What’s Behind the Slide in Gold and Silver? 27 comments
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After watching the price of silver soar to as high as $15 /ounce in May 2006, Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, offered some sagely words of wisdom:
What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end. At the start of the party, the punch is flowing and everything’s going well, but you know at midnight, it’s all going to turn into pumpkins and mice. People think they’ll be able to get out just before midnight, but everyone else thinks that too. The problem is that, in commodities there are no clocks on the wall.
Nine years earlier, in 1997, Buffett had begun accumulating 130-million ounces of silver, or nearly one-third of the entire world’s supply, at roughly $4.50 per ounce for around $572 million. His public announcement of the silver purchases sent the price up to $7.50 an ounce from just under $6.00 in a few weeks. Then it was discovered that Mr. Buffett was taking delivery of March silver while selling July futures contracts. As quickly as silver prices soared, they plunged.
But by May 2006, silver was spiraling higher again, doubling to $15 /oz, and Buffett lamented before his shareholders that he had sold his silver too early and did not profit much from the sale. Still, Buffett's warning of a commodity bubble that was ready to deflate was initially proven correct when silver tumbled 32% and gold fell 24% over the next five weeks. Other key commodities, such as copper and crude oil, fell by a third by year's end from their peak levels that year.

Yet in hindsight, the perceived “bursting” of the silver bubble in May-June 2006, from a peak of $15 /oz to as low as $10 /oz, was simply a wicked correction within the context of a long-term bull market. Fourteen months later, silver would mount another spectacular rally, this time to as high as $21.25 /oz, and surpassing the May 2006 high by 40 percent. Now, for the third time in the past four years, silver is undergoing yet another wicked correction from a spike top.
The May-June 2006 slide in the silver market was triggered by a surprise rate hike by the Fed to 5.25%, above the perceived “neutral rate” of 5%, leaning on the side of restraint, to keep the powerful “Commodity Super Cycle” in check. Fed chief Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke was anxious to shed his dovish reputation after he had secretly confided to CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo, “It’s worrisome that people look at me as dovish and not as an aggressive inflation-fighter.”
Bernanke tried to reinvent himself as a hawk on June 1, 2006, when he told the International Monetary Conference in Washington:
The Fed will be vigilant to ensure that the recent pattern of elevated monthly core inflation readings is not sustained. The Fed must continue to resist any tendency for increases in energy and commodity prices to become permanently embedded in core inflation.
Bernanke held the fed funds rate steady at 5.25% for more than a year, even as US home prices began their historic slide. Silver prices were locked in a sideways trading range, gyrating between $11 and $15 /ounce. But when startling revelations about the $1.8 trillion sub-prime mortgage crisis began to surface in the summer of 2007, threatening to topple Wall Street banks and brokers, Bernanke panicked and opened the money spigots, thus jettisoning the silver market to above $20 /oz.

Silver peaked on March 17th, near $21.25 /oz, coinciding with the Fed’s eleventh hour rescue of Bear Stearns from bankruptcy. Since then, silver has tumbled 25% to $16 /oz, enduring its third major shake-out in the past four-years. Whereas the 2006 shake-out in the silver market was triggered by the Fed’s surprising 0.25% rate hike to 5.25%, the latest slide is based on opposite ideas - that the Fed’s rate cutting spree has arrived at a dead-end at 2 percent.
In today’s highly sophisticated financial marketplace, there is no longer any need to employ Federal Reserve officials to figure out the most appropriate target level for the federal funds rate. Instead, it’s done by remote control, by traders in the US Treasury and Chicago interest-rate futures markets who are usually several steps ahead of the political lackeys sitting at the Fed.
A pause in the Fed’s rate cutting campaign was signaled when yields on the US Treasury’s two-year note moved above the 2.25% fed funds rate last week. Treasury yields jumped after NBER chief economist Martin Feldstein, a close confidant of Mr. Bernanke, said on CNBC television:
It would make sense for the Fed to stop cutting its target rate at between 2% and the current 2.25%, because to go lower could exacerbate the problem of inflation emanating from high commodity prices.
On April 9th, former Fed chief Paul Volcker lashed out at the Bernanke Fed’s super-easy monetary policy, which has fueled the biggest commodity bubble since the 1970s.
When concerns about recession are rife, the central bank will be tempted to subordinate the fundamental need to maintain a reliable currency, to the impulse to shore up a flagging economy. The danger is that you lose both battles, as the US did in the 1970’s, and wind up with stagflation. The Fed has a particular duty to defend the integrity of the fiat currency in its charge.

But the political lackeys at the Fed take their marching orders from the Bush White House and US “Plunge Protection Team” commander Henry Paulson, who are calling the shots on monetary policy. “I’ve got confidence in the Fed and I’ve been very supportive of what the Fed has done and what the Fed is doing,” Paulson said after the central bank lowered its key interest rate 0.25% to 2.0 percent.
The latest shake-out in silver and gold may have a little further to go, but for investors betting on higher commodity prices in the longer-term, fueled by strong Asian demand, explosive money supply growth, and negative interest rates in the United States, one should recall the advice of the London trading wizard Nathan Rothschild, “The time to buy is when the blood is running in the streets.”
ECB Hawks Trip the Precious Metals
Unlike the rookies at the Bernanke Fed, the hawks at the European Central Bank aren’t bullied by politicians or German schatz traders in Frankfurt, who campaigned hard for a series of ECB rate cuts in the first quarter. German 2-year yields fell as low as 3.10% in February, or 90 basis points below the ECB’s repo rate, anticipating rapid-fire rate cuts to re-inflate the battered European stock markets.
But fighting inflation is the top priority for the ECB, said Greek central banker Nicholas Garganas on Feb 6th. “Our monetary policy is not led on what the markets expect. I’m very concerned about the high inflation rate. Inflation risks remain on the upside,” he said. Consumer price inflation in the Euro zone hit a 16-year high of 3.6% in March. But when German schatz yields still refused to move higher, Bundesbank chief Axel Weber stepped in to set the markets straight.

“Interest-rate expectations for the Euro region don’t reflect the monetary-policy assessment of a central bank that’s obliged to maintain price stability. Be assured, our aim is and remains price stability in the medium term,” he said on Feb 27th. Then on April 17th Weber said, “Recent wage dynamics in conjunction with elevated and persistent energy and food price pressures have increased the risk of a prolonged period of intolerably high inflation,” ruling out an easier monetary policy.
“Against this background, we will have to continuously monitor closely all incoming data and evaluate whether the current level of interest rates in fact ensures achieving our objective,” Weber warned. With the recovery of the European stock markets above their March 17th lows, German 2-year schatz yields eventually shot higher to within spitting distance of the ECB’s 4% repo rate.
The ECB has kept its repo rate steady at 4% for eleven months, and throughout the US sub-prime mortgage crisis which began last summer, in sharp contrast to other members of the G-7 central bank cartel, such as the Bank of Canada, England, and the Fed, who capitulated to political pressure, and slashed their overnight lending rates, despite signs of explosive commodity inflation and money supply growth.

While the ECB has held its repo rate steady at 4% this year, Jean “Tricky” Trichet has pulled another fast one, allowing the 3-month Euro Libor rate to climb 45 basis points higher to 4.85%, thus engineering a clandestine tightening of monetary policy. Higher Euro Libor rates are indicative of instability in the European banking system, with its arteries clogged by toxic US mortgage debt.
But unlike the Fed and the Bank of England, the ECB hasn’t taken any extraordinary measures to flood the banking system with excess liquidity, and counter the sharp rise the Euro Libor rates. Combined with open mouth operations to push German 2-year schatz yields higher, the ECB has managed to steer money away from the precious metals markets and into higher yielding European credit markets.
Japanese Bond Traders awaken from Grand Illusion,
Japanese bond traders have been brainwashed by government propaganda artists and are taught that Japan, one of the world’s biggest importers of food and energy, is immune to global inflation. But after reporting a decade of deflation, Ministry of Finance apparatchniks are finally forced to paint a rising inflation trend, after crude oil prices doubled and a ton of Asian grown rice soared 140% from a year ago.
Last week, Japanese consumer inflation was reported at a decade-high of 1.2% in March, led by rising fuel, raw materials and food prices. Ironically, the Bank of Japan’s super-low interest rate of 0.50% encourages global traders to borrow funds in yen, in order to bid-up commodities and stocks worldwide. Yet it’s tough to get the BoJ to shift to a tighter money policy because the Japanese government is addicted to low interest rates, saddled with a national debt of $6.7 trillion.

To avoid hiking interest rates to curb inflation, the Japanese ministry of finance allowed the yen to strengthen by 12% against the US dollar to hold down the cost of soaring commodity imports. “A stronger yen will ease the negative effect from rising costs of crude oil and commodities,” said former BoJ chief Toshihiko Fukui on March 7th. It was an historic shift in Tokyo’s foreign exchange policy, which had intervened with a strong hand in prior years, to prevent the dollar from falling below 106-yen, the break-even point for many Japanese exporters and multinationals.
Yet despite the stronger yen, the Rodgers International Commodity Index [RICI], the most diversified index including 35-commodities traded on 11-global exchanges, is up 47% from a year ago, near a record 850,000-yen. Yet Tokyo traders were bidding-up Japanese bond prices alongside rising commodity prices for nearly eight-months and knocking bond yields 80 basis points lower to 1.20 percent.
Since the two markets can’t co-exist in a bull-market forever, and with the RICI refusing to budge from its record high, the Japanese government bond snapped first, and suffered a violent backlash, with its biggest one-week loss in 5-years. The lead JGB futures contract fell as much as 2-½ points last Friday, triggering the first-ever halt in trading. Schizophrenic JGB traders did a 180 degree flip and switched their sights towards a Bank of Japan interest rate hike to 0.75 percent.

Yen Libor futures (Dec ’08) suffered their worst losses in 16-years, tumbling 15-ticks to 98.90, and lifting its yield to 1.10%, or 60 basis points above the BoJ’s overnight loan rate. Seeking to quickly extinguish expectations of a rate hike, the BoJ, under its new boss, Masaaki Shirakawa, switched its tightening bias to neutral on April 30th. “The outlook for economic activity and prices is highly uncertain. It is not appropriate to predetermine the direction of future monetary policy,” the BoJ said.
“Given that the economy is underperforming compared with expectations and risks are rising, our stance can be described as flexible,” explained BoJ chief Shirakawa. However, any heavy-handed move by the BoJ to jig the Yen Libor and JGB market higher, would be of great interest to Tokyo gold traders, who have priced in a BoJ rate hike to 0.75% by knocking the yellow metal 12% lower to 90,000-yen /oz.
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This article has 27 comments:
Here is my reasoning, and anyone of course is free to attempt to find fault with it:
Assume that I buy a ten-year, $1,000 bond that pays 3% interest (assuming simple interest for this exercise). Now, I think in terms of lamb chops: how many pounds of lamb chops can I now buy with my $1,000? Say they cost $10/pound. So with that $1,000, I can buy 100 pounds of lamb chops. So for ten years, I receive $30 each year while I wait for my bond to mature. When that happens, I get my $1,000 back. Now, how many pounds of lamb chops can I buy with that returned $1,000? Well, over those ensuing ten years, the purchasing power of that $1,000 has dropped by 3% annually, for a total depreciation of 30%. That means that after those ten years, I can buy only 70 pounds of lamb chops with my returned $1,000. So by buying that ten-year bond that paid $30 annually, I've lost 30% of my original investment in real terms.
You may say that while I was waiting for my bond to mature, I was earning 3% on my money. But was I? No. Why not? Because the government wants its slice in taxes. So that 3% return is really perhaps 2.2%. And if I spent that purported 3% nominal return, I'm really in a fix, no? If I don't spent the interest, at least I came close to maintaining the original purchasing power of my money. But it's still a losing proposition.
The bond I thought was an OK deal turned out to be a loss.
If anyone disagrees with me, you are also disagreeing with a banker and a bond expert who, in quiet voices, completely agreed with my logic.
Today, the only way a person could buy a bond and come out ahead is if he successfully played the interest game.
I believe that's why the Ben Bernankes of the world say they hate deflation. Why? Because in a deflation, the above argument is reversed, and bond distributors would then find themselves on the receiving end, not the dishing end. They would need to turn profits with the money they collect, rather than making a guaranteed profit the way it is now.
So what exactly are you trying to say? could this be the summary of your well elaborate post.
The latest shake-out in silver and gold may have a little further to go, but for investors betting on higher commodity prices in the longer-term, fueled by strong Asian demand, explosive money supply growth, and negative interest rates in the United States, one should recall the advice of the London trading wizard Nathan Rothschild, “The time to buy is when the blood is running in the streets.”
GPC MD
I totally agree with you about bonds. They are a horrible "investment" when inflation is factored in.
Regards,
KSV.Padmanabhan, Mumbai, India.
The reality is quite different, just shifting from etf gold to etf silver is impossible in masse...
Where is my silver, try to get yours in hand... go back to sleep...
www.infowars.com/?p=18...
May 2, 2008
“I believe George Bush and Dick Cheney plan to take care of Iran before they leave office,” former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said in an interview published in the Charleston Gazette on Wednesday.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the United States is planning right now, as we speak, a military strike against Iran. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost every senior US military official has pretty much acknowledged the same,” former UN weapons inspector and now anti-war commentator Scott Ritter had told Democracy Now on Monday.
soaring food and oil prices along with WWIII, then what will
happen to gold and silver?
I read about a gold mine in Russia that a Canadian/American company wanted to extract gold from. The Russian government only permits outsiders who partner with Russian companies. So, the Canadian/American mining company found some Russian partners. But the Russian partners had no money, and so had to borrow money from the Russian government for their half of the business. They got loans from the Russian government based on the gold they'd have in the future. Well, after the Canadian/American company and the Russian company got the mine well constructed and started getting gold out, what do you know - somehow, mysteriously, the world gold price dropped so low, the Russian half of the partnership was broke. They could not afford to repay their government loans, and the Canadian/American company was able to buy them out. Afterward, what do you know, mysteriously and inexplicably, the gold market went right back up! But, thankfully, the Russian government has not allowed the Canadian/American company to take any gold out of the country.
So, I think part of the plot involved getting affluent people to take their money out of stocks, etc. and put it into gold, then drop the gold price.
You want my advice?
Re-read what JT said a couple of times for it to sink in.
I agree completely.
In this day & age that people have discovered most "consp. theories" are actually true and the government and others use that label to discredit cold hard proof - so anytime you mention that word, you loose ALL respect and credibility and sound as if you are "one of them."
HOLD PHYSICAL GOLD & SILVER!
SILVER WILL % MUCH MORE LOOK WHAT IT HAS DONE PAST FEW DAYS:
19th - 1.~~%
20th - 4.07%
21st 1.93%
22nd 0.~~%
23rd 1.34%
Depending on the times I checked they could have closer higher/lower.
Buy 20-30 times more silver in weight than gold.
But buy PLENTY of gold.
And food!
And ammo!
For the coming Martial Law in the USA! (then WWIII - YES THREE)
PLEASE LOOK IT UP GOD DAMNIT EVEN IF IT FOR THE SAKE OF PROFITING FROM THE PLANNED DOLLAR COLLAPSE (FOR THE AMERO) and the end of the U.S. (for the NAU - North American Union - Canada/Mex/US).
Don't listen to disinfo agents like this writer & don't for one minute think those peaks were silver & golds highest price.
Silvers real value in terms of dollars is higher than $200 and gold is $2500 if you factor in inflation for those highs.
Also taking into consideration the manipulation by the Rothschilds and other people who hold most of the metals - you can bet your last ounce that their true value is much higher than cash can ever measured (they've admitted this publicly).
After all once the U.S. dollar is dropped... not even $1,000,000,000,000,000... will buy you my ounce of silver. Even if you came to me right now with the dollar still "running" - although not well - with double the value I would still not sell.
Unless I sold for double price then put all that money back in silver therefore doubling my stash (or gold).
Silver+ Gold = THE ONLY REAL MONEY THAT HAS EXISTED FOR 5000 YEARS!
Paper Money = Monopoly money = Toilet Paper
Credit = Numbers on a screen.
Use that monopoly money and digits on a screen to buy whatever REAL MONEY YOU CAN BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
The post above is the most important post you could read all year
***********
No website, no name - I don't want your money or anything.
I want you to use your head.
Research research research from 30+ media sources (NOT MAINSTREAM tv radio or yahoo/msn (unless for searching) and come to your own conclusion.
But by then you will have wasted the time I'm trying to save you!
believe it, fellow sheep :
In addition, I don't have to worry about my respect being loosened.
On May 07 04:08 PM TehStone wrote:
> patti you're stark raving mad - but the rest of you posters had interesting
> things to say, as well as the article that started it all. The research
> done by the author answered many questions I had that I simply didn't
> have time to research.