Precious Metals

Last week it was the Fed crossing the Rubicon with infinite easing. We explained very clearly that the next steps would be everyone else joining the infinite easing party. Sure enough, here comes the first one:

• BOJ TO CONSIDER ADDITIONAL EASING: NIKKEI

Keep in mind that the BOJ already monetizes ETFs and REITs, the very instruments which the Fed will soon be forced to buy. And so it begins - because when it comes to pushing CTRL and P, over and over, it really doesn't take much skill.

Since 2007 our analysis has suggested the likelihood of economic outcomes that most have considered unlikely: significant and ongoing monetary inflation, policy-administered currency devaluation, substantial global price inflation, and an eventual change in how the forty year old global monetary system is structured. Most observers have viewed such outlooks as tail events – highly unlikely, unworthy of serious consideration or a long way off. We remain resolute, and believe last week’s movements in Frankfurt and Washington towards perpetual quantitative easing confirmed and accelerated the validity of our outlook. With QBAMCO's view that $15,000 - $19,000 Gold is possible, timing of the catch-up phase is impossible - though they suspect last week's events may be the catalyst that begins to raise public awareness of the link between monetary inflation and price inflation.

It appears that the strike that had crippled South Africa's precious metals industry is coming to an end. Reuters reports that striking miners at Lonmin's Marikana mine in South Africa said on Tuesday they accepted a management pay rise offer and would return to work on Thursday after six weeks of mining sector unrest that shook Africa's largest economy. The cost to get back to work? A 22% hike in wages, and a corresponding crunch in corporate margins (which we hope finally clears up to all those who have been so confused for years why a surge in the underlying PMs usually tends to backfire on the miners extracting it, as labor costs surge as much if not more). "The gathered strikers cheered near the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, when they were informed of the 22 percent wage increase offer, a Reuters witness said." Lonmin is not alone: "In another sign that weeks of labour unrest in South Africa's platinum belt could be ending, world No. 1 platinum producer Anglo American Platinum said it had resumed its operations in the strike-hit Rustenburg area. On the news of the Marikana agreement, the spot platinum price fell 2 percent to a session low at $1,627.49/oz and the rand firmed against the dollar."

The Grand Plan, as we have espoused for years, is to force all 'safe' assets to a point where they appear 'rich' to 'risk' assets - and inflate another bubble to take our eyes off the debt being inflated away in the other hand. In the Fed's mind, they tried this before with QE1 and it worked magnificently - lifting stocks phoenix-like from the ashes of a credit-crunch reality. However, this time is different. The last time the Fed forced MBS CurCpn yields down to 'match' the S&P 500's dividend yield was March 2009 - and investors 'rotated' back to risk (to many people's surprise). Yields were at 4% then and the S&P's P/E multiple was 10x; this time yields are just above 2% and the S&P 500's P/E multiple is a staggering 14.9x. We suspect that rather than re-enacting the post-March 2009 eruption, valuations this time will force that liquidity to flood into non-equity asset classes (and with HY call-constrained, it leaves little but the energy and precious metals complex to soak up the Fed's exuberance).

Global gold production remains at its level of the late '90s, even though prices have risen to over $1,700 per ounce from $252 per ounce in 1999 or roughly 16% per annum in dollar terms. Only Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe's Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia stand out as a major new gold mines expected to begin production in the near future. Bulls note that global production has remained impervious to the price of gold. This may continue to be the case due to the increasingly obvious geological constraints being seen in the gold mining sector. Resource nationalism is beginning to become an important factor again. This will also almost certainly affect supply at a time when demand is increasing from people throughout the world and many hedge funds, pension funds and central banks’ due to geopolitical, systemic and monetary risks. The lesson of QE is that fiat currencies increasingly grow on trees. Gold does not.  This is the primary reason that gold will continue to protect investors in the coming months.

One of the key stories of 2011 was the revelation, courtesy of MF Global, that no asset in the financial system is "as is", and instead is merely a copy of a copy of a copy- rehypothecated up to an infinite number of times (if domiciled in the UK) for one simple reason: there are not enough money-good, credible assets in existence, even if there are more than enough 'secured' liabilities that claim said assets as collateral. And while the status quo is marching on, the Ponzi is rising, and new liabilities are created, all is well; however, the second the system experiences a violent deleveraging and the liabilities have to be matched to their respective assets as they are unwound, all hell breaks loose once the reality sets in that each asset has been diluted exponentially. Naturally, among such assets are not only paper representations of securities, mostly stock and bond certificates held by the DTC's Cede & Co., but physical assets, such as bars of gold held by paper ETFs such as GLD and SLV. In fact, the speculation that the physical precious metals in circulation have been massively diluted has been a major topic of debate among the precious metal communities, and is the reason for the success of such physical-based gold and silver investment vehicles as those of Eric Sprott. Of course, the "other side" has been quite adamant that this is in no way realistic and every ounce of precious metals is accounted for. While that remains to be disproven in the next, and final, central-planner driven market crash, we now know that it is not only precious metals that are on the vaporization chopping block: when it comes to China, such simple assets as simple steel held in inventories, apparently do not exist.

Marc Faber, one of the few analysts, to have predicted the current crisis correctly and to have protected his clients in the process, remains very bullish on gold. In another excellent Bloomberg interview, Faber said that “the trend for gold prices will be steady but the trend for the dollar and other currencies will be down. So in other words gold in dollar terms will trend higher.”  “How high it will go, you will have to call Mr Bernanke and at the Fed there are other people who actually make Mr Bernanke look like a hawk and so they are going to print money.” Faber is on record as to the importance of owning physical gold and he again warned about the importance of owning gold but not storing it in the U.S.  “You ought to own some gold but don’t store it in the U.S., the Fed will take it away from you one day,” Faber astutely noted. He said that Bernanke is a money printer and this could lead to massive inflation and the Dow Jones at 20,000, 50,000 or 10 million. Faber cheerily predicted that the “the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy will destroy the world” and “eventually we will have a systemic crisis and everything will collapse.”

What the Fed did was actually much more than QE3. Call it QE3-plus... a gift that will now keep on giving. The new normal of bad news being good news is now going to be more fully entrenched for the market and 'housing data' (the most trustworthy of data) - clearly the Fed's preferred transmission mechanism - is now front-and-center in driving volatility. I don't think this latest Fed action does anything more for the economy than the previous rounds did. It's just an added reminder of how screwed up the economy really is and that the U.S. is much closer to resembling Japan of the past two decades than is generally recognized. It would seem as though the Fed's macro models have a massive coefficient for the 'wealth effect' factor. The wealth effect may well stimulate economic activity at the bottom of an inventory or a normal business cycle. But this factor is really irrelevant at the trough of a balance sheet/delivering recession. The economy is suffering from a shortage of aggregate demand. Full stop. It just perpetuates the inequality that is building up in the country, and while this is not a headline maker, it is a real long term risk for the health of the country, from a social stability perspective as well.

Bernanke took the plunge yesterday by embarking on QE3 or what would be better described as “Currency Debasement 3”. Improving the U.S. job market and therefore economy was the reason given for the extremely radical measures. However, the scale of the open ended monetary commitments suggests the Fed is worried about another Great Depression and an economic collapse. The move was described as "stunningly bold" by some analysts as it is "open ended" with Bernanke pledging to print or electronically create, with no time limit, an extra $40 billion every single month until the labour market improves. This is the frightening vista we have been warning of for some time. It means that should the US economy enter a recession and or depression, which still seems very likely, that the Fed will continue printing money and debasing the dollar thereby leading to dollar devaluation and inflation - potentially virulent inflation on a par with or worse than that seen in the 1970's. We had long said that QE3 was inevitable - the question was when rather than if. Indeed, we had said that given Bernanke's closeness to Wall Street we expected that QE4, QE5 etc.  were likely.  The "open ended" nature of this new round of QE as enunciated yesterday means that the Fed could if it wished or believes it is necessary print unlimited quantities of dollars.

There was one thing, ONE THING only that Bernanke could do, to become a gold bug's best friend today, than merely announcing QE 3/4. It was to announce open-ended QE. This means this is the Fed's final shot and there is no way to frontrun the Fed any more by definition. It means the terminal start of currency debasement is now here. It also means that the path to all time nominal (and inflation adjusted) highs in gold, which is now just $160 away, silver, platinum, and all other metals, as well as all other hard assets is now clear. It also means that very soon stocks are about to realize what soaring "input costs" mean for the bottom line.

Thank you Chairsatan: you are truly a gold bug's bestest friend!

In the last 30 days (since August 13th), platinum has risen by 18.9%, silver by 18.7%, palladium by 18.4% and gold by 7.6%. All remain well below their nominal record highs (see charts) and more importantly well below their inflation adjusted highs. All will most likely continue to rally especially if the Fed announces QE3 today as investors turn to precious metals to hedge substantial money printing by governments and the real risk of future inflation. "The Euro bailout measures and the opening of the monetary policy floodgates by the central banks are likely to result in higher inflation in the medium to long term," says today's Commerzbank commodities note. The strikes and violence in South Africa's gold and platinum industries are supporting and may contribute to higher prices. Machete-wielding strikers forced Anglo American Platinum, the world's No.1 platinum producer, to shut down some of its operations in South Africa, sending spot platinum to a five month high of $1,654.49. 

Central bank demand internationally continues and demand for gold in the increasingly volatile Middle East remains robust as seen in data from the Istanbul Gold Exchange. It showed that Turkey’s gold imports were 11.3 metric tons last month alone. Silver imports were 6.7 tons, the data show. Much of these imports may be destined for Iran where imports have surged an astonishing 2,700% in just one year – from $21 million to $6.2 billion. In the first seven months of this year, Turkey's exports to Iran have also skyrocketed to $8 billion, up from $2 billion in the same period last year. And it is widely believed that the major portion of the increase, which is $6 billion, stems from the export of gold. There is speculation that the Iranian central bank is buying gold and that they may be accepting gold in payment for oil and gas in order to bypass western sanctions.  Turkey is paying for the oil and natural gas it is importing from Iran in gold, Turkish opposition deputies have claimed, drawing attention to the enormous increase in Turkey's gold exports to Iran in 2012.  “Gold is being used as an instrument for payment. Under the guise of exportation, gold is being sent to Iran in exchange for oil,” Sinan Aygün, a deputy from the Republican People's Party (CHP), has told Turkish daily Today's Zaman.

We will mince no words: Mr. Draghi has opened the door to hyperinflation. There will probably not be hyperinflation because Germany would leave the Euro zone first, but the door is open and we will explain why. To avoid this outcome, assuming that in this context the Eurozone will continue to show fiscal deficits, we will also show that it is critical that the Fed does not raise interest rates. This can only be extremely bullish of precious metals and commodities in the long run. In the short-run, we will have to face the usual manipulations in the precious metals markets and everyone will seek to front run the European Central Bank, playing the sovereign yield curve and being long banks’ stocks. If in the short-run, the ECB is the lender of last resort, in the long run, it may become the borrower of first resort!

The unremitting deterioration of the eurozone’s sovereign debt landscape continues to fuel uncertainties about the longevity of the euro as a hard currency. Such uncertainties are not only leading to capital flight from the EMU’s periphery to the core and destabilizing markets worldwide, but they are also beginning to frighten southern European savers into seeking refuge outside their 10-year-old currency. Such is the case of Spain – the latest tumbling economy to threaten the euro’s survival. As the crisis deepens, there is still a window of opportunity for Spaniards to turn to gold as a means to protect their wealth against the risks of increased foreign exchange volatility, forced re-denomination, or even a total currency collapse.

I was recently interviewed by a journalist for a local newspaper who was developing a story on the exponential rise of the “prepper lifestyle” in America, most especially in Western Montana.  Being an outsider to the Liberty Movement, she was naturally curious as to what motivated us to make what some in our culture would see as a drastic and bewildering leap away from the mainstream.  She was equally fascinated with our willingness to travel great distances and make substantial sacrifices to live in regions like the American Redoubt.  I will not deny, Montana has indeed become a “hotbed” of survivalism and Constitutionalism, or what the Southern Poverty Law Center would call “extremism and domestic terrorism”.  I lived in Pittsburgh for years while writing for Neithercorp and Alt-Market and rarely ran into like minded individuals aware of the tenuous status of our society.  Within days of moving to Montana, I was being recognized by complete strangers in supermarkets excited to discuss the inner workings of Keynesian monetary corruption, precious metals investment, and Alinsky disinformation tactics.  Yeah…I know…it’s weird. After living for a while in the Redoubt, you begin to forget that there are still many people in this country that are utterly oblivious to the epic dangers around them, as well as painfully helpless in knowing what to do when those dangers land on their doorsteps.  Speaking with the newspaper reporter, and my experiences at Paulfest in Tampa, Florida, reminded me that the world has yet to be reminded of the value of survivalism.  There is still a gap, a disconnect, a psychological twitch of the masses, and it compels me to explain, yet again, what they are missing.