What happens when government officials spend with virtually no restraint and they don’t have a printing press that can crank out more money?
Hartford, Connecticut.
Last week, both S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Hartford’s credit rating deeper into junk status. According to a Reuters report, the downgrade puts Hartford near the bottom of the credit scale. This means the agencies view the city as essentially in default with little prospect for a full bondholder recovery.
Conventional wisdom holds that gold is a good store of value, and provides a hedge of protection against inflation and economic upheaval. But a close look at the data reveals gold offers a long-term growth trajectory comparable to other financial asset classes.
Gold sales at Australia’s Perth Mint doubled in September. Meanwhile, sales of silver surged 78%.
Sales of gold coins and minted bars jumped to 46,415 ounces in September, up from 23,130 ounces a month ago. Silver sales during the month came in at 697,849 ounces, compared with 392,091 ounces in August.
Earlier this month, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatened China, saying the US would “put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system” if they don’t go along with the most recent round of sanctions slapped on North Korea. We argued that the threat may be meaningful, but it also might be empty.
In a recent article published on the Mises Wire, Ryan McMaken added another layer of analysis, arguing that if the US were to follow through on the threat, it would imperil the US dollar. McMaken’s reasoning dovetails with a point we’ve made more generally about Trump’s penchant for tariffs – that they will undermine the dollar. Of course, that’s good for gold.
Indians love gold. Despite rising prices, a tax increase, and government attempts to tighten regulation of the jewelry industry, gold imports into the country nearly tripled year-on-year in August. India ranks as the second largest gold consuming country in the world, trailing only China. But gold isn’t the only precious metal Indians covet. They also buy a lot of silver.
According to a new report by the Silver Institute, India consumed 160.6 million ounces of silver in 2016, accounting for 16% of global silver demand.
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A few Fridays back, I shared some of the innovative ways people have come up with to smuggle gold. Like I said in that article, gold smuggling is a very lucrative business. People want gold, and they’ll go to great lengths to have it. But smuggling isn’t as easy as you might think, and people have put gold in some places … Well, let’s just say it couldn’t have been a comfortable experience.
OK – I’ll just come out and say it. More than a few smugglers have resorted to sticking gold up their butts.
Last week, Janet Yellen announced the Federal Reserve will begin the much anticipated “tapering” of its massive balance sheet. The Fed chair also hinted another interest rate hike is in the works. After the most recent FOMC meeting, we raised the question: Is this a viable path forward, or is the central bank playing a game of monetary chicken? Peter Schiff has argued that the Fed ultimately won’t be able to reduce its balance sheet to any significant extent. So, despite the Fed’s hawkish stance, the path forward seems far from certain.
In a recent article published on the Mises Fed Watch, Tho Bishop also raised some poignant questions about how the Fed will actually move forward with monetary policy.
When we reported on the Toys R Us bankruptcy, we argued that it wasn’t just about shifting shopping patterns away from brick and mortar to online companies. A recent article on TechCo complaining that millennials are broke backs up our assertion.
Earlier this month, we reported a move by China that could foreshadow the end of the US dollar as the world reserve currency. The Chinese announced the launch of a gold-backed, yuan-denominated oil futures contract. The move potentially creates a way for oil exporters to circumvent US dollar denominated benchmarks by trading in yuan. The contracts will be priced in yuan, but convertible to gold.
More broadly speaking, Russia and China seem to be setting the stage to set up an alternative the international US dollar system. Many analysts believe the two countries are buying gold specifically to minimize their dependence on the US dollar. Russia and China are also reportedly moving closer to developing a broader gold-based trading system.
In an article originally published on the Mises Wire, Ronald-Peter Stöferle digs deeper into the possibility of “de-dollarization.”
The world is looking for alternatives to the dollar — and finds them more and more often.”