My name is Shawn Ozbun, and our goal is to keep you up to date with what’s going on in the world of Gold and Silver by providing you with current news and precious metals pricing.
The Silvertowne Vault Cast is brought to you by www.Silvertowne.com
Welcome to the 50th episode of the SilverTowne Vault Cast. It’s really hard to believe that I have now recorded this show 50 times. Thank you so much to those of you who have supported this show by sharing the videos and leaving comments and feedback on SilverTownes YouTube and iTunes pages. I appreciate your continued support of this show.
Today we have some very interesting news about Russia and how they are now the top gold buyer in the world. What are China and Russia up to with their huge gold holdings and imports and are wall street insiders expecting something really big to happen. Houston Texas is going to require you to get a mug shot and give fingerprints in order to sell gold. That is very troubling and we will discuss all this and more on the show today.
Now lets get into today's precious metals pricing!
Gold - $1647.63 Up $4.94
Silver - $30.90 Up $.15
Platinum - $1722.00 Up $6.50
Palladium - $ 762.04 Down $1.47
Gold at $5,000 and beyond: Peter Schiff sticks to his call
So what does one of the biggest gold bulls out there have to say about recent action that has been anything but bullish for the precious metal?
“It’s hardly any move. These are small moves and the media likes to make a lot of noise whenever this happens. ‘We told you, gold’s a bubble. Get out,’” says Peter Schiff , the chief executive and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, who has been calling for gold to hit $5,000 since 2000, when it traded at around $300 an ounce.
Peter Schiff
Gold has languished since Monday’s pummeling, which saw it hit five-week lows. And gold is being outperformed by every other precious/base metal out there so far this year.
But Schiff is nonplussed. “If you compare the volatility to stock markets, it’s a lot less volatile. Also, whenever the stock market makes a nominal new high, the bias in the media against gold goes up,” says Schiff. (Watch Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter on CNBC talking about how gold is breaking down.)
Schiff’s big gold call ties into his extremely bearish view on where the dollar is headed, amid the money-printing from the Fed and other central banks and hyperinflation that he says is coming. Watch Schiff on Dow at 14,000 is no big deal.
Quantitative easing is one reason many gold bugs like Schiff think the precious metal is a winner in the long run. The more money central banks print in a bid to help growth, the more those currencies debase. And that works in gold’s favor. Conversely, efforts (or anticipation of such efforts) to rein in monetary stimulus tend to clip gold.
Check out: Confusion reigns over G-7 position on yen “We are creating so much money. Japan, Europe, China, the whole world is engaging in a race to debase. Everybody thinks inflation is good, printing money is good, a weak currency is good,” said Schiff.
In some ways, Schiff’s call has been a good one. Gold prices had run up by a factor of five by August 2011, when they hit a settlement high just under $1,900 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
But the gold rally has stalled since then, putting Schiff’s call even further into the ether. On Monday, the April contract GCJ3 -0.14% settled below $1,650 an ounce, a five-week low. And it’s been pretty much rangebound since.
But Schiff takes the long view.
In fact, he says gold could go beyond $5,000, depending on how much longer money printing goes on. “A lot of people will get caught by surprise. People who buy and have the patience to hold on will be rewarded,” he said.
As for the billion-dollar question – when — well, that’s a tough call even for Schiff. “Can it get to $5,000 in six months? Probably not. In two to three years it’s more likely. I doubt it will take five years. If it takes that long, it will go higher.”
Schiff has gone to the mat over what some say are “out-there” calls like that gold prediction and his stance on inflation. He’s got lots of fans and lots of detractors — like NYT columnist Paul Krugman. Krugman wrote last November that Schiff is among history’s “erroneous” predictors with his long-running cry that that hyperinflation is coming.
Schiff says government calculations are not accurate and we’ve got a CPI averaging between 5% and 7% a year. Read More...
Russia emerges as world's top gold buyer, adding 570 metric tons in last decade
Over the last decade Russia’s Central Bank acquired 570 metric tonnes of gold. The amount is almost triple the weight of the American Statue of Liberty and makes Russia the world’s biggest buyer of gold.
The amount is a qurter more than runner-up China, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Countries like Russia and China use such stockpiles as an economic buffer against another wave of economic crisis or US dollar devaluation, as both remain weary of the US Federal Reserve’s stability and prefer to edge their bets on gold.
It’s also proven a sound investment and opportunity for the Russian state to make money, with gold prices crawling upwards over the past 12 years, gaining 12% in 2012 alone. On Monday gold traded at $1650 per ounce and analysts expect the price to keep growing in 2013 to reach $1825 by the end of the year. However French investment bank Natixis dampened the outlook by forecasting a drop in price to $1500 by 2014, Finmarket.ru reports.
But the link between high gold prices and falling crude has plagued Russia in the past. In 1998, when Russia defaulted on $40 billion of domestic debt, it took 28 barrels of crude to buy an ounce of gold, according to Bloomberg research. Two years later, when Vladimir Putin came to power, an ounce was worth 11.5 barrels. By 2005 the ratio had dropped to 6.5 and that is when President Putin ordered his Central Bank to buy. In just a month the proportion of gold in Russia’s total reserve rose from 2.2% to 3.5%.
In 2000 Vladimir Putin inherited a country with 384 metric tons of gold and more than doubled its gold reserve in 12 years – according to official data from World Gold Council, in October 2012 gold made up 9.6% of Russia’s national forex reserve and stood at 936.7 metric tons.
However it is still far from its historic high – in 1941 Russia held a record 2800 tons of the precious metal and thanks to these reserves successfully recovered after World War II.
Russia’s gold rush still doesn’t mean it tops the list of global gold owners. The United States holds the leading position with 8133.5 tons of gold which make 75.4% of country’s total reserve. Germany runs second with 3391.3 tons and the IMF third with 2814 tons. China and Russia are sitting in sixth and eighth place respectively.
China however is suspected of downplaying its actual volume of gold by 3-4 times, Zerohedge news website reports, and prepares to introduce Yuan as world’s reserve currency. Back in 2009 China set a goal to overtake the US in the rankings. When the Chinese Central bank is ready to officially declare its actual gold reserve volume, world markets will experience serious problems, Zerohedge.com believes.
Major global investor and consulting adviser to the Obama administration, George Soros also appears to have a golden investment streak. In August 2012 it was reported, Mr. Soros offloaded over a million shares in financial companies and banks and purchased $130 million in gold. His move to sell stocks and beef up on gold, is being interpreted by some as a sign of changing investment strategy in the world market. Read More...
Do Wall Street Insiders Expect Something Really Big To Happen Very Soon?
Why are corporate insiders dumping huge numbers of shares in their own companies right now? Why are some very large investors suddenly making gigantic bets that the stock market will crash at some point in the next 60 days? Do Wall Street insiders expect something really BIG to happen very soon? Do they know something that we do not know? What you are about to read below is startling. Every time that the market has fallen in recent years, insiders have been able to get out ahead of time.
David Coleman of the Vickers Weekly Insider report recently noted that Wall Street insiders have shown "a remarkable ability of late to identify both market peaks and troughs". That is why it is so alarming that corporate insiders are selling nine times as many shares as they are buying right now. In addition, some extraordinarily large bets have just been made that will only pay off if the financial markets in the U.S. crash by the end of April. So what does all of this mean? Well, it could mean absolutely nothing or it could mean that there are people out there that actually have insider knowledge that a market crash is coming. Read More...
Are Russia And China Hoarding Gold Because They Plan To Kill The Petrodollar?
Will oil soon be traded in a currency that is thousands of years old? What would a "gold for oil" system mean for the petrodollar and the U.S. economy? Are Russia and China hoarding massive amounts of gold because they plan to kill the petrodollar?
Since the 1970s, the U.S. dollar has been the currency that the international community has used to trade oil around the globe. This has created an overwhelming demand for U.S. dollars and U.S. debt. But what happens when the rest of the globe starts rejecting the increasingly unstable U.S. dollar and figures out that gold can be used as a currency in international trade?
The truth is that it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure that out. Demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt would fall off the map and there would be a rush into gold unlike anything we have ever seen before. So are Russia and China accumulating unprecedented amounts of gold right now because they eventually plan to cut the legs out from under the petrodollar and they want to gobble up huge stockpiles of gold before the cat is out of the bag?
Of course they will never admit this publicly, but there are rumblings out there that this is exactly what is happening.
Not that you can really blame any nation that wants to get into gold right now. News outlets all over the globe are telling us that we are in the midst of a "currency war" as central banks all over the planet race to devalue their currencies.
Russia's gold hoarding appears to have accelerated last year. According to one recent report, Russia added 3.2 million ounces of gold to their reserves in 2012 alone.
But of even greater concern is China. Nobody really knows how much gold China has, because they do not tell us, but all indications point to the fact that Chinese gold hoarding has gone into overdrive.
So what are Russia and China up to?
Well, for a long time both nations have expressed displeasure with the fact that the U.S. dollar is the de facto currency of the world. Leaders from both nations have suggested the possibility of adopting a new global reserve currency, but up to this point no real contenders have emerged to dethrone the U.S. dollar. Read More...
City council passes ordinance to fingerprint, photograph precious metal sellers
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Next time you try to sell gold, silver or other precious metals you can expect to be fingerprinted and photographed.
The Houston City Council passed an ordinance meant to help track down criminals who try to resell stolen valuables. Gold-buying businesses will now be required to photograph and fingerprint sellers as well as photograph the items that are being sold to the dealer.
"It's going to allow us the tools necessary to combat a lot of the high-end jewelry thefts that's going on in the city, whether it's robberies or burglaries," said Houston Police Officer Rick Barajas.
A similar ordinance is already in place for scrap metal sellers and dealers. Read More...
For the best source for acquiring gold and silver please contact Silvertowne at 1-877-477- coin, that’s 1-877-477-2646 or you can visit us at www.silvertowne.com. Silvertowne has been a trusted precious metals and numismatics dealer since 1949.
One of the most common ways to invest in silver is with silver ingot . They are affordable, portable and easy to stack and store. Popular SilverTowne Trademark Silver Bars, featuring a classic prospector and his donkey, are guaranteed .999 fine silver and available in 1, 5 and 10 ounce sizes and SilverTowne is currently offering free shipping for these ingots. Contact Silvertowne today.
[Disclaimer] Shawn Ozbun is not a licensed financial adviser, there is risk associated with all investment including gold and silver. You should seek advise from a licensed financial expert before making a purchase.
