Tag Archives: 6a.) Monetary Metals

[unable to retrieve full-text content]We’re seeing the argument, again, that silver stocks are being consumed in solar panels, medical applications, and of course, electronics. This argument has a certain temptation. After all, the standard assumption is that value is inversely proportional to quantity. Purchasing power is widely believed to be 1 / N (N is number of units of currency issued).

[unable to retrieve full-text content]This month marks the five-year anniversary of Monetary Metals paying interest on gold. It was July 2016 when we offered our first Gold Fixed Income True Gold Lease. The gold lease was to Valaurum for manufacturing their flagship product, the Aurum®. It paid 3.0% interest on gold to investors (you can read the original press release here).

Can there be innovation in physical gold? Absolutely! In our increasingly digital reality, innovation in the material world may seem a bit passé, but not to Dr. Adam Trexler, founder and President of Valaurum. Valaurum produces the Aurum® – the smallest verifiable unit of gold for investment available on the market today. Adam joined Keith and John for an invigorating discussion on what the future of gold is going to look like. “We’re at the tip of the iceberg in...

There is sometimes a tendency to confuse ends and means. For example, in traveling through an airport there is extensive inspection of passengers. Before you are allowed to board an airplane, you must go through a process that is intrusive and increasingly invasive. This is deemed to be security. How do we know it makes us secure? Because it is annoying. See the switcheroo? The degree of disruption of your schedule and possessions bears only a faint relationship to...

Mainstream analysis sees rising consumer prices, and looks for a monetary cause. Also, when it sees an increase in the quantity of dollars, it looks for rising consumer prices. It is a fact that the quantity of what the mainstream calls money (i.e. the dollar) has risen at an extraordinary rate. The M0 measure has nearly doubled since the start of Covid. It is also a fact that many prices have jumped up significantly. So only one question is open for debate. Is...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The price of gold (and silver) was on a tear in April and May. Then some sideways action. And then this week, thud. On Twitter, a popular meme is that the banks smashed the price by selling futures contracts, though there was no selling of gold bars. Let’s just say that if the price of an August contract fell by $120, while the price of a gold bar held steady, there would be a backwardation of around 40%!

According to the US Treasury, the federal government owes $28.2 trillion. It crossed the “28” threshold on the last day of March. The debt was just under $25 trillion at the end of April a year ago. There’s no question it’s growing at a faster and faster pace, and now there’s the excuse of Covid to spend more. Keep in mind, this is only that part of the total liabilities that the government chooses to acknowledge. If it reported its financials the way all...

The prices of the metals hit their lows by the end of April. Gold traded for around $1,685, and is now over $1,900. Silver was around $24, and is now over $28. These are big moves (though of course nothing like bitcoin). Both metals are subject to the persistent belief that their prices are greatly suppressed. But right now, silver is widely believed to be in a global shortage. We have explained this as a shortage of retail products, most especially one-ounce silver...

Some recent videos about the silver market are generating more buzz than we have seen in a while. They make several points, but the main one is that there is a global shortage of silver. This assertion stands in contradiction to the fact that the silver price has dropped. As of the date of the first of these videos, it had dropped around 10% from its level just a month earlier. An 8th grader is a good litmus test for ideas in economics and markets. What would a...

Keith presented his Theory of Interest and Prices at the Mises’ Austrian Economics Research Conference earlier this year. Described as one of the most interesting talks of the entire event, this episode includes his fifteen-minute presentation as well as some follow-up thoughts by Keith himself at the end. In this episode, he covers: Was Milton Friedman right about inflation? The dynamics of the central banks pushing interest below time preference, and above the...