Investment and commodities guru Jim Rogers says we’re heading toward the worst bear market in his lifetime.
Rogers recently spoke a the MoneyShow in San Francisco. He said the first thing we need to understand is that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve “came to the rescue” and drove interest rates to the lowest level in recorded history.
Never in the history of the world have interest rates been this low. In some countries, they were actually negative. This has never, ever happened in the history of the world. Some Federal Reserve governors, when they think nobody’s listening, they acknowledge that this is an experiment. They don’t know how it’s going to wind up.”
But Rogers said he knows how it’s going to wind up.
SchiffGold’s It’s Your Dime features “straight talk” interviews with movers and shakers in the world of precious metals, investing and economics.
In this episode, I talk with Mises Institute president Jeff Deist about Austrian economics, the Fed, Trumpanomics. the biggest threats to our freedom, and of course, gold.
Indians are buying gold.
Imports of the yellow metal into India jumped for the first time in seven months in July and the trend appears to be carrying forward into August, according to a report in the Times of India. Gold sales have surged 15% by volume over last year as Indians took advantage of soft prices and kicked off the wedding and festival season early.
According to jeweler associations in India, demand could finish up as much as 20% in August compared with 2017.
Friday was an active day in the markets. The S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq all hit record highs. The Dow Jones didn’t quite crack into record territory, but it was up over 100 points. Meanwhile, the dollar fell and gold was up more than $20.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks the dovish speech by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole drove all of this. And it could have longer-term ramifications.
We are well into the third quarter of 2018. In our perpetual fast-forward world, analysts are already looking toward Q4. What will the last quarter of the year bring?
It’s virtually impossible to predict the short-term. Who knows what kind of political event, natural disaster or emerging trend will drive the markets over the next few months?
Of course, we can’t predict the future at all. We’re not fortune tellers or Old Testament prophets, but as Dan Kurz notes in his latest post at DK Analytics, it is a bit easier to project what will happen to the economy in the long run because we can clearly see the big-picture dynamics and fundamentals underlying it. As he put it, he’s less sure where America is headed in Q4 than ‘down the road’ in general. The whole thing (political, financial, economic) could fall apart at any time.”
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.
Gold fell about 3% through the first half of August, dropping below the key $1,200 support level. But a report by the World Gold Council released this week lists three key fundamental and technical reasons the gold price may well rebound in the near future.
- An unusually short market
- Financial market uncertainty remains
- Natural buyers may step in
Tuesday marked the 167th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Since then, the Aussies have become the second largest gold producing country in the world. But analysts project gold output in the Land Down Under, along with several other key countries, could slump to “generational lows” in the midterm.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve been reporting on efforts to remove the US dollar from its throne as the world reserve currency. We’ve primarily seen moves toward de-dollarization from countries like China and Russia, and other nations within their orbits. It’s easy for Americans to dismiss efforts to undermine the dollar as desperate moves by their enemies that will never gain any kind of international traction. But now we’re beginning to hear the same de-dollarization rhetoric from American allies.
Earlier this week, German foreign minister Heiko Maas called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the United States.
Russia has added to its gold reserves every month since March 2015. That trend didn’t end in July. In fact, the Russians ramped up their gold purchases even more last month in the face of US economic sanctions.
The Russian central bank added 26.1 tons of gold to its hoard in July, according to International Monetary Fund data reported by Bloomberg. It was the largest increase in Russian gold holdings since last November.
