In Part I of this article, we looked at arbitrage between the physical metal market and the futures market. We saw that there are arbitrageurs who straddle the spread between these markets, who don’t care about price but about the difference between two prices. They seek to profit, not from a change to the gold price, […]
It’s curious, isn’t it? So-called “paper gold” (a futures contract) has a price that is not only very close to physical gold, but it remains locked to it. This is despite the fact that “paper gold” is reviled in the gold community. I am writing this on Sunday evening with little liquidity in the market, […]
There has been much buzz in the past few days about a truly horrible idea. Instead of having to negotiate with Congress to raise the debt ceiling so the Treasury Department can sell more bonds to pay for more spending, why not just mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin? This coin would contain one ounce of […]
Last Friday, I was interviewed on Capital Account with Lauren Lyster. We discussed one of the more popular conspiracy theories regarding gold price manipulation. The claim is that a banking cartel is surreptitiously suppressing the price of gold by selling contracts short “naked” (i.e. without having the metal to deliver) in the futures market. We […]
Professor Antal Fekete has written several pieces discussing gold backwardation, and arguing that this is the red alert signal for the coming financial Armageddon, when the tower of unpayable debts collapses. In this paper, I delve deeper into this topic. My goal is to make this topic approachable by the layman and describe what I […]
I gave this talk at the Chicago Objectivist Society MiniCon Sep 4, 2011. Here is the full set of 9 videos on youtube for my presentation plus Q&A at the end, posted on this site to archive the links. Irredeemable currency vs gold – 1_9 introduction.wmv Irredeemable currency vs gold – 2_9 the origin of […]
