Gold Bugs

If Peter Schiff is selling gold, then maybe you should too!

Why do commercial investment advisers always tell you that gold (& silver) and PM assets are all massively risky? Here's the one chart that explains everything.

In the spirit of the holidays and hope for a more prosperous 2013, we thought readers might appreciate a little humor to partially offset the relentless 'cliff' doom and gloom. So please, don’t take this too seriously. But if you happen to stumble across a ‘paperbug’ or two over the holidays, perhaps you could share some of the points made here. Humor sometimes helps people realize just how hopelessly misguided they are... Quantitative easing changes nothing. Remember, the PhDs are in charge of our economies and they know exactly how much our money should be worth. Those of us concerned that our money might lose purchasing power are just being paranoid. Choice is dangerous. Think Adam and Eve and you’ll get my point. Those arguing in favour of monetary freedom, of choice in money, of repealing legal tender laws, they’re just like that nasty snake Lillith in the Garden of Eden, the source of all trouble I tell you. ‘Tis the season to borrow and spend folks, as indeed it has been since 1971.

Presenting Dave Collum's now ubiquitous and all-encompassing annual review of markets and much, much more. From Baptists, Bankers, and Bootleggers to Capitalism, Corporate Debt, Government Corruption, and the Constitution, Dave provides a one-stop-shop summary of everything relevant this year (and how it will affect next year and beyond).

Credit expansion, wrote the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, is not a nostrum to make people happy. "The boom it engenders must inevitably lead to a debacle and unhappiness." That seems a pretty accurate summary of the current situation for the western economies: a debacle, and unhappiness. Von Mises also wrote that "The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment." And, "What is needed for a sound expansion of production is additional capital goods, not money or fiduciary media. The credit boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse." It seems to us that we may be fast approaching the tail end of a 40-year experiment in money. The conventional financial media continue to keep central bankers on their pedestal; such thinking is astounding for the rest of us who know the Emperor's new clothes when we see them.

Gold bugs can’t understand how the public can be so unaware, how highly intelligent policy makers can be so immoral, and how the mainstream media can be so incurious. We can’t understand why more men and women in the investment business haven’t joined some of the more successful ones that have come around to precious metals and have taken substantial positions in them for their funds and personal accounts. Conventional financial asset selection guidelines for professional investors are becoming increasingly uneconomic and problematic. Current macroeconomic conditions leave little doubt as to why. A zero-bound rate structure across developed economies, heavy monetary policy intervention, guaranteed negative real returns of benchmark financial assets and cash, impossible discount cash flow models,cacophonous (and economically meaningless) fiscal political wrangling diverting attention from legitimate budget arithmetic ($800 billion over ten years when we’re running $1 trillion-plus annual deficits?), dubious short and intermediate-term prospects in already-emerged emerging economies, and non-trending financial markets, all suggest something has changed. Regardless of whether one is investing personally or as a fiduciary, conventional financial asset allocation models and procedures are obviously failing and the reason is simple: the currencies in which financial assets are denominated are gravely flawed.

Bankers have engaged in a huge misinformation campaign against gold and silver to deliberately keep people out of buying gold and silver. If you’re a newbie thinking about buying gold and silver assets for the first time ever, here’s what you need to know.

It must be pointed out that gold is certainly no longer the bargain it was at the lows over a decade ago (at which time Warren Buffett undoubtedly hated it just as much as today). This is by no means akin to saying that there is no longer a bull market in force though. What seems however extremely unlikely to us is that the long term bull market is anywhere near to being over. After all, the people in charge of  fiscal and monetary policy all over the globe are applying their 'tried and true' recipe to the perceived economic ills of the world in ever bigger gobs of 'more of the same'. Until that changes – and we feel pretty sure that the only thing that can usher in profound change on that score is a crisis of such proportions that the ability of said authorities to keep things under control by employing this recipe is simply overwhelmed – there is no reason not to hold gold in order to insure oneself against their depredations.

An article by David Weiner on the MarketWatch site reminded me of just how weak the economic arguments against the gold standard are. Its title: "A Fool's Gold Standard." We examine this article here. The issue that divides the anti-gold bugs from the gold bugs is simple to state. The gold-coin standard places monetary authority in the hands of millions of economic participants who own gold. The gold bugs favor this. The anti-gold bugs oppose it. The rival camps are divided by rival systems of economic sovereignty. The gold bugs favor the sovereignty of the free market. The anti-gold bugs favor the sovereignty of the banking cartel, which is the joint creation of the federal government (Federal Reserve) and the states (state bank licensing). This is a replay of the arguments of Adam Smith against the arguments of the mercantilists. It is the logic of widespread, decentralized private ownership and voluntary contract versus the logic of government licensing, barriers to entry, and the legal right to counterfeit money. The anti-gold bugs do not want to put it this way. This is why gold bugs should always put it this way. Ultimately, this debate is between the logic of the free market as a social organization versus the logic of central planning. The battlefield is monetary theory and monetary policy.

We already know that Ben Bernanke is a gold bug's best friend (here, here and here). And while technically Ben Bernanke is a republican, and was appointed to his post by a republican president, it is safe to say that when it comes to printing money political affiliation is irrelevant, especially since it was paradoxically a democrat Obama who was Bernanke's biggest backer during the last year for very obvious reasons - after all it was merely Bernanke's $2 trillion in excess reserves that pushed the stock market higher and gave the false impression that the economy is improving (even if a potential Romney administration would have hardly budged the status quo and likely replaced Bernanke with an even more pro-printing figurehead in the face of Bill Dudley). So a different question is: should gold bugs be more excited by a democrat or a republican president. The answer is self-evident: of the $4000 inflation-adjusted increase in gold price since gold was floated by Nixon, a solid $3000, or 75% of this rise, has taken place under Democratic administrations. So dear gold bugs: stock pile that physical and cheer on Obama and hopefully his democratic successors. At this rate, gold (and ostensibly all other precious metals) will outperform every single asset class known to man (sorry Buffett).

Silver remains the most under appreciated and under reported on asset in the world despite continuing positive fundamentals.

The Telegraph published an unusually bullish article on silver yesterday which suggests that silver might rise by over five times in the next few years. 

Emma Wall interviews fund manager Ian Williams who says that "silver is about to enter a sustained bull market that will take the price from the current level of $32 an ounce to $165 an ounce and we expect this price to be hit at the end of October 2015."

With expectations that Europe will once again become a flaming powderkeg after the US elections are over running high, Europe has so far not disappointed. And as usual, the focal catalyst of greatest pain remains Greece, which is only now learning what ZH readers knew days ago, namely that the Greek "austerity" vote was merely theater, and that Europe, i.e., Germany, has certainly not decided to release any of the much needed cash that Greece needs not only to run its society but to make a key bond payment on November 16. Confirming this was German finance ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe, who said on Friday that Eurozone finance ministers will probably not be able to decide at their upcoming Eurogroup meeting on Monday whether to disburse a badly-needed €31.5 billion loan tranche to Greece, as MNI reported earlier. "Speaking at a regular government press conference here, Kothe reminded that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble needs the approval of the German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, before being able to approve any further aid for Greece. “It will be difficult to achieve this by next Monday,” she said." In other words, the Greek default is suddenly in the hands of the German people, of whom at last check  about 60% wanted Greece gone. There is yet hope for Greece, with a story overnight running that George Soros is ready to commit "serious funds to aid Greece." Surely that generosity too will end well for the Greek people who by now must feel as if they are in the 5th circle of a NWO globalization hell.

"Yellow journalism" – which seems almost the only kind we have these days dominates our newsflow, but the truth is out there. As with everything else though, it's subject to Pareto's Law. So, 80% of what's out there is crap, and 80% of what's left is merely okay. But that remaining 4% of quality, uncensored, free information flow is extremely valuable. The terminal corruption of the major news corporations and the lack of interest in seeking the truth among the general population augurs very poorly for the prospects of the US and the current world order. This creates speculative opportunities, but prospects for mainstream investments are not good. Western civilization is truly in decline and far down the slippery slope.

The reasons why interest is so incredibly low in buying gold and silver among the general masses when they are screaming bargains, and why the general populace’s interest in PMs only perk up after prices have moved much higher, or worse yet, never at all, is a testament to the disinformation campaign waged by the bankers against the people.

There is one personality trait that no gold and silver investor should ever be without.