Eurobench.com

[verwijderd] 15 september 2010 16:27

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NRC Handelsblad 15-09-2010, pagina 13
Lux
De vergulde kip of het gouden ei

MAARTEN SCHINKEL
En wéér een record. De goudprijs bereikte gisteren 1.275 dollar per troy ounce (31,1 gram). Het nieuws van de toonaangevende goudconsultant Gold Field and Mineral Services (GFMS) dat centrale banken dit jaar netto 15 ton goud kopen, joeg de prijs van het metaal omhoog. In de afgelopen tien jaar verkochten centrale banken juist jaarlijks gemiddeld 442 ton, aldus GFMS. Dat is nogal een ommekeer.

Er is niet veel voor nodig om de fantasie op hol te laten slaan, want de goudprijs is op twee manieren te bezien. De eerste, voor de hand liggende, is dat de prijs van goud omhoog gaat. De tweede, interessantere, is dat de waarde van het geld dat voor dezelfde hoeveelheid goud wordt betaald kennelijk daalt. Van daaruit is het maar een kleine stap om in die dalende prijs van geld van allerlei onheil te zien: een wereldeconomie die bezwijkt aan hyperinflatie, of een wankele toekomst voor de internationale reservemunt waarin goud wordt afgerekend – de dollar. De verhalen zijn aantrekkelijk: als vluchtheuvel voor inflatie heeft goud nog en lange weg te gaan. De 1.275 dollar van nu mag dan een record zijn, maar om gecorrigeerd voor inflatie de vorige piek van 1980 te overtreffen moet de goudprijs bijna verdubbelen.

Maar stel nu dat de eerste zienswijze de beste is: de prijs van goud gaat omhoog. Dan zal de prijsvorming simpel moeten worden gezien als een gevolg van de verhouding tussen vraag en aanbod. Nieuw goud is strikt gezien niet nodig. Het jaarlijkse daadwerkelijke verbruik (dus zonder de juwelenbranche) door industrie en tandheelkunde ligt rond de 400 ton. De rest van de vraag is in wezen luxe of speculatief. Tegenover de 400 ton aan werkelijke materiële vraag staat aan mijnproductie en hergebruik jaarlijks het tienvoudige.

Goud gaat vrijwel nooit weg, dat is nu eenmaal het kenmerk van een edelmetaal. Het hoopt zich op. Er is uitgerekend dat de totale huidige bovengrondse goudhoeveelheid nu al genoeg is voor zo’n 400 jaar verbruik.

De schaarste van goud is daarom zeer relatief, en als de prijsvorming daar van afkomstig moet zijn dan is de kans groot dat het goudrecord van nu vooral het resultaat is van wantrouwige hamsterwoede en speculatie. Er zijn via fondsen en andere constructies nu allerlei nieuwe mogelijkheden om in de goudmarkt te stappen, die voorheen meestal slechts toegankelijk was voor specialisten en eindgebruikers. Nieuw geld jaagt op dezelfde hoeveelheid goederen. Goud lijkt wat dat betreft op andere grondstoffen waar hetzelfde mee is gebeurd en waar de prijsvorming steeds wilder is geworden. En dat doet de vraag rijzen of goud nog het schild is tegen inflatie, of dat het er nu zelf aan onderhevig is.

[verwijderd] 15 september 2010 17:41

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quote:
rozs schreef:
NRC Handelsblad 15-09-2010, pagina 13
Lux
De vergulde kip of het gouden ei

MAARTEN SCHINKEL
En wéér een record. De goudprijs bereikte gisteren 1.275 dollar per troy ounce (31,1 gram). Het nieuws van de toonaangevende goudconsultant Gold Field and Mineral Services (GFMS) dat centrale banken dit jaar netto 15 ton goud kopen, joeg de prijs van het metaal omhoog. In de afgelopen tien jaar verkochten centrale banken juist jaarlijks gemiddeld 442 ton, aldus GFMS. Dat is nogal een ommekeer.

Er is niet veel voor nodig om de fantasie op hol te laten slaan, want de goudprijs is op twee manieren te bezien. De eerste, voor de hand liggende, is dat de prijs van goud omhoog gaat. De tweede, interessantere, is dat de waarde van het geld dat voor dezelfde hoeveelheid goud wordt betaald kennelijk daalt. Van daaruit is het maar een kleine stap om in die dalende prijs van geld van allerlei onheil te zien: een wereldeconomie die bezwijkt aan hyperinflatie, of een wankele toekomst voor de internationale reservemunt waarin goud wordt afgerekend – de dollar. De verhalen zijn aantrekkelijk: als vluchtheuvel voor inflatie heeft goud nog en lange weg te gaan. De 1.275 dollar van nu mag dan een record zijn, maar om gecorrigeerd voor inflatie de vorige piek van 1980 te overtreffen moet de goudprijs bijna verdubbelen.

Maar stel nu dat de eerste zienswijze de beste is: de prijs van goud gaat omhoog. Dan zal de prijsvorming simpel moeten worden gezien als een gevolg van de verhouding tussen vraag en aanbod. Nieuw goud is strikt gezien niet nodig. Het jaarlijkse daadwerkelijke verbruik (dus zonder de juwelenbranche) door industrie en tandheelkunde ligt rond de 400 ton. De rest van de vraag is in wezen luxe of speculatief. Tegenover de 400 ton aan werkelijke materiële vraag staat aan mijnproductie en hergebruik jaarlijks het tienvoudige.

Goud gaat vrijwel nooit weg, dat is nu eenmaal het kenmerk van een edelmetaal. Het hoopt zich op. Er is uitgerekend dat de totale huidige bovengrondse goudhoeveelheid nu al genoeg is voor zo’n 400 jaar verbruik.

De schaarste van goud is daarom zeer relatief, en als de prijsvorming daar van afkomstig moet zijn dan is de kans groot dat het goudrecord van nu vooral het resultaat is van wantrouwige hamsterwoede en speculatie. Er zijn via fondsen en andere constructies nu allerlei nieuwe mogelijkheden om in de goudmarkt te stappen, die voorheen meestal slechts toegankelijk was voor specialisten en eindgebruikers. Nieuw geld jaagt op dezelfde hoeveelheid goederen. Goud lijkt wat dat betreft op andere grondstoffen waar hetzelfde mee is gebeurd en waar de prijsvorming steeds wilder is geworden. En dat doet de vraag rijzen of goud nog het schild is tegen inflatie, of dat het er nu zelf aan onderhevig is.

De zoveelste minkunkel die zijn zegje over goud komt doen en er totaal niks van snapt.

Ooit zal hij er nog wel achter komen.

smith&jones 15 september 2010 18:12

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Bovenstaand artikel mbt goud gaat voorbij aan het feit dat de kaarten fundamenteel anders liggen dan lange tijd daarvoor:

Er komt een ongekend aantal welvarende consumenten bij in met name India en China. In beide culturen ( afijn , in china mag het sinds kort weer) is het gewoonte onder brede lagen van de bevolking om iig een deel van de eigen assets in edelmetaal te steken.

China wil zich bovendien losmaken van haar dollarholdings in de komende tijd. De Yuan moet zich gesteund weten door met name goud, daar maakt de Chinese centrale bank de laatste tijd geen geheim meer van. De dollarholdings zijn opgebouwd na de 'Aziecrisis' waarbij vele Aziatische valuta door het putje gingen door te weinig backup van sterke valutaholdings. Nu de dollar die rol duidelijk niet meer kan vervullen, is goud aan de beurt.

De laatste serieuze aanval op goud was de verkoop van 400 ton door het IMF vorig jaar, dit werd moeiteloos geabsorbeerd door de centrale bank van India.

Tijdens de vorige goudhausse, begin jaren 80, was er een behoorlijke inflatie, maar er was geen fundamentele twijfel aan de stabiliteit van de betrokken valuta. Dit is nu wel het geval.
Goud kan imo nog behoorlijk doorstijgen derhalve, de onzekerheid mbt de positie van de dollar ( en de euro) als reservevaluta zal wss alleen maar toenemen.

S&J.

The Man 15 september 2010 23:47

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Goud is net als aardolie, bij aardolie is er al een hoop opgegraven en wordt er een hoop verbruikt. Bij goud wordt er bijna niks echt verbruikt en zit het grootste gedeelte van het goud nog welliswaar moeilijk winbaar, maar diep in de aarde in de grond.

Ik heb een schatting gehoord dat 80 tot 90% van al het goud nog in de grond zit.

Voor bijna alle toepassingen van goud (tandheelkunde enz, zijn ook alternatieven te bedenken en die worden ook wel gebruikt).

Na nu weer het zoveelste record heb ik besloten om short te gaan. Alleen het inflatiecijfer ten opzichte van het vorige record doet mij nog aarzelen.

[verwijderd] 25 september 2010 10:33

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A Red-Alert Threat to the Regime

by Gary North

"Show me the money!" Cuba Gooding made this phrase famous in the 1996 movie, Jerry McGuire. The phrase soon got into the language.

"Follow the money!" That came from the movie, All the President's Men. No one knows who said it. "Deep Throat" didn't. The screenwriter says that he does not know where he got it. It has entered the language.

"Trust me." That was Jimmy Carter's phrase in 1976. It also got into the language. It has been used ever since as satire. It has been the mantra of every Chairman of the Federal Reserve System.

"Don't ask. Don't tell." That was Bill Clinton's phrase. I think he got it after watching Congress deal with Alan Greenspan.

"Never give a sucker an even break." That was W. C. Fields's famous line. This has been the FED's operational policy since 1914.

AUDIT THE GOLD

In 2011, Congressman Ron Paul will introduce a bill in the House of Representatives calling for an audit of the gold held by the Federal Reserve System on behalf of the United States government. If he can successfully promote this bill by the phrase, "Show us the gold!" he will inflict enormous damage on the American Establishment. This damage could conceivably spread to the entire international Establishment, which rests on the sovereignty of the central banks over their domestic governments.

Most of those few Americans who have ever heard of the Federal Reserve System operate under the illusion that the government is sovereign over the FED. On paper, this is true. Operationally, it isn't. We know this, because no government agency audits the FED.

You are surely not sovereign over the United States government. The United States government is sovereign over you. The supreme mark of this control is the fact that the Internal Revenue Service can tax you. It requires you to sign your tax forms, on penalty of perjury. You can be sent to jail if you lie about these forms. It can require you to provide evidence that you have filled out your income tax forms accurately. If you refuse to provide this evidence, the IRS will simply assess whatever it wants, and you will be required to prove that its assessment is inaccurate.

If you want to find out who is really in control in any situation, find out who has the legal right to audit the other one.

This is easy to understand with respect to individuals, corporations, and other organizations that are under the thumb of the tax man. This is understood by taxpayers all over the world. They fully understand who is in charge. In a modern society, the agency in charge is the agency that can and does compel other individuals and agencies to supply records relating to their income, capital, and bank accounts.

The Federal Reserve System has never been audited by an agency of the United States government. The FED hires private auditing firms, rotating them year by year, which undermines continuity, making it more difficult for them to follow the money. The FED limits those firms with respect to what they are allowed to audit. The FED then submits these internally audited facts to the United States Treasury.

Each year, the FED pays the Treasury any excess money beyond the FED's operations expenses, if the money came from interest earned from its holdings of U.S. government debt. This has been the law since the early 1940s. In the good old days, the FED kept all of the money that it earned as interest payments from the Treasury. It paid nothing to the Treasury. That was a sweet deal.

When Congressman Paul persuaded the House of Representatives in 2009 to vote in favor of a general audit of the FED by the Federal government, the bill was blocked in committee. His original version of the audit bill never came to a final vote in the House as part of the banking reform legislation. The Senate never considered the amendment.

So, it is obvious who is in charge. Congress pretends that it is in charge, but in fact the Federal Reserve System is in charge. Congress accepts the word of the Federal Reserve System with respect to how much it cost the FED to keep its doors open, and it accepts whatever payment the FED makes to the Treasury.

It is obvious that if the Internal Revenue Service did not have the power to audit taxpayers, and if taxpayers have the authority to decide how much it cost them to "keep their doors open," and pay the Treasury only that amount of money that is in excess of their costs of operation, the government would go bankrupt. It is equally obvious that the government does not intend to go bankrupt. The government does not intend to let individuals decide on their own authority how much to pay the government. This is because the government is in charge, and taxpayers are not in charge.

The Federal Reserve System is in charge of Congress; Congress is not in charge of the Federal Reserve. You can say that, on paper, the Congress is in charge. In response, I argue that this paper is rarely used, and with respect to an audit, it has never been used.

WHERE IS THE GOLD?

This leads us to what I think is the symbolic heart of the matter: the gold that the Federal Reserve purchased from the United States government in 1933 and 1934, when Roosevelt confiscated the citizens' gold.

Officially, that gold belongs to the United States government. Unofficially, it does not. It no more belongs to United States government than Congress has authority over the Federal Reserve System. It doesn't matter what is on paper. What matters is what Congress is willing to enforce.

There has been no audit of the gold held by the Federal Reserve since the mid-1950s. The government does not know how much gold is in Fort Knox. It does not know how much American gold there is in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, located at 33 Liberty St., New York City.

The gold remains in the possession of the Federal Reserve System. Most of the governments around the world have agreed to keep their gold stored at 33 Liberty St. This enables the employees at 33 Liberty St. to move bars of gold from one government's pile to another government's pile. This also lets them keep the records. The trouble is, no government anywhere has the authority to audit the holdings of gold at 33 Liberty St. The governments simply take the word of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that their gold is properly monitored and allocated in the New York FED's vault.

It is quite possible that, beginning in 1968, the gold held in the vault at 33 Liberty St. was transferred to the London Gold Pool, a consortium of European central banks. From 1965 until the Pool collapsed in 1968, this gold was sold at $35 per ounce when the world market price began to climb above $35. You can read about this here.

Finally, in August of 1971, Richard Nixon unilaterally closed the American gold window. He refused to sell gold to other central banks at $35 an ounce, which the United States government had agreed to at the Bretton Woods meeting in 1944.

The government of the United States maintains the illusion that it owns all of the gold that is stored by the Federal Reserve System on its behalf. It also maintains the illusion that it is in control of the Federal Reserve System, merely because it is officially in charge of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. But the 12 regional banks of the Federal Reserve are not part of the government. You can prove this by going

[verwijderd] 25 september 2010 11:30

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.You can prove this by going to any of the Federal Reserve bank websites. They end in .org. This includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Only the website of the board of Governors of the Federal Reserve ends in .gov.

FAITHFULNESS OR BETRAYAL?

Ron Paul will wait until 2011 to introduce his gold audit bill. He seems to be assuming that Republicans will be in control of the House of Representatives in 2011. He also seems to be assuming that the House of Representatives will be more aggressive passing legislation that will embarrass the Obama administration, assuming that a House bill gets through the Senate.

Obama will veto any bills that he does not like, which will be a lot of them if Republicans control both branches of Congress. If Republicans do take control, and if they are successful in getting such legislation onto the desk of the President, this will undoubtedly embarrass the President. Short of that, bills from the House can embarrass Democrats in the Senate.

As part of positioning for the Presidential election of 2012, a bill to audit America's gold could play havoc with the Federal Reserve. The bill will not be seen as an audit of the FED's operations in general – only an audit of America's gold, which has been justified by the FED in its supposed capacity as a trustee. It is the issue of the FED as trustee, not the FED as a lender, that will be the heart of the audit.

Will the House pass a bill to audit the gold that is supposedly held in Fort Knox and also in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York? Will Congressman Paul be able to gain support from the rest of the Republicans in Congress? If he can't, then it will be clear who is really in charge. But if he is able to get the bill passed, and if it somehow gets through the Senate, then Obama will veto it. Whether that will be a big deal politically remains to be seen.

The problem that such a bill poses to the Federal Reserve is obvious. On paper, Congress has the right to audit the Federal Reserve. On paper, Congress also has the right to make certain that the gold reserves of the United States government are still available to be used by the United States government, should the United States government ever decide to do something with the gold.

Any attempt by the Federal Reserve to argue that it must not allow the United States Congress to see if there is really any gold in its vaults is going to be a very difficult public relations exercise.

It is one thing for the FED to say that a full audit will interfere with the privacy necessary for the conduct of central bank operations. Some voters might actually believe this. But it is something completely different to say that the Federal Reserve should not be required to prove that it still has possession over the gold that it purchased with the money created by the FED in 1933 and 1934. Its reports have always said that it does. If it doesn't, then there will be a huge scandal. "Who got America's gold?" That would force Congress to conduct a full-scale audit.

The public really does believe that the gold belongs to the government. Legally, the gold does not belong to the government. The Federal Reserve bought it fair and square back in 1933 and 1934 with newly created money. The gold is on the books of the Federal Reserve System. But the public, which is naïve, has the illusion that the government did not turn over the gold to the bankers in exchange for bookkeeping entries created out of nothing by the Federal Reserve System. The public thinks that whatever is in the vault at Fort Knox is in the vault of the government entity. Voters do not know that deliverable gold – 99.9% pure – is stored in the vault of a private entity, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The gold in Fort Knox is probably coin melt: 90% pure.

So, the Federal Reserve is going to be facing a big problem in 2011. If the Democrats lose control of the House, and Dr. Paul introduces his legislation as announced, the FED will have to invent some kind of believable reason why the United States government does not have the right to find out if the gold that is supposedly owned by the United States government is really in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the other vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

If it were to turn out most of the gold in Fort Knox and New York is not there, the price of gold will rise. The investing public will figure out that the price of gold has been kept low by means of secret government sales of their nations' gold reserves – what Gordon Brown a decade ago did publicly with half of Britain's gold. With a scandal brewing, there will be no more central bank "leasing" of gold. That will dry up the supply.

If it turns out that the gold in Fort Knox is melted coins, and not deliverable gold for international markets, international markets will respond accordingly. Gold will go up.

If the physical inventory indicates that much of the gold that is stored at 33 Liberty St. has in fact been transferred to other central banks, then there is no legal way for the United States government to audit the reserves of those other central banks. But the pile of American gold that is supposedly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would turn out to be much smaller than what has been reported.

Here is my tip for any future auditors. Get a definition of the phrase "deep storage gold." Then find out where this gold is stored . . . if anywhere.

If all the gold is not there, there will be enormous pressure from voters on governments around the world to audit the gold reserves of their central banks. If the gold held in trust by the New York FED is not there, foreign voters will conclude that their governments' gold may not be there, either. The reason is obvious: if a lot of American gold is missing from America's pile of gold at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it is quite possible the gold is no longer inside that vault.

It will occur to Website editors that other central banks have leased their gold to bullion banks, which then sold the gold and invested the money in high-yield government bonds. This would mean that the supposed reserves of the world central banking system have been depleted. It would also mean that the bullion banks, which are privately owned, are in hock to the central banks, because they borrowed the gold from the central banks. Then they sold the gold. They cannot get the gold back to repay the loans, because the price of gold would skyrocket. So, the bullion banks could default, and the central banks could be left holding IOUs from bankrupt private institutions.

If this were to take place, the financial dominoes would begin to fall. There would be outrage around the world by voters, and politicians would hold central bankers accountable for having in fact sold the gold, and hidden the fact by calling the transaction a lease.

AN INTERNATIONAL SCANDAL

Politicians, of course, don't care about any of this, at least not until voters begin to put pressure on them. But the scandal that would result from an audit of the Federal Reserve that revealed the gold is not all there would spread very rapidly around the world. This would be the biggest news on the Internet relating to money and banking that there could possibly be. The major news media, of course, would attempt to cover it up, but at some point the pressure of the leaks into the web would fo

[verwijderd] 25 september 2010 11:32

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AN INTERNATIONAL SCANDAL

Politicians, of course, don't care about any of this, at least not until voters begin to put pressure on them. But the scandal that would result from an audit of the Federal Reserve that revealed the gold is not all there would spread very rapidly around the world. This would be the biggest news on the Internet relating to money and banking that there could possibly be. The major news media, of course, would attempt to cover it up, but at some point the pressure of the leaks into the web would force them to cover the story.

Under these circumstances, Congress might reassert its legitimate authority over the Federal Reserve System. Under these circumstances, the entire monetary structure of the West would be called into question. It would mean the end of the rule of central banks.

That rule has been almost complete since the outbreak of World War I in 1914. When the governments allowed the private banks to default on their contracts to pay gold to the public on demand, which took place within weeks of the outbreak of the war, the governments of the world transferred both gold and sovereignty to the central bankers. An audit of the Federal Reserve system that would reveal the gold, or most of the gold, is not there would begin to reverse the sovereignty of central banking over international and domestic politics. The fallout from an audit that indicates the gold is not all there is the greatest threat to central banking that it has ever faced.

This is why Congressman Paul is the most dangerous politician to the Establishment that the Establishment has ever faced. He has targeted the soft underbelly of the entire system. The soft underbelly is public trust in the Federal Reserve System.

The public cannot grasp the sophisticated operations of central banking. Neither can Congress. But the public can grasp the idea that the government's gold – gold held in trust by the Federal Reserve – is supposed to be in some vault. The American public believes that there is physical gold held somewhere on behalf of the United States government. If it turns out that a lot of the gold is gone, the public will understand this. The public will not be bamboozled into believing that the sale of the gold, quietly done under the secrecy provided by Congress to the Federal Reserve System, was necessary to maintain the prosperity of the United States.

CONCLUSION

Consider the dilemma that the President would face if Congressman Paul's bill lands on his desk. Should he take the risk of signing the bill into law, and thereby take the risk that gold is missing? Or should he veto the bill, with some kind of lame explanation as to why he vetoed the bill? He will then face a public relations disaster. He will be seen as an agent of Ben Bernanke. Is this wise political positioning for 2012? I don't think so.

I think the President will veto the bill. His advisers will tell him that this is necessary, even though it requires him to fall on his sword.

People don't understand the Federal Reserve System, nor do they understand the need for an audit of that system. But they do understand that the gold that is supposedly in the vaults of the Federal Reserve belongs United States government. This concept is much easier to understand than any other aspect of central banking.

This is why a bill to audit the gold is the biggest threat the Federal Reserve's secrecy and autonomy that has ever been posed to the FED . . . if any of the gold is missing.

It is no threat at all if it is all there. If it is all there, why would the FED resist?

And so, I close with this thought: "Show us the gold!"

September 25, 2010

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2010 Gary North

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 27 september 2010 13:52

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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold is last refuge against universal currency debasement

Submitted by cpowell on 02:35PM ET Sunday, September 26, 2010. Section: Daily Dispatches
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Sunday, September 26, 201

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... d/802632...

States accounting for two-thirds of the global economy are either holding down their exchange rates by direct intervention or steering currencies lower in an attempt to shift problems on to somebody else, each with their own plausible justification. Nothing like this has been seen since the 1930s.

"We live in an amazing world. Everybody has big budget deficits and big easy money but somehow the world as a whole cannot fully employ itself," said former Fed chair Paul Volcker in Chris Whalen"s new book, "Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream."

"It is a serious question. We are no longer talking about a single country having a big depression but the entire world."

The US and Britain are debasing coinage to alleviate the pain of debt busts and to revive their export industries: China is debasing to offload its manufacturing overcapacity on to the rest of the world, though it has a trade surplus with the US of $20 billion (L12.6 billion) a month.
Premier Wen Jiabao confesses that China's ability to maintain social order depends on a suppressed currency. A 20 percent revaluation would be unbearable. "I can't imagine how many Chinese factories will go bankrupt, how many Chinese workers will lose their jobs," he said.

Plead he might, but tempers in Washington are rising. Congress will vote next week on the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, intended to make it much harder for the Commerce Department to avoid imposing "remedial tariffs" on Chinese goods deemed to be receiving "benefit" from an unduly weak currency.

Japan has intervened to stop the strong yen tipping the country into a deflation death spiral, though it too has a trade surplus. There is suspicion in Tokyo that Beijing's record purchase of Japanese debt in June, July, and August was not entirely friendly, intended to secure yuan-yen advantage and perhaps to damage Japan's industry at a time of escalating strategic tensions in the Pacific region.

Brazil dived into the markets on Friday to weaken the real. The Swiss have been doing it for months, accumulating reserves equal to 40 percent of GDP in a forlorn attempt to stem capital flight from Euroland. Like the Chinese and Japanese, they too are battling to stop the rest of the world taking away their structural surplus.

The exception is Germany, which protects its surplus ($179 billion or 5.2 percent of GDP) by means of an undervalued exchange rate within EMU. The global game of "pass the unemployment parcel" has to end somewhere. It ends in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and parts of Eastern Europe and will end in France and Italy too, at least until their democracies object.

It is no mystery why so many states around the world are trying to steal a march on others by debasement, or to stop debasers stealing a march on them. The three pillars of global demand at the height of the credit bubble in 2007 were -- by deficits -- the US ($793 billion), Spain ($126 billion), and the UK ($87 billion). These have shrunk to $431 billion, $75 billion, and $33 billion respectively as we sinners tighten our belts in the aftermath of debt bubbles. The Brazils and Indias of the world are replacing some of this half trillion of lost juice, but not all.

East Asia's surplus states seem structurally incapable of compensating for austerity in the West, whether because of the Confucian saving ethi, or the habits of mercantilist practice, or in China's case by the lack of a welfare net. Their export models rely on the willingness of Anglo-PIGS to bankrupt themselves.

So we have an early 1930s world where surplus states are hoarding money instead of recycling it. A solution of sorts in the Great Depression was for each deficit country to devalue, breaking out of the trap (then enforced by the gold standard). This turned the deflation tables on the surplus powers -- France and the US from 1929-1931 -- forcing them to reflate as well (the US in 1933) or collapse (France in 1936). Contrary to myth, beggar-thy-neighbour policy was the global cure.

A variant of this may now occur. If China continues to hold down its currency, the country will import excess US liquidity, overheat, and lose wage competitiveness. This is the default cure if all else fails, and I believe it is well under way.

The latest Fed minutes are remarkable. They add a new doctrine, that a fresh monetary blitz -- or QE2 -- will be used to stop inflation falling much below 1.5 percent. Surely the Fed has not become so reckless that it really aims to use emergency measures to create inflation, rather preventing deflation? This must be a cover story. Ben Bernanke's real purpose -- as he aired in his November 2002 speech on deflation -- is to weaken the dollar.

If so, he has succeeded. The Swiss franc smashed through parity last week as investors digested the message. But the swissie is an overrated refuge. The franc cannot go much further without destabilizing Switzerland itself.

Gold has no such limits. It hit $1,300 an ounce last week, still well shy of the $2,200-2,400 range reached in the late Medieval era of the 14th and 15th centuries.

This is not to say that gold has any particular "intrinsic value." It is subject to supply and demand like everything else. It crashed after the gold discoveries of Spain's conquistadores in the New World and slid further after finds in Australia and South Africa. It ultimately lost 90 percent of its value -- hitting rock bottom a decade ago when central banks succumbed to fiat hubris and began to sell their bullion. Gold hit a millennium-low on the day Gordon Brown auctioned the first tranche of Britain's gold. It has risen five-fold since then.

We have a new world order where China and India are buying gold on every dip, where the West faces an ageing crisis, and where the sovereign states of the US, Japan, and most of Western Europe have public debt trajectories near or beyond the point of no return.

The managers of all four reserve currencies are playing fast and loose. The Fed is clipping the dollar. The Bank of England is clipping sterling. The European Central Bank is buying the bonds of EMU debtors to stave off insolvency, something it just months ago vowed never to do. And the Bank of Japan has just carried out two trillion yen of "unsterilized" intervention.

Of course gold can go higher.

_________________

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 5 oktober 2010 10:14

0

Oct 5, 2010
Super-rich buy gold by ton
GENEVA - THE world's wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar - and sometimes by the ton - and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to the very rich said on Monday.

Fears of a double-dip downturn have boosted the appetite for physical bullion as well as for mining company shares and exchange-traded funds, UBS executive Josef Stadler told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit.

'They don't only buy ETFs or futures; they buy physical gold,' said Mr Stadler, who runs the Swiss bank's services for clients with assets of at least US$50 million (S$65.7 million) to invest.

UBS is recommending top-tier clients hold 7-10 per cent of their assets in precious metals like gold, which is on course for its tenth consecutive yearly gain and traded at around US$1,314.50 an ounce on Monday, near the record level reached last week. 'We had a clear example of a couple buying over a ton of gold ... and carrying it to another place,' Mr Stadler said. At today's prices, that shipment would be worth about US$42 million.

Julius Baer's chief investment officer for Asia is also recommending that wealthy investors park some of their assets in gold as a defensive stance following a string of lacklustre US data and amid concerns about currency weakness. 'I see gold as an insurance,' Van Anantha-Nageswaran said.

Billionaire financier George Soros, echoing comments from investment guru Warren Buffett, last month described gold as the 'ultimate bubble' because it is costly to dig up and has no real value except its market price. -- REUTERS

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings
_________________

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[/quote]

[verwijderd] 28 oktober 2010 16:02

0

Gold vs. the Fed: The Record Is Clear
There were no world-wide financial crises of major magnitude during the Bretton Woods era from 1947 to 1971.

BY CHARLES W. KADLEC

online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527...

When it meets next week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely expected to signal its desire to increase the rate of inflation by providing additional monetary stimulus. This policy is based on a false -- and dangerous -- premise: that manipulating the dollar's buying power will lead to higher employment and economic growth. But the experience of the past 40 years points to the opposite conclusion: that guaranteeing a stable value for the dollar by restoring dollar-gold convertibility would be the surest way for the Federal Reserve to achieve its dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability.
From 1947 through 1967, the year before the U.S. began to weasel out of its commitment to dollar-gold convertibility, unemployment averaged only 4.7% and never rose above 7%. Real growth averaged 4% a year. Low unemployment and high growth coincided with low inflation. During the 21 years ending in 1967, consumer-price inflation averaged just 1.9% a year. Interest rates, too, were low and stable -- the yield on triple-A corporate bonds averaged less than 4% and never rose above 6%.

What has happened since 1971, when President Nixon formally broke the link between the dollar and gold?
Higher average unemployment, slower growth, greater instability, and a decline in the economy's resilience. For the period 1971 through 2009, unemployment averaged 6.2%, a full 1.5 percentage points above the 1947-67 average, and real growth rates averaged less than 3%. We have since experienced the three worst recessions since the end of World War II, with the unemployment rate averaging 8.5% in 1975, 9.7% in 1982, and above 9.5% for the past 14 months. During these 39 years in which the Fed was free to manipulate the value of the dollar, the consumer-price index rose, on average, 4.4% a year. That means that a dollar today buys only about one-sixth of the consumer goods it purchased in 1971.
Interest rates, too, have been high and highly volatile, with the yield on triple-A corporate bonds averaging more than 8% and, until 2003, never falling below 6%. High and highly volatile interest rates are symptomatic of the monetary uncertainty that has reduced the economy's ability to recover from external shocks and led directly to one financial crisis after another. During these four decades of discretionary monetary policies, the world suffered no fewer than 10 major financial crises, beginning with the oil crisis of 1973 and culminating in the financial crisis of 2008-09, and now the sovereign debt crisis and potential currency war of 2010. There were no world-wide financial crises of similar magnitude between 1947 and 1971.
At the center of each of these crises were gyrating currency valuesâ€”either on foreign-exchange markets or in terms of real goods and services. As the dollar's value gyrates it produces windfall profits and losses, feeding speculation and poor judgment. The housing bubble was fed in part by 40 years of experience with a dollar that lost purchasing power every year. Today, individual investors are piling into gold and other commodities in hopes of finding a safe haven from the FOMC's intention to decrease the buying power of the dollar and reduce the value of our savings.
And what of the seductive promise that a floating dollar would make American labor more competitive and improve the nation's trade balance? In 1967, one dollar could buy the equivalent of approximately 2.4 euros (based on the pre-euro German mark) and 362 yen. Over the succeeding 42 years, the dollar has been devalued by 72% against the euro and 75% against the yen. Yet net exports have fallen from a modest surplus in 1967 to a $390 billion deficit equivalent to 2.7% of GDP today.
The members of the FOMC, like their predecessors, are trying to do the best they can, but they are not really sure what it is that needs to be done. They have kept the federal-funds rate near zero for almost two years, but small businesses find it difficult to get loans and savers suffer from the lost income brought by artificially low interest rates. Now they're about to advocate higher inflationâ€”i.e., less price stabilityâ€”in hopes of spurring economic growth.
Economists and pundits may disagree on why the gold standard delivered such superior results compared to the recurrent crises, instability and overall inferior economic performance delivered by the current system. But the data are clear: A gold-based system delivers higher employment and more price stability. The time has come to begin the serious work of building a 21st-century gold standard for the benefit of American workers, investors, and businesses.
-----
Mr. Kadlec is a member of the Economic Advisory Board of the American Principles Project, an author, and founder of the Community of Liberty.

f you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 1 november 2010 22:51

1

MARKETSOCTOBER 30, 2010
'The World Does Not Need to End'
A Gold Bull and His Prediction: $10,000 an Ounce
By SUSAN PULLIAM

There are gold bulls. And then there is Shayne McGuire.

Blake Gordon for The Wall Street Journal
AU-DACIOUS? Shayne McGuire, at the Texas Capitol in Austin, says of his gold bet for the Teacher Retirement System: 'It's a return to normal.'

Like those who once boldly predicted $1,000 Internet stocks and a 36000 Dow Jones Industrial Average, Mr. McGuire is a lone voice among mainstream investors suggesting such an outsize price jump in gold's price.

Mr. McGuire's view isn't idle prognostication. He runs a $330 million gold portfolio at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Mr. McGuire's forecast, which he made in the recently released book, "Hard Money," makes him a very far outlier. Most on Wall Street consider the prediction outlandish.

"If you missed" gold's recent run-up "you have to come up with some pretty sophisticated reasons to buy" now, says Andy Smith, metals analyst with Bache Commodities, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc.

Mr. McGuire was early to the gold trade. In 2007, he and a colleague persuaded the $100 billion Texas fund, the nation's eighth largest, to move into the metal. It was a novel strategy that made it one of the few large U.S. pension funds to have a fund solely devoted to gold.

At the time, gold was trading at around $650, less than half its current price.

In his 2007 pitch, Mr. McGuire argued that gold was "the most underowned major asset, widely seen as an eccentric, anachronistic leftover from the pre-information age that is best for 'end of world' types."

Not everyone at the Texas fund felt the same way. In one meeting, a pension executive sarcastically asked if anyone else in the room thought "the world was going to end?"

Indeed, most pension funds still steer clear of gold, investing just a fraction of 1% on average of their assets in the yellow metal, according to Alan Kosan, of Rogerscasey, an investment-consulting firm. Most pension funds consider gold too volatile and therefore too risky.

So far, however, Mr. McGuire is in the money. With gold prices surging this year, his fund is up about 25% since its inception a year ago. For its fiscal year ended in June, the Texas pension fund was up 15.6% overall. The gold fund has half its assets invested in a gold exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust, and the rest invested in gold stocks.

Gold's historic run-up was spurred by uncertainty about currencies, fears of inflation and continued monetary easing by the Federal Reserve. Like dot-com stocks in that bubble, which were difficult to value because many companies generated no earnings, gold is hard to value because it produces no earnings or revenue and costs money to store.

"It doesn't do anything but cost you charges and stare at you," billionaire investor Warren Buffett said in a recent interview.

There are other gold bulls, of course, including prominent hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who has predicted gold could go to $4,000 an ounce by as early as 2013.

For his part, Mr. McGuire says gold is no longer only for those who think financial Armageddon is near. He expects gold to soar amid rising inflation, among other things. "The world does not need to end for gold to go hyperbolic," he says.

In his book, Mr. McGuire reasons that $10,000 gold is possible if enough other pension funds and big investors jump-start buying and move as little as 1% of total global stocks and bonds holdings into the metal. Such a migration into gold would equal enough demand to push prices up tenfold from their current level, he calculates.

Of course, the same argument would be true for nearly every other investment class. Mr. McGuire has confidence in his argument, however, because he believes inflation will return, which typically pushes gold prices higher.

He said he expects a series of fiscal crises to hit around the world. And then there is China, where he says that gold is "widely regarded as a basic savings asset."

Gold prices also are rising because of the ascendancy of exchange-traded funds, which are funds that track an index but are be traded like a stock. The largest ETF, under the trading symbol GLD, now invests $50 billion, an amount that Mr. McGuire believes could grow far higher if investors shift a small percentage of their investment funds into gold. At its current level, the stock-market capitalization of all gold ETFs is about $80 billion, roughly that of McDonald's Corp.

"Now that the value of modern money is becoming highly questionable, more and more people are turning to gold. It's not the new thing; it's a return to normal," he says.

The son of a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, Mr. McGuire grew up in Mexico and spends leisure time playing chess and reading history books.

He is a fan of the financial history of the 1930s, and quotes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural speech in 1933 about the importance of not overspending. Before joining the Texas pension fund in 2001, he was an analyst at Deutsche Bank and ING Barings.

His gold prediction is by far the most aggressive call he has made in his career, he says, but he says he ignores his doubters. "It seems like an aggressive call," Mr. McGuire says, "but it's really a comment on what governments have been doing to the monetary system."

Of course, the risks of such a big prediction can affect one's entire career, much as it did former stock analyst Henry Blodget, whose bullish call on Amazon.com was lambasted after shares plunged in the dot-com bust. "There are enough nutty-sounding gold targets out there that this one probably won't shock anyone," Mr. Blodget wrote in an email. "But it's certainly a nice big headline-friendly number."

Write to Susan Pulliam at susan.pulliam@wsj.com

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 4 november 2010 10:00

3

Gold to heading for $2,000+ on U.S. political and economic uncertainty
Republican control of Congress, plus more QE adds further uncertainty for the road ahead - and gold thrives on uncertainty.
Author: Jeffrey Nichols
Posted: Thursday , 04 Nov 2010

NEW YORK (ROSLAND CAPITAL) -

Gold thrives on political and economic uncertainty . . . and we've got plenty of that following the Republican victories this week and the Fed's Wednesday afternoon announcement that it is embarking on another large dose of monetary stimulus.
We reiterate our long-term forecast that gold prices will rise to $2,000 an ounce, then $3,000, and possibly higher over the next few years. Certainly, this week's U.S. Congressional election and the policy decisions just announced by the Fed only reinforce our confidence in gold's bullish prospects.
ECONOMIC POLICY STUMBLES ON CAPITOL HILL
Now that the Republicans have overwhelmingly seized control over the U.S. House of Representatives, there will be plenty of rhetoric from Congressional leadership and the Obama Administration about "working together" to solve America's economic problems.
But, in the end, unbridgeable philosophic differences on the role of government suggest that the ship of state will remain rudderless -- at least with respect to fiscal policy -- until the next federal elections in two year.
Not only will the new Republican majority in the House confront a liberal Administration, but there could also be a titanic struggle for control within the Republican Party between its now-more-powerful conservative wing and party moderates and within the conservative wing between the traditionalists and the unconventional Tea Party bloc that has now won a seat at the head table.
It's hard to imagine we won't be faced with more gridlock and more acrimony on Capitol Hill -- in short, a dysfunctional government that is incapable of dealing effectively with America's serious economic problems.
FISCAL INDICATORS
One of the first big indicators of future fiscal policy -- or lack thereof -- will be the decision taken to extend or let expire the Bush tax cuts that run through the end of this calendar year -- or just possibly accept some sensible compromise that would extend the cuts another year or two for all but the wealthiest few percent of tax payers.
Rather than pursue what some consider appropriate counter-cyclical fiscal policy, failure to extend the Bush tax cuts will raise taxes at just the wrong time, taking money and spending power out of the household and small-business sectors.
Others argue the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is just the right medicine to reign in our outsized Federal budget deficit and borrowing requirement, a first step toward restoring confidence in the U.S. dollar both at home and overseas -- but fiscal restraint at this juncture could easily backfire, reversing or slowing the hoped-for economic recovery.
In any event, neither course -- raising taxes enough to achieve a quick and significant reduction in the Federal budget deficit, nor cutting taxes enough to greatly stimulate a sluggish economy is politically feasible given the deep divisions in Washington DC.
How this controversial fiscal-policy issue unfolds and its long-term effect on the health of our economy -- will be one of the big issues affecting gold and other world financial markets, not only in the weeks ahead but possibly for years to come.
Another important fiscal policy issue that will soon capture more attention on Capitol Hill and in the financial press is the insolvency of many state and local government entities across the nation. With the new, more conservative, majority in the House of Representatives the hoped-for bailouts from Washington may not be forthcoming.
Many states operating in the red (including California, Texas, New York, Michigan and others) must balance their budgets -- meaning further belt-tightening, service cuts, more layoffs of public employees (including teachers, policy, firefighters and office workers) and higher local taxes, all of which will be a further drag on the national economy.
THE FED TO THE RESCUE . . . OR NOT
With the Obama Administration and a more conservative Congress at loggerheads, it is likely that America's central bank will, by necessity, be the only agency capable of acting forcefully in the face of a continuing recession-like economic performance. And, all the Fed can do is print more money -- what economists and financial journalists call "quantitative easing" or simply "QE." The Fed accomplishes this magic trick by purchasing securities, usually Treasury notes or bonds, in the open market but pays via an electronic debit entry on its balance sheet.
Indeed, perhaps more important than this week's election outcome for the short-term direction of gold and other financial markets will be the decisions taken at this week's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed's policy-setting forum.
In its policy statement released following Wednesday's FOMC meeting, the Fed stated it will buy $600 billion more in longer-term Treasury securities over the next two quarters -- or about $75 billion each month -- but the Fed has left the door open to make adjustments up or down in response to the unfolding economic indicators.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may be doing the right thing by adopting more aggressive monetary stimulus. Without more action now, the economy will sink further, new job creation will slow or grind to a halt, and unemployment will surely rise.
Even with this new commitment to more aggressive monetary stimulus, I believe recession-like conditions with persistently high unemployment will continue for another few years -- and that additional tranches of quantitative easing by the central bank could raise the cumulative size of the Fed's monetary stimulus to two or three trillion dollars.
INFLATION INTENTIONS
Printing more money may raise the hackles of sound-money advocates and surely won't be appreciated by foreigners holding U.S. debt -- but inflation may be just the potion that could ultimately restore economic equilibrium by devaluing our debt in real terms and reducing its burden the economy expands more quickly in nominal terms, reflecting not only real growth but also inflation. And, if wages rise with prices, a few years of moderate inflation here at home could be politically palatable.
Although the Fed is actually targeting a small rise in consumer price inflation, I believe they are well aware of the much greater inflationary potential arising from their program of quantitative easing.
The stagflation of the 1970s -- a period of sluggish economic growth and high unemployment -- demonstrates that inflation, led by a falling dollar and rising commodity prices, can take hold even with a high degree of economic slack and low rates of capacity utilization.
It's especially relevant to today's investors to remember that this was also a period of rapidly rising gold prices!
Jeffrey Nichols, Managing Director of American Precious Metals Advisors and Senior Economic Advisor to Rosland Capital, has been a leading precious metals economist for over 25 years. See www.nicholsongold.com and www.roslandcapital.com

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 5 november 2010 09:26

3

Ron Paul wants dollar backed by gold and silver
U.S. Rep Ron Paul, who is likely to chair the House subcommittee overseeing monetary policy, says he will also urge an audit of U.S. gold reserves and has called for the dollar to be backed by gold and silver.
Author: Andy Sullivan
Posted: Friday , 05 Nov 2010

WASHINGTON -
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul on Thursday said he will push to examine the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions if, as expected, he takes control of the congressional subcommittee that oversees the central bank in January.
"I think they're way too independent. They just shouldn't have this power," Paul, a longtime Fed critic, said in an interview with Reuters. "Up until recently it has been modest but now it's totally out of control."
Paul is currently the top Republican on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees domestic monetary policy and is likely to head the panel when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.
That could create a giant headache for the Fed, which earlier this year fended off an effort headed by Paul to open up its internal deliberations on interest rates and monetary easing to congressional scrutiny.
Paul, who has written a book called "End the Fed," has been a fierce critic of the central bank's efforts to boost the economy through monetary policy.
"It's an outrage, what is happening, and the Congress more or less has not said much about it," he said.
Paul said his subcommittee would also push to examine the country's gold reserves and highlight the views of economists who believe that economic downturns are caused by bad monetary policy, not the vagaries of the free market.
Global organizations like the International Monetary Fund also will come under scrutiny, he said.
"Eventually we're going to have monetary reform. I do not believe the dollar can be the reserve standard of the world," said Paul, who has called for returning the United States to a currency backed by gold or silver.
Many economists say that the Fed's decisive actions during the 2008 financial crisis prevented the deep recession that followed from turning into a depression. But grassroots outrage over the bank bailouts and other Fed actions helped propel many Republican candidates to victory in Tuesday's congressional elections -- including Paul's son, Rand Paul, who will represent Kentucky in the Senate.
"With a lot of new members coming and the problems getting worse rather better, there's going to be a lot more people who are going to be looking for answers," Paul said.

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 5 november 2010 09:37

0

bedankt, tot nu toe voor mij de meest waardevolle forumberichten.
Ik broed verder,
groet, louve

smith&jones 5 november 2010 23:24

0

quote:
The Man schreef:
Goud is net als aardolie, bij aardolie is er al een hoop opgegraven en wordt er een hoop verbruikt. Bij goud wordt er bijna niks echt verbruikt en zit het grootste gedeelte van het goud nog welliswaar moeilijk winbaar, maar diep in de aarde in de grond.

Ik heb een schatting gehoord dat 80 tot 90% van al het goud nog in de grond zit.

Voor bijna alle toepassingen van goud (tandheelkunde enz, zijn ook alternatieven te bedenken en die worden ook wel gebruikt).

Na nu weer het zoveelste record heb ik besloten om short te gaan. Alleen het inflatiecijfer ten opzichte van het vorige record doet mij nog aarzelen.

En? hoe is het met je shortpositie?

S&J.

[verwijderd] 8 november 2010 12:24

3

Zoellick seeks gold standard debate
By Alan Beattie in Washington
Published: November 7 2010 22:31 | Last updated: November 7 2010 22:31
Leading economies should consider readopting a modified global gold standard to guide currency movements, argues the president of the World Bank.

Writing in the Financial Times, Robert Zoellick, the bank’s president since 2007, says a successor is needed to what he calls the “Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies that has held since the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime broke down in 1971.

Mr Zoellick, a former US Treasury official, calls for a system that “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account”. He adds: “The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”

His views reflect disquiet with the international system, where persistent Chinese intervention to hold down the renminbi is blamed by the US and others for contributing to global current account imbalances and creating capital markets distortions.

This week’s meeting of government heads in South Korea is likely to see yet more exchange rate conflict. A US plan for countries to sign up to current account targets has run into widespread opposition.

Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, has raised the temperature by describing the US economic model as being in “deep crisis” and criticising the US Federal Reserve’s decision to pump an extra $600bn into financial markets. “It is not consistent when the Americans accuse the Chinese of exchange rate manipulation and then steer the dollar exchange rate artificially lower with the help of their [central bank’s] printing press.”

Currency wars

FT In depth: Unilateral currency interventions and manipulation threaten to raise tensions
Although there are occasional calls for a return to using gold as an anchor for currency values, most policymakers and economists regard the idea as liable to lead to overly tight monetary policy with growth and unemployment taking the brunt of economic shocks.

The original Bretton Woods system, instituted in 1945 and administered by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank’s sister institution, comprised fixed but adjustable exchange rates linked to the value of gold. Controls to restrict destabilising shifts of capital from one economy to another buttressed it.

“The scope of the changes since 1971 certainly matches those between 1945 and 1971 that prompted the shift from Bretton Woods I to II,” Mr Zoellick writes. “Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today.”

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 15 november 2010 16:13

2

Gold (GC : NASDAQ : US$1367.80), Net Change: -35.50, % Change: -2.53%, Volume: 280,024
Behold – the three-headed monster! Three dominating concerns had investors selling gold on Friday: 1) Worries that the Chinese government would further tighten money supply even after a series of measures in recent weeks to counter inflationary pressures. Credit Suisse Chief Economist for Non-Japan Asia Dong Tao said last week's reserve requirement ratio hike should not be read as a one-off tightening but the beginning of an accelerated process of monetary normalization. China's monetary authority appears to have placed “fighting inflation” as a higher priority against “boosting growth”; 2) The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CALSTRs) is taking a wait-and-see approach. CALSTRs, the second-largest U.S. public pension plan, sharply scaled back plans to invest in commodities. CALSTRs plans to allocate $150 million to commodities; that's way less than the $2.5 billion rumoured to have been made; and 3) More rumours of margin hikes at the exchanges. Last week, the CME Group (CME), which runs COMEX, said it will raise margin requirements for silver futures. Minimum maintenance margin requirements for silver went to $6,500 from $5,000 per contract. David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates, had one of the best quips of last week. He said, “We remain big fans of the yellow metal and still see potential for $3,000 an ounce in coming years as its hedging properties against the integrity of the global financial system are hardly going to subside. But the reality is that it has made such an asymptotic move in recent weeks, speculative fervour is evident in the Commitment of Traders report and the fact that gold is now a front-page story, makes it susceptible to a near-term pull-back. Nonetheless, it can correct all the way down to $1,213.52 per ounce (the 200-day m.a.) without violating any long- term trendline.”

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

@iPlof 15 november 2010 19:05

0

quote:
Gung Ho schreef:
GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record,

Ja mooi is dat op zich.
Alleen leven de meesten van ons geen 6000 jaar.
En dat goud een waardedrager is én blijft is iedereen het wel over eens.

De vraag is nu: is goud op 1372 dollar een betere waardedrager dan andere valuta, grondstoffen en assets?

Ik betwijfel dat.

Overigens wordt de goudhoeveelheid nooit minder.
Leuk is dat veel andere oude spullen juist meer waard worden omdat ze zo zeldzaam worden. Een archeologische vondst, een schilderij, een poster, een antieke auto etc...allemaal waardedragers.

[verwijderd] 29 november 2010 18:22

3

Commentary
Dear Mr. Buffett, Your Gold Comments Do Americans A Disservice
Drew Mason, 11.29.10, 12:00 PM ET
Dear Mr. Warren Buffett,

Your investment insights have gained you breathtaking wealth, and your successes surely will dwarf mine when our epitaphs are complete. However, your recent comments comparing gold to farmland and ExxonMobil are inappropriate and are inflicting harm on many Americans. Specifically, you suggested that productive assets such as agriculture and oil companies are comparable assets to gold, and you implied that there is no real benefit to owning gold in lieu of productive assets.

One insight I can provide you from being on the front lines of this issue is that your words have led many Americans to conclude gold is insignificant if not unattractive to portfolios. Because of your stature even investment professionals fail to recognize that you have compared two totally distinct asset classes with completely different risk profiles and objectives.

It goes without saying that oil companies and farmland can produce value--that is their raison d'être. Gold, on the other hand, is not a producing asset, and has a completely different raison d'être, namely to preserve wealth after producing assets have endowed owners with a form of wealth. The investment decision Americans need to make is whether to save wealth in unproductive paper dollars or unproductive gold.

Presumably the rational investor would store his wealth in the choice that has been more resilient over time--but not in America. Gold has retained nearly 100% of its owners' wealth as a currency since Christ walked the earth, when measured by the equivalent of minimum wage. The dollar, in contrast, has lost 90% of its value over the last 100 years alone.

Instead of deriding gold as a nonproducing asset and discouraging Americans from diversifying away from their dollars, you would serve your fellow citizens far better by pointing out that there is great utility in an asset that holds its value and is without liabilities. The issue Americans face today is Risk Management 101: Americans need to diversify away from complete allocations to the shriveling dollar held in savings accounts, bonds and so forth, and into a noncorrelated cash instrument such as gold.

If one looks through that prism, a more appropriate comparison may be with the dollar and the Titanic, as James Grant has made. Like the Titanic, the dollar was once in a class of its own, thought to be of lasting value. Today the dollar has taken on so much water (in the form of crushing debt) that it tragically cannot be saved in its current form.

Consider another comparison with the Titanic as it relates to passengers' and investors' behavior. At some point on that fateful voyage passengers realized the ship was going down and that there were not enough lifeboats to save everyone. Today markets are realizing there is simply not enough gold to protect everyone.

Immoralities aside, imagine if there had been an auction for lifeboats on the Titanic. How smart would it have been to bemoan that one had missed cheaper lifeboats when subsequent lifeboats were auctioned at higher prices as awareness spread? In hindsight it was prudent to pay up for a seat, especially since the cost of a lifeboat was a rounding error to a passenger's wealth.

Irrational behavior such as passing on a lifeboat because of price is what we see happening in the U.S. every day. While Asians, Arabs and the richest banks in the world are price-takers, repeatedly buying gold regardless of price, Americans lament having missed the move from $1,000.

To illustrate how immaterial the move in recent years is to protecting one's wealth, imagine if someone with a $5 million net worth wanted 5% of his wealth diversified into gold. At $1,000 per ounce he could have bought approximately 250 ounces of physical gold.

Suppose the investor is now fixated on buying 250 ounces of gold. If gold were at $1,500 today and the investor still wanted to buy 250 ounces, gold's 50% appreciation would still only cost him an incremental 2.5% of his net worth to buy his whole position. Conversely, if gold fell from $1,500 to $1,200 (as the whole world expects), buying the same 250 ounces would only save the investor 1% of his net worth.

The dichotomy of our time is the action of governments and the absence of rational American investment behavior. History tells us the dollar will not survive, and gold will preserve wealth, yet Americans keep virtually all of their net worth in dollars.

Americans forget that it is specifically because of gold's unique and long-standing history that it is globally accepted. As we look into the emerging next paradigm, gold's utility possesses characteristics that PayPal did during the emerging Internet in the 1990s: Whatever the business landscape ultimately looks like when it comes into focus, counterparties can take comfort that gold offers protection other mediums of exchange simply do not.

As it relates to the importance of gold as a currency, let us also not forget the words of your father, Rep. Howard Buffett:

Is there a connection between human freedom and a gold-redeemable money? ... When you recall that one of the first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and the rare prize known as human liberty. ... Various plans have been proposed to reverse this spiral of debt. ... All of these proposals look good. But they ... will not stand against [political] spending pressures.

Here at the twilight of your career you have sent a loud message to Americans that diversifying out of dollars and into gold is unnecessary. At the end of the day you have to know that such advice spits in the face of history and risk management. You don't want to be remembered for discouraging Americans from diversifying their worth, given the fate that now inescapably awaits the dollar. Come clean, Mr. Buffett, and explain to America that having gold exposure, uncorrelated to the dollar, is a sage use of capital.

Drew Mason is a member of Miles Franklin, bullion dealers and market makers.

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

[verwijderd] 11 januari 2011 10:29

3

Gold rises slowly but premiums up at a 2-year high
Euro zone debt concerns pushed the price of the yellow metal higher in trade on Tuesday while investor-buying pushed gold bar premiums to two-year highs
Author: Lewa Pardomuan
Posted: Tuesday , 11 Jan 2011

SINGAPORE (REUTERS) -
Gold inched up on Tuesday on persistent worries about indebted euro zone countries, while purchases from investors and jewellers pushed up premiums for gold bars to their highest in two years.
Bullion's drop to its lowest in more than a month last week also helped lift premiums for gold bars, with demand picking up ahead of the Lunar New Year celebration in February. Gold bars were offered at a premium of $3 to the spot London prices in Hong Kong, matching a similar level seen in late 2008.
Spot gold rose $1.41 an ounce to $1,375.86 an ounce by 0411 GMT. Gold was well below a historical high of around $1,430 struck in December.
"There's a huge demand from China. Refineries just opened and there's not much stock around, so it's a bit tight," said Ronald Leung, director of Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong.
Investors will also closely watch the developments in Portugal, which is widely seen as the country next in line in the euro zone to need a bailout after Greece and Ireland, said Leung.
Gold will rebound into a range of $1,388-$1,392 per ounce as an upward wave "c" is advancing, according to Wang Tao, a Reuters market analyst for commodities and energy technicals.
The euro found a steadier footing on Tuesday, having clambered up from a four-month trough as some players took profits on bets against the single currency.
The focus this week is on whether Lisbon will be able to raise funds in the debt market on Wednesday or be forced to turn to the EU and IMF for financial aid.
U.S. gold futures for February added $2.1 an ounce to $1,376.2 an ounce.
The physical sector in Singapore was steady after seeing heavy buying from jewellers in Thailand on Monday.
"Trading is mixed this morning, with moderate trading volume," said a dealer in Singapore. "The market is currently short of physical supply. We have no available stocks to offer except for those who have booked in advance.
China's Lion Fund Management, which last month launched the first gold fund in the world's biggest producer of the metal, has met its goal of raising $500 million for the fund, the company said in a statement.
The world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust, said its holdings rose to 1,272.682 tonnes by January 10 from 1,271.164 tonnes on January 7.
© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved

If you don't trust GOLD,the only asset with a 6000 year track record, do you trust the logic of taking a $1,000 pine tree, cutting it up, turning it to pulp, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion $ dollars?

AEX 905,63 +7,66 +0,85% 14 mrt


Germany40^	23.081,70	+0,41%
BEL 20	4.410,12	+1,05%
Europe50^	5.420,69	+0,31%
US30^	41.420,70	0,00%
Nasd100^	19.651,10	0,00%
US500^	5.623,92	0,00%
Japan225^	37.519,50	0,00%
Gold spot	2.991,78	+0,24%
EUR/USD	1,0881	-0,02%
WTI	67,14	0,00%

AZERION	+9,48%
Sif Holding	+6,14%
RANDSTAD NV	+4,47%
Corbion	+4,46%
ALLFUNDS GROUP	+4,39%

UMG	-8,75%
Pharming	-6,04%
OCI	-2,89%
EBUSCO HOLDING	-2,43%
Ahold Delhaize	-0,68%

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