Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:
"It is very scary: the flight to gold is accelerating at a faster and faster speed," said Peter Hambro, chairman of Britain's biggest pure gold listing Petropavlovsk.
"One of the big US banks texted me today to say that if QE3 actually happens, we could see gold at $5,000 and silver at $1,000. I feel terribly sorry for anybody on fixed incomes tied to a fiat currency because they are not going to be able to buy things with that paper money."
China, Russia, Brazil, India, the Mid-East petro-powers have diversified their $7 trillion reserves into euros over the last decade to limit dollar exposure. As Europe's monetary union itself faces an existential crisis, there is no other safe-haven currency able to absorb the flows. The Swiss franc, Canada's loonie, the Aussie, and Korea's won are too small.
"There is no depth of market in these other currencies, so gold is the obvious play," said Neil Mellor from BNY Mellon. Western central banks (though not the US, Germany, or Italy) sold much of their gold at the depths of the bear market a decade ago.
***Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard as it becomes clearer that Japan and the West have reached debt saturation. World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said it was time to "consider employing gold as an international reference point." The Swiss parliament is to hold hearings on a parallel "Gold Franc". Utah has recognised gold as legal tender for tax payments.
A new Gold Standard would probably be based on a variant of the 'Bancor' proposed by Keynes in the late 1940s. This was a basket of 30 commodities intended to be less deflationary than pure gold, which had compounded in the Great Depression. The idea was revived by China's central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan two years ago as a way of curbing the "credit-based" excess.
For background, see this, this, this and this.
Note: I am not an investment adviser and this should not be considered investment advice. Personally, I am long gold.
Nobody has "a fixed income": if your salary does not allow you to pay for the basics, you just cannot work, you do not work.
ReplyDeleteNormally, specially if the situation is widespread and there's no apparent way out on sight, you get very angry, get out to the streets and do something (some may suicide, others may become criminals but many others may just start burning things and make a revolution overnight).
But even if nothing of that happens it is irrelevant: if someone tells you: you work for me 8-10 hrs and I pay you what you need to survive for 1 hr, you juts show him your middle finger: even slaves need the basics, you can't expect free workers to accept less than slaves.
There are many other commodities worth investing in, however Gold will always be the default for the rich. Here is the huge difference between now and the Depression of the 30s. Internet and a much bigger, denser population. Not going to be a pretty day when millions, if not billions, of people realize their money is worthless.
ReplyDeleteAs you are touting an investment opportunity, please state your position in gold.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. The smart play for blue-collar workers is physical silver. How astonied I am that so few of my associates are accumulating physical silver. If people bought 2 ounces per month even for 1 year, they would have 24 ounces before they knew it. That $900 investment may soon be worth $24,000. Joel the K loves physical silver. I would love physical gold too if I had that kind of scratch, but I don't. Not yet anyway. I pray that the spot price of silver stays below $50/oz. for a few more months so I can purchase a few more American Silver Eagles.
ReplyDeleteQE just consists of swapping one asset for another (cash for bonds). Worse still, it’s the rich who receive the cash, and the rich tend not to spend a significant proportion of cash windfalls. Thus QE has little effect.
ReplyDeleteFor a decent anti-recessionary effect, it’s indebted households who ought to get the cash. I wonder if the ars*holes inside the Washington DC beltway will ever realise this?
I note that old lie at the end of the piece...."...a variant of the 'Bancor' proposed by Keynes in the late 1940s. This was a basket of 30 commodities intended to be less deflationary than pure gold, which had compounded in the Great Depression."
ReplyDeleteFekete has explained in great detail how bond speculation exacerbated by open market purchases by the FED sucked all the money out of the real economy - productive sector - no matter how many FRN were dropped form the mythical helicopter as the cause of the Great Depression deflation.
http://professorfekete.com/articles/...ionPartOne.pdf
http://professorfekete.com/articles/...ionPartTwo.pdf
"Not going to be a pretty day when millions, if not billions, of people realize their money is worthless."
ReplyDeleteExactly. And that's what we are looking at here. We can talk about hoarding gold and silver but it won't be much good if this plays out in the form of a major societal breakdown of even six months. You can't eat gold or any precious metal in fact. If you can exchange them for food, medicine, water all well and good. But if we are looking at a major breakdown on the scale of the Soviet Union then gold isn't really going to go that far and is likely to be ignored in favour of what keeps one's family fed and watered: real goods.
Bartering will be the medium of exchange if it does get that extreme and all the signs show that that's exactly where the US is heading. And unlike the Soviet Union whose infrustructure was very sound, the US is oil/petrol-based and as such, the breakdown is likely to be last for a very long time indeed...
Default is inevitable. We are past the point of no return. So it's not a question of "If", but "When"!
ReplyDeleteJonathan M said, "You can't eat gold or any precious metal in fact."
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for fiat paper currency. The "new currency" is gold and silver. Oil makes the world go-round but you can't carry it or eat oil either. Gold and silver has been "real money" since Biblcal times, and we are going back to that today.
Is the world's richest buying or selling gold? You need to be buying also. The better leverage is with silver.