10 December 2010

Sprott says SLV has physical?

I found it interesting in this Sprott piece The Silver Lining that Sprott includes SLV in his table of "real investment demand for silver".

In the context of his point that GFMS and The Silver Institute neglect investment demand, I assume by the use of the word "real" Sprott must mean physical. In which case by including SLV's 305,205,951oz he is therefore saying it does have the physical.

If SLV doesn't, then he shouldn't include it in the table as their holdings would represent fake paper silver. However if he doesn't include SLV then he has no point about GFMS/Silver Institute missing investment demand of 225,783,924oz because without SLV the "aggregate implied investment demand" figure from GFMS/Silver Institute covers the other funds' inflows.

10 October 2010

Gold Bubbles

UK financial writer Dominic Frisby argues “that both metals [gold and silver] are still in a bull-market phase. Any mania is yet to come.” In support, he notes that in 1980 gold bullion went from $400 to $873 an ounce in only 36 trading days, with silver trading from $16 to $50 in 37 days. The current market is not exhibiting those sort of price moves.

He also proposes looking at the value of the US gold reserves compared to money on issue as an indicator of a bubble - “in 1980 … the market value of the 260 million ounces of gold held by the USA in Fort Knox came in at $221bn, yet only some $160bn of paper money was in issue” so if “the market value of the gold held in Fort Knox once again exceeds the number of US dollars the US authorities have issued, then gold will be in bubble territory once again, in that it will be trading at levels above its intrinsic value”.

Dominic closes his article with his definition of a bubble that I think may explain why a lot of financial commentators are consistently negative on gold: “A bubble is a bull market in which you don't have a position”. However, I doubt we will see many of them change their view and buy gold, because these days the internet means all their previous statements are recorded and easily searchable and I can’t see them admitting they were wrong.

09 October 2010

Perth Mint Blog

Perth Mint has launched an online bullion selling website and to go with it a corporate blog. After 2.5 years of blogging privately I'm finally going to be able to go legit!

The change in role means I will have more time to put into posts and be able to formally draw on our internal data. I'll keep this blog up for posts that aren't suitable for a corporate blog. For the moment I'll be dual posting as it is a soft launch before they go for a proper launch and marketing campaign. What I'm aiming to cover with the corporate blog can be found here and is pretty much the same as what I've tried to do with this blog.

08 October 2010

Prof Keen Compares Bankers To Drug Pushers

Professor Keen presents a dramatic analogy in his recent article on his speech at the American Monetary Institute’s 2010 conference: “banks are effectively debt pushers, and trying to control bank lending at the source is like trying to control the spread of illegal drugs by directly controlling the drug pushers. While ever there are drug users who want the drugs, then there’ll be a profit to be made by selling drugs, and drug pushers will always find ways around direct controls.”

The comments were a response to the American Monetary Institute’s campaign to establish a 100% reserve banking system. While Professor Keen is ambivalent about the proposal, he feels that the issue “is not how money is created, but how it is used. If it’s used to finance productive investment, then generally speaking all will be well; but if it’s used to finance speculation on asset prices, then it will lead to financial crises”.

He therefore feels reforms need to be focused on modifying borrower behaviour rather than trying to regulate lenders. His article is worth a read for his proposed reforms and the civil and mostly intelligent debate of them that follows in the comments section.

07 October 2010

High Court Judge Rules Paper Money “Almost Worthless”

In a recent High Court of Australia judgement on the Goods and Services Tax treatment of foreign currency transactions, I note with amusement Justice Dyson Heydon’s statement that:

“Apart from those rights [as legal tender], the pieces of paper had little value. They might have been used to stop an uneven table wobbling, or to jam shut a loose door, or to amuse small children, or to light a cigar. If the currency included coins, the coins might have been used to turn stiff screws or to lay on railway lines for the purpose of being flattened. But uses of that kind, which are very remote from their real purpose, would not prevent both the pieces of paper and the coins from being almost worthless.”

Before you rush to burn your money or flatten your coins, the judgement notes that “because the tokens are currency, the holder of the tokens can use them as a medium of exchange and as a store of economic value. Currency has value only because of the rights that attach to it.”

So relax, your paper money does have value. However, if you are concerned about what high inflation may do to the value of cash, you may wish to consider storing your surplus “economic value” in the form of legal tender bullion coins - sorry, tokens.

Of course, I can’t guarantee that precious metal prices will not fall, but at least you will always be able to use the coins to turn a stiff screw or two!

02 October 2010

Gold Symposium Bail Out

I've had to pull out of The Gold Symposium as the Mint's Board meeting (which I have to attend) has been moved to a day of the event. Was looking forward to meeting the speakers and attendees so not too happy. In that case the Board better approve my business case for redeveloping our exhibition area :) or I will have missed the event for no good reason.

29 September 2010

05 September 2010

China desperate for gold & The Mind Conspirators

1) Reported by imarketnews.com:

Sales by overseas central banks could see a sharp fall in gold prices, the Financial News reported Wednesday, citing Zou Pingzuo, a central bank researcher.

"Investors should be careful about investing in gold. Gold prices could fall sharply because of intensive gold sales by the U.S. and other overseas central banks," Zou said.

To me this a sign of desperation by the Chinese. There has been no indication by the US to sell and all recent talk is about central banks buying. They are trying the old scare tactic of central bank selling to try and push the gold price down. They want to buy as much gold as they can but don’t like the current high price.

I think they are hoping this "bubble" will deflate and they can continue with their sneaky "get out of dollars and buy gold". What happens when the Chinese realise the price isn't going to drop? Will they be forced to go all out and start buying whatever physical they can?

2) Worthwhile read for libertarians - The Mind Conspirators by Nelson Hultberg. A quote:

Philosophical fallacies and socialist falsifications of economics and history have gained sway in the school system to poison our citizens' minds against the American concept of freedom. Such fallacies have created a grossly distorted image for the man in the street about the way the world works. Freedom is now seen as inimical to human dignity. Creative entrepreneurship is portrayed as exploitation of the poor instead of their only hope. Gold is termed a "barbarous relic" instead of history's proven store of value. ...

We are being conditioned to accept sloth as normalcy, servility as dignity, weakness of will as compassion, and government conveyed privilege as justice. The world of sanity and rationality gives way to regimental nightmares of Orwellian "newspeak" and "political correctness" in order for legions of middle-class sluggards to feel good about themselves while they live out their spiritually squalid lives queuing up to the entitlement troughs of the mega-state.

My response to the article agrees very much with the comments of MetaCynic:

Accepting Hultberg's argument that ideas are the engine of not only entire civilizations but of every individual, begs the question why do some ideas gain traction and not others. Why did the ultimately unworkable collectivist ideologies of the big picture intellectuals, Rousseau, Hegel, Comte and Marx, find acceptance in the midst of the wondrous prosperity produced by the Enlightenment's Industrial Revolution? Why does the siren call of unaccountable collectivism to this day continue to outsell individual liberty with all its attendant responsibilities?

Despite its clashes with reality, do collectivist intellectuals really have to work very hard to find widespread acceptance for their ideas? Maybe there has always been a ready market for their disabling poison. In politicians and bureaucrats they have, of course, an enthusiastic audience eager to legitimize their own drive for wealth and power. In the envious masses they have deluded voters proudly participating in the process to redistribute the wealth of others into their own pockets. And in the captains of industry they have "capitalists" in need of protected markets and guaranteed profits. The great majority of humans are conformists and clock watchers interested only in comfort and entertainment.

03 September 2010

Australia’s only hard money conference

From http://www.symposium.net.au/the-gold-symposium.htm

The Gold Symposium, Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th November 2010

Symposium announces the launch of The Gold Symposium being hosted at the Amora Jamison Hotel in Sydney, Australia on Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th November 2010.

Featuring highly respected speakers from Canada, Australia and the USA, this event will approach topics such as the current state of the global markets; why gold is important as an investment; and, gold versus paper as currency.

Amongst many renowned speakers, hear from the internationally respected gold analyst and author, Mr James Dines. Even now many do not believe Mr. Dines’ longstanding prediction of “The Coming Great Deflation” internationally, but what’s next? Boom or Bust, inflation or deflation, or even a hyperinflation?


Other speakers are:
Mr Dan Denning, Editor, The Daily Reckoning
Mr Louis Boulanger, CFA, Founder and Director, LB Now Ltd
Dr David Evans, mathematician and founder of GoldNerds
Mr Robert Lambourne, Chairman, Penox SA
Mr Rudy Fritsch, President, Allsteel
Mr Richard Karn, Managing Editor, The Emerging Trends Report
Mr Gavin Thomas, Managing Director and CEO, Kingsgate Consolidated
Mr Barry Dawes, Managing Director, Martin Place Securities
Prof Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics and Finance at the Uni of Western Sydney
And ME!

My presentation is: Paper gold – will it “crack-up”?
• You only protect your wealth by knowing when (or when not) to sell your gold
• To do this you need a real understanding of the risks inherent in the operation and interaction of the physical and paper gold markets, not the hyped-up commentary designed to increase the commentator’s Google ranking rather than your wealth
• Otherwise you may find yourself holding worthless cash after what you thought was a bubble in gold was really a collapse of paper assets