A friend of mine, who was struggling with the idea of buying gold, lamented that gold only had any value if someone else perceived it to. Yes that’s true. As it is for everything, whether you’re talking about a share of Apple stock or a 1977 Chevy Malibu.

But perception is of particular concern for gold. To understand why the dollar price of gold languishes from time to time, you really have to step back and take a look at the larger picture. Understand that we now live in a world where almost every trader and investor today has lived their entire adult lives in a global system of fiat money. That almost every living person who has a degree in economics, finance, or business, has spent years having the false ideas of Keynesian promises drilled into their collective consciousness. That generations of the public have been told – and believe – that central banks notes are the ultimate arbiter of value for everything. /> /> Combine this overwhelming consensus with the emotional need for humans to have approval from the herd, and you are left with an incredibly powerful system of perception. One which will not change easily.

However, the reality is simply this: you cannot continue to accumulate debt forever. Eventually something must give way. Our public leaders are not only unprepared to deal with this, but most will not even acknowledge it as a possibility.

Take Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. In his recent Bloomberg debate with Ron Paul (see video below), he was asked, with the current debt to GDP number around 100%, how much more debt would he be willing to incur in order to stimulate the economy?  His answer was that he would be comfortable with an immediate increase in debt to GDP to 130%.

But how can this go on ad infinitum? Can an individual live beyond his means forever by accumulating credit card debt or is there eventually a day of reckoning?  How is it any different for a government? Yes there is the additional wrinkle that they can print new money to pay for things, but there are limits to that as well. Then what?

Krugman and his Keynesian ilk would have you believe that we will grow into our debt. Jump start the economy with some additional debt and soon enough additional tax revenues will be flowing in to cover it. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen. If that were the case, how did we get to 100% debt to GDP in the first place? How do we have any debt at all? By any metric you care to look at, the total debt of the United States continues to grow beyond its ability to pay for it.

Yes the current perception will not change easily. There are simply too many who profit from it to let it go without a fight. The role of economics in modern society is not to spread understanding and offer solutions, but rather to obfuscate truth. The role of economic policy in politics is to convince the majority to support programs that are contrary to their own self interest.

The harsh lesson of life is that you are on your own and always have been. You simply cannot blindly follow those who are presented as experts. You must become your own expert. You must ask the tough questions and put emotion aside as you analyze the answers – remembering that the truth is often not what you want to hear.

Let me start by saying that I am not a technical analyst. Consider the following to be for learning or entertainment purposes only.

If you take a look at the silver chart from last October, there appears to be a classic reverse head and shoulders pattern forming with a neckline in the $36-37 area. This is considered to be a very bullish formation. The difference between the head and the neckline is about $10, which is indicative of the size of the breakout once the second shoulder has been completed. If the formation plays out, it would mean somewhere around $46 silver in the mid to late summer time frame. /> /> Is classic technical analysis relevant in today’s silver market? Can a reverse head and shoulders pattern overcome the summer doldrums? Stay tuned and find out…

Long term, the fundamentals look stronger every day with central banks around the world continuing to grow their balance sheets (the real QE) and bankrupt governments foolishly pursuing their panacea of endless debt.

 

I was asked if there were any good books about gold confiscation and do I have any recommendations. As it turns out I do. The guys over at Dollar Vigilante have a put out “Get Your Gold Out Of Dodge” – A complete resource on Internationalizing Your Precious Metals.  ~David Morgan

Silver expert David Morgan presents his case for the diminishing worldwide silver supply which cannot possibly meet the growing industrial demand for silver. This talk was presented on March 16th, 2011 in Plano, Texas, and was sponsored by Texas Precious Metals.

Although gold is frequently considered as the only expensive metal that can serve the function of money, silver too is gaining significance in the investment market. The commercial use of silver is increasing and with this, the value of silver is climbing fast too and even quicker than the cost of gold. Thus, if you’re in debt and looking for debtreduction services, you can utilize the cash from your investment to repay your debts. Between Jan 4, 2010 and June 30, 2011, silver made an immense rise above gold in the market. Gold lifted its cost by 34 percent, whereas silver went up in excess of 100 percent, setting an unmatched sellable value via silver investing. Pure silver investments are conducted through the acquisition of .999 pure silver coins or rounds.

The coins are one of the safest means to conduct an investment in the silver market. These rounds or coins are recognized as the most liquid and least expensive way to retain your silver to hand and if the need occurs, a good type of deal or exchange material. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 included the costly metal objects to hold eligibility for addition in the IRA, producing a richer, steadier portfolio via silver investing for the proprietor. Silver has a history of its own. In 14 diverse languages, the words for “silver” and “money” are identical. People have employed silver for trade over gold. Even though gold used in coins were closed in production, silver retains its position as a strong metal worth in the trade market. The silver rounds are a means to invest in a sound, well-built financial future.

Silver – An investment option

Under the existing scenario, a lot of investors are looking for safe investment options. Gold is probably the most accepted safe shelter in disturbed markets, although its authentic use as a metal is comparatively low. There has been much guesswork over whether or not the metal is overrated, frightening a lot of investors out of gold and into a different valuable metal, silver. Silver has turned out to be an increasingly well-liked safe shelter option as it’s available with an economical price mark and a list of realistic uses in comparison to the other precious metal, gold. However, gold’s chief attraction has been its excessive profits over the last few years, generating handsome returns for numerous investors. Whereas the SPDR Gold ETF earned 23.99% and 29.27% in the year 2009 and 2010, the SLV or iShares Silver Trust made a profit of 47.29% and 82.14%, overshadowing the wonderful performance from gold.

Even though silver has created some startling figures, 2011 witnessed a steep fall in the price of the metal. With the costly metal at its cheapest price, and global instability likely to continue, purchasing into silver at such economical costs seems quite alluring. If you’re seeking the maximum return on a safe investment, you might opt for silver. Silver remains the finest and most sensible investment opening out there. As the terrors of inflation are slowly sweeping out of the global financial system, the silver market is clearly building on the new highs.

Real Money Tracker lets you keep track of what your physical gold and silver savings are worth today and in the past. Lets say you bought 1 oz gold coin in 2008 and 5 oz silver coins in 2009 and you want to know what you would get if you sold all of it today. RealMoneyTracker.com calculates this for you and displays cool graphs of how your savings have done in the past. Sure, there are many gold and silver graphs out there showing you the current spot price of real money, but RealMoneyTracker.com shows you your personal graph. For free!

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*Your personal gold and silver chart! /> *Multiple fiat currencies /> *Keep track of gains and losses

Registration is 100% anonymously, 100% free.  /> www.realmoneytracker.com

Political pundits remain amazed at 76-year old Ron Paul’s appeal to America’s youth. When he goes to college campuses, students show up in groves. A couple of years ago, his flight from Houston to Phoenix was weather-delayed for hours, but when he arrived at ASU thousands still waited to hear him speak.

At the final GOP presidential debate in Mesa, over a thousand youth, who could not afford to pay to attend the debate, waited at a church for Ron Paul to make a personal appearance. Ron Paul did not disappoint, showing up and delivering a basic talk on liberty, freedom, no wars (unless Congressionally-declared) and a reduction in government spending. The crowd went wild.

Ron Paul is so popular that he could have his own clothing line. Actually, he almost does as multiple websites offer Ron Paul shirts, T-shirts, caps, coffee mugs, sweatshirts and hoodies. The latest line of Ron Paul t-shirts proudly proclaims Ron Paul is my Home Boy. Stickers are also available.

Ron Paul is my Home Boy T-shirts and stickers can be bought at www.ronpaulismyhomeboy.com.  5% of all sales of Ron Paul items will be donated to Campaign for Liberty, which sprang from Ron Paul’s 2008 run for the GOP presidential nomination.

The reactions to last week’s hammering of gold and silver further exhibits that we are still in the early stages of a long-term precious metals bull market.  With Tuesday’s huge declines in gold and silver, public sentiment turned bearish almost instantly, which is exactly what the sellers wanted.

In the early stages of a bull market, setbacks produce last week’s results: nearly instant negativity, in some cases panic.  In the latter stages of a bull market, price declines are viewed universally as buying opportunities, which are jumped on with confidence.  In the early stages, setbacks generate concern, cause investors to question the wisdom of their positions.  In the later stages, positions are increased.

Richard Russell, of Dow Theory Letters fame, used to say that if you aren’t sweating your buys you aren’t buying right.  To buy right, you have to separate yourself from the crowd.

Last week’s selling has been reported by experts in the industry to have been an absolute manipulative move.  Andrew Maguire, now known as the London whistleblower because of his email to the CFTC about a coming manipulative move last year, had this to say in a KingWorldNews.com interview: “. . . it couldn’t have been more blatant (intervention in the gold market) could it?  Talk about not worrying about hiding your footprints.  This was obviously sanctioned somewhere at a higher level because the amounts of contracts, paper contracts that hit the market, all at once, within seconds of each other, this was not normal trading.”

Maguire also said: “We were seeing massive order flows.  We were seeing every single bid being hit.  The offers were just massive.  I mean we were seeing 10’s and 20 thousand contracts at a time being unloaded by single individuals.”

James Turk, famed long-time gold trader said, also in a KWN.com interview: “We’ve seen this so many times over the past twelve years, Eric.  I’m taking last week’s smash in the metals in stride.  The fact that central banks chose to intervene when silver had broken out on massive volume and gold was on the verge of a breakout is not surprising.  The situation was getting desperate and they had to intervene at that point or things were going to get out of control on the upside.

“The reason, of course, is that the underlying fundamentals for gold and silver remain very bullish.  I know that corrections, like the one we are experiencing, can be disconcerting to investors who have made recent purchases, but as we have said so many times in the past, the hardest thing to do is to sit tight during these downdrafts.”

The sellers got the results they wanted: negative news on the metals, big declines, which send the message to investors thinking of joining the gold and silver march upward that the metals are dangerous investments.  Not discussed is that gold is up nearly seven times off its low a decade ago and that silver is up nearly nine times off its decade ago low.

Turk notes that “the fundamentals for gold and silver remain very bullish.”  Frankly, I haven’t looked at gold’s supply/demand fundamentals in a long time.  Silver’s fundamentals, of course, are widely discussed in precious metals circles and difficult to miss.  Besides, I’m a silver bull and know well silver fundamentals.  However, I’m not a gold and silver bull because of either gold’s or silver’s fundamentals.

I am a gold and silver bull because the metals are in long-term bull markets as a result of the US’s expansive monetary policy, and not just because of the massive creation of dollars since 2008.  The US went on a dollar binge immediately after Nixon closed the gold window, entering a great inflationary period.  Look at the graph below.

For now, ignore the action from 2008.  Admittedly, it’s hard to look at the graph without being drawn to the part that shows the massive money supply growth since 2008, but for now concentrate on the money supply increase from August 1971 to 2008.

In the decades before 1971, the money supply saw small growth.  In the following decades, the money supply ballooned.  Monetary inflation is followed by price inflation, and massive monetary inflation is followed by massive price inflation.  Gold and silver will remain in bull market regardless of their fundamentals.

A final note on last Tuesday’s (Feb. 28, 2012) bear raid.  Many analysts said it was because of the Fed’s statement that there was no need for another quantitative easing program at this time, which suggested that monetary policy would be “tight over the foreseeable future.”  The Fed could withhold printing another single dollar, and we will still face massive price inflation.  Now, concentrate on the graph for the years following 2008.  Enough money has already been printed to guarantee continued price inflation.  This dip should be bought although there’s no way of know how much further prices will fall before they stabilize and afterwards rebound.

Another piece of advice from by Richard Russell: a bull market will bailout your timing mistakes.  Don’t worry about buying a little too soon.  Only one investor buys at the absolute bottom.

I highly encourage you to read the latest interview with Hugo Salinas Price.  Mr Price is a retired billionaire who made his fortune via a chain of appliance stores in Mexico.  He is also a tireless advocate of sound money.  His plan to reintroduce silver as a competing currency in Mexico would make it the most sought after money in the world bar none. It is well worth your time to understand the details of how he proposes to do this.

But what I really want to draw attention to is a point that Mr. Price frequently makes that you very rarely hear anywhere else – the fact that the limitless trade imbalances of the US and its subsequent de-industrialization and loss of quality jobs can be laid at the doorstep of the fiat dollar.  Consider his point: />

“I see no fundamental reason why silver cannot support international trade; it did at one time, and can do it again: it is a question of a natural rise in the price of silver to reflect the tremendous depreciation of paper currencies that has taken place through the years. But we must remember that international trade has to be self-liquidating: exports are collected in the form of imports, and imports are paid for with exports.

No amount of silver (or gold) would be sufficient to allow chronically UNBALANCED trade. So this brings with it, the revival of JOBS. Jobs growth has become so scarce in the West because all that the East exports can be paid with dollars or euros, whose supply is inexhaustible. Eastern exports have removed millions upon millions of Western jobs and hundreds of industries, because those incoming goods can be paid with unlimited amounts of fiat paper money. I cannot see how any Western industrial economy can survive in the long-term, under the paper money system. Europe is gravely affected by the loss of industries and jobs, and only a return to gold can bring them back.

Jobs will NOT return until TRADE IS BALANCED and trade will not be balanced until silver and/or gold is made the international means of payment – paper unacceptable.”

This is perhaps difficult to intuitively understand without some explanation.  First consider a global trade system that works entirely on a barter system.  Imports must equal exports.  No country will give away its valuable goods without an equal value of goods in return – nor would any individual in a barter economy.  This is easy to understand.  Now let’s introduce money in the form of gold.  Gold has value all over the world as a recognized store of value and as such a country would be willing to trade its goods all or in part for gold.

Since gold is sound money, meaning that new gold cannot be summoned into existence by a central banker, a trade imbalance offset by gold can only be a temporary condition.  If a particular good, say an automobile, is cheaper to buy as an import than domestically produced, then many consumers will pursue this option resulting in a net outflow of gold from the country.

A decrease in a country’s gold supply is deflation by definition.  The result is an increase in its value, most commonly observed as a general drop in prices.  At some point this drop in prices will make the domestically produced automobiles more attractive to those in other countries, and they will begin to import more of them, thus reversing the trade imbalance along with the net flow of gold.

Gold as money in the settlement of international trade has a natural balancing effect.  A fiat dollar produced by the Federal Reserve has no such property.  Since dollars can be produced in unlimited quantities, trade imbalances can be maintained for as long as these dollars are accepted.  Unfortunately, the net flow of manufacturing and good jobs from the West to the East can also be maintained for just as long.  The Federal Government likes this arrangement as many of these dollars flooding the world have no where else to go but to come back the US to fund additional government debt.

In 1971, when the US government defaulted on its obligation to redeem dollars for gold with its trading partners, it set our fate into stone:  A near endless de-industrialization, a loss of quality jobs, a massive rise in the size and power of government, bankruptcy, and ultimately the destruction of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

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