October, 2014

Guest Post: Why is gold mining such a crappy business?

by Steve Saville Below is an excerpt from a commentary originally posted at www.speculative-investor.com on 12th October 2014. That gold mining has generally been a crappy long-term investment for almost five decades is evidenced by the following chart. The chart, much of the data for which were provided by Nick Laird of www.sharelynx.com, shows the ratio of the Barrons […]

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: 26 Oct, 2014

On Monday and Tuesday, the hopes of the gold and silver speculators were raised. Early on Tuesday morning (Arizona time) the gold price hit $1,255 and the silver price was $17.66. But by Friday’s close, the prices were down from last week by seven bucks and 8 cents, respectively. Silver, in particular, is developing a […]

Fans of Central Banking Have an Achilles Heel

Most of my writing about the gold standard is about how it works, and how the paper dollar standard doesn’t. A casual conversation I had with someone recently underscored that there is an even stronger argument. Our opponents, those who support central banking and irredeemable paper money, have to make two cases. One is to […]

100% of Mainstream Interest Rate Theory is Wrong

An interesting article on MarketWatch today caught my attention. The subhead is the money quote, “Back in April every economist in a survey thought yields would rise. Guess what they did next.” Every? The article refers to 67 economists polled by Bloomberg, all of whom would seem to believe in the quantity theory of money. […]

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: 19 Oct, 2014

We want to share a thought that has been implicit in many statements in this Report over the last two years. There is no direct or linear connection between the price of gold (or silver) and what we see reported as macroeconomic data, gold mining data, Indian or Chinese imports, jewelry, etc. By the official […]

Why is the Gold Standard Urgent?

After President Nixon’s gold default in 1971, many people have advocated a return to the gold standard. One argument has been repeated: consumer prices are rising. While this is true, it wasn’t compelling in the 1970’s and it certainly doesn’t fire people up today. Rising prices—what most people think of as inflation—is a dead-end, politically. […]

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: 12 Oct, 2014

The dollar dropped this week. The dollar index fell from 86.69 to 85.91. Of course, this is largely driven by the change in the dollar value in euros, as the euro makes up about 58% of the index. The dollar went from €79.88 to €79.19, or just about -1%. If you’re not an American, don’t […]

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report: 5 Oct, 2014

How much higher can the dollar go? Betting on the Fed’s paper has been one helluva speculation. No doubt the Fed’s credit quality has been falling, but powerful forces are driving it up, such as desperate debtors clutching for cash to calm their creditors (sorry, couldn’t resist). The dollar was up this week, from 25.5 […]

Perception vs. Reality at the Fed

Last week, a story broke about Fed whistleblower Carmen Segarra. I wrote an article on Forbes about it, Disgruntled Fed Lawyer Blows Whistle on Regulatory Capture. Segarra is a former Fed regulator assigned to supervise Goldman Sachs. She secretly recorded 46 hours of audio from her meetings, during her short stint on site at Goldman […]