but they are supplemented from time to time. Weekly is published in both Finnish and English, and you can change your language preference here³.

We have also added two new elements: a silver currency table and the “Voima Now” section, where we collect current updates and practical announcements. Please also note that many email clients may cut the message short. If you want to see the full content, especially the currency tables and the unsubscribe link, it is worth opening the message in full by clicking “show entire message.”

Thank you for all the messages, comments, and observations you have sent. We read all of them, and I generally reply. Many of these letters are born directly from the questions readers raise.

If this is relevant to you, you do not need to do anything. The next letter will arrive. You can unsubscribe at the end of the message.

If the measuring stick changes, the outcome changes too — even if you do everything “right.”

Easy to read. Hard to forget.

– Marko Viinikka
Founder, CEO
Voima Gold Oy

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.