Monday, February 26, 2018

James Rickards: Is the Future of Money Gold, Crypto or Fiat?


James Rickards discusses a question many of us have asked, what is the future of money? 

Currently, we dominated by a highly corrupt and evil fiat based system, however, that is not to say that it will be replaced anytime soon, given the tremendous power that it allots our financial elites. 

However, things do have a way of spinning out of control, time and time again, as history has shown. Will the successor be the rising crypto star, or will precious metals once again reassert themselves to dominate all others? 

Rickards discusses this, plus much more.


- Video Source

Saturday, February 24, 2018

How Could Central Banks Unwind QE Without Causing a Recession or Worse?

Especially in hindsight, it is easy to point out the obviousness of the Internet stock bubble in the late 90’s and the subprime-mortgage-driven real estate bubble that max-inflated in 2006. They were parabolic and contained within silos; you could point to the specific-to-them factors that were feeding such wild and unsustainable price levitation.

But what about when The Fed prints so much money over such a long period of time that it seeps into every nook and cranny of the entire economy? And how much more difficult is it to recognize a bubble when most every asset class is part of it?

Rickards flatly states:

Bernanke and Yellen did not get a residential real estate bubble. Instead, they got an “everything bubble.” In the fullness of time, this will be viewed as the greatest blunder in the history of central banking.

What happens when you print $8.3 trillion in money and only get $2.1 trillion of growth? What happened to the extra $6.2 trillion of printed money?

The answer is that it went into assets. Stocks, bonds, emerging-market debt and real estate have all been pumped up by central bank money printing.


Further:

This conundrum of how central banks unwind easy money without causing a recession (or worse) is just one small part of a risky mosaic.

Smart investors should prepare now with reduced exposure to stocks and increased allocations to cash and gold.

Lastly, William White, the former chief economist for the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS (“The central bankers’ central bank”) summed it up in no less stark terms than these: “All the market indicators right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis, but the lesson has somehow been forgotten.”


Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Dominos Are Starting to Fall, The Markets Are Going to Crash


James Rickards appears on Bloomberg news, where he discusses how everything is starting to line up and fall into place, for another major market crash. This is just the beginning, we haven't seen anything yet.

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Monday, February 19, 2018

First There Was 1998, Then 2008, Now 2018? The Next Major Crash is Coming


James Rickards appears on Fox Business, where he talks about the history of crashes the markets have experienced and relates them to the current setup we our now seeing in real time. 2018 appears to be the year of the next big crash.

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Friday, February 16, 2018

U.S. Dollar Decline, Currency War with China, Gold Price Spike


The US Dollar is declining, a currency war is erupting behind the scenes with China and threatens to spill over into the broader markets. Gold is setting itself up for a massive spike higher.

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Monday, February 12, 2018

Silver Was Money, Is Money and Always Will Be Money


The Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire had gold coins called the aureus and solidus, but they also minted a popular silver coin called the denarius. One denarius was the daily wage for unskilled labor and Roman soldiers.

Of course, in the late Empire, the aureus, solidus and denarius were all debased by mixing the gold and silver with base metals. The decline of the Roman Empire went hand in hand with the decline of sound money.

In the early ninth century AD, Charlemagne greatly expanded silver coinage to compensate for a shortage of gold. This was successful in stimulating the economy of the predecessor of the Holy Roman Empire. In a sense, Charlemagne was the inventor of quantitative easing over 1,000 years ago. Silver was his preferred form of money.

Under the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792, both gold and silver coins were legal tender in the U.S. From 1794 to 1935, the U.S. Mint issued “silver dollars” in various designs. These were widely circulated and used as money by everyday Americans. The American dollar was legally defined as one ounce of silver.

The American silver dollar of the late eighteenth century was a copy of the earlier Spanish Real de a ocho minted by the Spanish Empire beginning in the late sixteenth century. The English name for the Spanish coin was the “piece of eight,” (ocho is the Spanish world for “eight”) because the coin could easily be divided into one-eighth pieces.

Until 2001 stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange were quoted in eighths and sixteenths based on the original Spanish silver coin and its one-eight sections.

Until 1935 U.S. silver coins were 90% pure silver with 10% copper alloy added for durability. After the U.S. Coinage Act of 1965, the silver content of half-dollars, quarters and dimes was reduced from 90% to 40% due to rising price of silver and hoarding by citizens who prized the valuable silver content of the older coins.

The new law signed by President Johnson in 1965 marked the end of true silver coinage by the U.S. Other legislation in 1968 ended the redeemability of old “silver certificates” (paper Treasury notes) for silver bullion.

Thereafter, U.S. coinage consisted of base metals and paper money that was not convertible into silver; (gold convertibility had already ended in 1933).

Let’s hope that the U.S. is not following in the footsteps of the Roman Empire in terms of a political decline coinciding with the substitution of base metals for true gold and silver coinage.

In 1986, the U.S. reintroduced silver coinage with a .999 pure silver one-ounce coin called the American Silver Eagle. However, this is not legal tender although it does carry a “one dollar” face value. The silver eagle is a bullion coin prized by investors and collectors for its silver content. But it is not money.

Who in their right mind would pay a full ounce of silver for goods or services worth only a buck?

In short, silver is as much a monetary metal as gold, and has just as good a pedigree when it comes to use in coinage. Silver has supported the economies of empires, kingdoms and nation states throughout history.

It should come as no surprise that percentage increases and decreases in silver and gold prices denominated in dollars are closely correlated.

Silver is more volatile than gold and is more difficult to analyze because it has far more industrial applications than gold. Silver is useful in engines, electronics and coatings.

Interestingly, gold is used very little other than as money in bullion form. Gold has some highly specialized uses for coating and ultra-thin wires, but these are a very small part of the gold market.

Both gold and silver are used extensively in jewelry. I consider jewelry to be “wearable wealth” and akin to bullion rather than a separate market segment.

Because silver has more industrial uses than gold, the price can rise or fall based on the business cycle independent of monetary considerations. However, over long periods of time, monetary and bullion aspects tend to dominate industrial uses and silver closely tracks its close cousin gold in dollar terms.

While gold and silver prices have a high correlation, the correlation is not perfect. There are times where gold outperforms silver and vice versa. Right now we are in a sweet spot for silver.

Gold is performing well, and silver is performing even better!

The latest data is telling me that silver prices are set to rally. This conclusion is based in part on a bull market thesis for gold.

Gold staged an historic rally from 1999 to 2011, from about $250 per ounce to $1,900 per ounce, a gain of about 900% in that twelve-year span. Since then, gold prices fell in a 50% retracement (using the 1999 base) and bottomed at around $1,050 per ounce in December 2015.

Secular bull and bear market tops and bottoms are difficult to see in real time, but they become apparent with hindsight. Gold gained over 23% in 2016-2017. From the perspective of early 2018, it is clear than the gold bear market ended over two years ago and a new multi-year secular bull market has begun.

Silver is not only along for the ride, it is showing even better performance than gold, albeit with greater volatility. Both the gold and silver rallies are based on a combination of supply/demand fundamentals, geopolitical pressures creating safe haven demand, and increasing inflation expectations as confidence in central banking and fiat money erodes.

In addition, silver has an excellent technical set-up right now. Precious metals analyst Samson Li writing in Thomson Reuters on January 2, 2018 offers this insight in the current technical trading position for silver:

Technically, silver is ripe for a major breakout to the upside in 2018. The CFTC figures Managed Money positions show that COMEX silver has been in a net short for three straight weeks since 12th December. This is not unheard of but is relatively rare for silver; the last time COMEX silver was net short was between the end of June and the first week of August 2015. As investment sentiment can swing from one extreme to another, and given silver’s innate volatility, this net short position should point to the possibility of a sharp short-covering rally. Looking back at the corresponding period in 2015, silver price was trading at $15.61/oz on the 7th July, and it was the third consecutive week recording a net short position. Approximately a year later, silver was trading over $20/oz in July 2016… [T]he current poor sentiment does suggest that silver could be one of the better performing precious metals in 2018, barring any crisis that could trump most of the commodities but gold.

The good news is that this secular rally in silver is in its early days. Recent gains will be sustained and amplified in the months and years to come.

Silver will outperform gold in the short-run, and shares in well-managed silver mining companies will do even better than silver.


- Source, Jim Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Friday, February 9, 2018

James Rickards: The Debt Bomb, This Is Why Gold Is Going a Lot Higher This Year


Jim Rickards discusses Why the Third Great Gold Bull Market is on the way. The U.S. Debt Bomb is at 105% to GDP Ratio and will only go higher. He asks's why are interest rates going up? Rising Deficit equals global financial meltdown.

- Source, James Rickards

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The Financial Bubble That Could Break the World

The key to bubble analysis is to look at what’s causing the bubble. If you get the hidden dynamics right, your ability to collect huge profits or avoid losses is greatly improved.

Based on data going back to the 1929 crash, this current bubble looks like a particular kind that can produce large, sudden losses for investors.

The market right now is especially susceptible to a sharp correction, or worse.

Before diving into the best way to play the current bubble dynamics to your advantage, let’s look at the evidence for whether a bubble exists in the first place…

My preferred metric is the Shiller Cyclically Adjusted PE Ratio or CAPE. This particular PE ratio was invented by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller of Yale University.

CAPE has several design features that set it apart from the PE ratios touted on Wall Street. The first is that it uses a rolling ten-year earnings period. This smooths out fluctuations based on temporary psychological, geopolitical, and commodity-linked factors that should not bear on fundamental valuation.

The second feature is that it is backward-looking only. This eliminates the rosy scenario forward-looking earnings projections favored by Wall Street.

The third feature is that that relevant data is available back to 1870, which allows for robust historical comparisons.

The chart below shows the CAPE from 1870 to 2017. Two conclusions emerge immediately. The CAPE today is at the same level as in 1929 just before the crash that started the Great Depression. The second is that the CAPE is higher today than it was just before the Panic of 2008.

Neither data point is definitive proof of a bubble. CAPE was much higher in 2000 when the dot.com bubble burst. Neither data point means that the market will crash tomorrow.

But today’s CAPE ratio is 182% of the median ratio of the past 137-years.

Given the mean-reverting nature of stock prices, the ratio is sending up storm warnings even if we cannot be sure exactly where and when the hurricane will come ashore.


This chart shows the Shiller Cyclically Adjusted PE Ratio (CAPE) from 1880-2017. Over this 137-year period, the mean ratio is 16.75, media ratio is 16.12, low is 4.78 (Dec 1920) and high is 44.19 (Dec 1999). Right now the 33.68 ratio is above the level of the Panic of 2008, and above the level of the market crash that started the Great Depression.

With the likelihood of a bubble clear, we can now turn to bubble dynamics. The analysis begins with the fact that there are two distinct types of bubbles.

Some bubbles are driven by narrative, and others by cheap credit. Narrative bubbles and credit bubbles burst for different reasons at different times. The difference is critical in knowing what to look for when you time bubbles, and for understanding who gets hurt when they burst.

A narrative-driven bubble is based on a story, or new paradigm, that justifies abandoning traditional valuation metrics. The most famous case of a narrative bubble is the late 1960s, early 1970s “Nifty Fifty” list of fifty stocks that were considered high growth with nowhere to go but up.

The Nifty Fifty were often referred to as “one decision” stocks because you would just buy them and never sell. No further thought was required. Of course, the Nifty Fifty crashed with the overall market in 1974 and remained in an eight-year bear market until a new bull market began in 1982.

The dot.com bubble of the late 1990s is another famous example of a narrative bubble. Investors bid up stock prices without regard to earnings, PE ratios, profits, discounted cash flow or healthy balance sheets.

All that mattered were “eyeballs,” “clicks,” and other superficial internet metrics. The dot.com bubble crashed and burned in 2000. The NASDAQ fell from over 5,000 to around 2,000, then took sixteen years to regain that lost ground before recently making new highs.

Of course, many dot.com companies did not recover their bubble valuations because they went bankrupt, never to be heard from again.

The credit-driven bubble has a different dynamic than a narrative-bubble. If professional investors and brokers can borrow money at 3%, invest in stocks earning 5%, and leverage 3-to-1, they can earn 6% returns on equity plus healthy capital gains that can boost the total return to 10% or higher. Even greater returns are possible using off-balance sheet derivatives.


Credit bubbles don’t need a narrative or a good story. They just need easy money.

A narrative bubble bursts when the story changes. It’s exactly like The Emperor’s New Clothes where loyal subjects go along with the pretense that the emperor is finely dressed until a little boy shouts out that the emperor is actually naked.

Psychology and behavior change in an instant.

When investors realized in 2000 that Pets.com was not the next Amazon but just a sock-puppet mascot with negative cash flow, the stock crashed 98% in 9 months from IPO to bankruptcy. The sock-puppet had no clothes.

A credit bubble bursts when the credit dries up. The Fed won’t raise interest rates just to pop a bubble — they would rather clean up the mess afterwards that try to guess when a bubble exists in the first place.

But the Fed will raise rates for other reasons, including the illusory Phillips Curve that assumes a tradeoff between low unemployment and high inflation, currency wars, inflation or to move away from the zero bound before the next recession. It doesn’t matter.

Higher rates are a case of “taking away the punch bowl” and can cause a credit bubble to burst.

The other leading cause of bursting credit bubbles is rising credit losses. Higher credit losses can emerge in junk bonds (1989), emerging markets (1998), or commercial real estate (2008).

Credit crack-ups in one sector lead to tightening credit conditions in all sectors and lead in turn to recessions and stock market corrections.

What type of bubble are we in now? What signs should investors look for to gauge when this bubble will burst?

My starting hypothesis is that we are in a credit bubble, not a narrative bubble. There is no dominant story similar to the Nifty Fifty or dot.com days. Investors do look at traditional valuation metrics rather than invented substitutes contained in corporate press releases and Wall Street research. But even traditional valuation metrics can turn on a dime when the credit spigot is turned off.

Milton Friedman famously said the monetary policy acts with a lag. The Fed has force-fed the economy easy money with zero rates from 2008 to 2015 and abnormally low rates ever since. Now the effects have emerged.

On top of zero or low rates, the Fed printed almost $4 trillion of new money under its QE programs. Inflation has not appeared in consumer prices, but it has appeared in asset prices. Stocks, bonds, commodities and real estate are all levitating above an ocean of margin loans, student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages, and their derivatives.

Now the Fed is throwing the gears in reverse. They are taking away the punchbowl.

The Fed is on course to raise interest rates again in March, under new chairman, Jerome Powell. In addition, the Fed is undertaking QE in reverse by reducing its balance sheet and contracting the base money supply. This is called quantitative tightening or QT.

Credit conditions are already starting to affect the real economy. Student loan losses are skyrocketing, which stands in the way of household formation and geographic mobility for recent graduates. Losses are also soaring on subprime auto loans, which has put a lid on new car sales. As these losses ripple through the economy, mortgages and credit cards will be the next to feel the pinch.

A recession will follow soon.

The stock market is going to correct in the face of rising credit losses and tightening credit conditions.

No one knows exactly when it’ll happen, but the time to prepare is now. Once the market corrects, it’ll be too late to act.

- Source, James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning

Sunday, February 4, 2018

James Rickards Final Warning, Buy Gold or Rue the Day


The markets continue to degrade and weaken as each month passes, even though they continue to tick higher in price. The foundation that props them up is based on fiat and that is being threatened. 

Gold is incredibly undervalued and has not yet priced in a "collapse style scenario". The time to buy is now. Don't say you weren't warned.

- Video Source