Current Gold Price

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 14 Jun 2011, 14:41

http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/ ... hread.html

According to UBS, the gold price will reach a low for this bull-market cycle this year. A deterioration in the global macroeconomic environment will provide good support for the gold price, though the end of the Fed’s quantitative easing measures at the end of this month could mean short-term weakness in the gold market. Thus UBS have downgraded their one-month price forecast from $1,500 to $1,475 per ounce, but have lifted their three-month price forecast from $1,400 to $1,600. In their view, investors should take the bull by the horns and buy the yellow metal on price dips, as economic problems in America and Europe – as well as gold buying by central banks – will boost gold prices going forward.

Despite the upcoming end of QE2, the renowned economist Nouriel Roubini told cnbc.com on Saturday that it’s likely that the Fed will start a third round of QE measures by the end of 2011 if weakness in the US economy persists. On Friday, the Dow Jones ended its sixth consecutive trading week in the red; the US “Blue Chip” Index lost about 1.42% and quoted below 12,000 points for the first time since March. According to Roubini, further stimulus packages introduced by the Obama administration are unlikely due to current political balance in Congress. Thus, additional QE measures as well as a continuing accommodating monetary policy would be one of the few options remaining to support the US economy in the coming months.

Last week, the Fed announced that it would be buying $50 billion’s worth of US government bonds for the final phase of QE2, which ends on June 30. After this date, there will be much less liquidity available at the financial markets compared with the last couple of months. Since the Fed started QE2 in November 2010, it has pumped about $100 billion into the markets each month. However, it is widely expected that the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) will continue to reinvest proceeds at up to $17 billion monthly from maturing mortgage backed securities (MBS) into US Treasuries.

Roubini thinks that the world economy is facing serious problems, such as those posed by the European sovereign-debt crisis. As far as he is concerned, a Greek default is a question of when and not if.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 14 Jun 2011, 15:00

UE
As I've said before, Gold will crash if governments hike interest rates, but I do not believe they will, therefore, I do not believe gold will crash.

However, thats quite clearly what the graph shows.
Gold price spikes, gold prices falls to double previous stable level, debt repayment costs jump.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 15 Jun 2011, 13:23

A rather interesting theory on gold and the IMF...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article28630.html

Requesting anonymity in return for speaking, senior French financial officials have disclosed their interpretation of why and how Dominique Strauss-Kahn known as "DSK" in France, fell suddenly from world power as head of the IMF. Cited on French blog sites, these officials see nothing less than a threat to world monetary stability and the integrity of the global economy, behind the dramatic sleaze operation that felled the woman-chasing, globetrotting freespender with a B-movie sting in a Manhattan hotel room.

Not only the USA is in financial and monetary meltdown and shackled by snowballing debt. In the European and Middle East-North African Arab region, monetary crisis is now in high gear. Not only DSK but finance ministers and central bank governors across the region know that if the dollar crumbles further, and regional debt and monetary disorder racks on and up, it is the euro which also will fall, creating a tidal wave of panic across Europe, the Arab world and further afield.

DSK's shuttle diplomacy and IMF financial firefighting was in high mode, when he disappeared from the scene leaving a sordid scrabble for the role of new IMF chief, pitting Europe, Japan and the USA against the world's only creditor countries: China, India, the Arab petromonarchies, Russia, Brazil and a very few other, small net creditor countries. For Europeans, the threat posed by Arab spring revolts now moving into all-out civil war in several theatres is at least as great as its own internal meltdowns featuring the PIIGS, the UK, Eastern and SE European EU27 countries.

GOLD AND MONEY
Each time an Arab regime falls and its long-time head of state flees - often to Saudi Arabia but very surely not in the Gaddafi case - its central bank's official reserves of gold will have no relation at all to what smaller amount is still left in its vaults. In the Tunisian case it is known that the wife of ousted strongman Ben Ali took at least 22% of the central bank's official reserves in one fell swoop. When Mubarak finally abandoned all attempts at crushing Egypt's democracy protestors, his family and henchmen scooped an unknown quantity of gold from its central bank vaults. The official reserve of 75.60 tons unchanged for 22 years is now extremely unlikely to be the real reserve. When Gaddafi and his sons who remain alive flee from Libya, its official gold reserves, flexibly estimated at anything from about 143 tons to over 220 tons will in no way correspond with what is left. If or when the Bachr al Assad regime of Syria tumbles, and al Assad and his family and henchmen possibly flee to Tehran, certainly not Riyadh, its official gold reserves of 25.80 tons, unchanged for over 30 years, will rather surely not be what the incoming regime will find left in its central bank.

Any country whose central bank has little or no fiduciary and official gold, and is edging near civil war or is in civil war, and has an economy in meltdown will also have a money that is worthless. International currency market speculation will ensure that, fast.

THE DSK GOLD SCAM
On the eve of DSK's easily-organized "honeypot sting" in a New York hotel, instantly removing him from the levers of power inside the IMF, he was due to meet with Germany's Angela Merkel and Eurozone-17 financial and monetary leaders, ostensibly to discuss IMF-backing for European national financial bailouts in Greece, Portugal and Ireland, and other countries, totalling hundreds of billions of euro. Germany is the undisputed money-master in Europe, with a huge trade surplus and an unswerving mercantilist strategy of turning its trade surpluses into gold: Germany holds more than one-third of all official gold in Europe, and its national reserve of about 3402 tons places it second-only to the USA, and well before third-ranking IMF by tonnage held.

Germany is therefore always interested in buying gold, especially at a low price, which the IMF is unquely placed to facilitate and organize. Methods used by the IMF feature the issuance - or printing - of its own near-money Special Drawing Rights, and the swapping of these for central bank gold from "assisted countries". The aided country will, through IMF magic, report an increase - not a decrease - in its central bank holdings despite the physical gold being transported out of the country. The official logic is that raised amounts of theoretical-only gold in its central banks vaults will stem speculation against the national currency, as part of the economic healing process. When this produces new economic strength, the central bank can buy back the gold it swapped for SDRs, using these to exchange for dollars, euro, yen, British pounds or Swiss Francs and cover its trade deficit crisis, budget crisis, or other transitional economic stress during "IMF adjustment".

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 15 Jun 2011, 14:47

Interesting....

I've been following the gold price here:

http://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/gold-coins/

The main page now says "Live prices unavailable" and the page where the prices of specific coins used to be now says "Call to Order."

The live price is still available here:

http://goldprice.org/live-gold-price.html

.....and has spiked from $1514 to $1532 in the last hour. Most of that rise happened in the 5 minutes between 2.30 and 2.35pm.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 15 Jun 2011, 20:44

http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/ ... price.html

Yesterday also saw the release of a new report from Standard Chartered bank, that stated that Chinese and Indian gold buying – along with limited gold production and central bank buying – “can potentially drive the gold price to US$5,000/oz”. Standard Chartered notes that just 1.8% of China’s foreign exchange reserves is in gold, and that if the country were to bring this proportion in line with the global average of 11%, it would have to buy 6,000 tonnes of gold, equivalent to more than two years of gold production.

GlynG · Post by **GlynG** » 15 Jun 2011, 22:18

I really wish I’d carried on working and turned all my savings into gold last summer as I could feasibly have around £40-50k savings now instead of £0 savings

I’m seriously considering getting an interest free student overdraft and 0% credit card and maxing them out to buy physical gold should there be a good price. I’ve read around a lot recently on it and while I still don’t really know what I’m doing that well, I’m getting the impression the price may be likely to dip by up to a third during the coming months but then go up massively over the coming year or two.

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 15 Jun 2011, 23:09

GlynG wrote:I really wish I?d carried on working and turned all my savings into gold last summer as I could feasibly have around £40-50k savings now instead of £0 savings

I?m seriously considering getting an interest free student overdraft and 0% credit card and maxing them out to buy physical gold should there be a good price. I?ve read around a lot recently on it and while I still don?t really know what I?m doing that well, I?m getting the impression the price may be likely to dip by up to a third during the coming months but then go up massively over the coming year or two.

I had a plan 10-11 years ago to max out a load of credit cards & loans. Not gold, however, but a derelict property with land in Portugal (good planning laws). I was going to move there but my parents found out and persuaded me not to (i was only 19). Sometime I wish i did

Gold should be the last preparation after food, shelter etc is taken care of. I've decided to buy some gold&silver now, even though it might dip but not, i think, as much as a third. I'm using it as a wealth preserver tho, so i'm not really interested in it as profit. If you can get a student loan, then buying gold's a great idea. It's a gamble but not much of one methinks.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 15 Jun 2011, 23:10

Lord Beria3 wrote:http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/ ... price.html

Yesterday also saw the release of a new report from Standard Chartered bank, that stated that Chinese and Indian gold buying – along with limited gold production and central bank buying – “can potentially drive the gold price to US$5,000/oz”. Standard Chartered notes that just 1.8% of China’s foreign exchange reserves is in gold, and that if the country were to bring this proportion in line with the global average of 11%, it would have to buy 6,000 tonnes of gold, equivalent to more than two years of gold production.

I've noticed that gold price nearly always goes up overnight...

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 15 Jun 2011, 23:11

GlynG wrote:I really wish I’d carried on working and turned all my savings into gold last summer as I could feasibly have around £40-50k savings now instead of £0 savings

I’m seriously considering getting an interest free student overdraft and 0% credit card and maxing them out to buy physical gold should there be a good price. I’ve read around a lot recently on it and while I still don’t really know what I’m doing that well, I’m getting the impression the price may be likely to dip by up to a third during the coming months but then go up massively over the coming year or two.

If it is going to dip, then it will do so before mid-August.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 16 Jun 2011, 15:46

http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/Inv ... dium=email

A rather interesting interview with a rare fund manager who invests in gold! All those gold bubble talk ignores the fact that most fund and pension managers still have no investments in gold.

Sebastian Lyon is a contrarian investor and his biggest contrarian position in the Trojan fund is the 12 per cent holding in gold. Gold is a big differentiator for the Trojan fund as other managers don't like it, but Mr Lyon has held gold in the Trojan fund's portfolio since 2005.

He acknowledges the old argument against gold - that it doesn't yield anything - but he has no truck with the idea that this makes the yellow metal impossible to value, and hence worthless.

"Gold has always had intrinsic value whereas paper currencies have come and gone, like blossom in the spring," he says. "Back in 1919, a £20 note could have been exchanged for 20 gold sovereigns. Now those sovereigns are worth £5,000. You would have been a lot better holding your money in gold than in £20 notes."

Mr Lyon believes that gold is a monetary asset and competes with paper currencies as a store of wealth, while the allure of the dollar, sterling, yen or euro diminishes with ongoing money printing and negative real interest rates. He doubled his gold holdings in summer 2009 when the central banks took desperate measures to avoid deflation and printed money. "I could see that a £20 note was not going to be worth that in 3-5 years' time. The governments didn't want the effects of deflation and as a result we have a 'phoney world' with zero interest rates, asset prices distorted and governments printing money."

Nor does he agree with increasingly widespread anti-gold feeling and "idle talk of a bubble building."

"We are in one of those cycles where gold has gone up five-fold over the last ten years. It has been a gradual but steady bull market. Gold performs very well during negative real interest rates and we are in that in the UK. There is no sign of interest rates going up. It is a very good environment to own gold."

A good example of durability of gold is this interesting story...

http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2011/04/25/ ... urt-rules/

Hackney hoard of gold coins fails to count as treasure, court rules £100,000 worth of American dollars is handed back to the family of its original owner

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 16 Jun 2011, 23:56

http://oilprice.com/Metals/Gold/Recover ... Years.html

It seems we have been so caught up in the decline of oil reserves that another commodity—one that the mining industry has thrived on for centuries—is apparently even in more scarce supply. Gold reserves are running surprisingly low, and analysts believe that recoverable resources could run out completely within 20 years.

A report written by gold mining analysts for Standard Chartered Bank cites U.S. Geological Survey estimates that at the end of 2010, global gold reserves were only 51,000 tonnes. At the rate of production seen in 2010, this would translate to only 19.2 years of production. Unfortunately, the report also shows that while exploration budgets have risen for major gold mining companies, it has failed to prevent an overall decline in the rate of new gold reserve discoveries.

"In response to escalating gold prices, exploration budgets for gold have been rising since 2002," the report notes. "As a result of declining hit rate and cost inflation, the average discovery cost of primary gold found has seen a rising trend since 1960, which is evidence that good, large gold deposits are increasingly difficult to come by."

Moreover, higher spending toward gold exploration between 2000 and 2009 still saw an average discovery rate lower than the period of 1980 to 2000.

Standard Charter adds, "It is also worth highlighting that the average ore grades of new deposits discovered have declined noticeably in the past six decades." In 1960 for example, one tonne of gold ore yielded 2.86 grams of gold. In 2000, one tonne only yielded 1.37 grams of gold. Now, the newest gold ore discoveries are yielding less than one gram per tonne of ore.

This news may come as a shock to the mining industry, which may have to face the very real possibility of a non-existent gold mining sector in the next few decades.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 17 Jun 2011, 00:00

Also of interested, two seperate articles on the gold standard, both from today.

History of: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba746

Myths and lies about: http://lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy179.html

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 17 Jun 2011, 13:30

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/pers ... -2009.html

Fund managers are becoming increasingly bearish as the global economic recovery shows signs of stalling.

The BofA Merrill Lynch Survey of more than 250 fund managers showed that they have cut their exposure to commodities and shares in favour of cash and bonds.

They also believe that gold is "more over valued" than at any time since December 2009.

"Investors are scaling back risk, but rather than capitulating, they are moving to neutral positions in equities, bonds and cash," said Gary Baker, the head of European equities strategy at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.

Some good comments from the collective wisdom of Torygraph readers...

When the so-called recovery in the west goes into reverse central banks will staying spraying out the printed money with added vigour, further debasing currencies.

Beware of bankers bearish on precious metals

The only thing wrong with this headline is everything.

You'd have to be out of your mind to sell your precious metals.

Bonds yep, there's a good idea, commonly referred to as the biggest bubble in history and clearly a good investment when the biggest bond holder on the planet, Bill Gross of Pimco has got out of them...

Cash? In a global market where every single currency is declining in value - odd what several trillions worth of money printing can do - clearly that's a superb strategy, it cannot fail to lose you money.

Why is it that these insider crooks are still able to keep doling out this deceitful misinformation designed to make them rich and their clients poor?

Anyone would think money was changing hands to keep this level of media coverage going.

What a disappointment mankind can be.

GlynG · Post by **GlynG** » 18 Jun 2011, 19:32

What does this does to the picture? Zero Hedge: Trading Of Over The Counter Gold And Silver To Be Illegal Beginning July 15. Will this increase or decrease gold prices short and long term? I'm thinking increase so now would be a good time to snap some up?

Also what do people think of the Automatic Earth's prediction that we are in a deflationary depression and that this will reduce the gold prices? I've seen others suggest the quantitative easing probably counters that and that gold can still rise even during deflation too.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 18 Jun 2011, 20:52

GlynG wrote:What does this does to the picture? Zero Hedge: Trading Of Over The Counter Gold And Silver To Be Illegal Beginning July 15. Will this increase or decrease gold prices short and long term? I'm thinking increase so now would be a good time to snap some up?

If this is true, it will send the price of gold through the roof.

However, I am deeply skeptical about it due to the lack of corroborating news items.

Also what do people think of the Automatic Earth's prediction that we are in a deflationary depression and that this will reduce the gold prices? I've seen others suggest the quantitative easing probably counters that and that gold can still rise even during deflation too.

We aren't in a deflationary depression. We have stagflation.