Lots of smart people are wondering if Russia might adopt a gold backing for the ruble to strengthen its ailing currency and economy. The idea is even getting traction in mainstream news with a new article from CNBC. Alasdair MacLeod, an expert precious metals analyst, explains why Russia would favor a gold standard:
There is no doubt that Russia and China, plus the other Eurasian states in their sphere of influence are all accumulating gold and the indications are they see it as central to replacing the US dollar for cross border trade.
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It is already in Russia’s interest to cast itself off from inflating western currencies and to base their economy on sound money, aka gold.”
Peter Schiff covers a wide range of topics in his latest interview with Chris Waltzek on GoldSeek Radio. Of course, they look closely at the precious metals markets and how they’re being influenced by the Federal Reserve’s monetary manipulation. However, they also discuss the price of oil, Russia’s ruble problems, and the future of the United States housing market.
Kitco asked Peter Schiff how he would invest $100,000 in 2015. He recommends buying gold, mining stocks, and international equities. Peter urges prudent investors to avoid the United States stock market and the US dollar.
I don’t think money should be in dollars, I don’t think it should be in treasuries… I think a lot of inflation is coming and I think the dollar is going to lose a lot of value … [Y]ou need to look at international equities and you need to look at precious metals.”
Here is a fascinating interview with Ned Naylor-Leyland, a precious metals expert with Quilter Cheviot Investment Management. Naylor-Leyland explains the coming divergence between the physical and paper gold markets and how mainstream media doesn’t grasp just how large the daily gold market is.
He also discusses the ongoing Eastern demand for physical gold, especially in China. Did you know China has twice as many retail bullion shops than the United States has Starbuck, Subway, and McDonald’s locations combined?
In his podcast yesterday evening, Peter Schiff shared his thoughts on the huge surge in the stock market over the past couple days. He also takes a look at the latest news from Switzerland. Just weeks after defeating an attempt to back the Swiss franc with more gold, the Swiss National Bank has set negative interest rates in an attempt to further weaken the franc. Finally, Peter digs back into Janet Yellen’s latest statements about the US economy and drop in the price of oil.
Jim Rickards agrees with Peter Schiff. The stock market is in a bubble thanks to the monetary manipulation of the Federal Reserve. Like Peter, he doesn’t think the Fed will raise interest rates in 2015. Instead, Yellen will be forced to start quantitative easing again by the beginning of 2016. This, he argues, will be the beginning of the end of the existing world monetary system. Watch Rickards explain his reasoning to Bloomberg below.
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In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff talks about the Federal Reserve removing the phrase “considerable time” from its policy statement yesterday. While they technically did change the language, Peter points out that they then used some linguistic tricks to essentially maintain the same position on the possibility of future interest rate hikes. You can see for yourself in the quote from the Fed’s press release:
Based on its current assessment, the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy. The Committee sees this guidance as consistent with its previous statement that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time following the end of its asset purchase program in October…”
After picking apart the Fed’s statement, Peter tries to puzzle out the economic conditions that will justify an interest rate hike in the coming months.
CNBC’s Futures Now interviewed Peter Schiff yesterday to hear what he expects from the Federal Reserve’s announcement this afternoon. They also spoke at length about gold, which Peter points out hasn’t gone down at all in 2014 contrary to many expert forecasts. In fact, when priced in other global currencies and stock markets, gold has risen significantly.
Peter Schiff’s new commentary at Euro Pacific Capital examines the supply and demand factors that could be influencing the plunging price of oil. If you want to listen to Peter discuss the economic repercussions of this possible bubble in black gold, listen to his podcast here.
The stunning 40% drop in the price of oil over the past few months has scrambled global economic forecasts, changed the geo-political landscape, and has severely pressured many energy sector investments. Economists are scratching their heads to determine if the drop is good or bad for the economy or whether cheap oil will add to or decrease unemployment, or complicate the global effort to “defeat” deflation. While all of these issues merit detailed discussions, the first question to address is if the steep drop is here to stay and whether energy prices will stay low enough, for long enough, to seriously reshuffle the economic deck.
If you follow precious metals news, you might have seen a recent article reporting that Russia sold a big chunk of its gold reserves. The article has since been corrected, but it just goes to show how sloppy Western journalism can be, especially when it comes to the reality of physical gold investment.
Laurynas Vegys of Casey Research has published a new article exposing this poor reporting. He goes on to dig deeper into the extremely bullish actions of Russia, which appears to prefer gold over the US dollar.
What we’re seeing here is not some haphazard pattern of purchases. Quite the contrary, this is a trend that has been in motion for quite a while, right under the noses of indebted Western governments and against the backdrop of unprecedented rounds of money printing by the world’s major central banks.
