Grant Williams on Risk

I’d heard about this presentation by Grant Williams at the Mines & Money investment conference in Hong Kong and it’s now available online.

I suppose the short version of this story is that traditional price signals have been thoroughly corrupted by central bank policies and we are once again in uncharted territory that comes with unknown risk, a condition that some mistake for new found prosperity.







After news crews outnumbered customers in some ATM lines last week when banks in Cyprus opened back up following a bailout deal with European Union officials, the mainstream financial media appears to have quickly lost interest in this story.

They shouldn’t.

This continues to be one of the more important developments in the long-running global financial crisis and it’s likely to spur a good deal of new interest in gold. Not immediately, but, over time, there is sure to be a “slow motion bank run” by wealthy investors in many parts of the world and some portion of that money will be used to buy gold.

It’s no surprise that there was little commotion when banks in Cyprus reopened last Thursday. Why? Because insured accounts (less than 100,000 euros) were left untouched in the bailout deal and capital controls limited cash withdrawals to 300 euros for individuals and to 5,000 euros for businesses. Large accounts, where up to 60 percent of deposits could be seized, were frozen.

In order to have a run on any bank, depositors must be able to withdraw their money – all of it if they desire – and that simply hasn’t been possible in recent days.

Word came on Monday that 37.5 percent of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros have already been seized to recapitalize the Bank of Cyprus, the nation’s biggest lender, with another 22.5 percent to remain blocked until the recapitalization plan is finalized. The 40 percent of large accounts that is left over could be unfrozen as soon as today, but even this won’t result in a bank run due to capital controls.

[To continue reading this article, please visit Seeking Alpha.]

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Dylan Grice On When To Sell Your Gold

Via this item at Business Insider and this one at BullionVault come some much needed words of reassurance for precious metals investors (it’s been another rough week) from Société Générale strategist Dylan Grice:

Some would say the time to sell gold is now… Gold just isn’t the misunderstood, widely shunned asset it was a few years ago. Isn’t the bull market now long in the tooth, with better opportunities to be found elsewhere?

The reason I own gold is because I’m worried about the long-term solvency of developed market governments.

Eventually, there will be a crisis of such magnitude that the political winds change direction, and become blustering gales forcing us onto the course of fiscal sustainability. Until it does, the temptation to inflate will remain, as will economists with spurious mathematical rationalisations as to why such inflation will make everything OK (witness the IMF’s recent recommendation that inflation targets be raised to 4%: IMF Tells Bankers to Rethink Inflation – WSJ). Until it does, the outlook will remain favorable for gold. But eventually, majority opinion will accept the painful contractionary medicine because it will have to. That will be the time to sell gold.

Grice also gets in a in a jab or two at economists:

…economists look down on disciplines which might teach them it, such as history, because they aren’t mathematical enough. True, historians don’t use maths (primarily because they don’t have physics envy) but what they do use is common sense, and an understanding that while the economic laws might hold in the long run, in the short run the political beast must be fed.

I don’t know about you, but I feel much better now…

The week is not starting out well for the yellow metal, but, as anyone who has owned gold and/or silver for more than a few  years surely realizes, this is a marathon, not a sprint, and confusing the two can really hurt your bottom line. Another reminder of the secular nature of rising gold prices comes via the infographic below from Gold Bullion International:

Click to enlarge and, just in case there was any doubt, to learn the answer to the question.

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Warren Buffett Priced in Gold

Via this item at the azizanomics blog the other day comes another way to look at Warren Buffett’s recent comments about “valueless” gold in the depiction of Berkshire Hathaway stock priced in the yellow metal.

I’d have to agree with the chart’s creator John Aziz when he notes:

Warren Buffett had a great ride: he grew his wealth and businesses in an era of unprecedented growth powered by OPEC oil, and later by Chinese industrialism. That era — the era of the American free lunch — is coming to an end. His insights are applicable to that era. Today is a different world.

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More on Warren Buffett and Gold

Max Keiser talks to Ned Naylor Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management about why Warren Buffett hates gold after the “Oracle of Omaha” devoted a considerable portion of his recent shareholders letter(.pdf) to discuss why the metal is not worth owning.

Among the many other interesting things you’ll learn from Ned is that Warren Buffett’s father was the “Ron Paul of his day”, meaning that, Buffett the Younger’s views toward the yellow metal are likely something he didn’t learn at home.

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