Category: Articles: Insights
Greenspan, Gold, and the Banality of Evil
By Stefan Gleason, Originally Published on Money Metals Exchange Under certain circumstances, seemingly decent human beings are capable of horrific things. So it is with Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who parlayed his sound money bona fides into the top post at America’s private banking cartel and current issuer of our un-backed currency. In betrayal of his own stated free-market principles, Greenspan spent his tenure at the Fed pumping up financial markets with easy money and enabling runaway government spending commitments. Today, however, the “maestro” of central banking is playing a very different tune. He’s warning against an inevitable crisis resulting from the very policies he helped implement. Perhaps […]
The History of Gold
It is quite astonishing that we remain so interested in gold when it was first discovered over five thousand years ago. For millennia, we have been enamored with this shiny yellow metal, mining it, shaping it, and trading it. Its value is immortalized in the saying that ‘not all that glitters is gold’. We are almost halfway into 2016 and people are still clamoring over the rising and declining prices of gold. It is impressive to see that after all this time, we still rely on one of the world’s oldest currencies. It appears that despite technological advances and digital tendencies, some things simply are too precious to let go. […]
2016 Outlook for Precious Metals
by Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT The precious metals sector will close 2015 entrenched in a seemingly forever bear market. Most of the sector has been in a bear market for over four and a half years. Gold’s bear market will reach four and a half years in a few months. Meanwhile the US Dollar’s bull market remains strong and is likely to continue. In this article we discuss our 2016 big picture outlook for the US Dollar, Gold and gold stocks. The US Dollar index will be a major focus of 2016. The greenback is currently consolidating and correcting below important resistance at 100. A strong break above 100 could trigger […]
Gold versus a Debt Sandwich
In one hand we hold gold, which is eternal, beautiful, and valuable everywhere. In the other hand we are stuck with a debt sandwich. That sandwich is a massive slab of debt wedged between an impressive military war machine that spends money like water flowing over Niagara, and a huge welfare system that spends money even more rapidly. Included in the welfare system are Social Security pensions, Disability Income, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), many more programs, and the salaries, bureaucracy and pensions to support them. You can’t eat gold, but you can’t eat a debt sandwich either. If you choose gold, it is recognized and valued globally and can […]
Is JP Morgan Buying The Physical Gold From GLD ETF?
Ted Butler: I believe that the big buyer of the 10 million ounces of gold liquidated in the GLD was JPMorgan, either alone or with other collusive commercial banks. The same methodology I’ve previously attributed to a potential Mr. Big in SLV (also probably JPMorgan) is at work in GLD.
Gold In 2013 – Too Many Mysteries Remain Inexplicable
It is clear that much is brewing below the surface of the gold market. There are too many significant evolutions related to PHYSICAL gold. The most credible assumptions we can come to are threefold (1) Strong hands are positioning themselves for the fundamental risks that are inherent in the present monetary system. (2) There is tightness in some specific vaults specifically the ones from US market participants. (3) When it comes to central bank gold, a final clearing out of the vaults of central banks in countries that are part of the «golden billion» zone is currently underway.
Sorry, We The People Are No Machines
Are we right to conclude that consumers (at least in the US, and very likely in Europe as well) do not have the ability AND willingness to take on more debt in order to spend more? Maybe there is some spending fatigue. As the French use to say: c’est trop.
European Banking – It Is Getting Scary
All the evidence is there. Cyprus was indeed a “pilot” to determine the resistance against a bail-in from savers. Apparently the reaction of the Cypriot people and savers in the rest of the world, was too weak. The path of less resistance was the most likely one. This is truly frightening. Up until this point the suspicion was too high to ignore but still we all somehow hoped this was not true. This brings up the question what exactly is going wrong with the banking system.
Interest Rates From An Austrian Viewpoint
In this piece we will look at what interest actually is from the viewpoint of the Austrian School of Economics and how the setting (manipulation) of the interest rate by central banks negatively impacts the economy in the long run. In essence, interest is the ratio between the value assigned to specific goods today, to be exact, the goods themselves are irrelevant but rather the underlying want satisfaction, in comparison to the identical goods at a future point in time.
Gold: Who’S Selling, Who’s Buying, Who’s Lying
The international monetary system based on credit and debt is, in truth, a confidence game in which gold was once a critical component. But when ties between paper money and gold were severed in 1971, confidence in the bankers’ paper money began to falter; and, today we are witness to what happens when confidence in a global confidence game begins to evaporate.
What If Gold & Silver Investors Are Wrong?
Any rational person should question whether long term silver investors are 100% wrong, especially in light of the recent notable decline in the price of silver. Nevertheless, if they ultimately conclude that silver investors are probably not wrong, then prudence would dictatethat at least some allocation of their investment portfolio to properly held precious metals would be appropriate.
Paper Money Has A Long History But Short Existence
As history has shown, the government can control the monetary system for a certain time but not endless. As time progresses, the market can take over control. With the global monetary system at risk levels never seen before, Holders of paper money should ask themselves what exactly they are owning … and what would happen if history is about to repeat itself.
The Unofficial Inflation Rate
Inflation – a few percent seems unimportant, but over a decade, it becomes very important. Look at the calculation in this article. According to several surveys, real people think their personal inflation rate is around 8% per year with a significant percent of the responders claiming 9 – 11% or more per year. Are you going to believe what the government is telling you?
Jim Rickards Describes Four Future Monetary Scenarios
What will the monetary system look like once a collapse occurs, which Rickards expects in the coming 3 to 5 year time frame. In his view, which he describes in great detail in his book Currency Wars, there are four possibilities: multiple reserve currencies, SDR’s, a gold standard, chaos.
