Gold, Silver, & other Metals

The Very Brief Phenomenon Of The Gold Standard

by Contributor •  • Comments Off on The Very Brief Phenomenon Of The Gold Standard

By Dr. Bryan Taylor: Europe was on a bimetallic standard, not a Gold Standard, from the Middle Ages until World War I. Gold triumphed in the 19th century because bimetallism had failed. This should have been taken as a sign that the gold standard too would inevitably fail.

Dollar Destruction And Gold Over 47 Years – A Personal Story

by Johnnygeneric •  • Comments Off on Dollar Destruction And Gold Over 47 Years – A Personal Story

In a human life, 47 years isn’t all that long. So this is a personal data point of how the Fed has managed, or rather mismanaged, or rather utterly and willfully destroyed, the dollar since his mom sold their trailer in 1966 – and what that would mean in gold today.

By Midyear, Europe ‘Can No Longer Live With This Euro’

by Wolf Richter •  • Comments Off on By Midyear, Europe ‘Can No Longer Live With This Euro’

“I’m sitting on cash,” Felix Zulauf said when he was asked in an interview where he was putting his money. With decades of asset management experience under his belt, he’d founded Zulauf Asset Management in Switzerland in 1990. But now he was worried—and has turned negative on just about everything.

Gold, Molotov Cocktails, Rubber Bullets, And Teargas: A Rift In Greece

by Wolf Richter •  • 2 Comments

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.

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.