This has become a monthly feature here a SchiffGold News – Russia buys more gold.
The Central Bank of Russia added another 18.7 tons of gold to its stash in March according to a press release last week. This boosts the country’s gold reserves to 2, 167.9 tons or 69,700,000 ounces. Gold now makes up about 18% of the Russian central bank’s reserves.
The silver-gold ratio currently stands at about 85-to-1. As one commentator put it, that’s “way out of whack.”
But what does this really mean?
In simplest terms, this is silver on sale!
Last year, the Social Security and Medicare trustees warned that the programs are going broke. A year later — they’re still going broke.
Social Security will dip begin dipping into reserves in order to pay out benefits next year and those reserves will run dry in 2035, according to the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report that was released Monday.
When reserves dry up, the system will no longer be able to pay full benefits.
When the Federal Reserve artificially manipulates interest rates, it’s messing with our minds by distorting important signals that prices provide in a free market. As investment guru Jim Grant put it in a recent article in Barron’s, central bank interest rates are nothing but crude price controls.
Like all price controls, the Fed’s interest rate mechanizations create some winners and some losers. But in the long run, the distortions caused by the central bank’s interventionist monetary policy makes us all losers.
Rising demand for solar panels pushes silver prices higher according to a recently released university study.
Researchers at the University of Kent found a “causal relationship” between solar panel demand and the price of the white metal.
Romania moved another step closer to bringing all of its gold home this week.
According to Romanian news outlets, the Chamber of Deputies Budget and Finance Committee released a favorable report on legislation that would require the country’s central bank to repatriate its gold and hold it within the borders of the country.
While President Trump nags the Federal Reserve to reinstitute Obama-era monetary stimulus, China has already taken off down that path. And it actually has some people in the mainstream concerned.
According to a Reuters report, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is warning that while Chinese government stimulus may boost the country’s economy in the short-run, it “may undermine the country’s drive to control debt and worsen structural distortions over the medium term.”
The amount of gold held by Europe-based ETFs hit a record high in the first quarter of 2019, according to a report by the World Gold Council.
European funds now hold 1,121.4 tons of gold.
The WGC pinpoints three primary drivers of European gold investment.
The world’s largest primary silver producer reported a plunge in production in the first quarter of the year, continuing a global trend of declining silver output.
Total silver production at Fresnillo PLC dropped by 15% in Q1. The company blamed falling mine output on lower ore grades and reduced volume of processed ore.
Silver demand was up 4% and hit a three-year high in 2018, according to the 2019 World Silver Survey released by the Silver Institute this week.
Physical demand for silver came in at over 1 billion ounces last year.
Meanwhile, silver mine production fell for the third straight year, dropping 2% in 2018 to 855.7 million ounces.
