It is bad enough watching the talking-heads of the mainstream media undermine the precious metals sector with their insipid and invariably flawed analysis. However, what is positively infuriating is when these drones manage to influence the market through parroting “fundamental” factors which (at present) are simply irrelevant.
Understand that in normal markets (and normal market conditions) that there would/should be a host of variables which influence the precious metals market – as with any other market. However, what has been completely lost in all the white-noise coming out from the mainstream media is that conditions have literally never been less normal.
Specifically, not only our markets but our entire economies have been perversely warped through pursuing (or simply allowing) the most extreme policies, and the most extreme behavior in our markets in all of history. These extreme policies, and the extreme behavior they have spawned now totally drown-out all other factors, even many of the most basic elements of supply and demand. Indeed, the ultimate proof of the cluelessness of media drones (and the mainstream “experts” who feed those drones) is the fact that none of them have even the slightest awareness of how economic fundamentals have been skewed in such an extreme and flagrant manner.
The purpose of this piece is to identify the three policy/behavior trends in our economies and markets today which either subsume any other factors, or simply render them (at the moment) irrelevant with respect to gold and silver. Understand that because the second and third trends are derivatives/consequences of the first trend that there will be considerable overlap here, so readers are encouraged not to become side-tracked by issues of semantics. Those three trends are:
1) Excessive money-printing
2) Gross misallocation of capital
3) Long-term destruction of the supply chain
Excessive Money-Printing:
There is simply no other single dynamic in the global economy today (and specifically Western economies) which comes anywhere close to the significance of the utterly insane monetary policies which Western governments have allowed to take place. Indeed, so dominant have these forces become that no one (not even our governments themselves) find it the slightest bit noteworthy that the Money-Printers (i.e. the privately-owned cabal of Central Banks) nowabsolutely dictate economic policies to our (supposedly) sovereign democracies.
The most current and extreme example is Greece. Here the bankers (and their political servants) have made it clear that they are going to force one election after another unless/until the Greek people “elect” a government who will do exactly what the Bankers tell them to do: inflict more savage/suicidal “austerity” on that economy in order that the Bond Parasites can continue to receive their interest payments.
Understand there is no long-term economic “plan” of any kind for Greece, not even any theoretical hope for solvency. Instead, the entire purpose of forcing more austerity on the Greek people is to allow the Bankers to print even more money – which they will then lend to this totally insolvent economy. None of the media drones or their “experts” consider this at all unusual or inconsistent either.
However we can be much more general here. Currently, every significant economic policy being pursued by all of the West’s largest economies either directly involves more money-printing or indirectly involves more money-printing. Indeed, this has forced the bankers to continue to invent new euphemisms and double-talk on a near-daily basis – so that they have jargon they can use to describe these policies without simply saying “print more money” again and again and again and again.
Here the media descends into sheer stupidity. We have the media reporting on our governments (not just in the West but around the world) explicitly engaged in “competitive devaluation” – which literally means racing to see which government can drive the value of their currency toward zero the fastest (through printing more money). Meanwhile out of the other sides of their mouths we have these drones referring to one of those currencies (the U.S. dollar) as a “safe haven”.
Let me see if I can construct an analogy simple enough for the media to understand. Suppose all of their favorite Wall Street fraud-factories announced that they were going to engage in “competitive devaluation”: printing up more and more shares for the sole purpose of diluting the value of those shares. Would the media drones and their experts search around for the “best” of those Wall Street banks, and then call it a “safe haven” to investors?
Hopefully not. Hopefully even the mediocre minds of the media would grasp the complex principle involved here: you never own an asset where the producers of that asset aredeliberately trying to destroy its value. If the media ever became sane/competent, then as long as our governments kept talking about “competitive devaluation” the media’s automatic response would be “hold none of this paper”.
Yet instead of getting sanity/competency from the media, what do we hear instead? We’re told that investors should shun the 5,000-year safe haven represented by gold and silver because “in a weakening economy demand for the metals will fall”. Here it’s necessary to introduce the media to another concept: proportionality.
Any slight changes in demand for gold and/or silver (higher or lower) have now been rendered totally irrelevant with respect to being determinative of prices. In other words, the relative “value” of gold and silver due to changes in demand is being drowned-out by money-printing on a scale at least an order of magnitude greater. The problem is attempting to quantify the size of that differential.
Here the strategy of the bankers is simple. They have created so many different definitions for both “money creation” and “money supply” that they can now totally confuse any debate on this subject by throwing out several different definitions – some of which are literally contradictory.
Crucial here is that the bankers have managed to include wealth destruction within their definition of “money creation”. Thus while the reckless gambling of the bankers is destroying wealth (with their failed bets) on a scale literally a thousand times greater than at any other time in history, this simply allows them to more easily hide the obscene magnitude of all this new (theoretical) “money” being electronically created by these financial pirates.
Currency-dilution is the dominant economic trend of our era. The destruction in the value of these currencies (at the most rapid rate in history) means that any sane investment strategy must revolve around holding “hard assets” (beginning with gold and silver), since their value cannot be destroyed/debased as the underlying currencies are being (deliberately) destroyed by our governments.
The obvious example here is Western bonds. The “prices” for Western bonds become totally irrelevant nominal numbers – as our paper currencies are driven closer and closer to zero. Indeed, if we received any competent analysis of the bond market by the mainstream media their coverage would begin with the latest news on more Western currency dilution, with the nominal bond prices themselves (rightfully) being treated a distant second in terms of importance.
Sadly, readers are strongly advised not to “hold their breath” waiting for sanity/competence to return to the mainstream media. Instead, their only recourse is to simply tune-out roughly 95% of all mainstream reporting on our economies and markets, reflecting the fact that (being charitable) only about 5% of what is put out on a daily basis by the mainstream media has any relevance at all.
In particular, the moment that readers see the words “economic fundamentals” this is their cue to stop reading since (as I just finished demonstrating), the mainstream media doesn’t have the slightest comprehension of the nature of the real fundamentals in our markets and economies today. Their mis-reporting, along with the extreme distortions that all of this excessive money-printing has produced have directly led to the other two, dominant economic trends of our current era.
In Parts II and III, I will explain and explore the two trends in the precious metals sector which have become the consequences of living in the Era of Money-Printing.
Wealth Wire May 30, 2012