A Greek economist’s terse sarcasm: “GDP has decreased by €47 billion in the last five years. Economy is expected to contract by 3.8% in 2013, the 6th straight year of recession! Unemployment has reached 24.7%. Youth unemployment… 55.4%! No worries though—we have the sun, the sea, our cultural background.” And GOLD.
Gold, Silver, & other Metals
The Japanese Are Dumping Their Gold
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Japanese Are Dumping Their Gold
In Japan, people who are old enough to have lived it as adults still reminisce about the bubble that blew up in 1989 when the Nikkei almost hit 40,000 (now 9,045) and when the sky-high prices of real estate could only go up further. The slide from top to reality has been brutal, and a lot of people lost their shirts. But there has been one investment that has worked out phenomenally well for the otherwise hapless Japanese investor: Gold.
Gold Confiscation, Inflation, And Virtuous Central Bankers
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Gold Confiscation, Inflation, And Virtuous Central Bankers
When the world’s major central bankers get together, as they did at the Fed conference in Washington this weekend, ironies abound. Off to the side, Turkey had just floated a plan to get its people to turn in their physical gold in exchange for “certificates,” a first if still voluntary step in what may become a process of gold confiscation. In the background: the Fed, which had promised to keep interest rates at record lows through 2014, come hell or high water, after having purchased $2.3 trillion in bonds. In the foreground: the money printers of Japan and Europe.