And why should they be? They’re sitting on the sidelines holding US treasuries worth $797 billion. That’s quite a chunk of change.

Of course I’m talking about China.

The Chinese have been the biggest foreign creditor to the United States and in recent statements they’ve made it clear that Washington needs to maintain the value of the dollar.

“We have made a huge amount of loans to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried,” said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

It’s estimated that around 50% of China’s total reserves are held in US treasuries. And they know that the reserve currency they hold is depreciated with each passing day.

With so much riding on the price of the dollar you can bet that Beijing has been keep a close tally on America’s spending — and the results can’t be pleasing.

To say the least, Chinese faith in the dollar is feigning.

And I’ll give you one guess as to where they are going to spend their $797 billion nest egg… Gold!

Right now China is 6th on the list of world gold holdings with around 1,000 tonnes of gold reserves. Not bad right?

Wrong.

When you look closer at the statistics you can see that China has a mere 1.9% of its total reserve holdings in gold. Compare that to the U.S. with 77% and you’ll start to see China’s future motivation.

China is in the market for a reserve currency that’s stable. And when it comes to stability nothing glitters like gold.

Need proof? Look no further than another developing world powerhouse… India.

Recently India made a bold move to start protecting itself from the U.S. dollar and fiat currencies in general…

News broke that India made a huge gold purchase from the IMF — somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 tonnes.

Previously, the government of India held 350 tonnes of gold reserves. This 200 tonne purchase is a 57% increase in India’s reserves. Now that’s what I call a stand against paper currency!

The Indian transaction may be the largest single central bank purchase of gold ever. The only comparable event was the U.S. government seizure of gold from circulation within the nation back in 1933, along with steady U.S. government purchases in the 1930s and 1940s.

I spoke with an acquaintance of mine who works in the “financial” side of the U.S. government — I cannot say what Cabinet department, but his office has a view of the White House. I asked why the IMF sold the gold to India, and not China.

My acquaintance replied, “It’s all about balance. India holds a lot of U.S. Treasuries and needs gold to diversify its assets. We can’t let all the IMF gold go to China and leave India in the dust. China is already building up its gold reserves due to being the No. 1 gold producer in the world and still a net importer. Besides, if the news hit the wires that China just bought all the IMF gold, it would crush the dollar. So the deal was that India could buy 200 tonnes.”

Put it all together and the global outlook for the U.S. dollar is dreadful. As time passes more countries will try to escape the depreciation of the dollar — and that leads them to one option for wealth preservation: gold.

Okay, so no one wants paper dollars and instead they want gold — that’s easy right?

Not so fast…

Approaching “Peak Gold”

Just like the “peak oil” phenomenon, we’re headed for “peak gold.” It’s all about how much gold is left unprocessed underground. The more we take out, the harder it is to find more. And the harder it is to get to.

For instance, miners used to pan for gold in streams. Today, just to get enough gold for a wedding band, you need to crush up to 20 tons of rock.

And remember, gold isn’t just for jewelry, coins, or bars of bullion. Gold goes into computers, cell phones, and satellites. It’s used in medical lasers, industrial lasers, and in spacecrafts. It plays a major role in medical research. It’s even used for treating some diseases.

According to the World Gold Council, the world mined 2,414 tonnes of gold in 2008 — 64 tonnes less than the year prior. It was even less gold than mined in 2006.

Meanwhile, the amount of gold used in jewelry and industry alone topped 2,186 tonnes — add that to demand for bars and coins (which has really been ramping up lately) and you’ll see that, by necessity, at least 425 tonnes had to come into the market — most likely by central banks out of their dwindling hoards, a practice that cannot continue indefinitely.

And that’s not even including industrial use or the demand from vastly popular gold investment holdings like ETFs!

In fact, when you get down to brass tacks, the supply outlook for gold is down right dismal.

Over the past 10 years large gold discoveries have been inexistent. The discoveries that are being made tend to be in more remote and less geopolitically attractive areas.

Tough new environmental laws and 20 years of low mining investment don’t help. But it’s really geology that’s conspiring against the miners most. Nobody can find the big gold deposits anymore. It looks like they’re all tapped out.

With gold prices up, they’re looking. More holes open up in the ground. More tons of rock go through the mills. But so far, the average quality of the gold they’re finding has gone down.

The low hanging fruit of the gold mining universe — the easy deposits and rich mines — have started to disappear. Gold’s already rare. But it’s getting more rare by the day.

This rarity is running into increasing demand. There isn’t a more fundamental argument for rising prices. And if the U.S. dollar continues to plummet there’ll be no stopping the yellow metal’s upward charge. Again, it’s economics at work. Gold is priced in dollars, so as the currency becomes less valuable, the metal naturally becomes more valuable.

You want to accumulate gold investments now, while prices are still relatively low. Sure, gold prices are at all-time highs, but they still have a long way to go…over $2,000…maybe as high as $3,000…or even $5,000!

Until we meet again,
Byron King
Whiskey & Gunpowder

October 1, 2010

More Reasons Gold Is Going to $2,000 was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

As you may know, California is bankrupt. That ball got rolling back in December 1994, when Orange County declared bankruptcy. Once one of the most prosperous districts in the state, it watched a pool of riskily invested and highly leveraged money go south, and the game was up. After losses totaling $1.6 billion, a liquidity trap was sprung from which Orange County’s Treasurer Tax-collector Robert Citron could not escape.

Although considered somewhat of an isolated incident, it wasn’t long until related problems began to emerge. Now the state faces endless traffic jams, aging schools and hospitals, falling cash accounts and an annual budget more dependent on volatile tax revenues than at any time in state history. And it looks like the crunch will come to a head under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But here’s the real problem.

All by itself, California is the eighth-largest economy in the world. So its bankruptcy would spell trouble for those that are interconnected with it — especially neighboring states that depend on California’s economic machine for their own growth.

But does California care? It doesn’t seem that way. Its state budget is larger than any other in the United States ($56 billion). And yet that still isn’t enough money to keep it out of trouble. It refuses to live within its means, and is determined to borrow at ever-increasing levels. For proof, remember that California voters rejected a bill that was really called, “The California Live Within Our Means Act.”

Why the arrogance? Perhaps it believes the Fed will step in with a bailout. After all, billions and billions have been given to private corporations… why shouldn’t a state benefit equally — especially if it would sink the U.S. economy otherwise?

But the corporate bailouts came with strings attached. So it’s easy to see the government telling the state to take action to get out of its mess. Reduce spending, cut programs and implement austerity programs until California’s budget is actually balanced.

Then make the very real threat to exorcise it from the Union if it doesn’t comply.

I’m sure you’re saying, “Wait, wait, hold the phone! Nobody is talking about this. There’s no chance that California is going to be kicked out of the United States”

And I am sure that you’re right. But we’ve heard very similar language used when it comes to talking about Greece and the European Union. And, in fact, that’s what today’s commentary addresses. Is it more likely that Greece will be removed form the European Union than that the state of California will be removed from the United States? After all, there are some similarities that make the comparison of the two cases worth considering.

Will California Go Greek?

Each party, Greece and California, are members of a union or conglomerate of political entities. Each one shares a united currency with the others in the union. Each one has particular trade interrelations as well as financial interrelations with others in the union. Lastly, each is “bankrupt,” and that has a certain dilatory effect on those around it.

As you may know, Greece has gotten a lot of bad publicity of late, and it has really hurt the euro — down around 10% in the last few months alone. Does the negative position of the Greek economy warrant such a drag on the European Union as a whole? Generally, they are only considered to be about 2–3% of the economy as a whole. California, on the other hand, is a little more than 10% of the U.S. economy as measured by GDP.

Thus, in theory, Greece should only drag down the euro by 3% on balance, but California should drag down the U.S. dollar by 10%. Overall, then, the USD should have fallen total of 7% against the euro… all things being equal.

But the problem is — all things are NOT equal. Here’s why.

California is a part of a 235-year-old republic. Even though it has not been a member for that same period, it nevertheless is a part of a union that has stood many difficult tests of time.

On the other hand, the European Union is still an experiment. It is barely out of adolescence, and we don’t know yet if it will even grow to stand among the older economies of the world. Also, even though both parties are entities in union structures, the structure of each union is different and addresses problems differently. The long and short of it is that California’s position in the United States is significantly more substantial than that of Greece in the European Union.

So right now California looks like a keeper and Greece a goner. If Europeans are reluctant to break up their happy (till now) Union, they only have a few options:

1. The European Union offers “solidarity” but no financial support.
2. The European Union offers a unified fiscal support from all members.
3. The European Union designates the stronger countries to subsidize the Greeks.
4. A mixture of numbers 2 and 3. Many have maintained that a bailout would be a violation of the Maastricht Treaty, the paperwork that created the European Union. However, the treaty itself is somewhat like a vicious dog that has no teeth or claws.

Here is an excerpt from the consolidated treaty, a piece that is commonly called the “No Bailout Clause”: The Community shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State, without prejudice to mutual financial guarantees for the joint execution of a specific project. A Member State shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of another Member State, without prejudice to mutual financial guarantees for the joint execution of a specific project. There you have it… NO BAILOUTS.

However, when a member does get into fiscal hot water, that language is no longer effective or applicable. At that point Article 100 takes over. It reads: Where a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control, the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, may grant, under certain conditions, Community financial assistance to the Member State concerned. The President of the Council shall inform the European Parliament of the decision taken. NOW, there you have it… BAILOUTS PERMITTED.

I only give you that so you are aware that bailouts can and will be formulated in the upcoming disasters. And they do not violate the treaty itself.

However, the bigger question remains, if the European Union allows fiscal support for Greece, does that mean carte blanch permission for others to run to the EU money window and collect assistance for their carefree spending days?

It certainly seems to me that if the European Union makes this decision, which, as we have seen, is fully allowable by law, it will lose all credibility. And that may be the only thing that stands between them and ruination of the Union. It may end up collapsing on itself, even if no members ever leave, and its downfall will be the loss of confidence in the currency.

So then, how much further could the euro fall? Could it go all the way to parity? Most certainly. But before that point we will likely see many waxing and wanes of each side of the currency pair. We see a little rebound in risk appetite.

But what does all this mean for the United States and its currency?

The United States

Philosophically and economically, the United States is on a rendezvous with history… unfortunately, the path we are taking is a crash course. Many people have to come realize that we are nearing the end of a gigantic global economic experiment. No one has really walked this particular path before. A circumstance where every major nation in the world (and many minor ones too) is utilizing paper currency that has no backing of any value except for the promise of the issuing government. And we have all come to see what that is worth.

And as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. No currency is bigger than the U.S. dollar. No economy is bigger than that of the United States. When it comes, great will be the fall of it. Fortunes will be made. But so long as it remains the reserve currency, it is very difficult (although not impossible) for it to collapse.

It is difficult because each time it falls and gets cheap to buy, there are many who still buy it because the majority of the world’s goods are priced in U.S. dollars. So when the dollar gets cheap, so do the world’s commodities to those who are buying in currencies other than the dollar.

For us here in the United States, a cheaper dollar means more expensive everything: gas, groceries, cars… you name it. But when the dollar is cheap and other currencies are strong, it becomes a good time to stock up. Such buying will continue to prop up the dollar until a different reserve is found or created. Since such a thing will not occur overnight, the prospect for currency fluctuation over the next several decade — and our opportunity to profit from it — will be tremendous.

But make no mistake: the dollar is in trouble — one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Regards,
Bill Jenkins

February 19, 2010

Will California Be Removed from the United States? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Doug: I just don’t know where they find these people… On the other hand, Slime magazine has always said that those named Person of the Year are not necessarily the most laudable people, but those who’ve had the greatest impact on the events in a given year. That would explain Hitler’s achievement of the same honor, and Stalin getting the nod twice.

L: Not to mention Bin Laden.

Doug: Yes, let’s not mention him. This is different: Bernanke isn’t being held up as a villain, but as a hero.

L: The tagline Time puts on it is: ”The story of the year was a weak economy that could have been much, much weaker. How the mild-mannered man who runs the Federal Reserve prevented an economic catastrophe.”

Doug: Right. And Bernanke is always presented as a Ph.D., a scholar of the Great Depression, its causes, and how to cure such an economic downturn. But he hasn’t prevented an economic catastrophe — he’s done just the opposite of what needs to be done, and there’s going to be hell to pay.

It’s quite perverse. Look at Alan Greenspan. In the 1960s, he was an acolyte of Ayn Rand and wrote a famous essay defending the gold standard, which I read in her book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. And then he goes on to become the most inflationary Fed chairman in history until Bernanke superseded him.

The really shameful thing about Greenspan is, not only were his policies the igniters of the giant bubbles we saw in the stock market and then in real estate, but since he was associated with pure capitalism through Rand, his failures through government intervention in the market have falsely discredited capitalism as a system in many people’s view.

L: The same could be said of Ronald Reagan. He got elected on a libertarian platform, speaking of free enterprise and getting the government off the back of the little guy. So now many people think that the chronic deficits and other problems of the Reagan years proved that limited government doesn’t work. It’s the same swindle you see in intro economics courses that teach young people that the Great Depression proved that laissez-faire capitalism doesn’t work when it was, again, government intervention in the market that created the Great Depression.

Doug: That’s right. Reagan allowed Congress to run gigantic, greater-than-ever-seen-before deficits that still have to be paid for, either through higher taxes or debasing the currency, or both or selling off the assets of the United States to foreign creditors. The Reagan deficits are nothing, of course, compared to the current ones.

L: I wonder how much we could get for the Statue of Liberty? She’s got to be feeling uncomfortable in a country that no longer wants anyone’s tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.

Doug: That’s a good question. The copper alone is worth a lot of money at this point.

L: A quick web search shows two frequently cited figures for Miss Liberty’s copper skin: one of about 60,000 pounds, the other 179,000 pounds. At three bucks a pound of copper, that’s either $180,000 or something over half a million bucks — a drop in the ocean of America’s national debt.

Doug: I would have thought it was more, but of course the dollar isn’t worth a damn anymore. The real value would be as a work of art, of course. Although it must be said that considerations like that didn’t stop peasants in the Middle Ages from melting down Roman bronzes and disassembling classical buildings because they needed the raw materials. I wonder what it would fetch at a Sotheby’s auction? I’d guess the Chinese might be willing to pay half a billion or even a billion dollars to take the lady home. It’d be a good deal, since the ideals behind the statue are as dead as the Constitution itself.

L: Yes… we’re not using the Constitution either, maybe we should sell that to them as well. But even a billion dollars would still be a drop in America’s ocean of debt.

Doug: A billion is only a thousandth of a trillion, and they’re now thinking in trillions. Obama may soon have to ask his science czar what comes after a trillion.

Getting back to Bernanke, the situation just shows one more time how corrupt the U.S. educational system is. That someone can get a Ph.D. and become known as a scholar of the depression era, and draw exactly the wrong conclusions about absolutely everything concerning it — what caused it, how to cure it — and then be held up as a model of relevant and useful academics… It just goes to show how utterly beyond hope the situation is.

L: Well, given what you’ve said about the education system teaching mostly worthless BS, especially when it comes to business and economics, why should we expect anything other than BS from someone who’s got it Piled High & Deep?

Doug: [Chuckles] Yes, that is what Ph.D. stands for, after all. In areas other than hard science, it has value mostly as a trade credential with the chattering classes. Its value in the real world is usually negative.

L: Is it possible that he actually does know what really caused the Great Depression and our current economic difficulties, but is caught by politics and can’t do or say anything other than what he is doing? Back in Greenspan’s day, there were people who thought Greenspan still believed everything he wrote in his essay on the gold standard and was trying to balance what was politically feasible with what he knew to be right that he was doing things he knew were harmful because if he didn’t do them, someone worse would do much more harm.

Doug: I asked Barbara Branden that one time, and that was her opinion.  She thought he still believed in the free market and gold money. But a person who believes one thing and does another is usually called a hypocrite.

L: I think it was Ron Paul who once told me that he’d asked Greenspan about his essay defending the gold standard, and that Greenspan had told him that he still believed everything he wrote in the essay.

Doug: I think I’ve heard that story too. It’s an interesting conundrum. I’ve thought about what I’d do if I were president of the United States, or chairman of the Fed, if my choices were limited to what’s politically possible. The right thing now, which is to bring on a deflationary collapse that would liquidate much of the malinvestment of recent decades, is not politically possible. With more than 50% of the people in the United States being net recipients of government largesse, no one can get elected, nor stay elected, who applies the breaks to the gravy train. The system is totally corrupt at this point.

I think I read the other day that something like 15% of the population is now on some level of food stamp subsidy, and another 15% are eligible but don’t know it, or are not yet willing to accept the stigma.  In the face of these kinds of facts, if anyone in power did what was necessary to liquidate past mistakes and get the economy back on a sound and sustainable path upwards, it would probably bring on a social revolution.

We’re going to have a social revolution anyway, and it’s probably better to have it sooner rather than later. This whole house of cards should have been collapsed back in the ‘60s, as opposed to having been built 40 stories higher since then. That just means it’ll be an even bigger mess when it does collapse. But it would take immense courage to set that collapse off deliberately. Whoever did it might well end up dead. And the same people who are cheerleading the current leadership’s disastrous moves would blame that courageous person for bringing on the United States’ second and Greater Depression. So, from at least a personal point of view, there’s nothing to be gained by doing the right thing. Although history would vindicate you, you’d be ostracized now.

L: That just raises an already impossibly high bar. The U.S. won’t be able to pay, when the bill comes due.

Doug: Yes. One of the most distressing things about this whole debacle is the total lack of intellectual honesty among any of the participants and decision-makers responsible for what’s going on with Bernanke being perhaps the worst of all.

On July 1, 2005, Bernanke stated with great confidence that the U.S. was not experiencing a housing bubble, saying: ”I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit.”

L: Wow could he possibly have been more wrong about anything more important?

Doug: In November of the same year, he talked about derivatives, saying, ”With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.” He also said, ”The Federal Reserve’s responsibility is to make sure that the institutions it regulates have good systems and good procedures for ensuring that their derivatives portfolios are well managed and do not create excessive risk in their institutions.”

And a couple months after that, back on housing again, he said, ”Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.”

L: So much for the wisdom of the expert…

Doug: Well, he’s not stupid, not in the sense of being unintelligent (he’s obviously very intelligent) but I would say he’s stupid in a better, more sophisticated sense of the word. One that I think is more useful, that being: an unwitting tendency towards self-destruction. And I’m afraid his stupidity is not just going to drag down the U.S. financial system, but the U.S. itself with it.

What he said about the housing and derivatives bubbles shows that he either has no idea what’s going on, or he’s a pathological liar. Reality was totally absent from those two statements.

And in February of 2008, he said, ”I expect there will be some failures of smaller banks.” Bear Stearns collapsed just a couple weeks later…

L: You’re kidding!

Doug: I wish I were. I’d like to believe the second most powerful man in the world weren’t either a knave, or a fool, or both. Remember, this is the same guy who told the world that Fannie and Freddie were ”adequately capitalized” and ”in no danger of failing.”

Earlier this year he said, ”Currently, we don’t think [the unemployment rate] will get to 10 percent.” Wrong again and if you actually count people who are out of work, rather than the government’s phony subset of that number, we already have over 17% unemployment.

This guy is truly pathetic but nobody points any of this stuff out. That he can be so dead wrong about so many vital things and not get called on it is simply amazing to me it makes me feel like I’m living in some sort of demented parallel universe.

L: This has to be the worst case of ”the emperor’s new clothes” on record.

Doug: Quite possibly. After all, who can gainsay the word of the second most powerful man on the planet? And a Ph.D. expert on the Great Depression to boot. Which makes perverse sense, as only an expert can screw things up as royally as he has.

I’m afraid the U.S. dollar is going to be totally destroyed. The consequences of that are going to make everything that’s going on now pale by comparison. I mean, as bad as the consequences of propping up all these dinosaurs like General Motors and AIG and General Electric and Goldman Sachs, among many others, might be next through direct theft from the U.S. taxpayer are, that’s nothing compared to what will happen when things get really bad, which they haven’t yet.

It’s really going to be bad when they destroy the dollar that’s when it’s really going to hit the fan. Runaway inflation is bad enough in a place like Zimbabwe, where most of the people are still living on a subsistence level. And it was bad enough in Germany in the 1920s, when most Germans were still living on farms or making things with their own hands. But in an advanced industrial society, as heavily urbanized as the U.S. is, runaway inflation is going to be unbelievably disastrous. As dim as the average American is, he’s bound to get perturbed when his quality of life nose-dives, and who knows what the social consequences of that will be.

L: Social revolution… Massive social change.

Doug: Yes. Runaway inflation in the U.S. would be the ultimate disaster. Think about all those people who have dollars set aside, which is to say the prudent middle class; they’ll be totally wiped out. Even huge corporations that have massive cash reserves, like Microsoft and McDonald’s, if they don’t hedge that cash with the utmost skill, could find those hoards wiped out and themselves bankrupted as well. Remember that people all over the world are holding U.S. dollars. There’s far more U.S. currency outside the U.S. than there is inside the U.S., and all those foreigners are going to resent it personally and hold it against Americans when their U.S. dollars are wiped out. On top of that, most central banks around the world hold U.S. dollars as their main asset, and that will be wiped out as well. It’s going to be a complete, worldwide disaster.

It’s going to be much worse than what happened in Germany or Zimbabwe. This is a couple orders of magnitude greater seriousness and it seems to me that this is almost certain to happen with a monumentally stupid person like Bernanke steering the ship of state into a reef.

L: Is there really any possible way he could not see the reef he’s got the U.S. pointed straight at?

Doug: Another interesting question, because, as I say, he’s not an unintelligent man but a stupid man, as I use the word.

L: But some people don’t see the world the way we do. Is it possible that he actually believes his own spin? Some people see price destruction and asset devaluation in some areas offsetting the inflation of the money supply, and believe there is some super-economic formula that really smart people like Bernanke can figure out, for the U.S. to spend its way back into prosperity.

Doug: I just don’t see how someone who’s studied the history of economics can so completely set aside its most pertinent lessons. It’s possible that he knows he’s caught between a rock and a hard place in technical economic terms, that he knows he and the economy are totally screwed and sees no choice but to carry on as long as he can and hope for a miracle. He probably knows that giving the economy the medicine it really needs would bring on a deflationary collapse, and losing his job would be the least of his worries.

As I’ve explained before, deflation is not only not a bad thing, it can be a very good thing. In a deflationary environment, the purchasing unit the dollar becomes worth more. That rewards people who have saved dollars, the prudent middle class upon which so much in modern society depends, and makes them prone to save more. Inflation makes people very loathe to save because what they’re saving is going down in value. And the solution to this depression we’re entering is not more spending, it’s not more consumption, it’s just the opposite of what these morons in Washington are saying: it’s less consumption and more savings. Savings are capital accumulation, and that’s what’s needed to start new businesses, create more jobs, and so forth in a sustainable way. Creating phony make-work jobs with more debt only serves to make things worse, come reckoning day.

So, switching from an inflationary policy to a deflationary one would be the right thing to do, but it would be such a sharp adjustment, this whiplash would hurt a huge number of people in the short term. And though most people don’t see it, the U.S. is on such a shaky political foundation at this point… It’s really become a question of ”Do you want to die by fire or by ice?” Either way, the U.S. is going to crash into a brick wall at high speed.

L: So, caught between the rock and the hard place, maybe he doesn’t believe anything he’s saying he’s just trying to hold off the noose as long as he can.

Doug: That’s a possibility. You and I will never get an interview with him, of course, and whoever does get an interview with him will get the kind of meaningless convoluted answers that Fed chairmen are notorious for giving. Answers so opaque as to be worthless. The only solution to this problem is, ultimately, to abolish the Federal Reserve. As we’ve argued many times in The Casey Report, it serves no useful purpose whatsoever it’s nothing more than a convenient instrument for inflation, which is to say, indirect taxation. But is that going to happen? I don’t think so. And that’s why I think the whole socio-political system in the U.S. is on the ragged edge of being overturned at this point.

L: The hollow oak that looks so mighty to all but is so rotten through its core that it collapses in the next storm. Do you suppose Bernanke could be doing it on purpose? Could he and Greenspan before him (who apparently claims to still believe in the gold standard) be orchestrating this crash on purpose, deliberately doing everything opposite of what’s necessary, carefully postponing the catastrophe each time to make it bigger and bigger, so that when it finally does all come crashing down, it does so in such a spectacular way, it teaches the world an unforgettable lesson on why you should never ever use paper for money?

Doug: That might explain their actions, but the odds on that scenario are slim to none. And Slim is out of town. Besides, I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories. I don’t think anyone could pull such a scheme off… But the bankruptcy of the U.S. government is baked in the cake. And that’s a good thing, in that they’ll have less ability to intervene in everyone’s lives domestically and in foreign countries. The bad news is that the government may bankrupt the country in a vain effort to keep itself alive.

L: So… Investment implications?

Doug: Everything we’ve been saying for years now and as Casey Report readers know, we did see and write about a credit crisis leading to a currency crisis before it happened about rigging for stormy weather is all the more vital now that the storm is upon us.

What, specifically, does that mean?

First and foremost, all of your savings, money that you don’t want to lose but need in a liquid form, should be in gold or gold proxies. To a lesser degree, silver as well, silver being a sort of poor man’s gold. That’s number one. You should have a very large position in these two things.

Second, regarding the speculative funds that you have, remember how much money Washington is creating. That’s definitely going to inflate other speculative bubbles to be on the watch for. I think it’s possible to make serious money spotting these early and cashing in before they pop. That’s number two: position yourself for taking advantage of speculative opportunities.

Third and I can’t emphasize this enough is that since what we’re really looking at is a political disaster causing the economic disaster, you must diversify your assets politically. And since the epicenter of this meltdown is the U.S., it’s absolutely vital that you diversify your assets, including the gold and the speculative investments, outside the U.S. That’s number three, but not third in importance there will be foreign exchange controls, and once we have those, your alternatives will be severely circumscribed.

These are the three most critical pieces of advice I can think of to give to anyone.

L: Heavy stuff, Doug thanks for laying it out so clearly.

Doug: You’re welcome. I just hope our readers will actually act on this, because it can not only make the difference between going under and surviving, but this basic approach and the details we spell out in The Casey Report can help them to turn crisis into opportunity. Some people will prosper during these difficult times; I hope it’s our readers who do.

Gary’s Endnote: This Conversation with Casey was originally released in December of last year, just after Time announced Ben Bernanke as its Person of the Year.

January 27, 2010

Bernanke Versus Deflationary Collapse was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

So the last decade of rising gold prices simply mirrored the US Dollar’s steady decline. Right…?

Well, no actually as I have repeatedly noted…and never less than when clutching a whisky and ginger this past Yuletide…typically to a fast-emptying room.

Gold’s tripling-and-more since Tues 4th Jan. 2000 came against all major currencies, let alone the minor ones. In fact, when judged against a truly globalized basket of the globe’s truly basket-case currencies — those various monies issued by the top 10 economies in terms of Dollar-GDP — gold turned decisively higher in mid-2001…looking back only a handful of times and never for more than a 20% drop.

All about the Dollar? Don’t you believe it.

Yes, volatility and violence rose together as the gold price pushed higher. And yes, the Dollar-price gains outstripped those in the Euro (292% vs. 180%) and commodity-led Canadian Loonie (179%).

But your local fund managers, financial advisors and op-ed pundits would have been hard-put to beat those returns with anything else. And as gold remains (at least in the view of die-hard, gloating and lone-drinking “gold bugs”) the only viable one-world currency, it’s worth glancing at just how it performed against the last decade’s various top 10 monies by economic weight…

* NB: The GGI is rebased for the top 10 currencies by economic output each year. The 13 gold-lagging currencies above all made one appearance (or more) in the last decade’s data. 2009 positions given here, courtesy of the IMF. The US accounts for 32%, the Eurozone 27%.

Of course, no one much cares for the last 10 years of data, however — not outside the relative performance tables of mutual fund sales teams.

But whether you think gold warned of trouble ahead when it first doubled to the start of 2006…or you feel it merely worked-as-prescribed when it almost doubled again during the financial crisis that then followed…it’s clear that the decade of gold just ended was a long way from a “Dollar down” story alone.

And all this without the much-fabled price inflation which newcomer pundits believe is essential for a long-term rise in the gold price. Just imagine what the price might do from here if a true surge in the cost of living now shows up worldwide.

Regards,
Adrian Ash
BullionVault

January 6, 2010

One Golden Decade and 13 Decayed Currencies was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

And counter to our prediction of an imminent, counter-trend U.S. dollar rally, the dollar is most definitely not surging. Take a look at the chart below. We’ve been writing about the decline of the dollar for nigh on ten years. So we looked at a ten-year chart to tally up the damage. It is considerable.

Dollar Index Threatens New Lows

What’s at stake with the interpretation of this chart? If the dollar rallies on short covering from the dollar carry trade (a BIG if), then other “risk” assets like gold, stocks, and emerging markets would probably sell off.

The chart shows that the index’s 50-week moving average is set to cross below its 200-week moving average. That is mixed news. The first time it happened on this chart was back in early 2003. That was the early days of a long decline in the index. The second time, though the move failed to confirm the “flight to safety” rally of 2008 had staying power in 2009.

Once the fear that gripped markets in 2008 went away, the investment world sold the dollar and started borrowing en masse to buy other, higher-yielding currencies and assets (like the Aussie dollar and resource stocks). That’s where we are now.

But based on the chart, is the next move down in the dollar index a new low, which the crossing of the long-term MA by the short-term MA would suggest? Or is it a false move? Will the dollar quickly and violently rally for some reason (geopolitical perhaps) that currently remains unknown to the human beings of this world?

“It’s an interesting chart,” said our technical analyst Murray Dawes. “But it is not useful for timing your moves out of or into trades related to the dollar’s movement.”

“So you’re saying our chart doesn’t have any useful information from a trader’s perspective?”

“Not really.”

The one piece of important information communicated by our chart is that the dollar’s trend is down. But there IS a catch.

The catch is that when this many people are this uniformly bearish, everyone is probably wrong. Consider this a warning then, that a dollar rally is just the sort of thing that will lead to a correction in the gold price and the stock market. We won’t speculate on the sort of things that could lead to a dollar rally. But surely they’re out there and sooner or later they’ll come.

The other possibility is that the dollar is in its death throes and that this is the big one, in currency terms. That is such a momentous and disastrous event that people consider it both kooky and unlikely, not to mention undesirable to a predictable and comfortable world. But it IS possible.

And do you get the feeling that this kind of manic melt up rally is the sort of irrational frenzy that comes just before everything goes haywire? Haywire is not a precise financial term. So what do we mean?

We meant that the world enjoyed a 20-year economic relationship based on a fundamentally unbalanced global economy. Manufacturing capacity migrated to Asia where wages were lower. For awhile, this was mostly good news in Western countries. Goods got cheaper but jobs didn’t vanish.

Now the situation is not so pleasant. The world is awash in manufacturing over-capacity, especially in China. Wage deflation (in the Western world) looks like a long-term trend, leading to a lower standard of living. This wage deflation is occurring at exactly the same time that Western governments are encountering demographic crises of ageing populations.

We all knew the ageing of the Boomers would put pressure on public finances right around now. But no one reckoned on a global financial crisis further saddling the public balance sheet with debt. And no one reckoned that Western wages and incomes would be falling at just the time people needed them most. And no one reckoned that savers would lose the most from low interest rates on fixed income — even though those low rates are keeping the American housing sector on life support.

It’s a bit of global impasse. America’s needed structural adjustment has come. Households and businesses are reducing debt, trying to live within their means. But the net adjustment to the American balance sheet is not happening because public sector debt is growing so fast.

Meanwhile, the other obvious adjustment is that the Chinese currency ought to be allowed to strengthen. For political and social reasons though, China will not allow this. It means China is actually adding to its industrial over capacity. It is conjuring up the world’s largest ever bubble in fixed asset investment, including commercial real estate.

It is easy to see why China is reluctant to allow a stronger Yuan. Exports account for 39% of Chinese GDP. The Chinese economy, and probably the Communist Party itself, cannot survive on unleashed Chinese domestic demand. They need American markets. But American consumers — in addition to reducing debt — are now realising that the focus on finance over manufacturing from American policy makers has worked out for Washington and Wall Street, but not terribly well for the average American worker.

Where do we go from here? How about the blame game. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner once blamed the Chinese for being currency manipulators. He back-tracked later. And yesterday, Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, had a go at America.

“The continuous depreciation in the dollar, and the US government’s indication that, in order to resume growth and maintain public confidence, it basically won’t raise interest rates for the coming 12 to 18 months, has led to massive dollar arbitrage speculation.” He is blaming the U.S. for fuelling a destabilising global bubble.

Of course that bubble is felt most acutely because China pegs its currency to the dollar. China is right to blame the U.S. for manipulating its currency to try and improve its competitive position. And China is right to worry about the value of its dollar-denominated assets in a world of exploding U.S. debt supply.

But China has put itself in this position. And here we are at the end of 2009 with a world still fundamentally un-adjusted to a new, workable currency arrangement. The world remains burdened by trillions in assets purchased with debt. Those assets linger on bank balance sheets, on government life support but fundamentally lifeless at fictitious book value prices.

And meanwhile, the China-US currency arrangement has fuelled a global bubble. The question is how it will end. In the U.S., the housing market looms as the Achilles heel of the economy. It could strike households, banks, and the government again in the next 12 months are more mortgages reset at higher rates (with lower home values).

If the event that pops this bubble comes from America, look for the supply of credit to the emerging world to dry up again. If the bubble pricking comes from China, what then? Well, China does everything big. So a Chinese bust would be world-class.

Regards,
Dan Denning

November 18, 2009

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning Australia as “Dollar Rally the Sort of Thing that Will Lead to Correction in Gold Price.” To view the original article, please click here.

Will a Dollar Rally Lead to a Gold Correction? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

For much of 2009, gold traded in the range of low-mid $900 per ounce. There was a dip over the summer, with a strong upswing starting in September. Gold is now trading well over $1,000 per ounce, in fact just under $1,100.

Turns out that the government of India was buying gold in mid-October. Over a two-week span, the central bank of India bought 200 tonnes (metric tons) of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at an average price of $1,045. The IMF — over which the U.S. holds veto power for most actions — got approval to sell the gold from — where else? — the U.S. Congress, last spring.

Previously, the government of India held 350 tonnes of gold reserves. This 200-tonne purchase is a 57% increase in India’s reserves. There’s joy in India, I’ll bet. (It makes me wonder what the Pakistanis think, now that their large neighbor has both nuclear weapons AND a growing gold hoard.)

Collapsing Economy?

Here’s what the Financial Times had to say. “Gold prices on Tuesday surged to an all-time high after India’s central bank bought 200 tonnes of the precious metal, swapping dollars for bullion as the country’s finance minister warned the economies of the U.S. and Europe had ‘collapsed.’ India’s decision to exchange $6.7 billion for gold equivalent to 8% of world annual mine production sent the strongest signal yet that Asian countries were moving away from the U.S. currency.” (Emphasis added.)

Have the economies of the U.S. and Europe really “collapsed”? As I sit here at my desk in Pittsburgh, I would not exactly say that the U.S. economy has collapsed around me. OK, so the economy isn’t booming, either.

Just yesterday, I saw that consumer powerhouse Johnson & Johnson foresees a long, continuing economic slump. J&J anticipates a slow recovery at best, contrary to the optimism of its namesake “No More Tears” brand. J&J management evidently believes that things will stay tough out there. And as if to add to the predicament, J&J is laying off about 8,000 employees.

Economic collapse or no, the point is that Indian gold purchases from the IMF are supporting the gold price. And the IMF has another 203.5 tonnes of gold yet to sell.

Who will buy the IMF gold? I’ve previously speculated that the Chinese are waiting in the wings. But now that the IMF has set a precedent for selling to a non-Chinese buyer, there are surely other players out there polishing their shoes and practicing their speech to the IMF bankers. We might see Arab countries buying. Or Russia. Maybe Brazil, with all its newfound energy wealth offshore.

China’s Golden Ambitions

Reuters news service has an interesting take on the matter. Reuters noted that it’s cheaper for China to buy domestically mined gold than to purchase bullion from the IMF at $1,045 per ounce. According to Li Yang, a former adviser to the People’s Bank, “China’s gold is much cheaper than that.”

In other words, China is the world’s No. 1 gold producer, and its mine costs are much les than $1,045 per ounce. So — China being governed by the Communist Party — why not just buy gold at “cost” from the mouth of the mine, right? Take the accounting hit and get the gold. In the long run, will it matter? (And we all know how the Chinese are able to think in terms of the long run.)

According to another Chinese Central Bank official — although with no direct authority over gold buying, “China is the world’s biggest gold producer, so there’s no urgency for us, as there is for India, to snap up big volumes whenever they come onto the global market. It’s cheaper for us to buy gold from the Chinese market, but it doesn’t help diversify our huge foreign exchange reserves.”

This Chinese official added, “To diversify our portfolio, we should spend dollars on things like gold. But the catch is that even if China bought half the world’s annual gold supply, it would only cost a few tens of billions of dollars, which is tiny compared to China’s huge reserves.”

And then the Chinese official offered this comment. “Having said that, I think China still should buy some IMF gold this time, and it might indeed do so, but it’s unlikely to take all the 200 tonnes that are left, as the price is, obviously, not particularly appealing. It would be a symbolic purchase, but better than nothing.”

Finally, Xia Bin, head of China’s Financial Department of the Development and Research Center also said China should buy IMF gold. “Why not? Even if it’s sold at a market price, we should still buy,” he said, according to Reuters, which was clearly a personal view from Xia Bin and not state policy. “India’s OK with it, why shouldn’t we be? What’s the use for so many dollars, whose purchasing power is weakening anyway? With so many foreign reserves in hand, I think China should buy, without doubt.”

What do you think it will mean for the dollar with the central banks of both India and China dumping dollars for gold?

On that happy note, I bid you adieu.

Until we meet again,
Byron King

November 9, 2009

India, China Central Banks Rather Have Gold Than Dollars was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Pound up…

Euro down…

Aussie pulling back…

Canadian giving way…

Yen losing ground…

October is coming to an end, and we haven’t really seen hide nor hair of any terrifying market moves or monstrous returns to the old days of dollar safety, when anything that even had a scent of risk was spurned as foolhardy investing.

But as of now, the dollar has been tanking and anything that is paying a higher interest rate has been soaring, thanks in part to the hawkish comments and actions by the Reserve Bank of Australia, but mostly due to the boneheaded actions of the United States.

Any way you put it, when a man shows up and says, “Hello! I’m from the government and I’m here to help” — RUN. As fast as you can. RUN.

We are following in the footsteps of Japan. Should this continue, we will have to replace our Stars and Strips with a new flag, ”The Land of the Setting Sun.”

No Happy Ending for the Dollar

We’re now at a 9.8% unemployment rate, and we lost a jaw-dropping 263,000 jobs in September. Now it’s true this isn’t the 700,000 we were losing not so long ago. But it still is not awe-inspiring evidence of a recovery.

The euro’s meteoric rise was on the G-7’s agenda this week. But before we start jumping up and down for joy as the powers that be begin pushing the euro back down (and the dollar up), I must confess that I smell a rat.

The folks at the European Central Bank have not been too worried about the strengthening euro up to this point. That could always change. But for now, they seem to be enjoying this appreciation. For them it acts as a nominal rate increase, which will keep inflation in check should it appear. But don’t get me wrong. Central bankers are men just like us (only often with a lot less common sense). They can get blinders on and only see things a certain way. After all, don’t all humans usually see things the way we want to see them? And this can handicap them when it comes to reading the data — the same way it can handicap us. Should they allow the euro to rise too much and too early, it will crush their budding recovery… much to their surprise and chagrin.

That being said, the dollar is in a bad way. Aside from the sheer size of its GDP, and the fact that historically it has managed to pull its fat out of the fire, I’m not sure what we can look at currently to construct any happy outcome for the dollar. That’s it, plain and simple.

The Dollar Will Be Let Down Gently

But nothing, not even the dollar, falls all at once. Hence all this jawboning about the euro (and yen, while were at it) being too expensive. None of these foreign economies can afford to let the dollar fall too much, too quickly. Thus, if they continue to badmouth the strength of their own currencies, it buoys the dollar and gives them opportunities to get out at a better price. But they can’t dump too much on the market all at once. If investors get wind of that, the big boys will have a harder time getting their target price.

So it seems to me that we should be looking for another return to dollar strength. That would play right into the hands of foreign economies that are looking to quietly unload the dollar. It is also the reason I don’t think we should look for the dollar to go into freefall — it is simply too costly for our trading partners. I believe they will do all they can to allow themselves an exit at a decent price.

No matter what may happen to the dollar’s reserve status in the decades to come, it will retain this status for a long, long time. Thus in this great tug of war between the currencies, there will always come periods when the dollar will be viewed as too cheap, and those who need it for continued trading purposes will not be able to resist the drive to buy it.

No Dollar Strength from This “Recovery”

For our last note, let me reassure you, dollar strengthening will not come as a result of the recovery we are supposedly in.

The stimulus has not performed as promised. A quick look at the figures from last November to the present will reveal it was no panacea:

Unemployment
November ’08: 6.6%
October ’09: 9.8%  (up 50%)

GDP
November ’08: $14.3 trillion
2nd quarter ’09: $14.1 trillion (down .25%)

Housing starts
November ’08: 655,000
October ’09: 590,000 (down 10%)

Food stamps participants
November ’08: 31.1 million
July ’09: 35.9 million (up 15%)

Home mortgages underwater
November ’08: 15 million
October ’09: 25 million (up 66%)

Deficit
November ’08: $450 billion
October ’09: $1.5 trillion (up 300%)

Looking for a Dollar Bounce

Let’s sum up. I am looking for a bounce in the dollar (and I have been since mid- September). I thought that perhaps the fall season might be enough to bring it on. That hasn’t happened. That’s not the same as saying it isn’t in the cards. We are now in the midst of the new equities earnings season. J.P. Morgan produced stellar figures that pumped risk appetite into the market strong and hard. Other corporations may not be able to do as well.

It seems to me that this rally is already on thin ice. At any rate, the dollar will bounce. It will likely end up being a bigger move than most anticipate and it will be fueled by fear and short covering. Then, when the big boys have had enough, the course will be reversed, fundamentals will resume their place, and the dollar will begin its drift toward the nether regions once again.

It is a treacherous pathway before us, but it should yield us some really nice profits if we position ourselves accordingly.

Due to the increased interest in currencies, the NASDAQ now offers an easy way for anyone to play up to ten currencies against each other. Click here to for the full fact sheet on the NASDAQ currency options. So you can do your positioning to take advantage of the coming strength in the dollar…and in the dollar’s ultimate decline.

Regards,
Bill Jenkins

October 22, 2009

Dollar Strength Then the Decline Resumes was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

A short series of secret memos, published and dissected at ZeroHedge, provide the “smoking gun” of gold-market manipulation. Apparently.

And given this little slew of dusty archive-digging – throwing up three documents from 1968 to 1975, each one declassified within thirty years – then “If over 40 years ago the Fed and the members of the gold ‘Pool’ were openly intervening in the gold market, one can only imagine what the situation is now…”

Go on, just imagine. Because imagination is what you’ll need if you’re going to nail type-written notes from before the Moon Landings as primary, original-source evidence that the United States’ official gold reserves – variously sold, lent, swapped or simply given away since the early 1990s – have been mobilized to suppress prices, pushing gold down from $250 an ounce a decade ago to, ummm, more than $1000 today.

These memos fret about shrinking gold reserves and the world’s gold-driven money supply…Britain’s failed deflation policy of the late ’60s…whether South Africa will sell its new mine supply on the open market…German border taxes…and the “gold-like” qualities of the proposed Special Drawing Right (SDR). Such prehistory matters, yes. But it’s a world away from demonstrating what newcomers to gold today may mistake for good cause to steer clear.

The little history these scattered notes sketch does echo today, however faintly. Are central banks buying gold at market prices – then France, now Beijing through via its domestic gold output? How to replace the abiding monetary standard – then gold, now the Dollar? And like the Fed memos reviewed on blogs elsewhere this year, the notes republished by ZeroHedge certainly prove one thing, at least:

Just how awkward gold became long before the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system. Bluntly put, it was a pain in the arse – and not only for Washington.

“Gold was causing such a rumpus that most authorities wished it would go away and stop bothering them,” as the late Peter Bernstein wrote in his 2000 history, The Power of Gold. But with so much of the world’s gold stacked up in their vaults, slipping away was impossible, and the world’s monetary system instead “lurched from crisis to crisis” says Francis J.Gavin, University of Texas at Austin’s professor of international affairs, in his 2004 monograph, Gold, Dollars and Power.

“There was not one year between 1958 and 1971,” Gavin finds, “when the Dollar and gold problem was not the most pressing issue of American foreign economic policy.” Or as President Kennedy put it in August 1962, “My God, this is the time…

“If everybody wants gold, we’re all going to be ruined.”

Luckily for JFK and the Dollar, not everyone wanted gold. Like Washington, the British government would have quite happily seen its former “badge of honor” turned to dust and swept away, too. Their private citizens were barred from owning gold, with strict controls applied across most of the rest of the developed (and communist) world. Yet with so many new US Dollars flooding the world…and with the Dollar-exchange clause of the 1944 Bretton Woods treaty still in force…less pliant friends increasingly asked for, and got, gold over dollars.

One nation actively sought to bring on the crisis. “There can be no other criterion, no other standard, than gold,” announced French president Charles de Gaulle at a press conference on February 4, 1965 – “gold that never changes, that can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins…that has no nationality and that is eternally and universally accepted as the ultimate fiduciary value par excellence.”

De Gaulle spoke in French, naturellement, in the gilded Salle des Fêtes of the Elysées Palace. But the White House’s least Francophone staffers could get the message loud and clear when, six days later, de Gaulle’s finance minister – future French president Giscard d’Estaing – announced in a lecture at the University of Paris that, from now on, France would swap every new Dollar it accumulated for gold bullion from the Federal Reserve.

The major powers, he said, should “make a solemn and unequivocal declaration” to likewise settle all their international payments in gold. Which was an easy thing for France to declare, given its large balance-of-trade surplus.

To drive the point home, France then made headlines around the world by announcing it would not only swap all new Dollars for gold…but immediately ship that new gold straight to France, too.

What could the United States do? As we’ve noted time and again, the final collapse of the Gold-Exchange Standard – put out of its misery in Aug. 1971, when Richard Nixon canceled America’s gold-for-dollars obligation – came because the US government wanted to keep hold of its gold. The legerdemain of then “demonetizing” it through occasional sales and amendments to the IMF treaty only hid this plain fact; it didn’t deny it.

The international promise signed after the Second World War made defending that hoard impossible given America’s domestic Dollar-inflation. Producing more dollars than the rest-of-the-world needed to finance its trade, the United States also invited a drop in the Dollar. That in turn invited withdrawals of gold from its vaults, effectively sparking a “run on the United States” as one advisor called it in the mid-60s’ phase of the crisis.

“The kind of transcending value attributed to the Dollar,” Charles de Gaulle had said at that 1965 press conference “has lost its initial foundation, which was possession by America of the greater part of the world’s gold.” Never mind that de Gaulle himself knocked out that support. What mattered was the abiding idea – gold equals power. Thus US dominance was clearly ebbing away.

“The French this year have been cashing in dollars for gold at a $54 million-a-month rate,” reported Time magazine in mid-1966. “Last week the Bank of France reported that as of Aug. 1, France had hoarded $5.13 billion in gold. Gold now constitutes 86% of all French reserves, compared with 73% at the end of 1964.

“Moreover, the [French] government is squirreling away the precious metal at such a rate as to account for the entire net US gold drain so far this year.” Hence de Gaulle’s jibe at the Dollar’s fall became self-compounding. By demanding gold over dollars, he proved the value of metal, not paper. But only on the old tattered Gold Standard logic. Losing its dominance as the gold-hoarder par excellence, the United States still retained the supreme currency. The “exorbitant privilege” of which de Gaulle’s advisor, Jacques Rueff, had complained, would now take America’s economic power as its foundation. Depriving the US of its bullion backing, the promise to redeem Dollars for gold was replaced with the promise to redeem Dollars with interest.

Fast forward to the fall of 2009, and the United States remains the world No.1 holder of physical gold (the potential for secret sales, swaps, loans and outright gifts to Wall Street notwithstanding), but while France and the rest of Europe turned seller, Russia and emerging Asia began re-stocking this decade. Moreover, “The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the Dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” as World Bank president Robert Zoellick told an audience at Johns Hopkins University in Washington this week.

“Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the Dollar…The future for the United States will depend on whether and how it will address large deficits, recover without inflation that could undermine its credit and currency, and overhaul its financial system.”

Zoellick naturally mentioned the Chinese Yuan, noting that “Over 10 to 20 years [it] will evolve into a force in financial markets.” He just happened to speak on the very same day, as Reuters observes, that Beijing issued its first Yuan-denominated bond open to foreign investors. Yet all the World Bank chief did, however, was confirm today’s abiding idea – that monetary power builds on an economy’s strength.

Maybe a new or even old idea will emerge in the next two decades or so. “The manner in which [this crisis] is resolved may well determine the shape of the world’s monetary arrangements, and therefore our economic and political interests over the next generation,” as then-Fed chief Arthur Burns memo’ed President Ford in June 1975, but the problem of excess Dollars was never quite fixed.

Still, we guess it’s more than coincidence Beijing is now buying gold – as well as frantically powering its non-stop economy – as the world’s monetary standard slides into crisis mode.

Regards,
Adrian Ash
BullionVault

October 2, 2009

Gold, the Dollar and Smoking Guns was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The Pause That Refreshes

We saw a short reversal in the recovery trade that has benefited the risk currencies, especially Australia, New Zealand and the Eurozone. As of last Tuesday morning when I began this column, the risk push is back on: The euro and Kiwi are pushing new yearly highs with the Aussie hot on their heels. Poor Canada got dumped on due to its poor retail sales but will likely fall back in line.

Let’s look first at the euro. This really looks like a gasping market. It resembles all those that make higher highs on a relentless basis. And when you talk about relentless, the mighty euro sure fits the bill. Until Monday, the euro had not seen two down days in a row for the entire month. That’s remarkable.

But the real question is, does that movement arise from its own strength, or is it something else? I have long been a proponent of an impending euro disaster — and I’ve positioned my paid Master FX Options Trader readers accordingly.

The one thing that would forestall my forecast of disaster would be an intermediate recovery. Please notice two words in that previous sentence — “forestall” and “intermediate.” The euro disaster is not over — it has only been delayed. Like all excesses, it must eventually come to light and be dealt with. A foundation can only be undermined for so long before the structure it supports has to topple.

That’s what has been going on in the United States. And without a doubt, the euro problems are much, much bigger. Moreover, the European Central Bank’s remedies thus far have not been nearly as effective as they have been in the United States. But the second item of note — “intermediate” — is the type of recovery that will allow the Eurozone to gloss over their immediate problems.

Thus it looks like “business as usual” for European banks and businesses. During the boom-boom years, the systemic problems of the Eurozone were easily glossed over. If we can return to that sense of “normalcy” — and believe me, that’s what every central bank is working toward — then the euro and the U.S. dollar will continue to part ways. Mainly because the U.S. problems are all exposed and out there for everyone to see. The Eurozone has managed to weather the storm, keeping its central bank rates higher than the U.S. rates, so it has all the appearances of not needing the drastic measures that America has taken. Ipso facto, it must not be in as bad shape as its North American counterpart.

But the way things seem is not always the way they are. Everybody has to pay the piper, and what you sow is what you reap. There are NO exceptions. So when we sow thievery and oppression, crushing economies to benefit the friends of central bankers, there will be hell to pay. And I’m not just using a figure of speech.

So then, the euro has posted a new high. It doesn’t have the internal strength on its own to continue higher. But as “good” recovery-style news comes out, they keep the Ponzi going.

So what will be the real drive going forward? Let’s take a look.

The Dollar Carries On

First of all, the U.S. dollar is in danger of becoming the currency of choice for the new “carry trade.” We’ve discussed this before, but it’s worth mentioning again — especially for new readers.

Plainly put, the carry trade is when a trader borrows money in a currency with a low interest rate, then uses the proceeds to buy a currency with a higher interest rate. So even though he has to pay interest on the currency he borrowed, he’s making even more in interest with the currency he bought.

Since the interest rate difference is so small, the carry trade is only worthwhile if it involves a tremendous amount of cash. That’s why it’s generally done by the really big, big players. Here’s an example of how it works.

Say an institutional investor borrows a bunch of dollars at a .25% interest rate. Then he uses those dollars to buy, say, Australian dollars, which are paying a 2.75% interest rate. So, he’s losing .25% on the dollars he borrowed, but making 2.75% on the Australian dollars he bought. And he earns that in perpetuity. He doesn’t have to do anything. It just keeps earning money day after day.

For years this has been done with the yen, as it always had the lowest rate of interest. It helped to keep the yen very cheap, which is exactly what the Bank of Japan wanted. It hoped the cheap currency would expand their perpetually receding economy.

Now this same scheme is being done to the dollar. So far, it’s only been in “bite-sized” chunks — but only because no one is very sure if the world economy is out of the woods. Still, unless more bad news comes, this is a profitable trade.

Also, higher interest rates tend to attract more money going forward (as all the scared money comes back into the market) — so the higher-yielding currencies also appreciate against the lower-yielding ones. Therefore, the investor makes a double boon: the interest and the appreciation.

So the big institutions have an interest in depressing the dollar. Any gain in strength or interest rates threatens the easy money of the carry trade.

But, as noted, the institutional players aren’t the only ones who want to keep the dollar down.

Bad Politics = Bad Currency

As I mentioned, the Bank of Japan was all too happy to let the yen carry trade go on, since a weaker currency was seen as a way out of its economic mess. The U.S. government is essentially taking the same route. Without a doubt, it is complicit in driving the dollar lower.

Like in Japan, a cheaper currency helps service ever-increasing debt (I’m certain they have long since abandoned any prayer of paying it off). And the indebtedness is increasing at a faster rate than at any time in history. As long as the major economic power wants to see its currency cheaper, it will do whatever it takes to get that done.

By the time you read this missive, the Fed will be ending their two days of meetings to determine what to do about U.S. interest rates. If you haven’t already heard the answer, what do you think it will be? It is important to formulate an answer to that with all the evidence before you, because it will give you an added insight into how the central bank works. Here’s my answer. They will not be raising rates.

Now that, of course, is no new revelation. But what will they do looking ahead? When will they start earnestly looking at raising rates? The answer to that question lies in our own recovery.

While data appear to show that the economy might be coming out of recession, unemployment is still at multiyear highs and is not decreasing. Housing numbers are improving, but they will NOT be coming back to what they were. All the weight put on housing starts, new purchases, purchases of existing homes, new permits issued, etc., are all a smokescreen. And if not intentionally an “illusion,” it certainly will not make a difference to the economy. Here’s why…

Under the “old economy” (two years ago), a house was a store of value. We all implicitly knew that our savings were not “safe” in a bank, and if they were, they certainly were not growing to keep pace with inflation. So we invested in real estate. I don’t mean that everyone went out and bought rental properties or tried to flip houses. What I really mean is this:

If you ever refinanced your house and took “cash out,” you invested in real estate. If you ever used a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit — you invested in real estate. The unwritten assumption was that your house would continue to increase in value, even as you were using the equity. We became a nation of equity spenders. Treating our homes like ATM machines, we attempted to increase our wealth by means of a bubble market. Even if you didn’t think you understood the nature of a bubble market, implicitly, or even instinctively, you did.

Spending a house’s future earnings meant that we believed our money would be worth less in the future than it is now. We believed its value was decreasing. (Incidentally, we were right.) But we were on the “safe side of the bet.” Because we would spend valuable dollars now, but repay our bill with less valuable dollars later. This is why a 30-year mortgage in a centrally managed and inflationary economy is such a good deal. You lock in today’s price, but pay it off with increasingly inflated money. It is that very inflation that makes your house go up in “value.” Any reasonable consideration would conclude that a house is not as “valuable” after 30 years of living in it. It must depreciate, because it “wears out.” Anybody who has ever owned a home knows this to be true. Defer just a few years of maintenance, and it will soon overwhelm you. Before long, you begin to wonder if you own the house, or if the house owns you.

But in the end, when houses were all in debt up to their value, and many far more than their value, we stopped investing in real estate. Mainly because we couldn’t afford it any more. Either our payments were already too high, or our equity was too low. At any rate, when people stopped “investing,” the residential market began crashing. It will not return to what it was, and vainly hoping for more increases in housing numbers to do that will only bring to pass the old proverb, “He that sows to the wind will reap the whirlwind.” In other words, vain hope isn’t gonna save the farm.

Getting back to the moral of our story, the government, which will not control or reduce its spending, can only raise taxes, cut services or inflate the currency in order to get us out of this mess.

Of course, raising taxes or cutting services are the easiest ways for a politician to lose his or her job. So the third option is always exercised. If done properly (according to prevailing monetary theory), it will be painless, and the effects of inflation will be partially offset by the ever-popular cost of living increase. That way everyone shares in the illusion that they are “keeping up with” inflation. But that’s all it is… an illusion.

So we’re up to two entities with a vested interest in keeping the dollar down — the institutional investors who want the carry trade to continue, and the U.S. government, which needs a weak dollar to plaster over its massive debt.

And the dollar has yet another enemy…

Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be

It’s easy to overlook, but when you buy bonds, you’re buying debt. You are loaning the issuer your money and getting their interest rate as your profit. Corporate bonds represent the debt of individual companies. When you buy Treasury bills and the like, you’re buying the debt of the U.S. government.

No nation in the world sells more debt every single month than the United States. Because of our existing budget (that’s using the term very loosely), we are forced to borrow money every 30 days. To pay Social Security, welfare, medical payments, elected officials and bureaucrats, the military, foreign aid, student loans — anything and everything that gets money with a federal stamp on the check.

And we have to borrow it. Somebody has to give us their money with the expectation that they are going to get it back, plus interest (uninflated).

Now, imagine your neighbor asked you to loan him some money, promising to pay it back with interest. A week later, all that money has been spent… so your neighbor asks for another loan. And another. Then another. How much longer would you keep lending him money? Even if he continues to pay the interest he owes you, you still have to wonder how long before he needs to borrow money just to pay the interest he owes you for borrowing the money.

That’s why everyone I know is casting a wary eye on America’s “neighbors” — the countries holding much of the U.S. debt. With our massive spending plans and dim economic outlook, other nations must be worried about our ability to repay our debt. What will we do when the Chinese stop buying? What will happen when the European Central Bank stops buying? What will we do when Japan stops buying? Will the government stop spending even then?

One way or another, the you-know-what is going to hit the fan. Oddly enough, however, foreign investment is higher this year (43.1%) versus last year (only 27.1%). That’s a year-over-year increase of 60%!

So instead of being worried, the U.S. government feels invincible. Foreign countries will always be happy to buy our debt, it thinks, so there’s no reason to adjust our destructive spending plans. It’s like giving more liquor to an alcoholic to sooth his tremors — a short-term fix that doesn’t do anything to solve the problem. Make him feel good enough, and soon he won’t feel anything ever again.

If I were you, I’d position my short-term and long-term currency savings accordingly.

Regards,
Bill Jenkins

September 30, 2009

The Euro, the Dollar and the Future of the Forex was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Some analysts now contend that China can no longer afford to let the gold or silver price slump. The rationale behind that contention is that with the Chinese government now telling the general populace to buy precious metals, it would be highly problematic should gold and silver subsequently take a nose dive.

In many cases, what a government wants and what ultimately occurs can be wildly different, due to unintended consequences rarely foreseen by officialdom, and because once the masses get it into their heads to break one way or another, government’s desires are largely ignored.

“You shall not smoke marijuana,” says the government. “Roll me another,” says John Q. Public.

But in the case of gold, interestingly enough, the Chinese government has the means at its disposal to actually do something about prices. Namely, at $1,000 an ounce, the total value of all the gold ever mined comes to about $5 trillion.

Of that amount, less than $1 trillion is held in official reserves, the rest under mattresses, in jewelry and family heirlooms, and in various ETFs – GLD being the biggest, by far, holding about $34 billion worth of gold.

Against these totals, China has foreign reserves in excess of $2 trillion. In other words, more than enough to push the tiny gold market around in any way it wishes. Given that much of its reserves are now denominated in fragile U.S. dollars that it would sorely love to replace with something more tangible, and that China is the world’s largest gold producer, the country’s involvement with gold is something more than just a passing fancy.

Simply, there is a new gorilla in the room in global gold markets. The extent to which the broader market hasn’t yet figured this out is the extent to which you as an early mover can ultimately profit. Especially in the more leveraged gold stocks, which continue to be strong even as the broader markets show weakness.

That all of this comes before the dollar hits the wall it must hit, or before the inflation that is now baked in the cake arises, lends a lot of credibility to the idea that when the gold bubble begins to expand, it could reach all the way to the moon.

No need to chase gold at these levels, as opposed to buying on dips. But buy.

Regards,
David Galland
Managing Director, Casey Research

September 18, 2009

Could China Push Gold to the Moon? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.