Short & Sweet
‘Advice doesn’t have to be complicated to be good.’

cartoon of a hedge fund manager on the phone telling a client to buy gold

“The world is complex,” writes analyst Safal Nivetchak. “Consider the various reasons floating around explaining the market’s fall in the last two months – war, inflation, interest rates, FII selling, China, supply chain disruptions, weak GDP, and over valuations. This is not a complete list, but enough to suggest that the world is complex. And so are financial markets. How do you deal with such complexity in your wealth creation journey without losing your sanity? Have an investment process that is elegant in its simplicity.” We found the down-to-earth practicality contained in Nivetchak’s advisory of enormous value, particularly for young investors searching for guidance on the road to building wealth – something appealingly analog in an increasingly complex digital age.

Though he never mentions gold, many successful investors see it as part and parcel of the keep it simple portfolio approach. He offers a memorable quote from Dutch computer science pioneer Edsger Dijkstra: “Simplicity requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it.” Nivetchak ends by quoting Steve Jobs on keeping it simple: “… It’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Says Nivetchak, “That’s also true for investing for wealth creation. In practicing simplicity, and staying the course, over time you can also move mountains.”

_________________________________________________________________

Interested in practicing simplicity in your portfolio plan?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK:
1-800-869-5115  x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com  • • •  ORDER GOLD & SILVER ONLINE 24-7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
When paper money dies, precious metals prevail.
The lessons learned from the nightmare German hyperinflation of 1923

“They’ll print money until they run out of trees.”
Jim Rogers, investor and financial commentator

photograph of German currency converted to notepad during the Weimar Republic hyperinflation

Not many investors are seriously concerned about hyperinflation in the United States at this juncture. At USAGOLD, we, too, see it as an outlier – something that could happen but not a probability. But that’s the thing about hyperinflations. Rarely does the handwriting appear unmistakably on the wall. Not many were worried about hyperinflation in Germany in 1923 when it struck out of the clear blue. When disaster did strike, however, it came with a vengeance. Prices shot up in 1921. Then just as quickly – within the space of a year – they ran out of control. By 1923, an individual’s life savings could not purchase a cup of coffee. We ran into the following charts researching another matter at the GoldChartsRUs website. The one unsettling aspect they all have in common is their verticality – an indication of how quickly and conclusively the inflationary catastrophe swept through the German economy.

The first and second charts reflect the severe debasement of the German mark at the time. The third and fourth show how gold and silver performed as a hedge. In effect, what could have been purchased with an ounce of gold or silver before the debacle, could have been purchased at any time as it worsened and finally when it ended a few years later. Few, as stated above, predict an inflationary disaster on the level of the Weimar Republic. Still, it is good to know that by preparing for the lesser version of inflation, one prepares for the nastier versions as well.

line chart gold mark value Weimar 1920s

line chart showing Weimar wholelsale prices 1920s

price of gold Weimar Republic 1920s
line chart showing price of silver in marks 1920s Weimar Germany

Charts courtesy of GoldChartsRUs • • • Click to enlarge

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Interested in preserving your purchasing power in even the worst-case scenario?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Image (top): Paper German marks converted to notepad, 1920s Weimar Republic. Attribution/ Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00193 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Ubiquity, complexity, and sandpiles
Contemplating the impact of that last grain of sand

photograph of a pyramid shaped sandpile illustrating angle of repose and also vulnerability

For a long while, John Mauldin (Mauldin Economics) has been one of the more thoughtful big picture analysts – someone whose work we read regularly. In a recent reflection posted at the GoldSeek website, he begins with a section on a Brookhaven National Laboratories study of sandpiles. Researchers attempted to ascertain at which point, and to what degree, the last grain of sand falling on the pile causes disequilibrium and the collapse of the pile. It found that the impact of the last grain of sand varied. It “might trigger only a few tumblings or it might instead set off a cataclysmic chain reaction involving millions.”

“We cannot accurately predict when the avalanche will happen,” Mauldin concludes. “You can miss out on all sorts of opportunities because you see lots of fingers of instability and ignore the base of stability. And then you can lose it all at once because you ignored the fingers of instability. You need your portfolios to both participate and protect. Don’t blindly buy index funds and assume they will recover as they did in the past. This next avalanche is going to change the nature of recoveries as other market forces and new technologies change what makes an investment succeed. I cannot stress that enough. Don’t get caught in a buy-and-hold, traditional 60/40 portfolio. Don’t walk away from it. Run away.”

So why would the story of the last grain of sand hitting the pile before it begins to dissemble be important? “The peculiar and exceptionally unstable organization of the critical state,” says Mark Buchanan, who wrote a book on catastrophes of all kinds (and referenced by Mauldin), “does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world. Researchers in the past few years have found its mathematical fingerprints in the workings of all the upheavals I’ve mentioned so far [earthquakes, eco-disasters, market crashes], as well as in the spreading of epidemics, the flaring of traffic jams, the patterns by which instructions trickle down from managers to workers in the office, and in many other things.” There comes a breaking point a which time the result is uncontrollable.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Worried about the sandpiles building in various markets?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

 

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
The next great monetary experiment

Uncle Sam poster with quote bubble saying 'I need vast sums of money!'

Daily Reckoning’s Brian Maher warns of the potential consequences of modern monetary theory. “This MMT sounds like a recipe for immense inflation, even hyperinflation,” he says. “You are spending all this money directly into the economy. It will drive consumer prices through the attic roof, you say. This is crackpot. A witch’s sabbath of inflation would surely result. Yes, but here the MMT crowd meets you head on… They agree with you. They agree MMT could cause a general inflation, possibly even a hyperinflation.” [Link to full article]

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), we would add to Maher’s observation, is neither modern nor a theory. John Law, the Scottish financier, tried a version of it almost exactly 300 years ago (1717-18) in France.* He did so with the blessing of the French monarchy and with a rationale very similar to MMT’s proponents today.  MMT entails, simply put, a federal government fiscal policy without spending limits coupled with the power to print whatever money is required to finance any deficits. In the end, Law’s theories (to his surprise if we are to believe the historical account) bankrupted the French people and the government, reduced the economy to ashes, and created such a distaste for paper scrip among the citizenry that it took 80 years for France to reintroduce paper money as a circulating medium.

In The Story of the Greatest Nations (1900), Edward S Ellis and Charles F. Home tell of the public mania that engulfed the French people and led to ultimate financial ruin for thousands:

“The shrewder speculators* became alarmed. They began to sell their shares of stock, and hoard in gold the enormous wealth they had acquired. This resulted in a demand on the government for metal in exchange for its paper, and soon the government had no metal to give. Then the crash came. Those who had the government paper could buy nothing with it. Those who held the Mississippi stock could scarce give it away. It was worthless. The government itself refused to accept its own paper for taxes. A few lucky speculators had made vast fortunes; but thousands of families, especially among the wealthier classes, were ruined.”

That snippet provides a hint as to the steps taken by those who survived Law’s version of modern monetary theory. For those to whom all of this has a distinct ring of familiarity, perhaps a judicious hedge makes some sense. A number of analysts have made the argument that we do not have to wait for the formal launch of modern monetary theory.  It is already here.

* Please see this link for a summary of  Law’s Mississippi Company land scheme.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Ready to move from education to action?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

 

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Tytler’s Cycle

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” –  Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish historian, (1747-1813)

illustration of Tytler's cycle

_______________________________________________________________________

To end right, start right.
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

_______________________________________________________________________
Image attribution: J4lambert, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Computer software gone mad

With respect to the growing dominance of machines on Wall Street, I recall the old Star Trek episode that involves a visit to a planet where the inhabitants seem to be living in a state of perfect bliss. Captain Kirk knows that this cannot be right. There is no such thing as perfect happiness. As it turns out, the population is controlled not by a loathsome dictator who has drugged the population into compliance, but by a computer that has evolved sufficiently to somehow gain control of their minds. Something must be done, concludes Kirk, to break its hold. Spock comes up with the solution by instructing the computer ‘to resolve the value of pi’ – an impossibility because its resolution, as we all remember from high school math class, is infinite. The computer spends all of its time and devotes all of its resources trying to achieve the impossible and the dictatorial hold it has on the population is released – a trick we might want to keep in mind for the day computers complete their mastery of Wall Street.

Similarly, in early 2017 Financial Times told the story of the textbook, The Making of a Fly: The Genetics of Animal Design. It started out selling for $113 per copy at Amazon – that is until the governing algorithm misfired between two third-party sellers. The price then skyrocketed to $23 million before someone took note and fixed the problem. We forget that computer software, and this applies to Wall Street’s trading apparatus as readily as it does the Amazon pricing platform, is only as reliable and intelligent as the code by which it is instructed to operate. The practical equivalent to Mr. Spock’s solution in the financial realm is to store sufficient capital in the form of gold and silver coins detached from potentially rebellious electronic circuitry.

Worried about the possibility of computer algorithms running amok in financial markets?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK

1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • •  ORDER GOLD & SILVER ONLINE 24-7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
Gold Relativity
Do not take your eye off the prize

blindfolded seeker can't see lighted room

Gold’s value is relative. It doesn’t really matter how many digits it takes to express the price. Its true value lies in what those digits represent in terms of purchasing power. During the post-World War I hyperinflation in Germany, for example, a 20-mark gold coin in 1918 purchased the equivalent of twenty marks worth of goods and services in the marketplace. By 1924 that same 20-mark gold coin (weighing roughly one-quarter troy ounces) provided the purchasing power of nearly 25 billion paper marks.

By pointing out this example of gold’s constancy, we do not intend to imply that the United States is headed the way of the Weimar Republic.  What we do mean to say, though, is that those who track the nominal value of gold by itself without taking into account the current and future value of the currency in which it is measured take their eye off the prize.

What are the intentions of the central bank and federal government, we should ask ourselves, and what will be the likely effect on the purchasing power of the currency?

Ready to add purchasing power constancy to your portfolio?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK

1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • •  ORDER GOLD & SILVER ONLINE 24-7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Super-rich doomsday preppers ahead of the times

And the not-so-super-rich are following in their footstepsgraphic image showing medieval castle shadowed by stacks of gold and silver coins

“Survivalism,” Evan Osnos once wrote in an article for The New Yorker, “the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years, survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.”

We have always taken exception to the mainstream media’s portrayal of the ordinary gold owner as “the woodsman in the tinfoil hat”. . . etc. Many among the media are utterly amazed to learn that people like Steve Huffman (Reddit, CEO), Peter Thiel (PayPal founder), and the long roster of other luminaries mentioned in this New Yorker article are identified as “preppers” in one capacity or another. They would probably be even more amazed to learn that many of this same group are likely to be gold and silver owners. We say “likely” because precious metals owners by and large are a group reluctant to advertise their ownership.

As it is, they take a place alongside a wide range of Americans who own precious metals – physicians and dentists, nurses and teachers, plumbers, carpenters, and building contractors, business owners, attorneys, engineers, and university professors (to name a few.) We know because that is the description of our clientele here at USAGOLD. Gold ownership, in short, is pretty much a Main Street endeavor. In a 2020 Bankrate survey, one in seven investors (14%) chose gold or other precious metals as the best place to park money they wouldn’t need for more than ten years – making it the fourth most popular category. Similarly, a 2020 Gallup poll found that 17% of American investors rated gold the best investment “regardless of gender, age, income or party ID. . .” One might assume that if Bankrate or Gallup took a similar poll today, even more investors would give the precious metals a thumbs up given what has occurred over the past year.

Those well-to-do preppers, as it turns out, were uncannily ahead of the times. Over the years, large numbers of the not-so-super-rich followed in their footsteps – setting up “bugout” retreats in the countryside and small-town America (though for reasons unforeseen in the article) while a good many fled the big cities permanently for safer environs. That mindset – the general flight to safety – has echoed loudly in the precious metals markets. The World Gold Council reports global retail gold investment demand running at record levels in 2022. As for silver, the Silver Institute, a research organization not given to hyperbole, recently reported an eye-catching 36% increase in physical silver investment for 2021.

Bankrate Survey of Investors
bar chart showing Bank Rate Survey of investors on where to put money for ten years
Chart courtesy of BankRate.com • • • Click to enlarge

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

NEWS & VIEWS
Forecast, Commentary & Analysis on the Economy and Precious Metals
Celebrating our 49th year in the gold business

We invite your interest in our popular monthly newsletter. 
Prospective clients welcome.

FREE SUBSCRIPTION!

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
The Exter Inverted Pyramid of Global Liquidity

Exter's inverted debt pyramid with derivatives at top and gold on the bottom

“[Exter’s Inverted] Pyramid stands upon its apex of gold, which has no counter-party risk nor credit risk and is very liquid.  As you work higher into the pyramid, the assets get progressively less creditworthy and less liquid. . .[In a financial crisis] this bloated structure pancakes back down upon itself in a flight to safety.  The riskier, upper parts of the inverted pyramid become less liquid (harder to sell), and – if they can be sold at all – change hands at markedly lower prices as the once continuous flow of credit that had levitated those prices dries up.” – Lewis Johnson, Capital Wealth Advisor’s Lewis Johnson

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Ready to own an asset without counterparty risks?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK:
1-800-869-5115 x100• • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • • ONLINE ORDER DESK-24/7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
Inflation is a process not an event
But history, as we are learning now, shows runaway inflation can come suddenly and without warning

graphic image showing decline of the denarius over 200 y ears

Image courtesy of Visual Capitalist • • • Click to enlarge

We sometimes forget that inflation is a process rather than an event. One of the better-known examples of that axiom is the nearly two centuries-long debasement of Rome’s silver denarius. The Roman citizen who had the wisdom to hedge that process by going to gold at nearly any point along the way ended up preserving some portion, if not all, of his or her wealth. Those who did not suffered its debilitating effects. In the inflationary process, the line between cause and effect is not always a straight one, and its timing difficult to discern. History teaches us, though, that when runaway inflation does arrive, it comes suddenly, without notice, and with a vengeance. That is why it pays to view gold as a permanent and constantly maintained aspect of the investment portfolio. “A change of fortune,” Ben Franklin tells us, “hurts a wise Man no more than a change of the Moon.”
_________________________________________________________________
(Related please see:  News & Views Special Report / March 2020 / Hedging the decline and fall of a currency – The baseline case for gold hasn’t changed much in 1700 years)

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Looking to prepare your portfolio for whatever uncertainty lies ahead
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK:
1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • • ONLINE ORDER DESK-24/7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

 

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
‘He clung to that which he could really trust, really own, really control’

photo of stacks of gold and silver coins

In an analysis posted at Daily Reckoning, Jeffery Tucker offered an opinion on inflation shared by a good many economists and investors. “Gradually,” he writes, “we’ve come to see the light. There will be no rolling back those price increases in general. There will be declines in the pace of increase here or there but overall prices have shifted upward, permanently.” With that in mind, he shares some family history: “There is nothing we can take for granted in this inflationary crazy economic environment, no rules of thumb that can really guide us. My father was a thrifty man, a truly great man, but also a believer in long-term value and truth. Yes, he loved gold and silver coins too, and very much so. He accumulated them throughout his life. As I look at that today, it is extremely obvious that this was one of his best financial decisions. He was never a day trader or a rah-rah techno champion. He clung to that which he could really trust, really own, really control. That seems like a good way to think even now.”

_______________________________________________________________________

Looking for something you can really trust, really own, really control?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged , |

Short and Sweet
Only real intrinsic money survives the test of time

photo of stacks of gold and silver coins

Here is a timeless observation from the now-deceased Richard Russell (Dow Theory Letter):

“Paper money is now being created wholesale throughout the world. Stated simply, all paper currency is now valued against each other. But more important, ultimately ALL paper is ultimately valued against the only true, intrinsic money – gold. In world history, no irredeemable paper currency has ever survived. Since all the world’s currency is now irredeemable (in gold), this means that in the end, the only form of money that will survive is real intrinsic money – gold. It’s not a question of whether gold will survive, it’s a question of when the world’s current paper money will deteriorate and finally die. I can tell you that irredeemable paper will not survive – but obviously I can’t tell you when it will die. The timing is the only uncertainty.”

The chart below from the World Gold Council speaks to Russell’s point. It shows the performance of various currencies – past and present – against gold over the long term.  When the end comes, as the chart illustrates, it can come abruptly and without warning. For those who stick to the proposition that gold is not really an inflation hedge, or that it is not really a safe-haven against currency debasement, the chart offers instruction. For those who already own gold as a safe-haven, it provides justification. For those who do not own gold, it serves as an incentive.  As the old saying goes:  All is well until it isn’t.

Chart showing gold outperforming all major currencies since 1900
Chart courtesy of the World Gold Council
________________________________________________________________________

Ready to begin or add to your precious metals holdings?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
Of wheelbarrows and runaway inflation

graphic image of a gold money machine

As Crescat Capital’s Kevin Smith and Tavi Costa point out in a client alert, the U.S. government issued $4.4 trillion of debt in fiscal year 2020, and $2.4 trillion, or 54%, was purchased by the Federal Reserve. They believe that $300 billion per month in quantitative easing will be needed to cover the upcoming tab as opposed to the current $120 billion per month. “Global central bank money printing is one of the primary drivers of the gold price,” they say. “Our current valuation target for gold based on the level of central bank assets and the inelastic supply of above-ground gold is $3,200/oz. Note, this is a rising target.”

“Really smart investors,” says Morning Porridge’s Bill Blain, the London-based commentator, “are increasingly hedging their wealth created from financial assets (stocks and shares) by putting much of their allocations into Alternatives: outright real assets or cash flow driven assets, assets that are likely to retain value while still paying attractive returns. (The cost is lower liquidity). The idea is that if crisis ever comes, then owning the wheelbarrow might be better than owning the mountains of worthless cash it’s carrying (to cite the classic example of inflationary danger from Weimar Germany…)” If runaway inflation truly does materialize, a wheelbarrow full of gold and silver might be an even better option ……

Looking to load up your wheelbarrow?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE


ORDER DESK
1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • •
ONLINE ORDER DESK-24/7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
The true nature of inflation

ramirez showing the the 31¢ dollar adjusted for inflationCartoon courtesy of Michael P. Ramirez.com

“The nature of inflation is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted,” writes analyst Dave Kranzler in an Investing.com overview, “‘Inflation’ and ‘currency devaluation’ are tautological—they are two phrases that mean the same thing. … Dollar devaluation has been occurring since the early 1970’s. The value of the dollar relative to gold (real money) has declined 98%. In 1971, $40,000 would buy a 4,000 square foot home in a good suburb. Now it takes $700,000 on average to buy that same home. Price inflation is the evidence of currency devaluation. The CPI is not a real measure of price inflation. The CPI is methodically massaged – starting with the Arthur Burns Federal Reserve (it was his idea) to hide the real degree of currency devaluation from all of the money that has been printed since 1971.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Worried about what currency devaluation is doing to the value of your savings?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK
1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • • ONLINE ORDER DESK-24/7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Past gold bull markets have begun with a surge in the money supply

If the Fed looks for inflation, it will find it in the money supply – something that did not occur with authority in the aftermath of the 2008 credit crisis. From June 2019, the money supply has grown by $7.1 trillion. During the financial crisis that began in 2008, the Fed sterilized its money creation by routing liquidity back to its coffers in the form of commercial bank excess reserves. This strategy kept the inflation rate from running out of control. Now, the additional infusions associated with the pandemic combined with the earlier money creation is feeding into the benchmark inflation rate. Since 2020, prices have risen 26.4%. The Fed’s recently launched bank rescue plan could also eventually feed into the money supply and more inflation down the road. 

“Every gold bull market over the last 50 years has begun with a catalyst that propelled significant growth in the money supply,” writes Manning & Napier, the money management firm, in a report posted at Seeking Alpha titled The Value of Gold in a Portfolio. “Each of those prior bull markets was proceeded by substantial US dollar money supply growth, making monetary expansion a key indicator. It is important to note that this alone does not guarantee a gold bull market, as there are many other variables at play. … We see the status of each of these economic factors, money supply growth, inflation, and real interest rates, as supportive of higher gold prices ahead. Policymakers have been remarkably forceful in responding to Covid-19, resulting in substantial recent money supply growth in the US, and they appear willing to continue to throw money at the crisis in the year ahead.”

Gold and the money supply
(1971 to present)
line chart showing gold and the money growth since 1971
Chart courtesy of TradingView.com • • • Click to enlarge

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Are you worried about the future value of your savings?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK:

1-800-869-5115 x100• • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • • ONLINE ORDER DESK-24/7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet

‘The world is being tested to the extreme.’
Protecting and building wealth in a new financial era

graphic image of gold coins stacks and green arrow ascending

Interest Rate Observer’s James Grant referred to the current period as a “wild time in money.” Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozcar warned that “this crisis is not like anything we have seen since President Nixon took the US dollar off gold in 1971.” Mohamed El-Erian likened the Fed’s current monetary policy to that of a developing country central bank. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the corresponding Western sanctions and seizure of Russian FX reserves,” said long-time market analyst Lawrence Lepard, “are nothing short of a monetary earthquake.” Larry Fink, who manages BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund, said the invasion marked “a turning point in the world order” and the end of globalization. Finally, George Soros went to the dark side calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the beginning of World War III with the potential to destroy our civilization.”

If we have indeed embarked upon a new and turbulent financial era, as the above suggests, investors will be tasked with protecting and building their wealth under extraordinary and unpredictable circumstances. “History,” says James Grant, “would counsel us to be humble, prepared to listen and interpret correctly.” Swiss-based investment analyst Claudio Grass took a similarly philosophical approach (and one that we have counseled over many years). “It really does go a lot deeper than a comparison between gold and stocks, or considering the better ‘play’ for one’s portfolio performance,” he said. “The real counter-question now is ‘What is your peace of mind worth?’” Long-time money manager Stephen Leeb believes “the world is being tested to the extreme…Right now, as individuals, the best thing you can do for yourself is to buy protection, and that means investing in gold. Even under the best scenarios, a lot of turmoil lies ahead before we reach the other side, and gold will be the best way to get through it in good shape.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Looking to protect your wealth in the new financial era?

DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
Copernicus on the debasement of money

Image of 8¢ stamp depicting Copernicus holding representation of heliocentric earth orbit

“Although there are countless scourges which in general debilitate kingdoms, principalities, and republics, the four most important (in my judgment) are dissension, [abnormal] mortality, barren soil, and debasement of the currency. The first three are so obvious that nobody is unaware of their existence. But the fourth, which concerns money, is taken into account by few persons and only the most perspicacious. For it undermines states, not by a single attack all at once, but gradually and in a certain covert manner.” – Copernicus, Essay on the Coinage of Money (1526)

Few know that Copernicus applied his genius to the insidious effects of currency debasement. The ground-breaking essay linked above probably influenced both John Maynard Keynes (See below) and Thomas Gresham of “bad money drives out good” fame. Supply Side Blog’s Ralph Benko says Copernicus’ essay “has been translated into English several times yet those translations remained difficult to obtain for students of the monetary arts and sciences. It has remained mostly the property of elite historians.” Above we link Edward Rousen’s translation that you might keep company with the knowledgeable elite.

It cost 8¢ to mail a one-ounce letter in 1973 as indicated by the commemorative Copernicus stamp shown above. It costs 55¢ today – an illustration of his assertion that currency debasement “undermines states, not by a single attack all at once, but gradually and in a certain covert manner.” The post office increased the cost of mailing a letter by 5¢ – to 55¢ – beginning in 2019.


“By a continuing process of inflation governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.” – John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of Peace (1919)

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Looking to protect your savings from being confiscated in a covert manner?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE


Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
‘Wannabes’ and ‘Gonnabes’  not the real thing

photograph of gold bullion coins and historic gold coins USAGOLD

‘Put differently, as long as humans remain tangible, it is likely that they maintain a desire to hold real and tangible assets. Very few companies on the US stock exchange, for example, are older than 50 years. By comparison, gold has existed for thousands of years and any gold coin or gold bar will most likely outlive any company and their stocks and bonds. Put together, it is unlikely that a company that sells claims on gold, such as a gold ETF, will beat physical gold’s longevity.” – Dick Baur, Professor of Finance, University of Western Australia (Why ‘digital gold’ won’t ever kill off the real thing)

Wannabe and gonnabe paper gold and silver will never pass for history’s time-honored store of value – nor will it be mistaken for actual gold coins or bars stored nearby should the cold wind blow. By the way, adding the word, blockchain, to a paper gold product might enhance its marketing appeal, but it changes nothing in terms of its usefulness to the true safe-haven investor.  The instrument is still paper gold and little more than a price bet.

Full article link


Don’t wannabe a ‘wannabee’?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

ORDER DESK
1-800-869-5115 x100 • • • orderdesk@usagold.com • • • ORDER GOLD & SILVER ONLINE 24-7

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973  

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short and Sweet
“The first stop of $10,000 is actually not that far away.”

One of the more intriguing analyses of the gold market  comes from Myrmikan Research’s John Oliver. He inquires into gold’s rangebound behavior under these extraordinary circumstances and concludes, “what propels gold into the multi-thousands of dollars per ounce—is sharply rising rates that destroy the value of the Fed’s assets and make further federal deficit spending impossible. Without a political reason to buy the dollar, it will seek out its economic value.” It’s all in the math, and more specifically, he says that when looking at gold, investors “are going to have to get used to logarithmic scales.” In early 2022, Myrmikan projected a gold price of $5000 per ounce at some point down the road to give one-third backing to the Fed’s balance sheet. Now, says Oliver, it would take a gold price in excess of $11,000 to achieve the same backing. Consulting projections on gold’s logarithmic chart, he says, “the first stop of $10,000 is actually not that far away.”

Gold and 10-year Treasury yield minus CPI
(Log scale)
overlay log chart showing the price of gold in log scale and the real rate of return
Chart courtesy of Myrmikan Research

________________________________________________________________________

Do precious metals look undervalued to you?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Short & Sweet
Older investors buying gold and silver remember the 1970s

‘The emotional scars of inflation will shake the foundations of western societies.’
Diane Coyle, Cambridge University

photo image of stacks of gold and silver coins

“Until this year, inflation in advanced economies,” writes Diane Coyle in a MarketWatch article titled The Emotional Scars of Inflation Will Shake the Foundations of Western Societies, “like the United States and the United Kingdom had been so low for so long that one needed to be well into middle age to remember what living through the price surges of the late 1970s was like. It was bad.… But the headline numbers do not reveal the toll that high inflation takes.” Market analysts tend to crunch the numbers without giving much thought to the net effect of economic maladjustment – like inflation – on daily life and the culture in which it occurs. Coyle, who is a professor of public policy at Cambridge University, makes reference to the 1970s and the German nightmare inflation of the 1920s, which continues, she says, to have “an impact on economic policy-making to this day.” Too, we would attribute a large proportion of the robust demand for gold and silver coins over the past year to older investors who remember the debilitating effects of the 1970s stagflation – and how well investors did who purchased those items in the early part of the decade.

_________________________________________________________________

Do you remember the 1970s?
DISCOVER THE USAGOLD DIFFERENCE

Reliably serving physical gold and silver investors since 1973

Share
Posted in Short and Sweet, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |