Will Argentina ditch the peso for the dollar?

Bloomberg/Ignacio Olivera Doll/6-8-2023

“The front-runner in the presidential race says he would make the greenback the official currency and “blow up” the central bank.”

USAGOLD note: This isn’t the first Argentina has considered replacing the peso with the dollar. To do so, however, is to pull the plug on the printing press. Argentina could go from inflationary disaster to deflationary disaster overnight.

Argentina inflation and US dollar exchange rate


Source: TradingEconomics.com

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Daily Gold Market Report

Gold up marginally as investors mull over a historical oddity
HedgeNordic cites gold’s 7.7% annual return since 1971

(USASGOLD – 6-20-2023) – Gold is up marginally this morning as investors mulled over the historical oddity of a Fed signaling higher rates to a financial community that believes it can’t or won’t follow through. It is up $3.50 at $1955. Silver is down 20¢ at $23.87. There is justification for the skepticism given the Fed’s long history of addressing crises with easy money policies – policies, Sweden’s HedgeNordic points out, that have undermined the purchasing of the dollar since 1971 and driven gold higher.

“Gold,” It says in a recently published advisory, “has delivered an annual return of about 7.7 percent in U.S. dollar terms since August 15, 1971, the day U.S. President Richard Nixon removed the U.S. dollar from the gold standard. Eric Strand, a precious metals specialist who manages the fund boutique AuAg Funds, offers a different perspective on this development. At an annual rate of 7.7 percent, ‘the U.S. dollar has experienced a cumulative devaluation of 97 percent relative to gold since the historic date of August 15, 1971.’ Strand considers gold as the unchanging benchmark and measures the development of fiat currencies in relation to gold.”

Gold and the purchasing power of the US dollar
(%, 1971 to present)
overlay line chart showing gold price and purchasing power of the US dollar
Chart courtesy of TradingView.com • • • Click to enlarge

Share
Posted in Daily Market Report, dailyquotes, Today's top gold news and opinion |

Notable Quotable

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

“One of the most important warnings offered by firefighters is simple: get out early. In the face of wildfires, some homeowners get the idea of staying in their homes and riding it out. As one firefighter warned, ‘The point is to go.’ But if you don’t, it’s better to stay than to panic and run in the midst of a firestorm of smoke and embers. It’s not the fire that gets you. It’s the heat. Even before the flames reach the house, it can be fatal to stand outside trying to protect what you have (h/t John Galvin). Similarly, our ‘Exit Rule for Bubbles’ is straightforward: You only get out if you panic before everyone else does. You have to decide whether to look like an idiot before the crash, or look like an idiot after it.”

John Hussman
Hussman Funds

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

Share
Posted in Notable Quotable, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged , |

US banks prepare for losses in rush for commercial property exit

Financial Times/Stephen Gandel, Joshua Chaffin and Eric Platt and Joshua Oliver/6-5-2023

photograph of Chicago's skyline“Some US banks are preparing to sell off property loans at a discount even when borrowers are up to date on repayments, a sign of their determination to reduce exposure to the teetering commercial real estate market.”

USAGOLD note: Something wicked this way comes…… And the banks see the signs.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Reserve Bank of India ups gold reserve 40% over past five years

EconomicTimes/Gayatri Nayak/6-8-2023

“The Reserve Bank of India’s gold reserves have risen by over 40% since it resumed the purchase of the yellow metal over five years ago. This shows gold has emerged as a strong hedge against inflation and also helped reduce dependence on the dollar to an extent. India’s central bank, unlike others, never sells its gold.”

USAGOLD note: At 795 tonnes, India has the ninth-largest gold reserve in the world. The World Gold Council reports that Indian households may hold as much as 24,000 to 25,000 tonnes of the metal.

India Gold Reserves


Source: TradingEconomics.com

Share
Posted in Gold-silver price predictions, Today's top gold news and opinion |

China: A gold bullion investor’s best friend?

Barchart/Levi Donohue/6-2-2023

Ed Stein Cartoon of dragon atop gold hoard captioned Dragon's Hoard“The PBoC is moving to widen gold and silver accessibility to millions of previously untapped Chinese citizens. This fresh new gold accumulation initiative follows a very similar push undertaken 13-years ago that had incentivized the wealthier middle-class section of the population to invest in physical gold bars and coins.… The option to buy gold and silver bullion from your banking app in China is the latest Chinese government attempt to incentivize citizens to buy gold bullion.”

USAGOLD note: Donohue uncovers a little-known Chinese initiative through its banking system that could bring millions of new investors into the market. We consider China’s latest gold-friendly policy a very important development. “Western bullion investors,” says Donohue, “should brace for a demand shock in the market which will see premiums on gold bullion bars and coins rise and decouple from the paper gold price. China is betting the prospects of its own citizens on gold and as of yet very few people in the west have noticed.”

Share
Posted in Gold-silver price predictions, Today's top gold news and opinion |

To pause or not to pause? Fed officials divided ahead of critical June meeting

Yahoo!Finance/Jennifer Schonberger/6-8-2023

photograph of the June14-15 FOMC meeting

“Federal Reserve officials are divided on whether to raise interest rates at the central bank’s policy meeting next week.”

USAGOLD note: As we kick off Fed week, three FOMC members favor a hike, two a pause, four could go either way, and two have not commented, according to YahooFinance. The Fed meets for two days starting Tuesday with a rate announcement and press conference scheduled for Wednesday.

 

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Daily Gold Market Report

Gold turns to the downside to start the week
Van Eck says ‘tail risks’ are driving the gold bull market that began in 2015

(USAGOLD – 6/19/2023) – Gold turned to the downside to start the week as markets pondered just what it was the Fed was trying to convey last week. It is down $8 at $1952. Silver is down 25¢ at $24.03. The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timaraos challenged the Fed’s apparent indecisiveness with a straightforward question asked at the post-meeting press conference: “Chair Powell, what’s the value in pausing and signaling future hikes versus just hiking now?… Why not just rip off the Band-Aid and raise rates today?”

“Gold,” says Van Eck, the New York-based fund manager, “has been in a bull market for over seven years, rising 87% from its secular low in December 2015. However, unlike the steady and predictable bull market of the 2000s, this bull moves up, down and sideways in fits and turns that makes price targeting next to impossible. The main drivers of past gold bull markets are extraordinary tail risks and a falling dollar. We are living in an age of tail risks as the world goes through sickness, war, social disorder and financial stress that most people thought were relegated to the past. The level of tail risks today are at least as significant as past bull markets.”

Gold’s bull market trend since 2015
(After Van Eck’s chart published at the link below)line chart showing bull market trend 1015 to present
Chart courtesy of TradingView.com and Van Eck • • • Click to enlarge

Share
Posted in Daily Market Report, dailyquotes, Today's top gold news and opinion |

Notable Quotable

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

“We live in a technological golden age but in a monetary and fiscal dark age. While physicists discover the so-called God particle, governments print and borrow by the trillions. Science and technology may hurtle forward, but money and banking race backward.”

James Grant
Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

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

Share
Posted in Notable Quotable, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

The road to confetti is long and winding

“Does the deployment of helicopter money not entail some meaningful risk of the loss of confidence in a currency that is, after all, undefined, uncollateralized and infinitely replicable at exactly zero cost? Might trust be shattered by the visible act of infusing the government with invisible monetary pixels and by the subsequent exchange of those images for real goods and services? . . .  To us, it is the great question. Pondering it, as we say, we are bearish on the money of overextended governments. We are bullish on the alternatives enumerated in the Periodic table. It would be nice to know when the rest of Cartoon image of Dr. Moneywise at the lecternthe world will come around to the gold-friendly view that central bankers have lost their marbles. We have no such timetable. The road to confetti is long and winding.” – James Grant, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

Dr. MoneyWise says. . . .Some think it takes an advanced degree in economics to understand the merits of a diversification in gold and silver when all it takes is a little common sense. Common sense ownership of physical metal saved the skeptical saver in the time of the French assignat inflation in 1789, the nightmare German inflation in 1923, the global bank collapses in 1932, the American stagflationary breakdown in the 1970s and Venezuela’s inflation in 2019 – even though those episodes span almost 250 years. As old Ben Franklin once said: “A change of fortune hurts a wise Man no more than a change of the Moon.”

_________________________________________________________________

Are you bearish on the money of overextended governments?
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 Dr. Moneywise, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

Favorite Web Pages
Gold Charts in Various Timelines and Currencies
map with currency symbols–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Euro, Chinese yuan, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Indian rupee, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, U.S. dollar

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

USAGOLD was among the first to offer charts that tracked gold in various currencies and timelines. These live charts have always attracted a steady stream of U.S. and international visitors. As a result, we recently streamlined and upgraded the page to make it more user-friendly and included more currencies in the mix.

We invite your visit and bookmark.

Share
Posted in Favorite web pages, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged |

No blog or DGMR today. Back Monday.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Druckenmiller warns there are ‘more shoes to drop’

Yahoo!Finance-Bloomberg/Will Daniel/6-7-2023

ramriez cartoon on the Fed making a slight overcorrection on inflationCartoon courtesy of MichaelPRamirez.com

“There’s a lot of stuff under the hood when you go from this kind of environment, the biggest broadest asset bubble ever, and then you jack interest rates up 500 basis points in a year, I think the probability is that Silicon Valley Bank, Bed Bath & Beyond, they’re probably the tip of the iceberg.” – Stanley Druckenmiller, Duquesne Family Office

USAGOLD note: Druckenmiller sees a credit crunch and recession ahead.……

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

China’s gold binge extends to seventh month as holdings climb

Bloomberg/Sybilla Gross/6-7-2023

“China increased its gold reserves for a seventh straight month, signaling ongoing strong demand for the precious metal from the world’s central banks. China raised its gold holdings by about 16 tons in May, according to data from the People’s Bank of China…”

USAGOLD note: China has led the global central bank gold buying spree. Central bank gold buying was at a record pace in 2023 and it has remained strong in 2023. The chart below is quarterly and does not include China’s most recent purchases which have taken its total holdings to 2092 metric tonnes.

China Gold Reserves

Source: TradingEconomics.com

Share
Posted in Gold-silver price predictions, Today's top gold news and opinion |

Wall Street economists are increasingly less worried about a 2023 recession

Yahoo!Finance/Josh Shafer/6-9-2023

illustration of recession at next exit with long road ahead“The much-discussed recession of 2023 still isn’t here, and economists are becoming less confident it will come at all.”

USAGOLD note: There are few signs of a recession at this juncture – a hint here or there – but nothing concrete or lasting. Nevertheless, the warnings come almost daily.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Short and Sweet
Blinded by the Money Illusion

graphic image of a pile of green money

“Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.” – Janet Yellen, Former Federal Reserve chairwoman

With those words, Janet Yellen, now the Secretary of the Treasury and facing an even worse crisis than the one referenced above, put investors around the world on notice, though probably not in the way she intended. In the past, such smug assurances from public officials have been enough to send contrarian villagers heading for the safety of the nearby woods. The informed student of financial history knows that panics, manias, crashes, and collapses are as common to investment markets as hurricanes to Caribbean beaches. To think that suddenly we have banished their recurrence for ‘our lifetimes’ smacks of the kind of misguided hubris that contributed directly to the 2008 meltdown and subsequent untold financial hardship. Just about the time most everyone comes to the conclusion nothing could go wrong, everything goes wrong …… and in a hurry, as we have discovered over the course of the past two years.

______________________________________________________________________________

Looking to hedge the mysteries of current monetary policy?
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 |

Forget inflation – deflation is the real danger

MSN-The Telegraph/Ambrose Evans-Pritchard/6-8-20-23

graphic illustration of a row of dominoes with a red dominoe ready to fall into the rest“The global inflation shock of the last two years is over bar the shouting. Legacy effects will generate much noise for a few months but the one-off spike is reversing almost everywhere with an elegant symmetry.”

USAGOLD note:  China is already showing signs of deflation, says Evans-Pritchard – a deflation it is exporting. He says that the pace is quickening in the United States as the Treasury Department borrows heavily in turn pressuring bank reserves and regional lenders.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Notable Quotable

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

“We’re in very uncharted waters. Nobody has gotten by with the kind of money printing now for a very extended period without some kind of trouble. We’re very near the edge of playing with fire.”

Charlie Munger
Berkshire Hathaway

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

Share
Posted in Notable Quotable, Today's top gold news and opinion | Tagged , |

Gundlach dials up his warning of a US recession

MarketInsider/Zahra Tayeb/6-7-2023

graphic image recession ahead sign on darkened road leading to city“Forecasts for the world’s largest economy have been growing increasingly grim following the past year’s surge in interest rates and amid a credit squeeze caused by the recent banking turmoil.”

USAGOLD note: Gundlach is not moving off his warning of a severe recession. With new economic vulnerabilities surfacing regularly – anyone one of which could evolve to a full-out crisis in the event of a recession – sage-haven demand for gold is likely to intensify beyond the already high levels.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |

Treasury’s $1 trillion debt deluge threatens market calm

Bloomberg/Eric Wallerstein/6-7-2023

graphic image of walk in a deep, fearful wood

“Investors are bracing for a flood of more than $1 trillion of Treasury bills in the wake of the debt-ceiling fight, potentially sparking a new bout of volatility in financial markets.”

USAGOLD note: Until we get to the other side of the deep dark wood, we will put emphasis on the coming Treasury bond deluge.

Share
Posted in Today's top gold news and opinion |