After marching steadily higher early in the week, gold and silver saw their biggest one-day losses in more than a month on Friday as hopes for more Fed money printing were dashed after the better-than-expected labor report. Still, both metals maintain impressive gains for 2012 after a disappointing end to 2011 as more attention is focused on demand in China and actions by central banks, two of the most important price drivers in recent months.

After rising above $1,760 an ounce for the first time since November, the spot gold price ended the week 0.7 percent lower, down from $1,737.30 an ounce to $1,725.90, as the silver price surged past the $34 mark before reversing course, ending the week down 0.9 percent, from $33.99 an ounce to $33.67. The gold price is now up 10.2 percent for the year, but down 10.3 percent from its 2011 high, and silver has risen 20.8 percent in 2012, down 32.0 percent from its peak last spring.

We’ll find out soon enough if Friday’s sell-off was anything more than a one-day event.

Clearly, there have been many good reasons for the price of precious metals to head higher over the last month – demand from China, loosening monetary policy by central banks, and increased gold purchases by central banks topping that list – and many technical analysts have been shocked by the ease which previous resistance levels have so quickly been surpassed and now function as support. Up until Friday, technical factors were unquestionably positive, but, with the late-week reversal, some now argue that the metals have come too far, too fast and the Friday correction will continue.

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

If you were to extend the chart to the left, you’d see that bank assets rose modestly for decades while the many economic/financial imbalances were being built up as the end of “The Great Moderation” signaled the beginning of “The Great Central Bank Intervention”.

In all, there are a dozen or so more images in this depressingly good collection of charts(.pdf) at Cumberland that will make you wonder anew where this is all headed.

Utah became the first state to introduce its own alternative currency when Governor Gary Herbert signed a bill into law last March that recognized gold and silver coins issued by the U.S. Mint as an acceptable form of payment. Under the law, the coins — which include American Gold and Silver Eagles — are treated the same as U.S. dollars for tax purposes, eliminating capital gains taxes.

Since the face value of some U.S.-minted gold and silver coins — like the one-ounce, $50 American Gold Eagle coin — is so much less than the metal value (one ounce of gold is now worth more than $1,700), the new law allows the coins to be exchanged at their market value, based on weight and fineness.

“A Utah citizen, for example, could contract with another to sell his car for 10 one-ounce gold coins (approximately $17,000), or an independent contractor could arrange to be compensated in gold coins,” said Rich Danker, a project director at the American Principles Project, a conservative public policy group in Washington, D.C.
…
However, most people aren’t going to walk around with such valuable coins in their pockets, said Vieira. Plus, calculating the value of the coins — especially if they come from different parts of the globe and are of different sizes and shapes — will get tricky. It’s more likely that the states will create electronic depositories and accounts for the coins to make transactions easier, when and if the initial bills are passed, he said.

Utah Gold & Silver Depository is already developing a system where customers could use debit cards linked to their gold holdings. When customers swipe their debit cards to make transactions, physical gold and silver coins would be transferred between accounts in privately-owned depositories (or vaults) based on the market value of the metals.

Of course, the dismal set thinks this idea is nuts, Vanderbilt economics professor David Parsley noting that it’s a “terrible” idea and that proponents of sound money may actually want to “destroy the country”. Yes, economists remain largely out-of-touch with reality…

There is a widening gulf in thinking about money these days and that theme is also clear in Floyd Norris’ New York Times offering In a Focus on Gold, History Repeats Itself.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from Mr. Romney yet,” joked Grant when I called on him in his offices down on Wall Street. “I’m sitting by the phone, I’m ready.”

He may have to wait some time. Romney, a conventional Wall Street figure, is unlikely to tap him anytime soon.
…
He is best known these days — to Gingrich and Paul, among others — for his long-standing support for the gold standard. The world has moved in his direction. In 12 years, gold has risen from a derided relic trading at $250 an ounce to a hot investment at $1,750. Everywhere paper currency systems are under challenge. In 2008, the world discovered that you can’t just manufacture endless wealth out of thin air, as the gold bugs had long argued, and it is still struggling with the realization.

Many people will think of the gold standard as a relic of a bygone era, something as old-fashioned as bow-ties and stuffed animals. (My caveat: To me, that’s not an insult.) Grant, when we met, argued the reverse. He says paper currencies and our current monetary system are the ones that are out of date.

“The anachronism is today’s system,” he says. We have a “command and control, top down” system where the Fed imposes an interest rate on society. The Fed, in other words, tells us what the price of money should be. It is, Grant says, at odds with the modern age. “We live in a world of collaborative social networks” of the Internet and Facebook, of Wikipedia instead of the old World Book, and so on. And yet when it comes to the price of money, we wait for a committee that sits in private to tell us what it should be”.

There’s lots more in this story on Grant’s views of the financial system as currently constructed and what he would do if he were to sit in Ben Bernanke’s chair at the Fed. If you ask me, his gold standard price of $2,500 an ounce for the metal seems a bit low.

The funniest thing about it are the prices – only three digits with a lower scale of $280!

I’ve long referred to the Fed Chief as “Golden Ben Bernanke” and, after last week’s FOMC meeting and what it did for the gold price, it looks he’ll cement that reputation this year.

From the World Gold Council’s latest commentary on gold as an investment comes the chart below showing that U.S. stocks were much more volatile than gold in recent years.

This Commodity Online story about central bank bullion buying is worth a look as well. I remember hearing about Mexico buying a lot of the stuff last year but didn’t know they managed to garner the top spot with nearly a 100 tonne increase.

Of course, we’ll probably find out in a few years that China bought much more than that in 2011, central bank officials there wary about telling the rest of the world about their purchases lest the price rise too fast before they’re done buying.

So far, there has been no official confirmation of this story and, at the moment, I’d have to agree with this commentary at Commodity Online that it’s probably best viewed as a rumor, but, if both India and China do intend to pay for their $25 billion per year in oil purchases from Iran with the yellow metal, that could result in a lot of gold being mobilized.

Of course that wouldn’t necessarily mean that the gold price will rise. India could simply exchange their currency for gold, transfer ownership of the gold to Iran in exchange for oil, and then Iran could exchange that gold for whatever currency they desire, having no net effect on gold demand. But, it certainly won’t hurt the gold price and will surely further diminish the reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar.

What’s interesting about the bottom half of the chart is that the world’s number one gold producer – China – has a relatively small amount of identified underground gold reserves. If investment demand continues to increase, we might just run out of the stuff.

Economists broadly do not favour a return to a gold standard. The University of Chicago conducted a poll of 40 leading economists none of whom supported the move. But it is also clear that something needs to change. So long as policy makers make over-extended promises on the one hand (to ensure re-election) and overextend the printing presses with the other then we will continue to see inflation and currency declines as those shown below.

Since 1971 the US dollar has lost over 85% of its value by official (CPI) measures. Truly the thief in the night and that’s just not right. To use the words of President Hoover in 1933 – “We have gold because we cannot trust governments”.

Simply put, the U.S. and/or the world can’t go back on a gold standard unless the price of gold goes substantially higher, which, come to thing of it, is where it’s headed anyway. But figures like the $45,000 an ounce suggested by Norman just seem impossible, though, come to think of it, $2,000 an ounce seemed kind of impossible just a few years ago.

A stronger euro and a weaker dollar have worked wonders for the once-thought-dead gold bull market and silver turned in its most impressive weekly performance in almost three months as the world continues to marvel at the surging demand for precious metals in China, a trend that could accelerate as policy makers there shift from fighting inflation to spurring growth.

For the week, spot gold rose 1.7 percent, from $1,639.70 an ounce to $1,667.00, as silver surged over the $30 an ounce mark, rising 8.2 percent from $29.77 an ounce to $32.20. Gold is now up 6.4 percent for the year, but down 13.3 percent from its high last summer, while the silver price is up 15.6 percent in 2012 but remains 34.9 percent below its early-2011 peak.

The late-2011 surge in Chinese gold imports discussed here last week made its way into a featured Wall Street Journal story($) on Wednesday in what was a very favorable take on the subject. I’ve always considered the Wall Street Journal to be the most even-handed mainstream financial media outlet when it comes to gold as an investment and the positive closing comments indicate to me a growing acceptance of this theme:

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