Gold Prices and Panic (Feds actions tantamount to government counterfeiting)

With gold selling for around $1,400 per ounce, it seems like everyone has jumped on the yellow-metal bandwagon. Resource-investment guru Rick Rule said about gold investing recently, "we're no longer lonely in the gold trade. You couldn't describe this as a contrarian activity, and you couldn't describe this as a low-risk activity."

But while Rule and the likes of David Einhorn aren't alone keeping some, or a lot of, money in gold, the Wall Street Journal ran a profile of a more typical investment guide who claims, "There's no utility of gold." Investment advisor Tim Medley says people only trade their dollars for gold when they're afraid, and they won't be afraid much longer.

Medley is old enough to remember overflow crowds at financial conferences in the early 1980s listening to presentations about gold, only to have the metal's price plunge and go nowhere for two decades. He's figuring the same will happen again. "Given a choice between first-rate common stocks and gold over the next five to ten years, I feel strongly that stocks will do much better," says Medley.

Unless his clients specifically tell him to buy some gold or gold stocks for their accounts, Medley won't touch the stuff. "There's no organic growth" in gold, he says.

For sure, gold coins and bars silently gather dust. Gold has no staff, makes no product, earns no profit, and incurs no loss. The yellow metal owes no one, but at the same time it collects no interest either.

However, to say gold has no utility? Time and history would say otherwise. Murray Rothbard listed seven necessary qualities for money during a History of Economic Thought lecture at UNLV back in the fall of 1990. For a substance to be used as money it must be (1) generally marketable, (2) divisible, (3) durable, (4) recognizable, (5) homogeneous, and have a (6) high value per unit weight and (7) fairly stable supply.

Gold happens to meet the test of all seven attributes. However, investment advisor Medley seems to be equating the macroeconomic landscape today with that of 1980, when gold hit $850 per ounce, thinking that it's all downhill from here for the price of the yellow metal, just as it was 30 years ago.

But he turns a blind eye to the fact that M2 was just short of $1.5 trillion in January 1980, while this past October it was $8.7 trillion. Gross debt in 1980 was $909 billion, on November 2 of this year, $13.7 trillion. As a percentage of GDP, the debt was 33.4 percent in 1980; today it's 93.2 percent.

On February 15, 1980, the discount rate was goosed up to 13 percent and federal funds were yielding 14.5 percent to 15 percent (on the way to 20 percent a year later) Today, the discount rate is all of 75 basis points and federal funds fetch a yield of zero to a quarter percent.

And while Volcker's policies spurred widespread protests due to the effects of the high interest rates on the construction and farming sectors, causing irate, bankrupt farmers to drive their tractors onto C Street NW, blockading the Eccles Building, Ben Bernanke invited 60 Minutes into the Fed's chambers to go on camera assuring people he will keep rates near zero for as long as it takes.

Bernanke assured the national audience that the Fed was not printing money; however, he didn't explain where the Fed was going to get the funds to buy $600 billion worth of treasuries.

Rick Rule already knows the answer; and it's not just the Fed that's creating money out of nowhere to buy government bonds. "The decision by the European Central Bank to emulate their American peers to print money to buy existent European bonds is tantamount to government counterfeiting," says Rule.

And while central-bank bureaucrats come up with fancy names for this counterfeiting, like "quantitative easing," the owner of Global Resource Investments differs with that characterization. He says, "I disagree; I think it's a form of fraud. I think they are printing money to buy bonds that they couldn't otherwise sell."

$10 $8 Tim Medley believes stocks are selling at good prices and have the potential to reward investors with significant gains, while he believes the gains in gold prices are likely short-lived. Rule also remembers the late 1970s gold bull market, and he contends this market hasn't yet become the "echo market" that that one was:

In an echo market, the market might be kicked off by fear buying like we're seeing in gold now, and the momentum established by the fear buyers attracts the greed buyers. The momentum associated with the greed buyers sparks more fear buying and backwards and forwards.

Based on what Bernanke said on 60 Minutes, it is hard to imagine that it's really too late to be afraid.

Douglas French is president of the Mises Institute and author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply and Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth. He received his masters degree in economics from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, under Murray Rothbard with Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe serving on his thesis committee. French teaches in the Mises Academy

The Peter Schiff/Austrian Economics ping. (Washington Bankrupting our Nation by Spending your past, present and future money!)

If you realize both parties in Washington think that our money is theirs and you trust them to do the wrong thing, this list is for you.

If you think there is a Santa Claus who is going to get elected in Washington and cut your taxes, spend a few trillion and that will jump-start the economy, this list is not for you.

You can read past posts by clicking on : schifflist , I try to tag all relevant threads with the keyword : schifflist.

Ping list pinged by sickoflibs.

To join the ping list: FReepmail sickoflibs with the subject line add Schifflist.

(Stop getting pings by sending the subject line drop Schifflist.)

The Austrian School’s Commandments plus :From : link

1) You cannot spend your way out of a recession
2) You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function
3) You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing
4) You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless
5) The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out of work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever
6) You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely
7) The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy
8) Every government bureaucrat should keep the following motto in mind when attempting to influence the economy: “First, do no harm!”
9) Central bank-supported fractional reserve banking is an economically distorting, ethically questionable activity. In particular, no government should ever do anything to save any bank from the full consequences of a bank run, no matter what the short-term consequences.
10) Gold is God’s money.

Add mine:

1) Businesses don't hire workers just because of demand for products or services, they hire because it makes them money. Sorry to have to state the obvious.
2) Government spending without taxing is still redistribution
3) Taking one man's money and giving it to another is not a job.
4) Paul Krugman and Bernake have been wrong about everything, as well as the other best and brightest Keynesian's who have been fixing our economy for over a decade.
5) Republicans in the minority (esp out of the White House) act like Republicans, in the majority they act like Democrats .

Coming soon, the sequel, to a theater (or safe deposit box) near you...................

The Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933

______________________________________________________________________Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled

An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes~', in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists,

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section to do hereby prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations and hereby prescribe the following regulations for carrying out the purposes of the order:

Section 1. For the purpose of this regulation, the term 'hoarding" means the withdrawal and withholding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates from the recognized and customary channels of trade. The term "person" means any individual, partnership, association or corporation.

Section 2. All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following:

(a) Such amount of gold as may be required for legitimate and customary use in industry, profession or art within a reasonable time, including gold prior to refining and stocks of gold in reasonable amounts for the usual trade requirements of owners mining and refining such gold.

(b) Gold coin and gold certificates in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate $100.00 belonging to any one person; and gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins.

(c) Gold coin and bullion earmarked or held in trust for a recognized foreign government or foreign central bank or the Bank for International Settlements. (d) Gold coin and bullion licensed for the other proper transactions (not involving hoarding) including gold coin and gold bullion imported for the re-export or held pending action on applications for export license.

Section 3. Until otherwise ordered any person becoming the owner of any gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates after April 28, 1933, shall within three days after receipt thereof, deliver the same in the manner prescribed in Section 2; unless such gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates are held for any of the purposes specified in paragraphs (a),(b) or (c) of Section 2; or unless such gold coin, gold bullion is held for purposes specified in paragraph (d) of Section 2 and the person holding it is, with respect to such gold coin or bullion, a licensee or applicant for license pending action thereon.

Section 4. Upon receipt of gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates delivered to it in accordance with Section 2 or 3, the Federal reserve bank or member bank will pay thereof an equivalent amount of any other form of coin or currency coined or issued under the laws of the Unites States.

Section 5. Member banks shall deliver alt gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned or received by them (other than as exempted under the provisions of Section 2) to the Federal reserve banks of there respective districts and receive credit or payment thereof.

Section 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, out of the sum made available to the President by Section 501 of the Act of March 9, 1933, will in all proper cases pay the reasonable costs of transportation of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates delivered to a member bank or Federal reserve bank in accordance with Sections 2, 3, or 5 hereof, including the cost of insurance, protection, and such other incidental costs as may be necessary, upon production of satisfactory evidence of such costs. Voucher forms for this purpose may be procured from Federal reserve banks.

Section 7. In cases where the delivery of gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates by the owners thereof within the time set forth above will involve extraordinary hardship or difficulty, the Secretary of the Treasury may, in his discretion, extend the time within which such delivery must be made. Applications for such extensions must be made in writing under oath; addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury and filed with a Federal reserve bank. Each applications must state the date to which the extension is desired, the amount and location of the gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates in respect of which such application is made and the facts showing extension to be necessary to avoid extraordinary hardship or difficulty.

Section 8. The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized and empowered to issue such further regulations as he may deem necessary to carry the purposes of this order and to issue licenses there under, through such officers or agencies as he may designate, including licenses permitting the Federal reserve banks and member banks of the Federal Reserve System, in return for an equivalent amount of other coin, currency or credit, to deliver, earmark or hold in trust gold coin or bullion to or for persons showing the need for same for any of the purposes specified in paragraphs (a), (c), and (d) of Section 2 of these regulations.

Section 9. Whoever willfully violates any provision of this Executive Order or these regulation or of any rule, regulation or license issued there under may be fined not more than $10,000, or,if a natural person may be imprisoned for not more than ten years or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.

This order and these regulations may be modified or revoked at any time.

/s/ Franklin D. Roosevelt
President of the United States of America
April 5, 1933

___________________________________________________________________

If your gold or silver is in a "safe deposit box", it isn't safe, and it isn't deposited. It is in a box. Just keep that in mind.

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