About a year ago, the IMF published a creepy paper offering governments suggestions on how to move toward a cashless society even in the face of strong public opposition. It hasn’t been in the news a whole lot lately, but the war on cash undoubtedly continues.
Governments and central bankers claim moving toward a cashless society will help prevent crime and will boost convenience for the average citizen. But the real motivation behind the war on cash is control over you. We got a first-hand look at what happens when governments restrict access to cash when India plunged into a cash crisis after the Indian government enacted a policy of demonetization in November 2016.
Andy Haldane serves as chief economist and the Executive Director of Monetary Analysis and Statistics at the Bank of England. He proposed the elimination of cash during a speech in the fall of 2015. Durham University professor of finance and economics Kevin Dowd has written a paper titled Killing the Cash Cow: Why Andy Haldane Is Wrong About Demonetization. Dowd wrote an article published by the Mises Wire outlining his arguments. It provides a fantastically detailed overview of the war on cash and why it threatens “widespread economic damage.”
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
If you’re a romantic man, at some point you might have daydreamed about stealing a queen’s heart. Well, some thieves in France did just that. Like, they literally stole her heart. As in the organ.
When Anne of Brittany died, her heart was removed and encased in pure gold. It’s been in a French museum for more than a century.
Yeah. Ewwww. That was my reaction too.
Rising interest rates could unleash a zombie company apocalypse – if the Fed lets it happen.
Corporate bankruptcy levels in the US hit seven-year highs last month.
New Chapter 11 bankruptcies surged 63% year-over-year in March. All-told 770 companies filed for Chapter 11 protection last month. That is the highest level since April 2011.
Imports of gold into China via Hong Kong surged in March, rising 78.67% compared to February.
The amount of the yellow metal moving into mainland China via Hong Kong rose to 59.4 tons in March, up from 33.25 tons in February, according to data emailed to Reuters by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department.
Last month, US Global Investors CEO Frank Holmes offered three reasons he thinks the gold might hit $1,500 per ounce this year. His number one reason was rising inflation. In a recent interview on Bloomberg Radio, Holmes reiterated that high inflation looks good for gold in the near future. He also pointed out that whether you look at things from a long-term or short-term perspective, gold had done exactly what it is supposed to within an overall portfolio.
Stock markets had another bad day Tuesday. The Dow Jones fell over 400 points as the 10-year Treasury yield broke through 3%. Several “marquee” companies warned of higher costs, including Google-parent Alphabet and Caterpillar.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks the correction is over.
Not the downward move. That is not the correction. This is the bear market. The upward move was the correction. It was the first correction in this young bear market that technically is not a bear market yet because we’re not down 20%. But that’s only a matter of time before the people call the bear market what it is.”
Inflation is low – so we’re told. But this simply isn’t true.
Now, it is true that the consumer price index (CPI) has remained relatively low. But rising prices aren’t in-and-of themselves inflation. In fact, we can have inflation without a corresponding rise in CPI – at least in the short-term. That’s exactly what we’ve had over the last decade. We’ve had rampant inflation, but it hasn’t manifested in broad-based rising prices – yet.
Everything is great!
We’ve heard this mantra over and over again from government officials, TV talking heads and Federal Reserve bankers. But as we’ve been saying, all the optimism in the world can’t trump economic reality. And there are a lot of signs in the global economy indicating everything is not, in fact, great.
Dan Kurz at DK Analytics aggregates large amounts of economic data and forms it into a big picture. In his most recent post, Dan compiled a long list of economic and financial risks lurking out there in the global economy.
Conventional wisdom holds that rising interest rates are bad for gold. The fact that the Federal Reserve has been nudging rates up over the last couple of years has accounted for a lot of the bearishness in the gold market. But the conventional wisdom doesn’t line up with the current reality. Even as the Fed has hiked rates, the price of gold has gone up – increasing by 8.5% since the Federal Reserve’s first rate hike of this cycle in December 2017.
A recent report issued by the World Gold Council indicates that gold investors focused primarily on interest rates are looking in the wrong place. They need to be watching the dollar.
Our analysis shows that the correlation between gold and US rates is waning and that the US dollar is again a stronger indicator of the direction of price. And, in our view, this will continue over coming months.”
