The lower house of Switzerland’s parliament voted against adopting a plan for banks to step around the Alpine nation’s banking secrecy laws and hand information about their dealings with suspected American tax evaders to U.S. authorities in an attempt to reach a sweeping resolution.
What is this all about anyway? Is America in such bad shape that it needs to criminalize its citizens and its supposed Swiss friends? Is complete citizen transparency and so-called “tax justice” really important enough to throw our long-time values and principles of freedom overboard?
This article points to the potential effects of the “debt trap.” Debts have mounted to record highs. The associated financing costs become unsustainable when interest rates are high (or start rising). Record low interest rates have one characteristic in common: they have much more upside potential than downside.
The primary conclusion for any prudent investor should be to not be lulled in by the soothing talks of Ben, Mario and Shinzo. Granted, they may be doing their best, and doing so in good faith. Only you should not rely on their being able to succeed. Ultimately, the interest rates and inflation expectations of financial markets are fickle. They can turn on a dime. And, irrespective of all their good intentions, the good men at the central banks will not be able to control the loss of confidence in the markets.
Since last October, at BFI, we have hedged our clients’ core holdings in gold. We are now watching gold and silver prices closely, as we get closer to the end of the correction. We expect to lift our hedge very soon.
We are all molded by the information kit we are fed as we grow up and as we grow old. And, unless we actively take the effort and find the energy to question all the commonly shared ‘truisms’ – the spoon-fed facts of others, the things that “everyone knows” and that all take for granted – we stand to be easy prey for those in possession of the means for mass propaganda.
This article is an excerpt from the Mountain Vision newsletter. We stronlgy encourage you to subscribe to the service. In this week´s edition of Mountain Vision, I will dig deeper into a subject I have only indirectly touched upon in some of my previous postings. Basically it is one of the greatest fallacies in both the Keynesian and Monetarist theoretical framework that will ultimately help decide your optimal portfolio allocation! Both Keynesians and Monetarists build their models on the assumption that money is neutral with regard to the economic outcome. In other words, the mainstream economists believe that monetary policy should be used to increase aggregate demand in the short run [...]
This article is an excerpt from the Mountain Vision newsletter. We stronlgy encourage you to subscribe to the service. As I write this Update, the price of gold has risen back to US$ 1,775 per troy ounce. The bull market trend has been, once again, forcefully confirmed. It is alive and well both technically and fundamentally. Until the root problems of the global fiat currency and banking system are addressed and solved sustainably, I expect this trend to go on. However, what has occurred in gold markets over the past few weeks is not merely a continuation of the same. I observed a change in tides of the speech and [...]
We expect the Chinese central bank to continue gradually accumulating gold, and we think that it might be planning a gold backing for the renminbi. If that were to happen, international acceptance would soar. Not for nothing was the enormous amount of gold reserves in the United States (N.B. the US reserves were at 29,663 tonnes in 1953) along with military dominance a central reason for the US dollar becoming the global reserve currency. Since the Chinese current account surplus has been on a steady decline, the widely held opinion of the massive undervaluation of the Yuan seems to become more susceptible to questioning as well. Therefore, a quick internationalisation would [...]
Gold And Silver – Greater Certainty Is Found In Charts
We can assert the trend is down because of lower lows and lower highs. What can be seen, at this point, is a very small range, so far, following a small range in May that closed poorly. What we know for certain is that the downtrend has not yet changed, so lower prices can be expected. We may hold an opinion that gold will ultimately be considerably higher in value, but there is no confirmation that price has begun to rally.
JPMorgan Now Long Gold. A Game Changer?
JP Morgan was able to maneuver itself to the long side of the gold market while speculators (which by nature are long during the bull market) have been pushed to the short side. Does it mean that the gold price will move up right away? No, although it could. Timing a price move is not what COT is about. But with the largest holder of gold futures contract on the long side of the market things could seem less bearish as the picture that has been painted lately.
Time Cycle Model for Silver Price
This simple model, which uses only four cycles and an exponential increase, indicates that a low in the silver price was expected approximately February – July 2013, and that the next high is expected approximately March – October 2014 in the $50 – $60 range. Further, the model suggests that a silver price of $90 – $110 is possible in the September 2015 – March 2016 time period. Do not depend solely on a model such as this; it is one of many tools.
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