How would money buy this?

http://janestreetclayworks.com/2011/02/15/preview-the-history-of-bricks/1925-drawing-to-raleigh/

Many a truth is spoken in jest: at his request, Herriman's ashes were scattered in Monument Valley, Utah. Here is his love, expressed in a backhanded way that reveals more than it conceals.

This week, again, I spent time with clients talking not about money and how to invest it, but about what they wanted from life. It's so easy to let your mind become trapped in attempts to beat the top score on the pinball machine.

The hard stuff

Richard Greene in Financial Sense on Wednesday paints a very worrying, but credible picture of accelerating financial instability and official attempts to disguise the crisis. He looks at the worst case, and says that nothing beats holding the bullion yourself:

In this scenario you don’t accept futures, you don’t accept ETFs, you don’t accept any paper promises; you only accept the real physical gold and silver in your possession. It may take more time for this to occur in the US, but overseas this IS occurring right now, particularly in the Far East and the Middle East. This is exactly what has been necessary to break the fraud and suppression of the gold and silver price that has kept them from reaching a fair free market value. It is happening as we speak...

...if defaults and bankruptcies became prevalent the banks could easily cancel your credit cards, not have any of your cash on hand, and deny you access to your own assets. We don’t expect this worst case scenario to play out soon but then again we find it incredible how few are prepared; and it is a substantial risk. So again to play it safe: have some of that green funny money on hand, definitely have some gold and silver, and have a nice stockpile of canned foods on hand to deal with unexpected emergencies. Do it now! If these things come to pass don’t be surprised to see gold moving up hundreds of dollars per day.

The red highlight is mine - I've suspected for some time that the gold price is being held down by undisclosed releases of bullion onto the market, by central banks.

Meanwhile, I'm interested to test sentiment about the markets - please see the poll on the sidebar and have a go.

Inflation, here we come

Jordan Roy-Byrne's article featured in Financial Sense last week examines various types of inflation and gives graphs, facts and his thoughts on future trends. He concludes:

It is my belief that the Fed's recent cut is the wake up call that will finally stimulate rising inflation expectations. Moreover, the public awakening towards inflation is coming at a time when monetary inflation, commodity inflation, currency inflation and wage inflation, already at significant highs, are set to rise even further.

He predicts a sharp acceleration when gold breaches $1,020 per ounce - itself a price level about 38% higher than today.

Although his remarks have most relevance for an American audience, it is worth remembering the recent Telegraph article (5th October) that forecast sterling dropping even faster than the dollar. Our determination to be as financially reckless as our Transatlantic cousins may result in our facing similar problems.

The good news? Our enormous holding of US Treasury stock may turn out to have been a reasonable investment, in sterling terms. The bad news? Perhaps we should have put that money into bonds denominated in a stronger currency. The Euro, maybe?

UK Inheritance Tax threshold unchanged

The Inheritance Tax announcement yesterday by "Chancellor" Darling is misleading. It has the flavour of a Gordon Brown dodge - hence my inverted commas.

The threshold per person remains at £300,000, as this article by Labour Home itself explains. What has changed is that the allowance is transferable on death, if you are married or in a civil partnership.

A similar effect would previously have been achieved by any competent solicitor, will writer or estate planner, by including a Nil Rate Band Will Trust in your Will. Similar, but not quite the same: the Nil Rate Band trust means giving assets away to a third party (not to one's partner) after the first death. Making the allowance transferable lets the surviving partner enjoy the use of assets worth up to £600,000, without the threat of estate tax afterwards.

This will reduce the amount of tax raised from IHT, since it helps those who a) haven't written the right kind of will/trust arrangement or b) couldn't do so because of the continuing needs of the surviving partner (who might, for example, be disabled or in a privately-paid nursing home).

But it's certainly not what it sounded like, which was an IHT allowance of £600,000 per person, or £1.2 million altogether.

Thanks to Dizzy Thinks and The Spectator Coffee House blog for the alerts.

Which will fall faster: the pound or the dollar?

An article in the Telegraph (referred to by today's Daily Reckoning) says that the pound sterling could drop about 14% against the dollar by 2009.

Which one is the basket case economy?

Nothin can go mwrong

A Krazy Kat cartoon, by George Herriman

A propos Britain's new electronic surveillance laws...

"How much money do we need?" revisited

The Daily Reckoning supports the drift of my question:

Our old pen-pal Jack Lessinger has a new book out: “Change.”

...His book outlines the development of the US property market over the past two centuries in terms of what he calls “paradigmatic economic changes.” He notes that the shrewd investor always had to stay ahead of the trend. That meant, looking beyond what the then-current paradigm to what people were likely to want in the future. Instead of investing in the old colonial regions along the East Coast, for example, an investor in the early 19 th century should have looked to the frontier. There, he would have found cheap land…and could have watched it soar for the next 50 years. He should have seen the huge development that would take place in Chicago and St. Louis, for example.

Later, after WWI, the landscape changed dramatically. New technology had created a new idea about how people should live – in the suburbs. For the next 50 years, fortunes could have been made simply by anticipating the growth of the suburbs – further and further out from the urban centres.

Our consumer economy did not exist before 1900, says Lessinger. Since then, it has grown and grown – “Sexy young women, smiling from the billboards , urging strait-laced and penny-pinching citizens to save less and spend more. Buy, buy , buy screamed the advertisers. Buy Coca Cola and be happy. Buy Dentine gum and be kissable. Buy Camels and be manly. The consumer economy blossomed. Houses grew bigger and more lavish, cars roomier, faster and more comfortable. What a great time to be alive!”

But buy, buy, buy is going bye-bye, says Jack. The consumer economy is unsustainable. People don’t have the money for it. It is based on cheap energy and cheap credit, both of which are running out. He thinks it will disappear by 2020.

“Get ready for an existential leap…” he warns.

The next Big Thing in American society will be a huge interest in downscaling, downshifting, and simplifying. When the baby boomers realise that their houses won’t allow them to Live Large, says another friend, they’ll begin to appreciate Living Small.

Jack comes at the subject from a different direction than we would, but his book made us think. You can find out more at jacklessinger.com.

I've been thinking how to "get out from under" for a long time. Maybe I'd better act before it becomes the fashion. Jim Puplava thinks the Fed has just bought us another two years, at a cost - to those who stay on too long.

Besides, I like beer and darts.

Secret taxation

This is a payslip for a supply teacher, showing income and deductions. On an emergency tax coding, tax is levied at basic rate (22%) on all earnings after pension contributions have been made. National Insurance is paid at the reduced rate of 9.4%, because the teacher is in his/her occupational pension. Total tax and NI: £399.61 / £1,472.20 gross pay = 27.14%.

Oh no, it isn't.

The tax that dare not speak its name is employer's National Insurance, which would be around £93.37. It's an extra cost that the employee never sees, but it's money that could be paid in wages if it were not deducted at source. Therefore, the gross (pre all stoppages) pay is higher than shown, and so are the deductions.

So why don't we see payslips that tell the whole story, say something like this? ...

The reason is obvious, isn't it? Especially when you show the appropriate marginal rate.

And if this was a payslip for someone not in an occupational pension, the marginal rate of N.I. would be 11% for the employee, and 12.8% for the employer. In other words, £100 extra payslip-declared salary would actually cost the employer a total of £112.80, with marginal-rate deductions of £22 in income tax and £23.80 in N.I. ! In that case, the real effective marginal rate of revenue-raising would be 45.80/112.80, or 40.6%.

The average wage earner is, in fact, a 40% taxpayer, without knowing it.

Is it illegal to show the truth on your employees' wage slips? Don't you think it would make the ordinary person start to take the taxation issue seriously?

Gold price manipulation: Mylchreet backs Veneroso

I've previously noted Frank Veneroso's theory that central banks have been offloading gold to keep its price down, a ploy that obviously cannot work forever. Now here's Paul Mylchreet saying the same thing:

"Central banks have 10-15,000 tonnes of gold less than their officially reported reserves of 31,000" the Chevreux report announced. "This gold has been lent to bullion banks and their counterparties and has already been sold for jewelry, etc. Non-gold producers account for most [of the borrowing] and may be unable to cover shorts without causing a spike in the gold price."

In other words, "covert selling (via central bank lending) has artificially depressed the gold price for a decade [and a] strongly rising Gold Price could have severe consequences for US monetary policy and the US Dollar."

The conclusion? "Start hoarding," said Paul Mylchreet...

The United States Federal Reserve: why the secrecy?

Two most interesting blog articles by the jokily-pseudonym-ed "Lord Higham-Johnson".

The posts themselves are far from jocular and those who may be tempted to dismiss them as conspiracy theorising must still recognise that there is nevertheless a case, of sorts, to answer; or at least, the scent of a story for the financial bloodhounds.

The first, from March this year, looks at the process by which the Federal Reserve came to be proposed, named and brought into being.

The second, today's, is a restrained fisking of an attempt by a teacher of economics to discount conspiracy theory in relation to "the Fed".

Lasting Power of Attorney: the next step in the Long March

The great day has arrived. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 is now in effect.

Though I'm not sure how many people who take out an LPA are aware that the withdrawal of "treatment" includes denying water, so patients in hospital can be made to die slowly of thirst ("Since a landmark House of Lords judgment in 1993, providing food and water to those who cannot eat or drink for themselves counts as treatment as well."). And no-one can be certain what is felt by someone who is apparently in a coma.

Doesn't this conflict with the Hippocratic Oath?

What oath? Wikipedia says:

In the 1970s, cultural and social forces induced many American medical schools to abandon the Hippocratic Oath as part of graduation ceremonies, usually substituting a version modified to something considered more politically up to date, or an alternate pledge like the Oath or Prayer of Maimonides.

A Catholic scholar details the Oath and its history here.

The Act is here; the government's own take on it is here.

We seem to be approaching a time when anybody except a criminal may be lawfully killed.

Is that charitable trust trustworthy?

I have received another charity mailing, this time from the World Children's Fund. There's so many that I feel guilt at not being able to give to all. And aren't they well-presented these days?

But there's something about the name of this one - similar to other charities somehow. So I google it. Page after page on Google, each leading you directly to their site.

But now for blogpower! I look to see what my fellow bloggers say. Here's one, and it's most interesting. I say no more, since I have no money to fight in court.

I shall now add Elmer to my links, and the US charity evaluation site, Charity Navigator.

Another case where bloggers have proved to be useful, I would say.

How much money do we need?

By W A Sillince (1906-1974)

I'll remove this if someone representing the now-defunct "Punch" insists, but it's so wise and truthful that I think Sillince's work should be more widely known.

The mortgage conundrum

Much of the nation's wealth seems to be tied up in our houses, which don't appear to be very productive from an economic standpoint. There is a kind of circular logic:

1. Houses cost a lot, so you have to borrow a great deal of money to buy a house.

2. Houses cost a lot, because you can borrow a great deal of money to buy a house.

Having regard for the wider consequences of your proposals, what is the optimum solution?

Thrift and Prudence: essay competition

Cartoon by Charles Keene (1823-1891) in "Punch" magazine

Contrary to Mr Gordon Brown's claim to be prudent, many believe that the British Government (as well as that of the USA) wastes public money. One such critic is "Wat Tyler" in the British blog, Burning Our Money.

What if the people we criticise said, put up or shut up?

So, if you want better value for money in public finance, how would you get it? How would you achieve the same results for less money, or how would you improve quality without increasing expenditure?

If you wish to submit a longer piece, please submit your email in the comments - I shall then add you as an author to this blog pro tem (but will keep your email address off the blog unless you wish it to be published).

Off theme

Dow 9,000 update

July 6 to present: Dow up from 13,611.69 to 13,895.63; gold up from $647.75/oz. to $743.10. So the "gold-priced Dow" is down 11.01% in 84 days.

Annualised equivalent: gold increasing by c. 82% p.a., "gold-priced Dow" falling 40% over a year. Will these trends continue?

Faber: bubble in commodities, but buy gold

Marc Faber in ABC News, Tuesday:

Very simply, it will end in a catastrophe. We never had, in the history of capitalism, a global, synchronised, boom. If you travel around the world, everywhere you go, there are booming conditions.

Now if you look at the last 200 years of financial history, you had investment booms and mania in relatively small sectors in the economy: in the US in canals and railroad in the 19th century, some regional real estate markets. And then in the 1920s you had the stockmarket boom, and in the late 80s you have a silver, gold and energy share boom, and in the year 2000 we had a boom in tech stocks and in Japan in the 80s in Japanese shares. And each time these bubbles burst, they had an impact but the impact was largely sectorial or regional and not affecting the whole world.

Now, we have a bubble everywhere. We have a bubble in real estate prices, we have a bubble in stock, we have a bubble in art prices, we have a bubble in commodities.bigger the bubble, the bigger the bang will be. If someone argues we're in a global synchronised boom, I agree entirely. The consequence will be that the next boss will be a global synchronised boss.

By the way, I like that mistranscription, it conveys his Europeanness.

The southern Germans are comfortable with the themes of pain and loss, as you'll know if you've looked at the Meglinger painting on Dr Faber's GloomBoomDoom site. D.H. Lawrence wrote of the sensual agony in the little roadside shrines in interwar Bavaria. This is not simple morbidity - unlike modern crime/action films - but a sign that you can rise above suffering, instead of avoiding it.

A Viennese taxi driver explained to us the difference between Austrians and northern Germans: "They say, it's bad, but it's not hopeless; we say, it's hopeless, but it's not so bad."

Back to our muttons. Here he is again, quoted from various sources via Resourcexinvestor:

"Investors have to look for assets which cannot multiply as fast as the pace at which the Fed prints money."

... He advised buying gold to defend against monetary inflation... he recommends holding physical gold bullion investments in gold-friendly countries such as Hong Kong, India and Switzerland. He counsels against holding gold in the US for fear that it might be nationalized by the government.

Crescendo crisis

Today's Daily Reckoning UK directs us to this article on FT.com, which says that sovereign wealth funds will support (if not boost) share prices in a "crescendo of investing".

Bully for the fund managers. But I say again, consider the implications for the West, which is losing control of its debt and now looks set to start losing control of its assets.

Frank Veneroso elaborates on the gold bubble

I am impressed by the courtesy of important people.

After reporting on his April 2007 presentation to World Bank people (see yesterday's post, "Gold bubble"), I emailed Frank Veneroso, and have received a reply from him today. I wanted to follow up on his essay of May 2001. Here's what I asked:

In 2001, you wrote a very intriguing article, posted on GATA, theorising that central banks actually hold much less physical gold than they pretend, because of loan-outs and possibly surreptitious selling. If I may, I should like to ask a few questions:

1. Are you still of that opinion?
2. What do you think is the present situation regarding gold holdings by central banks?
3. What evidence do we now have?

Here is his reply:

That was my opinion. It still is. However I gave ranges regarding that amount. I now believe that central bank loan outs and undisclosed sales were at the low end of my expectations. Why? I have no direct evidence. My evidence is the following.

I believe that we are near the end of a commodity bubble that is the largest in all history. The greatest extreme is in metals. Hedge funds have accumulated futures, forwards and physical on a scale that simply has no precedent. The greatest excesses are in base metals but these same funds all hold large gold positions. I believe that individual funds may hold positions in copper or gold that are as large in value as the ETF. I know that sounds unbelievable. But I have a great deal of evidence.

If this is so, the price of gold should be much higher. My only explanation for why it is not is that central bank holdings must be very large for this to happen.

I should add, I believe there will be a coming crash in the metals sector that will surface. There will be an unprecedented investor revulsion toward this sector.

Gold’s fundamentals are totally different from those of base metals and silver. However, because the same funds also hold gold, I cannot see how gold can escape forced liquidations from these portfolios.

Mr Veneroso has kindly given his permission to publish the above comments.

From the prospectus for a conference in New Orleans in 2006:

Frank Veneroso — Perhaps the most highly regarded market economist of our time, Frank Veneroso has advised countless governments, as well as the World Bank, on economic policy, served as a senior partner in one of the world's largest hedge funds, and is a confidant and private advisor to many of today's most influential investors and economic leaders.

He was among only a handful of analysts who clearly predicted the Tech Wreck, and followed it up with a deadly-accurate forecast of today's gold bull market.

Now, Mr. Veneroso is stunning the world with predictions of a major train wreck in no less than two high-flying sectors of the global economy. Virtually no one is expecting these dramatic events...

Red Dragon, White Collar

Just a few tasters of the emerging advertising and media class in China:

http://www.apmforum.com/columns/china20.htm
http://www.danwei.org/
http://www.china-britain.org/

Stay here and go East

In today's Daily Reckoning Australia, Bill Bonner is at a conference and hears that while the US may languish, some US companies may thrive:

Whole new industries are waking up to a New China, with a middle class...and millions of rich people too... We spoke to a young man here who believes that the key to making money in large US companies actually lies in Asia.

"US companies aren't going to make much money by selling more product to Americans. Americans don't have any money... A company with a good product - especially a good brand - can make a lot of money now by doing two things. One is lowering its costs by outsourcing labour to Asia...not just manufacturing, but even high-level things like design, research, marketing, legal work. The other thing it has to do is to sell its products to this huge rising market of the Asian middle class.

"If it does these two things, it will have lower costs and higher revenues. If it doesn't do these two things, it will be stuck with high costs...and a stagnant market - at best. Actually, as the housing problem deepens in the United States, you'd expect domestic sales to fall."

He's probably right. While the average American will probably grow poorer - in both relative and absolute terms - many US companies will probably do quite well. Many already are.

I've suggested before now, that the white-collar people here are next in the firing line. Those mushrooming Third World (first-class) universities aren't just turning out engineering graduates. James Kynge pointed out that maybe 85% of the end-price of our Chinese imports is added on by sales and marketing. There's a strong incentive for developing Madison Avenue East. Not to mention Great Wall Street.

The good news for investors is that you may be able to make some money stock-picking the right Western companies, where access to shares is easier, accounts are not quite so dodgy, the government doesn't generally have its hand up the corporate puppet, and even governments have (to some degree) to obey the law and respect private property.

Returning to the gold-bubble question, Bill repeats the argument that gold is a haven in a storm, and mooring is getting cheaper:

There are times when the investing world becomes so dangerous that the most likely rate of return for the average investor will be negative. That is a good time to hold gold; your rate of return will almost certainly be better than actually investing! Gold is a hedge against the unknown... But like any insurance, it costs money. When you hold gold, you give up the yield you would otherwise get from stock dividends or bond coupons. Now that Bernanke has cut short-term rates, the cost of holding gold has gone down.

Is now the time to buy gold? The money supply in the United States is rising at a rate nearly five times the growth of the economy itself. The Fed, claiming that inflation is now under control, has just cut the price of credit to member banks by half a percentage point. The economic explorer has to rub his eyes and look twice; he can't quite believe it. How can inflation be under control when prices for key commodities - notably the keyest commodity, oil - are at record levels? He doesn't have an answer, but he can put two and two together. Whatever kind of 'flation' the Fed has been cooking up, we're going to get more of it. So put on your best bib and tucker, dear reader.

Golden bubble

A bubble shot through by a bullet - experiment described here

Here's a counter-blast to gold-bugs and fans of other metals:

In this long and dense presentation to the World Bank, delivered in April 2007 and revised/updated in July, Frank Veneroso says that commodities, including gold, nickel and copper, are already in a big bubble. He thinks an estimated $2 trillion in hedge funds, plus leveraging, is pumping the prices:

When it comes to metals, we see hedge fund speculation, hoarding and squeezing everywhere. Not only have some metals markets been driven far, far higher in this cycle compared to all past cycles; we see the same phenomenon across all metals. It is the combination of both the amplitude and breadth of the metals bubble that probably makes it the biggest speculation to the point of manipulation in the history of commodities. (Page 50)

Short runs costs have risen, but not long run costs. New sources are being exploited. And if recession hits, demand will drop:

... the historical pattern... for all commodities, suggests that, rather than seeing well above trend metals demand growth in the years to come as the consensus now projects, we are more likely to see outright declines in global demand for these metals as demand destruction takes hold. (Page 56)

For institutional investors, the "barren breed of metal" is unproductive compared to other assets:

... it is likely that the net nominal return to portfolios from investing in physical “stuff” has not been more than 1% per annum. By contrast, in a 3% inflation environment, bonds have yielded somewhere between 5% and 9% and equities have yielded somewhere between 8% and 11%. In effect, you gave up an immense amount of yield if you diversified out of bonds and stocks into commodities. You did gain by reducing overall portfolio volatility, but that gain was not large enough to offset the loss in yield. Diversifying with “stuff” did not enhance risk-adjusted returns. (Page 57)

So prices have been boosted by the futures market. And commodities as a market are small enough to be susceptible to "manipulation and collusion".

Readers of this blog will recall that Marc Faber recently said he saw bubbles everywhere, including commodities. Even if cash isn't king, it may be a pretender to the throne.

Slow down - credit crunch at work?

Eric Fry, in today's Daily Reckoning Australia, shows that substantial tightening in the credit market has already started.

The big picture (as I see it)

Home economics: making a mint

Most of the people now managing our money - the money that we plan to retire on - are too young to remember the financial world of the 1970s. This hampers their judgement, and a debacle like subprime lending shows how they have underestimated both the likelihood and the impact of Black Swan events.

In one of George Goodman's books, the financial journalist author (aka "Adam Smith") is shown round a dealer's office by a friend, and the young people are all chirping away optimistically about how they're going to make fortunes for the company in this or that opportunity. His friend turns to him and smiles ironically. "See what I mean? Kids!" Of course, in a rising market you want optimists: the scarred old bears will tend to hang back and miss out on the bonanza. Which is why Adam Smith's friend was employing kids.

But the tide is turning.

I called it far too early (but how was I to know that governments would lose their sanity and print money as fast as their presses would work?). Here's what I wrote to a client on 21st October 1999:

As you are now around three years off the maturity date of your personal pension with XXX Life, you should be considering the security of your fund.

I went to a very interesting investment seminar yesterday, at which it was said that the American stockmarket could be as much as 50% too high, and a correction is overdue. It has already slid 20% off its highest point, by degrees, but a bigger drop could happen. If and when it does, this would have consequences for other markets around the world, since the US is the biggest stockmarket of all.

As you know, the XXX Fund is designed specifically as a safe haven for your investment in uncertain times, and I enclose a form for you to sign and forward to XXX Life, if you agree with my suggestion.

To those in the know, the crash of 2000 was not a surprise. What was your adviser telling you then? Yet the tone of that seminar was upbeat - the market's overpriced, so what?

If governments had maintained financial integrity, then following the mad tech boom, the Great Correction would have started in 2000 and the cleansing and healing process would be well under way. Instead, our politicians chose inflation.

If you were earning money in the mid-70s, you'll know what runaway inflation is like. To counter it, we had financially-motivated strikes: strikes for more money to restore real incomes, strikes to maintain pay differentials between different categories of worker, and strikes for pay parity by those who were left behind. Then settlement, paid for by inflating the currency further. Then more price inflation, and more strikes.

In the new globalized economy, strikes aren't going to work. Here in the UK (and Alan Greenspan has recently advocated the same), we simply allow the import of lots of poor people to undercut our indigenous skilled and semi-skilled workers. This keeps down wage rates and improves productivity. But it also earns little tax/National Insurance, and builds up massive obligations for Health, Education and Welfare (present, for those undercut; future, for all).

For a former Chancellor of the Exchequer keen on off-book financing, it's not a big issue: let the future take care of itself. For most of us, who have to move into the future without a bomb-proof PM's pension and lifelong special police protection, those debts will come home to roost.

I've often wondered how middle-class Germans coped when their money was wiped out by hyperinflation; and how the Russians on State pensions survived in the hinterlands, after the economy collapsed some years ago. Today I read (UK's "Mail on Sunday", page 31) an account by one of the few remaining whites in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe:

"The professional generation before me, the doctors and lawyers and the engineers who built Zimbabwe, are all starving to death on their pensions." (If you want to help them, please contact ZANE - they're on the Web. And there's millions of black Zimbabweans who are even worse off.)

But it's to the Sunday Express I have to turn, to get a serious warning about inflation for ourselves. Geraint Jones (page 10) notes that China is hinting at dumping the dollar wholesale; Saudi Arabia has refused to follow the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut; China and India are emerging as this century's budding supereconomies; oil's going up; food is getting pricier; the subprime disaster hasn't finished; mortgages are costing more.

The Express' Financial section wants to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted - much good a reformed Bank of England will do us now. Back in the main paper, Jimmy Young supports the suggestion that UK savers should be given guarantees for the first £100,000 of their deposits - again, too late: it's inflation guarantees we need - in the Germany of late 1923, 100,000 marks wouldn't get you a postage stamp.

The American Jim Puplava, on his excellent Financial Sense Newshour, thinks the latest desperate reflation will buy us a couple of years.

Use them.

Sovereign wealth funds: debt-for-equity swapping

A $20 American Eagle gold coin from 1914

Bill Bonner, reflecting on news from the International Herald Tribune such as this, notes yesterday that sovereign wealth funds are taking advantage of the falling dollar to buy US assets:

As the dollar goes down, Americans become poorer…and their assets become cheaper...The foreigners have huge piles of dollars which are losing value... Doesn’t it make sense for them to use the dollars to buy American assets?

The Arabs must think so... They [are] making offers on the Nasdaq…the London Stock Exchange…and the Carlyle Group, a US buyout firm.

China , meanwhile, recently took a big stake in Blackstone, another big corporate chop shop. Buying up the buyout firms is a particularly important omen, we think. It allows the foreigners to take up more and more US (and UK) assets without getting their name in the paper. And it allows Anglo-Saxons the soothing flattery of thinking that their assets are becoming more and more sought after…it takes their minds off the sour news, that foreigners are using their mountains of trashy dollars to get control over genuinely valuable assets…and that Americans will increasingly be working for foreigners…

A potentially dangerous form of debt restructuring is in progress. As small businesses yield to huge corporations, increasingly foreign-owned, could Big CEO become the new Big Brother? Will the excesses of consumerism end in our descendants serving in a modern version of bonded labour?

No easy bounce back this time, says Marc Faber

Marc Faber, quoted in The Daily Reckoning Australia on Thursday but writing in late August, anticipated the Fed's strategy of interest rate cutting, and thinks it won't work.

Unlike all the Wall Street strategists who compare the current credit crisis to the credit crisis of 1998 (Long Term Capital Management), I believe that the ongoing credit problems will be far worse and of a longer-term nature. This will make it difficult for the market to reach new highs in the near future. Moreover, even if the 1998 comparison were to hold, we would still be looking at a much deeper stock market correction than the 22% sell-off we saw in 1998....

...even if the Fed were to cut rates massively now, it is unlikely that it would stimulate credit growth, which, as I have explained repeatedly in the past, must continuously expand at an accelerating rate in a credit- and asset-driven economy in order to keep the economic plane from losing altitude. Accelerating credit growth is most unlikely now, because I cannot see how financial intermediaries will ease lending standards any time soon after the losses they have recently endured and following their dismal stock performance...

The crises that build up in international financial structures always ricochet from country to country….

...For the last several years, investors have enjoyed a massive global boom. But they should not rule out a massive global panic.

A layman's guide to economics

Outburst

From the Royal Palace of Westminster

This isn't quite on theme, but I turned on the radio for the four o'clock news in time to hear our new Prime Minister's latest proposal: a motto for the country, to show our "values". He is pretending that it has escaped his notice that we have one: Dieu Et Mon Droit. All part of airbrushing out the Monarchy, I assume. What is his suggestion - "In Gord we trust"?

Here's my suggestion: stop indulging your Ruritanian fantasies and do something to restore the economic stability of this once-great country. You've had ten years as the de facto general manager of Great Britain plc, with what results? A social security system that we can't afford and the claimants can't understand; an industrial base that is shrivelling like shrink-wrap on a bonfire; and a demolition derby of a democracy, in a country that mothered many other democracies and paid heavily in blood and gold to save Europe from fascism - twice.

All aboard

Dow 9,000 update

Dow currently 13,839.54, gold (10.03 am NY time) $736.30. Adjusted for the change in the gold price, the Dow would be worth 12,175.15, or down 10.55% since July 6.

Putting it another way, gold has risen 13.67% against the dollar in 77 days; that's getting on for 90% annualised. Is this lift-off for Doug Casey's trip to the moon?

And so say all of us...

Investment experts Jim Rogers and Marc Faber agree with Jim Puplava that (a) the US will try to reflate out of its troubles, and (b) cutting interest rates to achieve this, will lead to worse trouble.

According to Bloomberg today, "Rogers said he is buying agricultural commodities and recommended investors purchase Asian currencies including the Chinese renminbi and the Japanese yen.

Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, said he is buying gold."

DOW 9,000 update

At the time of writing, the Dow stands at 13,493 and gold at $713.70/oz. Adjusted for the change in the price of gold, the Dow has fallen by just over 10% since July 6.

Puplava: this isn't the big one

I'm a bit behind on my listening to Financial Sense Newshour, but as ever, the issues we're talking about aren't momentary. Jim Puplava's view (8 September) is that this crisis isn't the big one: the US will reflate its way out. It can't do that on its own without sacrificing the dollar, so (as has been happening for a long time) there will be cooperation with other nations' central banks. In effect, we are in an international currency inflation cartel, since no trading nation wants a hard currency that leaves its industries high and dry.

But, says Jim, the next recovery will be shorter, and the next fall back much worse. He sees this as happening around 2009/2010, which coincides with the time of Peak Oil, in which he is a big believer. That's when he feels the energy and credit crunches may come together. He sees gold and silver soaring to levels that currently seem fantastic.

For us ordinary people, that may be less interesting than the effects of energy shortage on our daily transportation and domestic heating.

Clausewitz reversed

The Prussian military theorist Von Clausewitz said that war was the continuation of politics by other means; some have since substituted the word "economics" for "politics".

But such is the complexity of modern industrial society, and the horrific potential of modern military technology, that we may invert the relationship: economic ownership and infrastructure may be the new weapons with which to wage war.

It is not hard to see the power potential in China's increasing stake in the US economy - not only US government bonds, but increasingly, other assets such as equities. Already, the bond market feels the jerk of the chain, and within the last couple of years Britain has stepped in to provide some much-needed slack to America. But the growth of "sovereign wealth funds" could see future governments using their investments to interfere in the equity markets, too. What price free trade then?

And there are other gaps in the armour. For example, America's recent allegations against China of cyber-warfare have highlighted our daily dependence on electronic technology.

Two Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, have produced a book examining such possibilities: "Unrestricted Warfare" (1999). Some translated extracts are available here, and the Wikipedia article is here.

This is not to say that China is actually hostile; only that, like the rest of us, she has her own agenda, and her own contingency plans. Much of warfare is not outright battle, but the use of threats and potential threats to gain strategic advantage. Pushing your opponent into desperation can backfire disastrously. As Sun Tzu said, "To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape."

But we must recover our economic balance, or risk having the imbalance used against us.

Slither

Gold $7.04, the British pound bumping up against $2.03. Is the system settling for a controlled skid?

UPDATE

A day later, gold is up another 1%, (or would that be, the dollar is down 1% against it?), the pound is marginally nearer $2.03, and the Dow is rising.

Michael Panzner agrees with Marc Faber

In Blogging Stocks, September 7:

We're in a rare moment in history where cash is king... My prediction is that the Standard & Poor's 500 could fall at least another 10% from here. I think the economy is weakening and the crisis in the credit markets will worsen from here... this is not the time for a buy-and-hold strategy. But if you must stay in stocks, look at more defensive sectors like food, beverage and healthcare... Gold...

Read the whole item - and see the video - here.

Dow 9,000 prediction revisited

September 8: since August 31, the Dow has slipped further to close at 13,113.38 on Friday; gold has risen to $701 (London PM gold fix). Adjusted for the rise in the price of gold, the Dow is now the equivalent of 12,117.25. So in terms of Robert McHugh's prediction, it has lost 10.98% since July 6. Time for another quiet release of gold by central banks?

How much physical gold does the Fed still hold?

A reassuring image from the Federal Reserve

US bond pressure mounts

...and China has been selling off US Treasury bills, according to Gary Dorsch of Global Money Trends, featured in GoldSeek today:

"Beijing sees a “veto proof” protectionist bill sailing thru the US Congress later this year, and has been a net seller of US T-bonds for three straight months by a record amount of $14.7 billion, the longest period of sales by China since November 2000."

UPDATE

More on this from the Daily Telegraph here.

Selling the family gold?

According to The Mogambo Guru on 30 August, "...gold suddenly plummeted on Thursday, making me laugh nervously, as things have now gotten so bad that central banks are apparently actually increasing their selling of sovereign gold to get the money to pay current bills! Hahaha!"
This would be interesting information for gold bugs. Unfortunately, the World Gold Council has not updated its list of gold holdings since June. Any information, anybody?

UPDATE

Physical gold has enjoyed record purchases in some regions, according to The Market Oracle yesterday.

Scare stories - "the S&P to fall to 700"

Dan Denning, in today's Daily Reckoning Australia, considers whether it may be a good time to unload your investments, and refers to reports of large bets made that the S&P 500 may drop to 700 (currently it's around 1,474) - or possibly rise to 1,700! It's got the conspiracy theorists exercised, although experts say it's a technical matter (see The Street); but the sums involved are large. Stormy weather ahead?

The outlook from Financial Sense

Some voices and topics from Financial Sense, 25 August:

inflation, deflation, gold, cash...

Jim Puplava: ...I've had Bob Prechter on this program and Bob is a deflationist and Bob believes that we get deflation first and then hyperinflation where I guess my views are we get hyperinflation and then what follows will be deflation. And that's the way it has unfolded with great debtor nations. And I think history will repeat itself here with the US. There is too much debt here and it has to be inflated away...

...I really believe that the full force of these storms aren't going to hit until somewhere between 2009 and 2010 when this really comes home to roost. And all of these debt problems, the problems that we have with energy today, availability, peak oil, the geopolitical problems in the Middle East – I do not expect the next decade to be a pleasant one, John. I wish I could say otherwise because as a father with three children, one to get married shortly and looking forward to grandchildren, you know, this is something that you don't like to think about...

credit bubble, credit crunch, commodities, East delinking from West...

Doug Noland: ...the economy is much more vulnerable than many believe because of the credit that was going to the upper end; and I think the upper end mortgage area is where we had the greatest excesses.

So I think when all is said and done, subprime losses are going to be small compared to the losses we see in jumbo and Alt-A, and especially, unfortunately out in California...

...there’s desperation out there to find buyers for mortgages... Washington generally doesn’t understand the risk of Fannie and Freddie [US government-sponsored entities - "GSEs" - that offer mortgages], so of course they would think it’s their role to step in and provide the liquidity.

But... their total exposure is over 4 trillion dollars now. And this is a huge problem, and I fully expect down the road these institutions to be nationalized. And I think the US taxpayer is going to pay a huge bill for this... To be honest, I don’t mind the GSEs if they want to play a role in affordable housing; if they wanted to try to rectify some of the problems at the lower end because of the lack of the availability of credit in subprime. But to think that the GSEs should start doing jumbo mortgages, to try to be the buyer of last resort for California mortgages, my God, it’s hard to believe that makes sense to anyone because that’s just a potential disaster. It’s also reminiscent of the S&L – the Savings and Loan problem that, you know, was a several billion dollar problem during the 80s that they allowed to grow to several hundred billion by the early 90s. And definitely, the tab of the GSEs is growing rapidly right now...

...even if the central banks add a trillion dollars of liquidity to help out this deleveraging we still have this issue of how are we going to generate the trillions of additional credit going forward to keep incomes levitated, to keep corporation earnings levitated, to keep asset prices levitated, to keep the global economy chugging along...

...The global economy may be something of a different story because we have credit bubbles all over the world. Like the Chinese bubble right now is pretty much oblivious to what’s going on in the US and in Europe. You can see a scenario where, you know, you have serious credit breakdown but let’s say Chinese demand keeps energy and resource prices higher than one would expect. So I’m going to be watching this very carefully because we’re going to see some very unusual dynamics as far as liquidity and inflation effects between different asset classes and different types of price levels throughout the economy.

Agriculture on the up

An interesting report this week in the International Herald Tribune about the coming boom in agricultural commodities, powered by demand from emerging economies.

Meanwhile, cattle are moving off the Argentine pampas to make way for crops of soybeans and corn. The cattle are being crossbred to cope with the rougher conditions they'll face.

What Bank of England?

Further to yesterday's piece on the licence to the European Central Bank to seize the Bank of England's assets, here are two relevant articles from the Maastricht Treaty. The Campaign for an Independent Britain was stating no more than the truth. (In the extracts, red highlighting is mine.)

ARTICLE 30

Transfer of foreign reserve assets to the ECB

30.1. Without prejudice to Article 28, the ECB shall be provided by the national central banks with foreign reserve assets, other than Member States’ currencies, ECUs, IMF reserve positions and SDRs, up to an amount equivalent to ECU 50,000 million. The Governing Council shall decide upon the proportion to be called up by the ECB
following its establishment and the amounts called up at later dates. The ECB shall have the full right to hold and manage the foreign reserves that are transferred to it and to use them for the purposes set out in this Statute.

30.2. The contributions of each national central bank shall be fixed in proportion to its share in the subscribed capital of the ECB.

30.3. Each national central bank shall be credited by the ECB with a claim equivalent to its contribution. The Governing Council shall determine the denomination and remuneration of such claims.

30.4. Further calls of foreign reserve assets beyond the limit set in Article 30.1 may be effected by the ECB, in accordance with Article 30.2, within the limits and under the conditions set by the Council in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 42.

30.5. The ECB may hold and manage IMF reserve positions and SDRs and provide for the pooling of such assets.

30.6. The Governing Council shall take all other measures necessary for the application of this Article.


ARTICLE 42

Complementary legislation

In accordance with Article 106(6) of this Treaty, immediately after the decision on the date for the beginning of the third stage, the Council, acting by a qualified majority either on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament and the ECB or on a recommendation from the ECB and after consulting the European Parliament and the Commission, shall adopt the provisions referred to in Articles 4, 5.4, 19.2, 20, 28. 1, 29.2, 30.4 and 34.3 of this Statute.

(Remember that "consulting" may mean no more than finding out how much we hate their plan, before they go ahead and implement it anyway.)

On the nose?

Aubie Baltin in DollarDaze gives it out straight from the shoulder: a 50% drop in US real estate that will take 10 years to turn around; a 30-50% drop on the Dow; we should be positioned 50:50 cash and gold bullion.

This last chimes with others who say there's bubbles everywhere but can't predict whether the Federal Reserve will feel forced to hyperinflate the currency.

The Dow 9,000 prediction

In SafeHaven on 9 July 2007, Robert McHugh predicted the Dow would drop to 9,000 "over the intermediate-term, although if the PPT responds by hyperinflating the money supply, it could be 9,000 in real dollars (gold adjusted), not nominal." This would mean a drop of 33.88% from its 6 July value. Others have also forecast a fall in the Dow and/or the dollar. I plan to test this assertion from time to time.

The situation is complicated by monetary inflation in the USA, and in other countries that are trying to maintain the exchange rate of their currencies against the dollar, in order to protect their trade with America. So we'll take the Dow as it was on 6 July (the chart McHugh was using) and adjust for relative currency movements and the price of gold.

Starting points for 6 July 2007: the Dow was 13,611.69; gold (London AM fix) $647.75/oz.; using the interbank rates as given by O&A, one US dollar bought 122.7160 Japanese yen, 0.49630 British pounds, 0.73450 Euros, 7.60760 Chinese yuan/renminbi.

Situation as at c. 7 a.m. GMT 31 August 2007: Dow 13,238.73; gold $666.30; dollar buys 115.73200 Japanese yen, 0.49660 British pounds, 0.73280 Euros, 7.55580 Chinese yuan/renminbi. Adjusting for movements in currencies and the price of gold, we reinterpret the Dow today as being worth:

12,870.16 against gold
12,485.29 against the Japanese yen
13,246.73 against the British pound
13,208.09 against the Euro
13,148.59 against the Chinese yuan/renminbi

At present and in purchasing terms, the Dow since 6 July 2007 has fallen most (8.275%) against Japan, next against gold (5.45%), then China (3.40%), Europe (2.97%) and the UK (2.68%). I see this last as a measure of Britain's own weakness.

So within two months, and against the yen, the Dow has already fallen by about one-quarter of McHugh's predicted overall drop.

September 8: since August 31, the Dow has slipped further to close at 13,113.38 on Friday; gold has risen to $701 (London PM gold fix). Adjusted for the rise in the price of gold, the Dow is now the equivalent of 12,117.25. So in terms of Robert McHugh's prediction, it has lost 10.98% since July 6. Time for another quiet release of gold by central banks?

September 18: At the time of writing (6 p.m. British Summer Time), the Dow stands at 13,493 and gold at $713.70/oz. Adjusted for the change in the price of gold, the Dow has fallen by just over 10% since July 6.

September 21: Dow currently 13,839.54, gold (10.03 a.m. NY time) $736.30. Adjusted for the change in the gold price, the Dow would be worth 12,175.15, or down 10.55% since July 6.

Putting it another way, gold has risen 13.67% against the dollar in 77 days; that's getting on for 90% annualised. Is this lift-off for Doug Casey's trip to the moon?

September 29: July 6 to present: Dow up from 13,611.69 to 13,895.63; gold up from $647.75/oz. to $743.10. So the "gold-priced Dow" is down 11.01% in 84 days.

Annualised equivalent: gold increasing by c. 82% p.a., "gold-priced Dow" falling 40% over a year. Will these trends continue?

October 27: The Dow is currently at 13,806.70, up slightly from its July 6 valuation of 13,611.69. But gold has risen from $647.75 to $783.50 in the same period - up 21% in 113 days, or around 85% annualised. This means the "gold-priced Dow" is worth 11,414.54. At this rate, Robert McHugh's prediction will be fulfilled by March 8 next year.

November 2: Dow at 13,595.10, gold $806 per ounce. Since July 6, Dow has appeared to hold its ground, but the "gold-priced Dow" has dropped to 10,925.83 - a fall of over 49% annualised. And at this rate, gold will have doubled in dollar terms by July 2008.

November 7: Dow at 13,660.94, gold $833.80/oz. "Gold-priced Dow" has therefore gone down since July 6, from 13,611.69 to (effectively) 10,612.71, a drop of 22% (or 52% p.a. annualised).

To put it another way, the Dow has stood still and gold has risen 29% (or 112% p.a. annualised) over the last 123 days.

January 13, 2008: Last year, Robert McHugh predicted that the Dow would drop to 9,000, if not in nominal terms then in relation to gold. The Dow was then 13,238.73 and gold $666.30/oz, which means that it took 19.87 ounces of gold to buy the Dow. McHugh's prediction implies the Dow dropping to 13.51 gold ounces (a fall of 6.36 ounces).

The Dow is now 12,606.30 and gold $894.90, so the Dow is now worth 14.09 gold ounces. It has fallen by 5.78 ounces out of the predicted 6.36, so the prediction is 90.9% fulfilled so far.

McHugh will be fully correct if, for example, the Dow remains unchanged and gold rises to $933/oz; or if gold stalls, the Dow will need to fall to 12,090.

January 18, 2008: Dow 12,082.31, gold $880.50/oz, so the Dow is now worth 13.72 ounces of gold as against Robert McHugh's prediction of 13.51.

Nearly there, and the new announcement of a $145 billion reflation may push gold that extra yard.

January 22, 2008: As at the time of writing, the Dow is 11,820.24 and gold $875.90/oz. The Dow/gold ratio is therefore below 13.51 and has (perhaps fleetingly) fulfilled Robert McHugh's prediction.

Whether the Dow falls below 9,000 nominal in the course of a severe recession is something we shall have to see.

More on the Euro as the dollar's replacement

From the website of the Campaign for an Independent Britain, a point about Britain's gold reserves. This strengthens the speculation that the Euro might become gold-related and take the reserve-currency mantle from the US dollar.

Is it really true that Britain's gold reserves would be transferred to Germany in the event of monetary union?

The arrangements for Economic and Monetary Union are set out in a Protocol annexed to the Maastricht Treaty signed by the British Government in 1992. Article 30 of the Protocol would require Britain, on joining EMU, to transfer around £8,000 million of our gold and dollar reserves irrevocably to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.

Article 42 provides that more of our remaining reserves could be transferred to the European Central Bank if a majority of the other EMU countries required it.

Britain would not be able to veto this process.

If so, perhaps holders of these German gold bonds from between the two World Wars might end up with Britain's bullion!

Good luck, Tampa investors.

UPDATE

The suit for German gold was brought by a farmer called Ronnie Fulwood. Here's the (English edition) German Spiegel article from 2004. His attorneys seem to have a history of long-shot claims, as this blog from May 2007 explains.

Money safety update - American banks

"I warn you, Sir! The discourtesy of this bank is beyond all limits. One word more and I—I withdraw my overdraft." (Punch, June 27, 1917)

I recently looked at the security of deposits in British banks, but what about the USA? As with my earlier post this morning, we find concise information included in a different argument, in this case about the American liquidity crisis.

In the USA, it seems that up to $100,000 in checking and savings accounts (per depositor per "member bank") is covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. There were two separate funds - one for banking, the other for savings (following the $150 billion losses in the savings & loan crisis a generation ago) - but they have been merged as from the end of March 2006.

There are three compensation methods used. One is direct payment to the investor, termed a "straight deposit payoff". The other two involve transfer of business to a healthy bank, with some financing from FDIC: these are known as "purchase and assumption" (P&A) and "insured deposit transfer" - full details here and here. (N.B. although FDIC prefers not to make a straight deposit payoff, as it is the most expensive solution for them, it remains an option - Sutton and Hagmahani's brief account skates over this point.)

The $100k upper limit for depositor protection is more generous than in the UK - and it seems to be 100% insured, unlike for the poor British saver. But, the authors warn, FDIC "only works when bank failures are isolated events, and will not work in a systemic crisis...or for that matter one really big bank failure."

Taking a more general view, the article explains that the subprime mess has reduced liquidity in the system, causing it to work inefficiently, which is why the Federal Reserve has pumped in more cash - accepting "toxic waste" collateral in return, and offering a discount on its loan rate to banks.

The authors have two objections to this assistance:

• it rewards bad behaviour and encourages a repetition ("moral hazard")
• accepting unrealizable obligations as collateral is inflationary, since it turns nothingness into money

Their prediction: a fall in the value of the dollar, and if the banks disguise their problems and fail to clean house, at worst a collapse of the financial system. The Fed has bought some time, but that time has to be used for urgent reform.

Doug Casey: business cycles and subprime loans

"The Man In The Moone" by Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford (1620)

I noticed years ago that you get the crispest explanations from someone who's busy trying to get to their main point - Isaac Asimov's "Extraterrestrial Civilizations" (1979) is an excellent example. Even if you disagree with the conclusion, you have learned so much on the journey, and so quickly.

Doug Casey in DollarDaze yesterday summarises the theorised relationship between the money supply and the business cycle, plus subprime mortgages and hedge fund gearing, as part of the argument for gold mining stocks. Again, you may not agree with him that gold "is going to the moon", but in the meantime he has given us a clear and concise exposition of two important economic topics.

2012: Olduvai Theory, sunspots and energy planning

Wm. Robert Johnston's reconstruction of the last Ice Age (at 16,000 BC)

A fascinating article by Brian Bloom in The Market Oracle on 6 August. He ties together a number of threads:

• Regular periodic stockmarket cycles
• Richard Duncan's Olduvai Theory (we've passed the peak of the per capita energy use that built our civilisation)
• The possible role of sunspots in cycles of climate change (allegedly we're heading for a deep global freeze in 50 years' time)
• The sun's movement in relation to the Milky Way, tentatively linked to a 100,000-year glaciation cycle

... and relates them to economic and political issues to suggest that we need to take urgent action to reduce debt and become more energy-efficient.

In case you are tempted to dismiss frontier thinking of this kind, it's worth remembering that many highly successful investors are intrigued by long-wave patterns. For example, Marc Faber is interested in the Kondratieff cycle, among others:

...business cycles do exist. Some economists claim that they occur, according to Juglar, every eight to twelve years. But according to Kondratieff and Schumpeter, you have these long waves that occur. You have a rising wave of about 15 to 25 years, then there is a plateau and downward again for 15 to 25 years. And then you have a drop and the entire cycle starts again. You have all kinds of cycle theory. I am not so sure you can measure the timing of the peak and the bottom, but definitely cycles do exist.

(Interview with Jim Puplava on Financial Sense, February 22, 2003)

More on Marc Faber and agricultural land

Zee News reports Dr Faber's continuing support for the agricultural sector, in which he himself has invested:

Faber... owns agricultural land and plantation stocks in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

Gold and farmland: further points

The Daily Reckoning Australia has very stimulating thoughts today.

(1) Dan Denning quotes a friend (David Evans) on the divergence between physical gold and shares in gold mining companies:

If the price of gold rises a lot, gold shares have greater leverage and will tend to go up more than gold bars (the cost of mining the gold stays constant, but the price of the mined gold goes up). When the general public gets involved and everyone just wants gold, gold bars tend to appreciate faster... The obvious strategy is to own gold shares now, and when every man and his dog is clamouring for gold, sell your gold shares and buy gold bars to enjoy the last part of the ride.

So when I looked at gold dropping with the Dow, maybe I should have also taken a peek at what gold shares were doing at the same time. For example, Newmont Mining opened yesterday at $40.30 and closed up at $41.07, whereas gold for delivery in December fell by $2.70.

(2) Chris Mayer looks at agricultural land in Brazil and Argentina, in the light of a hungry and resource-limited China:

In Brazil and Argentina, you have one of the few places left in the world where you can acquire large tracts of land in temperate climates with plenty of rainfall to support large-scale agriculture. Already, the two countries produce about one-third of the world’s agricultural commodities. As China is the world’s workshop and India its back office, so has South America become its breadbasket.

Maybe this is why Hugh Hendry and his colleagues have just launched the Eclectica Agriculture Fund.

Gold: speculative investment vs store of value

White Star Line's "Olympic", launched 20th October 1910 (big picture)

Yet again, the Dow drops (about 2%), and gold limps after the pack (down about 0.3%). Until there's a major financial disaster, or it is returned to currency status, gold will not be able to make up its mind whether it's a quality investment or an emergency provision - a liner or a lifeboat.

Money supply, shares and property

Here's a 22 May article by Cliff d'Arcy in The Motley Fool, comparing house prices and the FTSE 100. From mid-1984 to December last year, the FTSE has outperformed by 7.4% compound per year versus 7.2% for houses. But as he points out, houses are "geared" by mortgages, whereas most of us don't borrow to buy shares.

From September 1984 to the end of 2006, the money supply as measured by M4 showed an annualised average increase of 11.64%. Looking at the growth of M4 as against that of two classes of asset, I wonder where the difference went? Do interest charges roughly account for this?

The money supply, the stockmarket, gold and land

Here's part of an interesting interview with a hedge fund manager in 2003, reproduced in October 2005:

An old interview with Hugh Hendry (2003)

Hendry: What's happening today happened 300 years ago in the French economy when John Law, another Scotsman, was allowed to launch the first government-sanctioned bank, which replaced coins with paper money. Commerce boomed. Politicians recognized this correlation between issuing more money and people liking you. They issued more and more money, but it was a false promise. Nothing intrinsically was being added to the economy except promises, which could never be redeemed. Selling by speculators caused the stock market to correct. The correction encouraged the authorities to print more funny money. Ultimately, the continued pumping of liquidity destroyed the economy, the stock market and France's currency.


More recently, the U.S. came off the gold standard in 1971 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed in 1974. Over the next 25 years, the Dow goes up 20-fold because every period of economic anxiety brought forward an orthodoxy of generous liquidity. Money has to go somewhere. It seeks to perpetuate itself by going into a rising asset class. This time, it is financial assets. Just like the Mississippi stock scheme in 1720 and the South Sea Bubble in London at the same time.

Hugh Hendry set up Eclectica Asset Management in 2005 and like others I've mentioned before, seems to have discovered an enthusiasm for agriculture; Eclectica's new Agriculture Fund is detailed here.

Elections, inflation and the stockmarket

Here's an interesting 2005 piece from British home lender / banker HBOS/Halifax, correlating periods of government with inflation and share prices. The conclusion:

Martin Ellis, chief economist at Halifax, said:

"Although wider economic conditions clearly play a part in the rise and fall of the stock market, election campaigns do appear to have a marked impact on share prices. The three month period preceding any general election traditionally sees large fluctuations in share prices as the market tries to understand the likely outcome of the election."

I haven't yet tried to relate increases in the money supply to General Elections, but it might be an interesting avenue to explore.

Buy or sell?

FT Alphaville (20 August) summarises an interim (between scheduled GBD newsletters) report by Marc Faber. The gist is that we should be looking for the right moments to sell, not to buy.

Peter Schiff: recession "necessary and inevitable"

Writing in The Market Oracle on Friday, Peter Schiff thinks it's time we took our medicine.

Economic warfare?

Gerard Jackson, in The Market Oracle today, rehearses the economic explanation for what's going on between America and China. He lays the blame on the expansion of credit in the US monetary system, rather than sinister Chinese intentions.

That's not to say that some in China don't see the weakening of America - and the West generally - as a bonus. National pride can be underestimated.

But the real question is whether our democracies can take really tough decisions now, in order to prevent a much greater disaster later.