The ONLY Variable That Matters To The Price Of Gold
Sep 27, 2017 12:55 PM
Written by Jeff Nielson, Sprott Money News
There are all sorts of positive fundamentals when it comes to the price of gold. There are the positive supply/demand fundamentals. The gold market is in a supply deficit. Mine reserves are at a 30-year low. The price of gold is below what is necessary to sustain the gold mining industry.
There are the positive geopolitical fundamentals. The world’s two most-unstable leaders – Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump – have been constantly trading threats and insults. And both of these people have nuclear weapons at their disposal. There is the endless “War on Terror”.
There are the positive economic fundamentals. Western real estate bubbles in major urban centers are at never-before-seen levels of insanity. Western markets are generally also at bubble levels, with U.S. markets representing bubbles on steroids. Western governments are bankrupt.
In relative terms, none of these fundamentals count.
There is one more important fundamental for the price of gold. Not only is it the most important fundamental, but it involves a variable which dwarfs all other fundamentals in magnitude -- combined.
Regular readers have heard many times before that gold (and silver) is “a monetary metal”. The definition is simple. Gold is money. Therefore the price of gold must change proportionate to changes in the supply of other forms of “money” (i.e. currency).
This is not a theory. It is a function of simple arithmetic. An elementary numerical example will illustrate this principle.
Suppose (in the entire world) there was a total of 10 ozs of gold. Suppose also (in this hypothetical world) that there was a total of only $10,000 U.S. dollars. And in this hypothetical world, the price of gold is $1,000/oz.
Let us suppose the supply of U.S. dollars increases by a factor of five, and thus there are now $50,000 USD’s. What happens to the price of gold? All other things being equal, the price of gold must increase by a factor of five (in this case, to $5,000/oz), to keep our hypothetical world in equilibrium.
Now let’s return to the real world. What happened in the real world? The supply of U.S. dollars did increase by a factor of five. This was the most reckless money-printing binge since Germany’s hyperinflation during the 1920’s. Regular readers know this monetary orgy as “the Bernanke Helicopter Drop”.
Over a span of 50 years from 1920 through 1970 (while we still had a gold standard), the supply of U.S. dollars was virtually unchanged. In five years, 2009 – 13, B.S. Bernanke quintupled the U.S. money supply.
Did the price of gold quintuple? No, not even close. At the time that Bernanke began his money-printing orgy, the price of gold was roughly $800/oz. That was right after, the price had been driven roughly 30% lower by the banking crime syndicate. And even before that point, the price of gold wasn’t close to reflecting its full value.
At a minimum, the Bernanke Helicopter Drop should have propelled gold to $4,000/oz (USD), concurrent with that money-printing. Arguably, the price should have gone much higher than that. In actual fact, as we all know, the price never even reached $2,000/oz: less than half of the absolute minimum price.
That should have been the base price for gold in 2013: $4,000/oz USD. The supply of U.S. dollars has never shrunk. Forget about “tapering”. It never happened.
How do we know? B.S. Bernanke told us so. From 2009 – 13, virtually every week Bernanke boasted about “the wealth effect” from his money-printing: how U.S. stock markets were being pumped higher and higher and higher.
Obviously if quintupling the supply of U.S. dollars pushed U.S. markets up to their bubble levels, then withdrawing dollars would cause those markets to fall from their all-time highs. What have we seen? Instead, the bubbles have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
Obviously the U.S. money supply hasn’t shrunk, it has continued to grow. Bernanke and the Fed lied when they claimed they were reducing the supply of U.S. dollars. And as we also all know, the Federal Reserve absolutely refuses to allow any outside auditing.
Nobody knows what are on its books, we only know what the Fed-heads claim is on their books. And what they claim is not remotely plausible.
The U.S. market bubbles keep expanding, ergo the U.S. money supply keeps expanding. There is no other possibility. Yet the price of gold isn’t at $6,000/oz. It isn’t at $4,000/oz. It isn’t at $2,000/oz. It has been falling for most of the last six years.
During those six years, no one in the mainstream media (and very few in the Alternative Media) has made any mention of the gigantic disconnect with U.S. money-printing and the price of gold. The reason why the mainstream media propaganda machine has ignored this fundamental is obvious. Their job is to suppress the price of gold.
Why have practically no commentators in the Alternative Media been banging the drum on this subject? Ignorance. Sadly, few of these gold “experts” have a correct understanding of gold market fundamentals. They dwell on trivia.
Look at what we see around us today. These self-proclaimed experts debate whether or not the price of gold should rise above $1,300/oz. They point to North Korea. They point to incremental changes in demand for some of the major gold-consuming nations. Irrelevant.
The fact is that thanks to the success of the banking crime syndicate in discouraging the buying of (real) gold in the Western world, total gold demand hasn’t increased by that much. The largest, single incremental change was the switch by central banks from being net-sellers to net-buyers of gold. That was a very significant change, but it has flattened out and there is no indication that this will change further over the short term.
The fact is that (despite all the rhetoric) there is very little chance of any actual hostilities between the United States and North Korea. Discounted for this small probability, this is not a major driver of the price of gold.
The most ludicrous influence – and distraction – to the price of gold has been U.S. interest rates. High interest rates are a negative driver for the price of gold. The reasoning goes like this.
If savers can obtain a positive interest rate on their savings then they have an incentive to hold paper instead of gold. What is a “positive interest rate” in this context? If the interest rate on their savings is higher than the rate of inflation, then that is a positive interest rate.
If the savings rate is lower than the rate of inflation, savers lose money by putting it in the bank, and they are much better off holding gold instead.
Are current interest rates high? No, they are the lowest rates in history. This is despite the fact that B.S. Bernanke and all the other central bank liars promised to immediately normalize interest rates in 2009 – meaning in the range of 3% - 5%.
Today, after nearly nine years, the U.S. interest rate is at 1%. Meanwhile, real U.S. inflation has hovered between 4 – 8%, according to John Williams of Shadowstats. U.S. interest rates would have to rise by at least another 3%, just to begin to be a negative driver for the price of gold.
Current interest rates are a mildly positive driver for the price of gold. Otherwise, for the last nine years, everything said and done by the Federal Reserve with respect to U.S. interest rates has been totally irrelevant to the gold market.
If we combine every other variable that influences the price of gold, even put together they don’t come close to equaling the impact of the Bernanke Helicopter Drop. The U.S. dollar is now worthless.
It is backed by nothing. It has been diluted more than any other major currency going back a hundred years. The U.S. government is bankrupt. The U.S. dollar is currently being phased out as reserve currency – meaning the demand for U.S. dollars is shrinking to a fraction of previous levels.
What is the price of gold (or any hard asset), denominated in a worthless currency? The price is infinite. What is the current price for gold, denominated in worthless U.S. dollars? $1,300. The Crime of the Millennium.
