This paper investigates the political property of oil from the perspective of geopolitical risk (GPR). We explore the relationship between GPR and oil price (OP) by performing the full-sample and subsample rolling-window bootstrap Granger causality tests. We find that wars will lead to an increase in OP but that low GPR cannot lead to an immediate decline in price. This finding can also be explained by economic crises, which can make OP soar while GPR is low. In turn, the rise in OP has a positive impact on GPR. The oil market has a significant interaction with geopolitical events, which reflects the pattern of global politics, so we can conclude that oil has a political property. In the context of a tense and complex global relationship, the world can benefit from the political property of oil to prevent GPR, which can in turn facilitate an accurate prediction of OP to reduce the adverse effects of large fluctuations in the oil market.

This paper evinces the ability of gold to avoid risks during periods with great fluctuations in the Bitcoin market. We apply bootstrap full- and subsample rolling-window Granger causality tests to explore the causal relationship between Bitcoin price (BCP) and gold price (GP). The empirical results show that an increase in BCP can cause GP to decrease, indicating that the prosperity of the Bitcoin market undermines the hedging ability of gold. However, a decrease in BCP causes GP to increase, and it also emphasizes that the ability of gold to avoid risks persists. Hence, the status of gold will not be completely threatened by Bitcoin, and they are complementary to each other instead of in competition. In turn, both positive and negative influences of GP on BCP suggest that fluctuations in BCP can be predicted through the gold market. In situations of severe global uncertainty and complicated investment environments, investors can benefit from complementary markets to optimize their asset allocation. Additionally, countries can grasp the trends in Bitcoin and gold prices to prevent large fluctuations in both markets and to reduce the uncertainty of the financial system.

In the context of the global economic downturn, the approach guided by consumer loans (CL) to boost consumer confidence is a feasible way to promote the internal circulation of the Chinese economy. Therefore, we use a time-varying rolling-window approach to identify how CL affects the consumer confidence index (CCI). We find that CL can be seen as vital support for promoting confidence because it can ease liquidity constraints and improve consumption levels. The empirical outcome is supported by the Rational Expectations Perpetual Income Hypothesis (RE-PIH), emphasizing that increasing CL can boost consumer confidence. Conversely, CCI has both positive and negative effects on CL. The positive effects suggest that consumers’ optimistic confidence leads them to increase borrowing, which in turn creates a heavier debt burden. This statement cannot be supported by the negative effect due to consumers’ blind self-confidence will cause cognitive bias, which is not conducive to the loan market development. Against the backdrop of increased global uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s continuous adjustment of loan policies, consumers can effectively optimise their consumption decision-making through borrowing. The policymaker can maintain loan stability by effectively promoting consumer confidence and raising the consumption level of the whole society.