Blog

June 6, 2005 – Currency risk is a troublesome problem that everyone faces. It arises for a variety of different reasons, but more often than not, government management of the currency through its captive central bank is the source of the problem. For example, inflation, i.e., the loss of a currency’s purchasing power because ofRead more

May 23, 2005 – In the last letter I drew attention to two charts that presented conflicting pictures. The first chart (last presented in Letter No. 362 but included and updated here) shows that the XAU Index of major gold mining stocks has broken its 4-year uptrend line. Clearly, that’s not a good sign forRead more

May 16, 2005 – There are two principal monetary provisions in the American Constitution. Taken together they make clear the intent of that document’s Framers. Article I, section 8 states: “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof…” The repeated misinterpretation of this clause has enabled it to be misused and abused.Read more

April 11, 2005 – Crude oil expert Matt Simmons is becoming a familiar name to many, particularly as the price of crude oil climbs higher. He has been featured in numerous financial publications and has appeared on CNBC. As proprietor of Houston-based Simmons & Co., he is widely respected for his views about crude oil,Read more

March 28, 2005 – Tim Wood is the founding editor of Resource Investor, (www.resourceinvestor.com) an online newsletter focusing on junior mining stocks. It is a newsletter that I find informative and filled with generally good research, so I read it regularly. Every once in a while Tim strays from the resource stocks in order toRead more

March 15, 2005 – On March 10th GATA (www.gata.org) issued a press release that presented an analysis of the gold market prepared by Dan Norcini, a futures trader based in Houston, Texas. Observing that the Commodity Research Bureau (CRB) Index – which is composed of seventeen different commodities important to economic activity – had justRead more

February 21, 2005 – The International Monetary Fund supposedly owns about 3,200 tonnes of gold. I say ‘supposedly’ purposefully, because like the deceptive accounting used by so many central banks to report their gold holding, one never knows for sure whether all the gold is really there or not. Assuming the IMF’s gold has notRead more

January 31, 2005 – In the previous article I provided a bullish forecast for gold and the gold mining stocks in 2005. My comparison was to 1987. After gold rose in 1986 while the mining stocks fell that year (the same as happened in 2004), the XAU jumped 43.9% on 1987’s 20.1% rise in theRead more

January 10, 2005 – From time to time over the past couple of years I have been comparing our present circumstances to those prevailing in the 1970’s. I made these comparisons in order to demonstrate that gold today has much the same potential to do what it did back then – namely, to achieve aRead more

December 13th, 2004 – Lines are being drawn in the debate about the new exchange-traded fund developed by the World Gold Council, which is listed on the NYSE under the symbol GLD. Several items have recently appeared on www.thebulliondesk.com, for which I am compelled to respond lest there be any misunderstanding about my point ofRead more