China May Ease Gold Import Rules
Bloomberg – The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is considering a plan to allow qualified miners and more banks to import gold. The intention is to attract more foreign investors and get China more involved in world markets. Chinese miners would be incentivized to “explore opportunities overseas,” said Wallace Ng, a Shanghai-based metals trader. If the PBOC follows through with the plan, it could drive down the premium on gold for Chinese consumers. In turn, this could expand demand and drive global prices higher.
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World currencies lost a lot of value in 2014. If you lived outside the United States, you would have done much better holding gold rather than local cash this past year. Check out this chart from The Market Oracle:
Eventually the Federal Reserve will be unable to artificially prop-up the US dollar. When that happens, we need only look around the world to see what life will be like. Russia is the most dramatic example this year. Consumer prices there rose 11.4% in December alone! As Bloomberg reports, “Russia’s currency lost 44 percent this year, the second-most in the world after Ukraine’s hryvnia.”
Back in the fall, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stirred things up by making some public statements about the importance of gold, calling it “the premier currency, where no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it…” Greenspan also indicated that he believes the Fed’s balance sheet will eventually catch fire and ignite some serious inflation. A good reason, he argued, to buy gold.
Well, now Greenspan is back in the news throwing a “wet blanket” on hopes for US growth, as Bloomberg puts it.
While few are as blunt as Peter Schiff in warning of another bubble in real estate, mainstream analysts are starting to worry that the US housing market isn’t as strong as many believe. Peter warns that rising home prices are a product of extremely low interest rates suppressed by the Federal Reserve. Robert Shiller, Nobel Laureate economist, seems to agree in a recent interview on CNBC:
There’s also the worry that the very low interest rates that we’ve had, with the 10-year just above 2%. That has also been driving this [housing] market. That is fragile… I’m not calling a turning point yet, but I feel a little bit of anxiety about the market.”
Shiller plays it cool, but admits that he thinks the market is looking like a bubble in San Francisco and possibly Miami:
Peter Schiff appeared on Fox Business to explain why the bursting of the oil sector bubble could be the first of many collapsing bubbles that will push the United States economy back into recession.
We were surprised to see mainstream stock speculators actually recommending gold as a good buy last week. On Friday, stock traders on CNBC argued the bull and bear case for the yellow metal, and the bull won. He touched on two of the key fundamentals supporting gold: the ongoing international currency war and huge physical demand for gold.
Of course, none of these traders pointed out that the US dollar’s days are numbered thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policies. Perhaps that’s the black swan the bear doesn’t see coming.
Everybody is talking about how strong the United States economy is based upon the upward revision of GDP growth to 5% in the third quarter. In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff digs into the data underlying the third-quarter GDP, as well as the economic data that could tell us what to expect for fourth-quarter GDP growth.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through another record high yesterday, closing at about 18,030. A record high in United States dollar value, that is. When valued in ounces of gold, the Dow is nowhere near its historical high, which we saw in 1999. Take a look at this chart, showing the Dow to gold price ratio:
MarketWatch published an article reviewing the growing gold repatriation movement throughout Europe. While the author tries to take a “balanced” mainstream view and even throws in a few swings at gold bulls, he is forced to admit that the trend is troubling. There’s only one reason so many countries would want their gold back on sovereign soil – fears of a massive currency crisis. Matthew Lynn writes:
The point about having gold on your own soil is that it is an insurance policy against a chaotic return to national currencies. The fact that so many countries seem to want that insurance tells you something important about the euro — and it is hardly comforting. They still think there is a real possibility of collapse.”
Peter Schiff explains the reality behind the United States’ false recovery to an incredulous anchor on CNBC World.