Silver

New Interview with Gold Money: Tear Down Those Pyramids!

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It’s only been a few hours since my interview with Gold Money News’ Félix Moreno was posted to youtube, but I’ve already experienced a flood of positive feedback.  It’s almost impossible to fathom the tremendous ground covered.  We start off discussing some of the more interesting aspects of my time on Wall Street (a topic I … Read more

Dubai Gold Demand Off the Charts as Price Plunges

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Only in the gold market does huge demand equal a price collapse!  I suppose the problem is they don’t buy Comex contracts in Dubai and India.  As I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, the pile-on from gold bears is reaching extreme proportions, something like you’d expect near a bottom.  I bought physical silver today for … Read more

Gold Premiums Double in India as Demand Outstrips Supply

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WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

From Reuters:

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Gold premiums doubled in India on Wednesday as suppliers struggled to meet surging demand after a ban on consignment imports, but futures prices fell to their lowest in more than a month as international gold prices fell due to a strong dollar.

India, the world’s biggest buyer of gold, now requires importers to pay upfront for inventory, making it difficult for smaller jewelers with lower working capital to source supplies. The government also raised the import duty to 8 percent in May to keep a lid on the surging current account deficit.

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The Liberty Mastermind Conference: Less than 2 Weeks Away!

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The Liberty Mastermind Conference is now very close at hand, and everyone involved is extremely excited to meet each other, interact with the attendees and share ideas about how to restore freedom and the rule of law to this once great nation.  As a reminder, the conference will be held in Dallas the weekend of … Read more

New Interview with Future Money Trends: Financial Markets Update and the Liberty Mastermind Conference

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It’s been a while my last interview with Future Money Trends, so this should be a real treat. As my regular readers know, I rarely write about the financial markets any longer.  The main reason is that I have shifted my focus into a much broader area of activism against the cancerous system we live … Read more

Why Has $1 Billion in Gold been Shipped from New York to South Africa?

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In what may be the strangest story I have seen in a while related to the gold market, it appears $982 million worth of gold has left JFK international airport in New York to some undisclosed location in South Africa.  While it remains unclear what purpose this gold serves, it seems the most likely explanation is to fulfill demand for Krugerrands (South Africa’s popular gold bullion coin) to meet elevated demand in the face of constricted mine production.  This story is timely coming on the heels of the article I posted yesterday about how Dubai’s gold demand is running at 10x normal levels.  This is a bizarre story, so if anyone has further color I’d love to hear it.  From Quartz:

Examining US trade data, we were surprised to see that South Africa’s $402 million trade surplus with the United States in January had turned into a $689 million deficit by March. Why?

It turns out the $1.1 billion swing is entirely due to unusual shipments of gold from the US to South Africa in February and March. So far this year, 20,013 kg of unwrought gold, worth $982 million, has left John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), in New York, for somewhere in South Africa, according to the US Census Bureau’s foreign trade division. (Unwrought gold includes bars created from scrap as well as cast bars, but not bullion, jewelry, powder, or currency.)

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Gold Demand in Dubai Now Running at 10x Normal Levels

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The disconnect between the massive physical buying of gold versus the falling paper derivatives price has now become nothing short of extraordinary.  While we have all seen the figures describing the gold buying frenzy in China and India, now we have some more detailed information about what is happening on the ground in Dubai.  Incredibly, we find that since the April paper price crash, 50 tons of gold has been purchased, which is the equivalent of the entire amount of 51.8 tons purchased in all of 2012.

One of the most comprehensive looks at the massive physical versus paper disconnect I have read is courtesy of Goldbroker.com, a company that specializes in physical bullion stored in Switzerland.  I suggest checking out their latest Gold Market Report.

Now from Emirates 24/7 we find that:

Dubai demand for gold has been witnessing a massive surge since the price collapse of last month, with demand far outstripping supply.

Various estimates suggest that demand in the past few weeks has been nothing short of astronomical, surging by 10 times the normal demand.

According to the latest precious metals weekly report by Gerhard Schubert, Head of Precious Metals at local bank Emirates NBD, “Participants of the physical industry in Dubai believe that an additional 50 tonnes have been bought since the price crash in April. These sales figures are in addition to the ‘usual’ numbers and put a little perspective on the derivative side of the market.”

The usual numbers that Schubert refers to are the same as the demand seen since April. According to World Gold Council data, total consumer demand for gold in the UAE (not just Dubai) stood at 51.8 tonnes for the entire year 2012, which means that demand was about 4.31 tonnes per month during last year.

Compared with that, as Schubert mentions, Dubai demand in the past few weeks has been 50 tonnes plus ‘usual’ numbers, in effect reflecting the massive surge in interest that gold has seen in this past few weeks.

“We have been running out of gold coins and bars even before they reach our stores,” he added. “There are people who are ‘pre-booking’ gold bars with us, and they collect it once new supply arrives,” he said. 

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Guest Post: Why Policy Has Failed

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The essay below is courtesy of Doug Rudisch, a friend and former fund manager, who I have known and respected since my days on Wall Street.  I am extremely grateful that he took the time and effort to so insightfully write on some of the greatest issues facing our nation today and to provide this content to my readers.  What follows below are some of the most powerful passages from his piece and the entire thing is embedded at the end. The whole thing is simply excellent.

What I can say with absolute certainty is that I have lost a lot of faith and trust in the system. And I am not the only one. This sentiment is running at all-time highs amongst business leaders (their collective in-actions prove it) and guys on the street. It is both sides of the barbell and middle that are upset. Often it’s one or the other, but not all three. This time it’s not at an external state, it’s directed inwards. That is a tough problem to solve. Jingoism is not the answer either as we already tried that.

If there is no faith in the system, it has a really hard time working. And I mean real underlying faith and trust in the system, as opposed to the confidence born from economic steroid injections or entitlements. These are valid notions, but as a point of clarity I am talking about a something different. There also is a subtle but important distinction between faith and trust versus confidence. Faith and trust are longer term and more powerful concepts.

There is more going on than a temporary lull in animal spirits that current fiscal and monetary policy will cure. If that was the case, it would be working already.

dougpic

However as the above chart shows, things clearly changed in the 2003 and 2009 profit cycles as corporate profits surged while employment did not. My explanations:

Starting with the 2009 cycle first. In the 2008 downturn companies eliminated a lot of jobs. The depth of the downturn forced them to make the tough decision. Normally that kills consumer spend due to wage loss. But the government plugged the revenue gap with transfer payments and direct investment. See the green line go nearly vertical and it is fascinating how profit growth has mirrored the trajectory of debt growth. The consumer has started to dis-save again as well. Thus corporations kept the revenue, lost the labor, and voila record margins. You could argue unemployment is being subsidized. Like anything else, when something is subsidized, you tend to get a lot of it.

For example, see the recent new investor activity in single family homes and farmland of all things, including equity hedge funds who apparently think homes are like stocks. Maybe it’s a sign that other asset categories (equities and credit) are getting toppy or inflation expectations are increasing when hedge funds begin to foray into the single family housing market and farmland (some having little or no prior experience in these markets). At any rate, it seems odd and not good to me when policy results in hedge funds buying single family homes and farms.

Sorry Mr. Greenspan we have seen where valuing assets solely on the basis of current rates got us. If we should do that, baseball cards and chewing gum would also be great investments today. My suspicion is from here baseball cards and chewing gum will hold their value over time better than the typical company trading at 15x earnings derived from profit margins that are twice its average levels. And in point of fact according to the CPI the price of candy and chewing gum increased 31% between the years 2000-2012, while the S&P index including this year’s rip is only up 6% since 2000. Yes it matters what the price is that one pays for an asset!

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Rasmussen: 81% of Americans are Paying More for Groceries

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What?!  Someone get the Bernanke on the line ASAP!  Apparently the remaining 19% of Americans work at TBTF banks and the Federal Reserve.  From Rasmussen: Most adults continue to say they are paying more for groceries than they were a year ago, and they expect that amount to be even higher next year. A new … Read more

CME President on Gold: “They Don’t Want Certificates, They Want the Real Product”

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What’s interesting about gold, when we had that big break two weeks ago we saw all the gold stocks trade down significantly, we saw all the gold products trade down significantly, but one thing that did not trade down, was gold coins, tangible real  gold.  That’s going to show you, people don’t want certificates, they … Read more