Minute Maid Park

Ticketamerica.com has seating charts and maps for Minute Maid Park and Miller Park in Milwaukee Wisconsin as well as PNC Park in Pittsburgh, PA. Park seating tickets are ailable through Ticket america.com by using the following links: minute maid park tickets miller park tickets pnc park tickets Ticketamerica has dates, seating charts, phone numbers, layouts, and map locations for all venues.

E-Gold

E-gold is a digital currency, used extensively on the Internet for making payments in exchange for goods and services.

It is one of the first digital e-currency providers, having started in 1996. E-gold accounts are backed by actual physical gold, dollar for dollar. You can take delivery of the physical gold if you wish, although there is an additional handling charge.

The E-gold e-currency is tied directly to the value of gold, so it's not possible to use outside influences to affect the value of it... unless one has the ability to affect the spot price of gold. Being tied to the price of gold, e-gold accounts fluctuate up and down with the value of national currencies as they move with the spot price of gold.

While gold is the most popular precious metal digital currency in use, E-gold also offers the platinum, palladium and silver precious metals as digital currency.

Funding an e-currency account is the job of a third party called a Market Maker [http://www.dx-currency-trades.com/market-maker.html]. A market maker is a merchant who exchanges national currencies for e-currencies, and places them in your online currency account. Similarly, they will buy your ecurrency and pay you in your national currency when you wish to exchange your egold for currency.

You can fund an e-gold with paypal, or buy e-gold with a credit card if you wish, though the market maker will charge up to 15% to do so. This is largely because of the cost to him of fraudulent charge backs.

E-currencies are now accepted fairly extensively by online merchants in exchange their products and services, mainly catering to people, who for whatever reason, don't have or can't get, a credit card.

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Copyright © 2005 :Russell Savige and DX-Currency-Trades.com [http://www.dx-currency-trades.com] This article may only be reproduced in full including this resourse box.

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Confused About Gold and the Dollar? Understand Their Relationship Before You Invest

It's not known for sure where the concept that an ounce of gold could always buy a nice businessman's suit came from, but the analogy is used today by many who want to paint a positive picture for gold. The premise of the story is used to reveal the fact that the dollar has lost 95%-98% of its purchasing power since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

The typical story goes something like this:

"In the early 1900's an ounce of gold was worth $20.00 and could buy a nice men's suit. During that time an ounce of gold was worth $20. Today an ounce of gold is worth around $960.00 and can still buy a very nice men's suit whereas $20 might get you a necktie."

But how much of the story is fact, and how much is fiction? Are we really comparing apples to apples when we use this analogy of the price of a businessman's suit and the price of an ounce of gold both then and now?

There's the assumption that the $20 cash just sat there earning nothing. Is this what a person did back in the beginning of the 20th century? Who in their right mind would do this? Would you do it today? Today's investor is always trying to have their money earn more money. In the 20's, they did the same.

The parable assumes that people did in fact take the $20 and put it under their mattress.

My grandmother was from that era and one of those who feared losing money. When she passed away in the 90's, we found some old birthday cards that she had received with the $10's and $20's still stuck in the card. But she probably didn't want to lose money in the stock market, so kept it from her husband who liked to dabble. Her husband, my grandfather, like many in the 20th century, did like to play the stock market or put their money in bonds or a bank where it could earn interest.

They called it the roaring 20's for a reason and the stock market was doing well and so were the banks.

But the stock market crashed in 1929 and the thousands of banks failed soon thereafter. In 1933, gold was even confiscated.

So stocks, bonds, dollars and gold all had their problems, but for the sake of argument, let's ignore the various problems of that era and deal with what's happened since that time with gold, bonds and stocks.

While it is true that the purchasing power of gold in and of itself has kept pace with inflation over the years, the dollar in and of itself has not. But the dollar does offer the investor something that gold doesn't, and that is interest.

Gold does not offer the investor any interest while the dollar that is put in the bank offers the depositor a return on their deposit. Bonds and some stocks offer interest (dividends) as well.

The bank offered a depositor interest on their savings account and this is what normal people did back in the 1920's. This accumulated interest is what the price of an ounce of gold should be compared to today.

So to do apples to apples historical comparison, one has to measure the value of one investment that they held at that point in time versus the other based on what a rational, reasonable investor would do.

Naturally, you would agree, a rational investor would not put the $20 under their mattress back in the 1920's just as they wouldn't today (emphasis on the word rational here). On a side note, I'll also leave out of this analysis the fact that the businessman's suit bought in the 20's, today would be rather old and musty and more than likely didn't retain its purchasing power and I'll also leave out the fact that those folks who put their dollars under the mattress back then would get a decent amount for them today from collectors if they were kept in good condition.

The Historic Analysis of Gold vs. the Dollar

Since we already know the price of gold today, we need to go back and calculate the interest paid on dollars and bonds from that period of time to today. I've also included a comparison to stocks.

I picked the year 1929 to do my calculation. Gold was priced about $20 an ounce1 then and had been holding steady at that price for years.

The dollar had not yet depreciated by 60% with the revaluing of gold to $35 an ounce in 1934, so in a sense, I'm allowing for the fact that the price of gold was artificially moved higher and the dollar was knocked down a peg or two. This depreciation of the dollar didn't help most as they were not allowed to own gold at the time. It only helped the government and the Federal Reserve, but that's a story for another time.

So to find the interest earned from 1929 to 2008, I turned to this website; http://www.measuringworth.org/interestrates/ and used the "short term"3 rates as my guide.4 Keep in mind I'm not using CD rates5 which have actually averaged 1.1% higher than short term rates over the last 10 years, but I did analyze long term bond rates6

Compounding the data, the $20 would have grown to $393.86 in the short-term asset account and $1,904.23 in the long-term asset (at a term of one year's account) by the year 2008.7 The DOW Jones Average would have returned you $562 (before dividends).8

These figures you can then compare to the current price of gold at $981.751

You can see from this analysis that the gold price historically fits somewhere between a short term savings account and a long term "one year bond" account. Gold has performed 42% better than the DOW during this time-frame.

So if someone put all their money each year into short-term asset accounts, they wouldn't be able to buy the same businessman's suit as they could if they had put it in gold, but they'd still be able to buy a decent suit at Men's Warehouse but not what $981 could buy you at Brooks Brothers.

Either way, it's a bit of a false conclusion comparing what a $20 ounce of gold can buy in 1929 versus what $20 cash can buy today. There has been a benefit of compounding interest one has received on that $20 put in the bank over the years. There is also the fact that the dollar still had gold backing for 42 years of this analysis until Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard.

Now the Good News Concerning Gold...

Let's take a look at the dollar's performance after Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard in August of 1971. The price of gold in August of 1971 averaged 42.73 an ounce.

What have the interest bearing savings accounts and long-term one year asset bonds earned versus gold during this 1971-2008 time-frame?

Beginning with $42.73 in 1971, the short-term savings account would have returned you $350.87 while the long-term one year asset would have returned you $832.93. The Dow Jones Industrial Average return would have been $425.34, again without dividends, but keep in mind that stocks since 1971 weren't paying anywhere near the dividends like they had been).

You will notice that the difference between the short-term savings account compounded from 1929 to 2008 isn't much different than the 1971 to 2008 figure, about $43.00. Why is this? ....because for 42 years, up until 1971, gold backed the dollar. At that time, gold and the dollar were perceived as equivalents. So since 1971 interest rates have had to rise to keep pace with the loss of purchasing power of the dollar. The problem is they haven't.

Not even the glorious stock market has kept pace with gold yet this is where most people invest their money. Long term bonds have held their own, but are now weakening compared to the price of gold.

Bottom line: Gold is breaking free!

The Great Decoupling of Gold from the Dollar

What you are seeing folks is the decoupling of gold from the dollar, short and long term bonds as well as stocks. Since 1971, gold has outperformed cash, stocks and bonds, yet you never see your financial adviser, sans a few, recommend gold as an investment. Why is that?

The answer is simply they can't make any money selling it...so they don't, plus the fact they don't understand it. Most people don't understand gold as an investment or how it fits into one's portfolio.

Gold needs to be a part of every person's portfolio. Gold is insurance as the dollar falls. Gold is the wealth you need to pay for things. Gold used to back the dollar. Now it has decoupled from it.

1 kitco.com (Click on Historical Charts for gold)

2 See actual year by year interest rates by inputting the years 1929 and 2007. They had only calculated through the year 2007 by the time of this writing.

3 Short-term (similar to a savings account at a bank): assumes that the principal investment is made in equal installments throughout the initial year at the average short-term rate for that year. The principal plus the interest accumulated is then reinvested at the average short-term rate for the second year. This continues until the final year, when the withdrawal is assumed to be made over equal installments throughout that year.

4 I calculated the year 2008 by using the short term rate of 3% and for the five months ending May 31st, 2009 I utilized a rate of 1.5%.

5 CD Rates Last 10 years; jumbocdinvestments.com

6 Long-term (assumes a government or corporate bond): assumes that the principal investment is made in equal installments throughout the initial year at the average long-term rate for that year. The principal plus the interest accumulated is reinvested at that same rate for the second year, and continues at that rate for the number of years of the term you have selected. At this point, the calculator will use the long-term rate of the next year and repeat the process. This continues until the final year, when the withdrawal is again assumed to be made over equal installments.

7 I used 1.83% for 2008 one year Government bond and .56% for the average of 5 months ended 5/31/09. Source: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data.htm

8 Keep in mind that taxes are not taken into account in this analysis as tax rates have varied over time for both income and capital gains. Tax deferred annuities could have been utilized in the analysis with gold where the accumulated value withdrawn at the end of 2008 would result in a combined federal and state tax rate close to 50% (depending on your state) while the sale of gold would result in a 28% tax on the capital gain. If one was taxed all along in the short-term and long-term account, the effective rate would be about 60% on average for the top tax bracket and possibly 15% or no tax for the lower tax brackets. There are too many variables involved, so I have just compared each asset with no tax ramifications.

After over 20 years as an investment adviser, Doug Eberhardt left the business to write & expose what's really going on in America's economy & help investors keep and grow their wealth. You can follow his blog at http://www.fedupbook.com/blog

If you would like to know more about investing in gold, read my free White Paper, "How Gold Investments Can Secure Your Retirement Years" available at http://www.fedupbook.com/whitepaper

Gold - A "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Back in 1969, when Simon & Garfunkel recorded "Bridge over Troubled Water" the duo had a gut feeling that this song was going to make a very big splash. And they were right, as their recording went on to become a number-one hit (staying atop the charts for six weeks) - while being covered by literally dozens of other singers.

Like Simon & Garfunkel, investors entering the gold market around 2001 have also scored a smash hit. Since then - quite simply - gold has performed in spectacular fashion. Even in 2008, when fears of a global financial meltdown drove virtually every asset class into the ground, gold alone held its relative value, actually rising that year by almost 5%.

And the best news? It's an odd's on favorite that we are still early in what could prove to be an epic precious metals' bull run. Says Doug Casey, who wrote one of the top selling investment books of all time: "The easy money in precious metals and the mining stocks has been made, but the big money lies ahead." With so many other investments looking questionable and the world economic situation still unclear, this "metal of kings" can provide the savvy investor with a bridge over troubled water. For peace of mind, look at gold (and silver) as providing insurance first; profit second. Why is the Case for Gold so Compelling?

Central Banks have Become Net Buyers

Between 1999 and 2002, England's central bank sold two-thirds of its gold reserves at almost the exact bottom of what turned out to be the end of a 20 year bear market. The official who squandered this portion of his country's monetary legacy was later to become Great Britain's Prime Minister - and lend his name to what is known in financial circles as "The Brown Bottom." A few years later, Canada (also unwisely) followed suit, getting rid of almost its entire reserve of gold.

But it now appears that central bank thinking has changed. For the first time in over 22 years, they have actually become net buyers - led in the fall of 2009 by India's purchase of over 200 tons of gold. Most of these officials are once again concluding that the yellow metal's strong financial performance makes it a useful counter-weight to the swings of the U.S. dollar, which has been steadily losing value for a number of years. While gold is no longer the foundation of the international financial system, it is still considered by central banks to be a crucial reserve asset. Rumors are abuzz that China, as well as a number of wealthy Middle Eastern nations have been quietly scooping up what little gold the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been offering for sale.

Supply is Down

According to the World Gold Council, gold's popularity continues to surge, driven by increasing industrial and jewelry manufacturing use, in addition to very strong investor demand - from individuals and institutions.

Also, producers have accelerated the unwinding of their hedge books. Years ago, mining giant Barrick Gold pre-sold much of its production forward under contract, promising to deliver at hundreds of dollars an ounce lower than where the metal trades today. In a better-late-than-never development, it recently decided to buy back all of its hedges - in the process, suffering a loss of several billion dollars...and adding to global gold demand.

The data strongly implies that available stockpiles will not keep pace with demand in coming years. Gold's global production peaked in 2002. Several of the world's largest mining companies expect further declines in production next year, and are in a scramble to increase reserves through the acquisition of new mining properties. South Africa, once the world's largest gold producer (now supplanted by China), mined its lowest amount of gold since 1922 - and its overall output is down 72 percent from its 1970 peak. Whereas China and Russia have become a major force in gold production, they also seem inclined to hold onto most of it - adding these precious ounces to their own reserves.

Importantly, no new major mine supply is expected in the near term. In general, it takes more than a decade to acquire, finance, build and staff a mine and commence production. Thus, the supply/demand imbalance is expected to continue - and is likely to increase for years to come.

Most of the new gold discoveries in recent years have been of the low grade/bulk tonnage variety, often in remote locations - sometimes near environmentally-sensitive areas. The normal procedure with these deposits is to dig up and crush thousands of tons of ore-bearing rock, then apply chemicals in a "heap-leach" process to get out the gold. The yield from this procedure is often only a few grams per ton! Compounding the supply problem is an ongoing global shortage of trained geologists, miners, diamond drills and mining equipment.

While Demand is Up...

Demand, on the other hand, continues to increase in the face of the newfound prosperity and increased disposable income being freed up by the Asian economic boom, particularly in China and India - three billion people adding fuel to a long-term shift in consumption demand.

Throughout the developing world, gold is the most liquid, efficient and widely accepted form of exchange and the best store of value - especially in rural areas that lack access to banking services. Jewelry is coveted in the developing world, where it functions as both adornment and savings. It is often the only asset a Muslim or Hindu woman is culturally permitted to own, and therefore may be her only form of protection against financial adversity. Additionally, the dowry concept is alive and well in India today, where gold is commonly transferred from the family of the bride to the groom.

Recently...

Legendary hedge fund manager, John Paulson has chosen to place a significant percentage of his total investment capital into gold and its relatives - ETFs and stocks. He actually owns more gold than that of several countries combined!
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., the 3rd largest life insurer, has now bought gold for the first time in its 152-year history.
The U.S. Mint is dealing with "pipeline" shortages of gold and silver blanks, causing delays or outright cancellation in the production of certain numismatic and bullion coins.
The Gold Buffalo - America's first 24 karat gold bullion coin - had its 2009 issue release delayed until last October, and in less than two months, discontinued sales until 2010...after exceeding its annual sales totals for each of the past two years.
The U. S. dollar is no longer perceived as the automatic safe haven for concerned investors around the globe. If you had a choice, would you rather own "digital dollars" - or gold?
It is in the government's interest to create inflation through excessive expansion of the money supply, in order to pay off its obligations of accumulated debt, such as employee pensions, Medicare and Social Security, in worth-less dollars.

Gold production is limited. Money creation by Printing Press is...Infinite.

Zimbabwe: Not that many years ago, the Zimbabwe dollar was trading at US $1.47. Last year, it had sunk to 100 TRILLION to the Dollar. A beautiful country which used to export grain to its neighbors now faces starvation. Imagine how a Zimbabwean family would feel, if they could lay claim to even one ounce of gold!

North Korea: In December 2009, North Koreans awoke to find that they would be required to exchange 100 units of their currency, the won, for just 1 unit of the government's new paper money. Overnight, the savings of these long-suffering people (except for the bureaucrats) had been wiped out. How different things might have been for them, if they possessed just a few ounces of "the poor man's gold" - silver!

The United States? Can we have "guns and butter" as the U.S. tried to do in the 1960's to finance the Vietnam War and the President's Great Society programs? In just the past year, the Federal Reserve has doubled the country's monetary base. In addition, how will we pay for a massive new healthcare program and two wars?

Within the next 12 months, it is estimated that the U.S. Treasury will have to finance between $2 and $3 trillion dollars in short-term debt, an amount equal to 30% of our GDP. Where will the money come from? Richard Russell, the doyen of financial newsletter writers (who began publishing in 1958) answers this rhetorical question. He says, "(And) my answer is that the money will have to come from the Fed by way of the printing press."

Is it any wonder that gold has outperformed nearly every other asset class over the past few years, including the S & P 500, protecting investors now in the same way that it has during other turbulent times? According to the Wall Street Journal:

"Even with the rebound this year, the U.S. stock market posted its worst performance for any calendar decade in nearly 200 years of American stock-market history. Investors would have been better off investing in pretty much anything else, from bonds to gold or even just stuffing money under a mattress. Since the end of 1999, stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year thanks to the twin bear markets this decade."

If gold had a voice, it would most likely sing, "I'm on your side, when times get rough/And friends just can't be found."

For 5,000 years, Gold and Silver have been looked upon as "Honest Money"

Honest, because gold and silver's rarity forces governments to limit the amount of paper in circulation. When citizens can exchange their printing press bills for "honest money" the government is forced to act responsibly regarding how much currency it can print...and how much it can spend!

Throughout history and across cultures, people have understood that it is wise to keep a portion of their wealth in gold. Over time, gold holds its value and serves as insurance. It is a truism that in Roman times, an ounce of gold would buy a fine tunic (garment) - and today that same golden ounce will still purchase a high quality suit.

The world is awash in fiat paper. Today, not a single currency is backed by gold - the first time in history when this has been the case. The total value of all paper money and bonds in the world is estimated to be on the order of $100 trillion, while the total value of all the gold ever mined is $5.9 trillion. Essentially then, for every dollar in paper money, there are only 5.9 cents worth of real money to back it up - a disconcerting thought. Perhaps the time has come to bring gold into your own portfolio, so that it can help serve as a "bridge over troubled water" for you.

Gold is Rare

Just how rare is gold? How small is the supply? According to the World Gold Council, as of 2006 the total amount of all gold ever mined comes out to under 6 billion ounces. Given that the total world population now exceeds 6.6 billion people, there is less than one ounce of gold available per person to invest in right now - a figure that shrinks even further in light of the fact that central banks already hold a considerable amount of the above ground supply.

It has been estimated that in USD terms, there are roughly $200 trillion in investable assets globally, but only $5.9 trillion of that wealth is in gold.

Why is this relevant? For one thing, financial portfolio managers suggest that at least 5 percent of a person's total net worth should be invested in precious metals as an insurance policy to protect against hard economic times and periods of geopolitical instability. Yet very few people have followed this advice - which is somewhat fortunate, as there is not enough gold to go around should the general public decide to act on this advice en masse!

Gold's Special Qualities

Gold has functioned as an adornment and store of value for more than 6,000 years. The earliest gold jewelry dates from the Sumerian civilization that flourished around 4,000 BC. Gold's intrinsic beauty, warmth, glitter, sensuality and spiritual richness have evoked powerful human emotions throughout history.

The Bible contains a detailed and lengthy description of the role that gold in its various forms played during King Solomon's reign (1 Kings Ch. 10). To hold an item made of gold is to possess something that has provided security and value for thousands of years.

Gold plays a vital part as a symbol of love and devotion. It has significance for occasions like weddings, anniversaries and birthdays, as well as a host of other holidays, ceremonies and customs. Consider, too, the ways in which gold has enriched our language - the best years of our lives are known as "the golden years" An advantageous situation is referred to as a "golden opportunity." A civilization's time of peace, prosperity and creativity is referred to as a "golden era". Treating others the way you wish to be treated is known as "The Golden Rule."

Gold is...

Free of religious or political affiliation
Neutral on race, gender and language preference
Easily transported
Universally accepted
With low/negative correlation to other major asset classes, helps diversify ones portfolio.
Impervious to corrosion, tarnish or decay
Free from debt (no one but the owner has claim to it)
Rare, scarce and difficult to produce -world supply increases less than 2% annually.
Cannot be created in unlimited quantities on a printing press like the dollar, yen or peso
All but impossible to counterfeit
Easily bought and sold anywhere in the world
Incapable of being bankrupted - no one but its owner has a claim to it.

Concluding Thoughts

Gold is quite simply, on a powerful run. In 2009 it traded at more than $1,200 an ounce - over 4 times higher than its low point in 2000. For 9 years in a row, the price of gold has increased. Can you name another asset class which has shown this kind of performance during the first decade of the new century? As a result, gold is gradually appearing on people's radar screen - and finding its way into Main Street portfolios.

At the top of gold's last bull market in 1980, the nominal high price was $850. To reach that same level on an inflation-adjusted basis today - using the CPI as calculated by the government - the price would rise to somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000. And what if the U.S. decided to return to a gold standard to back its paper dollars? Gold would have to be valued at more than $6,000 per ounce.

Major investment banks and brokerage firms that were long silent on gold are now talking it up. Merrill Lynch has reiterated its forecast that gold could top $1,500 during the next year or so.

Analysts know that the combination of slowing U.S. economic growth, the inflationary effects of rising oil and commodity prices and a change in supply-and-demand dynamics make gold a safe haven, which is likely to place further upward pressure on its price given the tight supply. Just like during the last metals bull market, we will see one of the giants of business publishing a book that advises investment in gold and precious metals, an event which may well serve as the tipping point toward a new investment Gold Rush.

Some observers believe that the gold price will be driven much higher, not so much due to greed, but more by fear, as the public - from some of the wealthiest investors, to those individuals and families who may only be able to afford fractional gold ounces - seek a way to protect their assets from the ravages of inflation, volatile stock and real estate prices, not to mention currency destruction like that experienced by the unfortunate citizens of Zimbabwe and North Korea.

Throughout history, the fate of every paper currency issued has been an eventual decline to its intrinsic value - zero. Could this happen to the United States? While no one can say for sure, betting against history could be a risky move. As the famous line from the Dirty Harry movie goes, "Do you feel lucky today?" Well, do you...?

Is the Last Train Leaving the Station?

Those who do not own gold need to ask themselves if it has become decision time. For those who decide to act - Do it to protect and diversify your portfolio. Do it for family. Do it because commodity bull markets typically last 15 years or more, and this one looks like it has a long way to go.

The last train may be leaving the station, so don't be left behind. The U.S. dollar may well continue to fall relative to foreign currencies. This will fan the flames of inflation as foreign goods become more expensive. Asian investors continue to dump the U.S. dollar, and the central banks of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam have signaled their intention to cut purchases of U.S. bonds. China is becoming less friendly to the dollar and clearly intends to diversify. August 2007 marked the first time since 1998 that the rest of the world has sold more U.S. treasuries than it has purchased, and that trend continues. Our government has actually had to buy some of its own debt to make up this difference! U.S. Federal Reserve rate cuts have trimmed our yield advantage over other countries, making for a very gold-positive situation.

Become a part of this historic bull-run in gold, and rest easier at night knowing that you have preserved your purchasing power and that you hold something of real and increasing value.

As Simon & Garfunkel sang, "Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way...."

Gold - God's Currency - Part 2

The market has been acting a bit strangely the past week or so. There's been a lot of speculation taking place, both to the upside and to the downside. Stocks are running way past their normal moves and falling much farther than would be expected. Are the Main Street stock speculators getting a bit itchy? Perhaps, but the trend of the market is still up, including the topic of this article:  Gold. 

If you have some time on your hands and you'd like to look back into the history of gold, you'd see some correlations with its long-term rise and fall. One that might stand out is the inverse correlation between its price and our government printing money. Since the printing of money has a direct correlation with the price of gold, let's start there.

 

The US dollar as we know it has been around for about 32 years. Yes, we were using the dollar long before that, but 32 years ago is when our government decided to take the dollar off the gold standard. That standard guaranteed that all dollars in circulation were backed by America's bullion reserves at Fort Knox, Tennessee. But that's no longer the case, and you can thank President Nixon and the Vietnam War for the detachment.

 

You see, we (America) needed money to pay for the Vietnam War, and we couldn't get enough if our dollar remained on the gold standard. So Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold and turned on the printing presses (which led to inflation, but that's a story for another time).

 

Today the US dollar is "fiat" money. Fiat money is basically any currency printed by a government as legal tender that is not redeemable for gold or other commodities and lacks economic value except that which the printing government gives it. So basically, fiat money is worth what others are willing to pay for it.  The problem with fiat money is that governments can print as much as they want, when they want, without asking anyone. This is not a good scenario for investors, but it can be mitigated if investors have gold as part of their portfolio.

 

Flashback to 1970: The US was in the middle of a very unpopular war on the other side of the world. It was in a small foreign land few people had heard of. The enemy was invisible. And our country didn't really have the money to pay for it. Fast forward 32 years: We are fighting a war on the other side of the world, in a foreign land few people had heard of, against people we can't see-and it's really expensive.

 

What happens when our government needs money to pay for what it can't afford? Does it have to dig up the money? No. Does it have to stop spending? No. All our government has to do is turn on a printing press, which is certainly less costly than spending $270 to mine an ounce of gold. All they have to do is move a decimal point on a computer in some building; they don't even have to print more money, though they indeed do that as well.

 

Printing money is such a big part of how our government works that at the end of 2002 (October), Ben S. Bernanke, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, made a statement in response to a question about deflation. The question was about what the Fed was going to do to counter deflation, if and when it starts (I believe it has started already, but that too is another article). Bernanke's comment was, "We have an invention called the printing press, and if need be, we'll turn it on."  In other words, the money sitting in your money market account is going to be worth a whole lot less after the US gets through printing a whole lot more dollars. Bernanke's comment set off a pretty big chain of events. In a very short time, gold shot up $65 an ounce and the US dollar index lost 7%.

 

Printing money whenever the Fed decides it needs to brings up a question: "How much has the value of the dollar fallen over time?" I'm glad you asked. A dollar in 1900 was worth a dollar. That same dollar today is worth 7 cents (Department of Labor Statistics).  And do you know why the dollar is worth 14 times less today? Because the US government hasn't taken any lessons from the diamond industry; instead, it just kept increasing the money supply, so much so, that in 1900 there was $34 of cash in circulation per capita, compared with $2,075 of cash in circulation per capita today, an increase of 61 times. That should make you fall off your chair. The government cranked out 60 times more dollars over 100 years; and yet, the dollar has only fallen 14 times during that century. Not bad. Still, that should make you sit up and ask, "How can I preserve my hard-earned money?" Now we're talking.

 

How about putting part of your money in gold? In 1900, it cost $19 an ounce. Today (April 2003), an ounce costs $360. The price from 1900 has increased by a factor of 18. As I said before, during the same period, the value of the dollar dropped by a factor of 14. Are you following me? The value of gold increased by a factor of 18, while the value of the dollar decreased by a factor of 14.

 

Which one of these holds its true value? Gold. Obviously. In 1900, an ounce bought a man a nice suit, and in 2003 an ounce can still buy a man a nice suit. Gold holds its value, especially when we go to war and print money to pay for it. It holds its value because the US Fed (or any other government) can't "print" more of it. Plus, gold is not someone else's liability. You are not buying someone else's government debt, which means that governments can't mismanage it. It cannot be inflated away. God did a good job with gold. If there were no other reason to buy, that would be enough, but there's more.

 

Gold coins leave no paper trail. Gold can easily travel over borders, it can be stored easily, and it has the same value in downtown San Francisco as it does in downtown Istanbul. It is the world's only inflation-proof currency, and everyone accepts it. The only other inflation-proof commodity I know of is diamonds.

 

Let's take a look at the two easiest ways to buy gold:

 

1 - Gold mining stocks

2 - Gold mutual funds

 

Gold mining stocks are a great place to start. I suggest you look at the bluest of the blue chips of gold mining stocks. If you own zero gold, this is where to begin. It should be a company that doesn't hedge its mining production ("hedge" means it doesn't sell future mined gold for a set price, it sells it for whatever the market says it's worth at the time of production). Any company that does not hedge its production will experience a rising stock price when gold itself rises. If you don't want to buy an individual stock, you can go to an independent mutual fund ranking company and investigate gold sector mutual funds.

 

Lessons:

 

1 - Gold holds its value when compared to the US dollar. Compare its value over the last 100 years to the US dollar, and you can see why it is essential to your portfolio.

2 - Wars and the printing of money have a tendency to increase the value of gold over the short term. Right now we are in both.

3 - Buy gold now so that when the world wakes up to it you can feel like the person who bought technology stocks in 1995 and sold them in 2000.

4 - The US dollar is flooding into the market, which will drive up the price of gold.

 

To being prudent and smart.

 

(This article was originally written in April 2003)

RC PECK, CFP®
Registered Investment Advisor, Founder of Fearless Wealth?
Investment Education for Successful Professionals.
If your current stock plan is "I trust my stock broker," then your money may be at risk. Investing has changed, and where you put your money needs to change with it. Fearless Wealth is the remedy to the education deficit that people have around growing money. With over 20 years of investment success, RC Peck is a Certified Financial Planner, Registered Investment Advisor, and an NLP Practitioner, which means he knows what you should do to grow your money and how to get you to do it. To see how he does this, go here: http://www.FearlessWealth.com RC has recently released a special report, called "29 Minutes to Investment Success," which outlines "One Tool" that causes Mutual Fund managers to tremble and Stock Brokers to weep with fear. Discover how the "One Tool" can revolutionize your investments today. Click here to get the "One Tool": http://www.TheStockMarketStrategy.com

Gold Is Still Cheap and It's Still Early to Buy the Precious Metal

Today we show that gold is still cheap and that we're still early in the gold bull market that began in 2001. The price of gold is now roughly the price of the all time previous gold high way back in 1980 when the price reached $875 per ounce. Of course, adjusted for inflation, $875 dollars then = $2100 dollars now.

So you may be pondering the big question. Is it too late to buy gold at these prices? The simple answer is no, and let us explain why.

In nominal dollars the price of gold has recently hit a new record high. But measuring the price of gold in nominal dollars is incorrect as this price does not take into account the last 30 years of inflation and the loss of purchasing power of the US dollar. We all know that the purchasing power of the US dollar back in 1980 was a lot more powerful than it is today.

The current gold price is cheap if we adjust the current price for inflation. Estimates are that the current gold price should be between $2100 and $2300 per ounce of gold. And this price is only bringing gold back to the previous high in 1980 of $875 per ounce. Throwing in the destruction of capital, a weakening US dollar, massive debt and a mass injection of printed money, we have a recipe for a huge increase in the gold price. Back in the '70s, gold rose from $35 to $875. This equates to a 25-fold increase in the price of gold.

This latest gold bull market started when gold was priced at $270 or thereabouts way back in 2001. So a 25- fold increase in the 2001 price of gold could take the yellow metal all the way up to $6750 USD per ounce.

A useful barometer to determine the end of a cycle is the Dow/Gold ratio. Way back in 1980, gold peaked at $870 and the Dow reached a similar level. This creates a ratio of 1. Now for this ratio to become 1 again, gold and the Dow have to meet up somewhere. To pick that point will be lucky; it could be Dow 5000, Gold 5000; it could be Dow 10,000, gold 10,000, but when you see it, that will be the time to exit a large portion of your gold holdings and transfer them possibly back into beaten down equities or strong asset classes.

In all probability, equities will be a bad name as an investment, and very few people will be talking about them, yet alone invested in them. This is what we like, as our approach is to take the contrarian point of view, and invest when the herd is nowhere to be found. Here we refer back to a famous quote. "Be brave when everyone is afraid, and be afraid when everyone is brave."

Another way to look at where gold is valued today is by looking at the M1 money supply of US currency and deposits. We know that the US government holds approximately 290 million ounces of gold, and the M1 money supply is around $1.6 trillion. This simple ratio therefore suggests gold should be valued around the $5,500 level.

But time is running out to get into the gold market - the time to buy is not when everyone's talking about gold and there are articles in the mainstream press and news. The "insurance premium" is cheapest when it's less popular.

Gold is the ultimate asset, and there is no counter party risk when you purchase gold. That is, you are not relying on the fact that the other party might default as you are with bonds, options, futures, etc. Gold has no debt.

The US dollar is getting constantly devalued and slowly the world is waking up to the fact that the US dollar is a worthless piece of fiat currency that is surely to go much lower in price. There is no other way for the US government to clear its debt but lower the value of the US dollar by inflating the currency. Gold acts in an inverse relationship to the US dollar, so if the US dollar is devalued, the price of gold rises.

Gold is important because it is universally recognized as something of value. As such, it does not lose value. Yes, its price in currency might fluctuate, but this is due to the currency losing or gaining value, not the gold itself. Whereas a dollar might buy one thing today, but require two to buy the same thing tomorrow, the purchasing power of an ounce of gold will remain the same. Today an ounce still buys roughly the same number of loaves of bread as it did in Roman times. You can't say the same about a $100 note even 20 years ago let alone two thousand!

In terms of markets, generally speaking, a bull market in a particular market sector has 3 up phases, separated by 2 down phases. The first up phase occurs when the so-called "smart money" moves into the sector.

At this time the sector is generally disliked, and only astute observers see its potential. Remember when Gordon Brown, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer sold off a large part of Britain's gold reserves? That point served as a marker for the start of the new bull market in gold.

The second up phase begins when the big institutions (central banks, pension funds, hedge funds, high net worth individuals) start buying. While its impossible to say for certain, it seems that we

are early in this phase. The very smart hedge fund manager John Paulson, renowned for making a fortune through the housing market collapse, has recently bought large stakes in Anglo-Gold, a large South African mining company, and Kinross Gold, operating out of Canada.

The third up-phase is the so-called "mania" phase, when Larry Lawnmower and Suzie Sixpack are converting all their assets into gold.

This is the time to sell gold and buy other things, like farmland or other valuable assets going begging.

Sign up for your free e-course on why you should be buying gold now.

http://goldsurvivalguide.co.nz/members/ecourse.php

We are three Kiwis (that's a local bird and colloquial term for New Zealanders) who, in total between us, have spent over 24 years of research and investment in the gold sector. This includes investing in bullion or physical gold (coins and bars), shares in gold mining companies, gold futures, and also in gold's sister precious metal, silver.

We met at an investment dinner and immediately discovered we all shared a similar outlook for where the world was heading. Over the course of the evening we also discovered we shared a desire to inform others about this and how they, too, could protect themselves. So, within two hours we shook on it and decided to do something about it! This site is the result of that hand shake!

We write from personal experience and knowledge gleaned from a certain amount of trial and error. These years of experience mean we have done the hard yards and determined where to find the most trusted and reliable information in the gold sector. We don't receive any commissions or payments from any third parties we may recommend and can therefore be relied upon to be impartial and unbiased.

Gold And The Dollar

In order to compare gold with the dollar, we should consider the purchasing power of the first as a monetary asset and of the second as a printed currency. In doing so, we will see that the value of gold has remained more or less the same even for centuries, whereas the dollar has constantly devalued, being faced with increasing inflation levels.

Comparing just the prices of gold in dollars over time will not do, simply because gold, unlike the dollar, is also a commodity and, as such, its price is determined by the relation between demand and supply. Therefore, if its price is higher in US dollars, but equally higher in other major currencies, this means that the demand for gold is higher than the supply. On the other hand, if the gold price is higher only in US dollars, then its price may be indicative of a weakened dollar and a poor condition of the national economy. And here we are facing a vicious circle to the extent the obviously weakening dollar and the fears of inflation can contribute in their turn to an increasing demand for gold as a more stable asset and, therefore, to increasing its price. In conclusion, if seen as competing assets, when the dollar is stronger, people prefer the currency, while, when it is weaker, they turn to gold. This happens because of the century-long tradition and education of using money to purchase goods and services or to store wealth.

On the other hand, the dollar, as any other major currency, is no longer backed by gold, already in 1971 president Nixon abandoning the gold standard. While governments were obliged to be able to redeem notes by a certain amount of gold, their power to print money was checked. But with the abandonment of the gold standard, they could do as they pleased: printing as much money as they considered fit, having through central banks other manipulation levers at their disposal as well, such as interest rates, tax checks, etc. As such, the only genuine indicator of the real condition of the economy and currency were the inflation levels and accordingly the devaluation of currencies. And the devaluation of the US dollar is a fact, if we consider only the expectation to have a gold price of $2,000/oz in just two year-time. Or gold price rises only when people no longer perceive paper money as reliable.

The recession in the US, determined by the credit crisis, the bankruptcy of major banks and the collapse of whole industries, as well as by the huge debt all these plunged the country in is also expected to lead to the further devaluation of the dollar. In this context, gold (especially gold bullion bars) remains the only reliable asset to invest in. On the other hand, the increasing global gold demand (driven by the limited gold supply and the continuous economic growth and therefore consumption in countries like China and India), in spite of rising gold prices, may determine a further imbalance between the value of gold and that of the dollar.

Therefore, when there are so many objective developments to support your fear that the dollar will plunge and as many supporting your trust in gold, what can you do? Presumably, get rid of the first 'asset' and get as much you could of the latter.

Learn from professionals how to buy gold bullion bars in times of recession.

Gold is the Number One Hedge Against a Falling Dollar

Gold is the chaos hedging premier monetary asset of the world. As geopolitical tensions, war, financial turmoil, geopolitial tension or virtually and global unrest manifests, gold responds directly. We will see gold rise higher in the future as the US and the global community keep spending too much. Too much much is being requested by banks and printed by the Federal Reserve and many other factors like a weakening Dollar, tensions internationally like the Middle East and also China and India's furiously growing economies effect directly the price of gold.

If you watch the markets then you will see that gold, silver, oil, commodities and other tangible assets tend to rise together, they're contra-cyclical to paper financial assets for 2/3 of a cycle. When stocks are doing well, then gold prices don't move and when stocks are flat to negative on their rate of return in other asset classes, gold performs very well. People tend to step back from other financial assets and say, until the risk reward relationship is fair and even, I'd rather protect than speculate. That's why, for 2/3 of the business cycle it is contra-cyclical.

In the past six years, gold has risen roughly 158%, silver, a bit stronger, has risen roughly 246%, Gold stocks 300% while the Dollar has dropped roughly 32%. Compair the the Dollar today to the Dollar in 1870 and it is only worth 1cent and compaired to the Dollar in 1919 it is only worth 2cent and the largest drop in the Dollar, since it has been unhinged from gold, has been since the 1970's. There has been a long term decline of the Dollar since the birth of the Federal Reserve in 1913, ending over 100 years of Dollar price stability. The US is now running a total annual budget and trade deficits exceeding $1.5trillion Dollars and the Federal Reserve is creating annually 1-2 trillion Dollar liquidity out of thin air which has a phenomenal effect on things like the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE, the DOWN JONES TRANSPORTATION AVERAGE and the DOW JONES UTILITY AVERAGE which have all been moving well since 2001 -2002 but if you divide their price performance by the price of gold, which is in my opinion real money, you have declining trends in all three averages of the DOW JONES.

So here we have it, US debt has grown 5.5 times, roughly, since 1980 from $8 trillion to $44 trillion which is the biggest debt explosion in world history.

How do we deal with this massive debt? One way to pay it off is to raise taxes. WE have seen that before and we will see it in the years to come. They can print money as in Weimar Republic Germany after World War II. They could sell off by privatizing National assets such as telecommunications, transport, water systems or real estate. They could repudiate debt as Russia did in 1917 with $110 billion. Finally, they could simply resort to plunder by launching wars to acquire wealth such as the Roman Empire did, the Spanish Empire did, the Nazis did and the Japanese.

Large Dollar holders are now beginning to exit the Dollar since the latest decline. The Dollar became the world's reserve currency in 1944, everything had to be related to Dollars, most international transactions were denominated by the US Dollar for the next 62 years giving America huge financial power economically and politically. The United Arab Emirates announced that it would cut its Dollar holding in half in October 2006 and Japanese life insurers with $1.6 trillion in managed assets announced they were to diversify out of their Dollar holdings. Central banks all across Asia (South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong) have all started to diversify out of Dollars. China with $1trillion in foreign currency reserves has begun to diversify out of its $700billion and to cut back on its purchases of U.S. Treasuries. Russia too has cut its Dollar holdings from 70% to 40%; Sweden cut its Dollor reserves from 37% to 20% and Italy cut theirs by 21%. China is pushing the world to rely less upon the Dollar for world trade.

If foreign banks holding roughly $2.94trillion of U.S. Dollars were to diversify even 10% of their assets, you'd see $294 billion dumped into the market. 20% diversification would make $588 billion thrown out there which has a very negative effect on the Dollars value and of course interest rates would rise.

Foreign commercial institutions like insurance companies, banks, hedge and pension funds hold between $7-8 trillion in U.S. Dollars. Again any diversification away from the Dollar will have the same effect of rising interest rates and inflation through the roof. The Euro is now taking the place of the Dollar, many of the world's oil transactions have begun to be made in Euros. In mid 2006, the IMF director for the Middle East and Central Asia urged Persian Gulf countries to peg their currencies to the Euro instead of the Dollar. There is now more Euros' in circulation worldwide in currency and bonds than Dollars and so the Euro is now big enough to become the new world reserve currency. Foreign Dollar holders are now switching to Euros, British pounds, Swiss Francs and other strong currencies, into gold and other commodities such as oil and minerals.

So as the Dollar collapses, gold has risen. They tend to move in the opposite direction if they aren't attached. Over the last 36years, the US Dollar has declined 80%, while gold has risen 1900%. Today it takes five times more of the Dollar to buy the same amount of goods or services than in 1971.

In the end we can see that against a depreciating Dollar, gold is the perfect hedge.

In these time of a failing Dollar, reaching to something solid like gold, silver or platinum is a great way to secure your future. Visit my website at http://www.wheretobuy-gold.com for resources and information. Also my new blog which is at http://howtobuy-gold.blogspot.com/
Thank you for your time!

Gold Or Silver - Which is the Best Investment?

It is fall 2008; our economy is shrinking; our personal and business assets are loosing market value across the board; the banking system is going catatonic; and commodities like gold and silver are bouncing around like my truck on a road full of potholes. Earlier in the year the US dollar was declining in value against virtually every other currency and all commodities. While this fall the dollar has strengthened relative to foreign currencies because the problems in our economy are also global problems that are affecting the economies of all industrialized countries. Along with the worldwide banking collapse and strangulation of our economies by high energy prices, we are entering into a significant global recession. Price speculators have been very active all year long in all of the commodity markets, such that prices on all raw materials, including gold and silver, shot up dramatically in the first six months of 2008, while in the past few months speculation is now driving most commodity prices way down. Since gold and silver have been de-monetized for a long time their values only rise and fall with industrial demand, because social demand for them as safe-haven money is still very limited. If our economy goes into a deep recession, the uncertainty of job security, retirement security, and the near certainty of rising inflation, caused by government deficits and Federal Reserve intervention into shoring up failing banks and other private businesses, will cause more people, as well as many businesses, to exchange dollars for gold and silver. Right now there is a preference for gold rather than silver as a security hedge; but for the individual, gold is the wrong metal to own.
Consider that with more than six billion people on earth there simply is not enough gold and silver available to have these precious metals fulfill the role of money for everyone. It is estimated that about 4.4 billion ounces of gold have been mined in historical times and at least 4 billion ounces are still with us as pure bullion, or easily recovered and smelted into pure bullion; this amounts to only two-thirds ounce per person. It is also estimated that about 44 billion ounces of silver have been mined in historical times and about 20 billion ounces of this silver has been consumed in the past and disposed in ways that are not profitable to recover. Approximately 24 billion ounces of silver could be recovered and converted to coins or bullion; this amounts to about four ounces per person. Central banks and governments hold about 800 million ounces of gold and negligible amounts of silver, leaving just over 3 billion ounces of gold and 24 billion ounces of silver in the hands if businesses and individuals; or an approximate ratio of 8 to 1.
If our paper currency fails, causing people to barter with gold and silver for their daily needs and wages, then gold can at most command a value of eight times that of silver. Since the current ratio of value is $750 to $10, or 75 to 1(in the fall of 2008), gold is nearly 10 times higher that it should be relative to silver. This means that silver will appreciate many times over when gold and silver become barter money again. It is less than 50 years since silver was taken out of our US coinage; yet prior to 1964 silver has been in coins going back over 1000 years. While gold has not been barter money since 1934 in the United States, its history as coined money goes back more that 2000 years.
It makes no sense to ask whether gold will go to $10,000 per ounce or $10 per ounce, because it is the US dollar that is changing value. Gold and silver change their value very little with respect to goods and services for which they may be bartered. One hundred and two hundred years ago an ounce of gold would buy a good suit of clothes and an ounce of silver would buy a good meal at a restaurant, and so they will today. Over the years these metals have not strayed very far from this valuation except under severe economic tensions, at which time they typically rise in value rapidly.
Even though gold and silver are in relative short supply and little used as money, the U.S. paper dollar is the wrong barometer of economic stability. Assets and commodities should not be valued in terms of US dollars, but in terms of fixed quantity commodities like gold and silver. The unstable item (dollar) fluctuates in terms of the stable (gold), not vice versa. Reporting it backwards does not make it valid. Worldwide currencies should be exchanged by valuing them to gold and silver, not to the U.S. dollar, or any other currency for that matter.
In the past there have been many government attempts to peg a monetary ratio between gold and silver. It has been ten-to-one, twenty-to-one and even thirty-four-to-one during the depression. Teddy Roosevelt ran for President promising to fix the ratio at sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. These ratios not only show a historical variance, they also are all showing ratios of silver to gold that are greater than the real amounts of these metals mined and refined. The reason that these metals are not valued in direct relationship with the amounts mined is principally the hoarding of gold by governments, central banks, international banks, and some international corporations. This hoarding of gold is the same as it having never been mined, as far as the markets are concerned. This hoarding of gold tends to skew the ratio of gold available to consumers and investors as compared to the silver available. And it is a valid factor in arriving at a proper price for gold with respect to silver, provided that this hoarded gold remains unavailable for investment or payment in trade. If this hoarded gold came back into the markets as a monetary unit it would un-skew a gold-silver relationship that goes back to the late 1800's. However, if governments decide by law to remove even more gold from private ownership to government ownership, they will do so at their price, similar to the US government action in 1934; and whatever is left in private hands will be too small of a quantity to serve as money. In either case silver would increase in value as compared to gold.
I am not asserting that gold and silver are improperly valued today. But I am asserting that investors who own gold to protect themselves from the calamity of a failed economy and inflating paper currency are investing in the wrong metal, by a factor of at least eight. Our current industrial and jewelry use of these metals would have no relationship to the value they would become as barter-money in a failing US economy. So one cannot compare these metals today and make an investment in holding either of them, based on their current uses and values in our social economy. When gold and silver are re-monetized to act as money in our economies it will not be by government decree, but by the actions of citizens acting to create opportunity and build a new economy.
If a well-to-do person were going to set aside food and other necessities for future consumption in case of economic depression, should they be advised to purchase champagne, caviar, and frozen pastries (gold); or should they perhaps purchase apple juice, sardines, and crackers (silver)? Quantity is more important than show when one is trying to survive. People who invest in gold as insurance against economic depression are not acting in their own best interest; they are simply following their investment counselor's bad advice.
If investors and their counselors really understood gold and silver they would never purchase or recommend the purchase of gold at its current inflated price. If silver is mined at ten ounces for each ounce of gold and is priced correctly at $10.00 per ounce then gold should only be $100.00 per ounce, when we consider their monetary barter value. But if gold is priced correctly at $750.00 per ounce then silver should be $75.00 per ounce. Whichever way the market moves in a panic, silver will appreciate by a larger factor in relationship to gold. Actually, both metals would appreciate with respect to the US dollar, but silver would outpace gold in percentage growth at the point where producers and consumers started preferring gold and silver in exchange for goods and services. Giving investment in silver today considerable value over investment in gold, because of this growth potential.
Besides the ratio of gold to silver issue there is another important aspect of gold usage in tough economic times that must be considered; and that is the usage of gold to purchase food, toiletries, medicines, clothes; etc. If we were to do the Zimbabwe thing and have the US dollar inflating 100 % per week while very few goods are available to purchase; anyone going to a store with a shiny 1-oz gold coin would find that their purchases may only use up 10 to 20 percent of the value of their gold coin and that the store cashier would not give them change in gold or silver (even if the store had gold and silver to make change); the cashier would give them change in paper dollars that would rapidly inflate to nothing if they could not be quickly spent.
This problem would not occur with silver to any great extent because silver is still available from 100 oz bars down to 1 oz coins, and also available as old US coins, right down to silver dimes, permitting shoppers to pay with exact change for the goods they require. In the late 1970's an elderly Dutch gentleman told me how he experienced this very problem when he was sent to Germany in the early 1920's to go to university. The gold coins he received from home, for living expenses, was greatly sought by the shopkeepers, but they had little to sell and he always received change in German Marks (paper) that lost more than half their value in a week. He seldom got full value for his money, because of daily inflation. The same situation could occur here; it certainly has hit many nations in the last few decades, and for some it lasted many years. Silver is by far a superior investment to gold when it is being held as insurance against inflationary times and economic panics.
The companies that mine gold and silver for our industrial and personal consumption should be aware of the potential re-monitization of these metals by consumers and retailers; and what this could mean for their businesses in tough economic times. Recovery from a bout of depression caused by hyperinflation will depend a great deal on having a good supply of gold and silver and a vibrant mining industry to supply the money necessary to grow and expand a new economy and support international trade.
Craig D. Hanks

Eugene, Oregon



This article is taken from a chapter of my book SOCIAL BENCHMARKS. Other excerpts can be viewed at http://beyondfarenough.blogspot.com/

Gold World Coins

Gold world coins are sought out by those who are among the most scrutinous of investors who are looking to invest in the "finer coins of the realm". There's something almost elite about them, that is to say, honorably high. Take for example the British Sovereign. Struck in 22 karat gold, these continue to set the standard among gold world coins as they have for centuries, with the quality of mintage, depiction of ancient art, and the place they have in history.
Perhaps the most famous of gold coins which virtually everyone has heard of within the coin collecting community and without, is the South African Krugerrand. From 1967 to 2007, 46,300,000 were minted, but throughout that whole time, less than 1% of them all were struck as special collector grade proofs (pristinely minted legal tender, but uncirculated and untouched by the public). Among gold world coins, these are sought after with extreme fervor.
A great example of the diversity you can find among world coins is the Nishu-kin gold coins from ancient Japan. While no longer minted, there are still many of these around which can be found at different dealers or numismatic exhibitions and so on. Rectangular in shape, these add variety to anyone's collection. Another superb example of gold world coins taking on new shapes is the Palau gold dollar, struck in .9999 fine gold, in the shape of a four leaf clover. How's that for a good luck charm, eh? Coins of gold from around the world are what many collectors treasure, for their variety, rarity and worth, as well as their cultural/historic significances.



Looking for some great coin deals? When buying coins head over to http://www.buyingcoinsonline.com First!

Gold, Silver and Platinum Bullion Can Be a Great Investment

A United States Coin, prior to being minted, may go through several stages where a proof coin is minted. This process is in preparation for the minting of the final coin. While these rare US coins primary purpose is for checking dies and archiving, nowadays they are struck in greater quantities for coin collectors (numismatists) and can even be found as a Proof Coin Set. The Gold Dollar Proof is a very popular form proof coin and of gold bullion at the moment. What exactly is gold bullion? The term refers to coins or ingots, also know as bars, that get their value primarily from the weight of the precious metal from which they are made. Potential bullion investors will be able to find bullion available in a variety of precious metals including Gold, Silver and Platinum. Gold proof coins while valuable based on the weight of the gold, have other factors such as age, beauty and denomination, that will enhance their value, especially for collectors. A gold ingot, on the other hand, would be valued primary based on the gold bar weight.
The most popular forms of bullion are bullion coins and ingots. Unlike the United States Coin, a silver ingot is shaped into a bar. The cost of an ounce of silver shaped into a silver ingot will be approximately the same as the cost of an ounce of silver shaped into a coin unless the coin happens to be one of those that are prized by numismatists like the American Buffalo coin or the American Eagle coin. In the case of especially rare US coins, the coin will often be worth many times an equivalent weight available as a silver ingot.
In addition, certain highly sought after coins, those especially rare US coins, like a 1776 continental silver dollar or a 1789 Brasher gold doubloon, can far exceed both their denomination value and their gold bar weight value as well. The bullion price of another highly prized United States coin is the Gold American Buffalo coin. The American Buffalo coin and the American Eagle coin are favorites among coin collectors. The value of the rare old American Buffalo or American Eagle coins is far higher than their modern equivalents since they are no longer minted in such limited quantities. As there is greater availability, the bullion price may be significantly less.
Coin collectors seek out old, rare US coins and value them not soley on the weight of the coin but on the rarity, age and quality of the coin. Some coins can have values many times their gold bar weight value because of their rarity, age and condition. Gold and silver bullion sales have increased in recent years due to a sagging economy, rising oil prices and the volatility of the stock market. Investors have turned to the bullion gold bar and collectible gold coin order to add diversity to their investment portfolios. While the stock market has plummeted recently, bullion price remains strong, making the bullion gold bar a safer investment in the opinion of many investors.
Many experts believe that gold will reach $1000 per ounce by 2009 so there has never been a better time to invest in gold bullion. As our economic conditions continue to deteriorate, many turn to gold and silver bullion as an excellent way to weather the storm.
If you would like to buy your bullion direct in order to advantage of current gold prices, why not take a visit to Gold and Silver Bullion Bargains. And don't forget, we have Platinum bullion too!



Joe Rodriguez - Gold and Silver Bullion Bargains

Is the US Dollar Headed For a Collapse? Gold Prices Seem to Indicate Just That

There is an elephant in the room that no one in Washington or the media wants to talk about these days; that of the impeding collapse of the US Dollar. While Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve continues to assure investors that the dollar is a safe investment, while printing money like madmen, several indicators seem to suggest otherwise. It isn't just an academical discussion either. The future of the dollar is of great importance to all Americans, particularly those with savings.
It used to be that the US Dollar was the strongest currency in the world. Those that traveled abroad would experience this first hand as their hard earned money would be highly appreciated by the locals. This just isn't the case anymore. Several countries now prefer the Euro and many have taken steps to replace their dollar reserves with Euros. The average American citizen may not have felt the impact yet. After all, domestic prices stay the same whether or not the dollar fluctuates, but they will eventually feel the impact as rampant inflation inevitably sets in. As the dollar weakens in purchasing power, it becomes more expensive to import goods, and since much of the US production has been outsourced, this will result in higher prices, which will be passed on to consumers.
Those with savings for retirement invested in American stocks and bonds will be hit the worst. Since their savings are in fixed dollar amounts, once inflation sets in, it's highly likely that the result will be a net loss as returns struggle to keep up with rise in prices. This is a common scenario and one that has happened many times over the world.
Of course, it is easy, but foolish, to dismiss such talks as fear mongering. However, there is very substantial indication that it is actually true. Take the price of gold for example. Gold has long been touted as a poor investment. Tell that to those who invested in gold around 2000-2001. Where one ounce of gold was worth $300 dollars in 2000, it's at the time of writing, December 2009, worth $1200. That's a 500% return on investment. Gold is the anti-dollar investment and has been since the Breton Woods currency system was abolished 40 years ago. Since then, gold has risen in value continuously, skyrocketing in value the last 10 years. Gold is the anti-dollar investment for the reason that gold is the real defacto currency of the world and has been that since mankind first dug up the metal. It does not corrode, fade or burn and it can't be printed or created artificially. It is the safe haven for all investments.
Why should we be worried that gold has risen so much in value? Essentially, what the market is saying is that it has lost faith in the US Dollar. While the central banks of the world are outwardly discrediting gold, they have actually been buying huge amounts. There is a reason for this of course. The more people hold gold, the less their monopoly on money is worth.
But that is not the only reason to fear for a dollar collapse. Few people know that a new pan-American currency known as the Amero has already been sent into circulation. Open a new browser window and do a Google search for 'Amero coin pictures'. This is a real currency, which if things continue down the current path, will replace the dollar and enter Americans into a currency union with Canada and Mexico. The then worthless dollars will be exchanged into Ameros at an unfavorable rate.
Does all this sound far fetched to you? Don't take my word for it. There are several influential people who do their best to warn the American public of this scenario. Two of those people are Congressman Ron Paul and hedge fund owner and soon to be Senator Peter Schiff. Peter Schiff, owner of Euro Pacific Capital, predicted the current financial crisis several years before it happened. Now he and Congressman Ron Paul are predicting the collapse of the US Dollar and doing their best to tell the American public about it.



How can you prepare yourself for the coming depression and possible collapse? The most sensible thing is simply to divert your savings into precious metals like gold and silver. There are several ways to do this. The most secure method is to actually buy physical gold known as gold bullion. Bullion simply means gold coins and gold bars, such as the South African Krugerrand or Canadian Maple Leaf. There are several places to buy gold such as the online store GovMint [http://buygoldbulliononline.info], who sells gold and silver coins. These coins are excellent for securing and diversifying your savings as they can easily be changed into silver for example.
The easiest choice for Americans looking to buy gold would be to buy from an online store such as that or head over the border to Mexico to buy Centenarios which are readily available. In any case, it pays to be prepared as there are risks involved buying gold. Buying Gold Safely [http://howtoinvestgold.org] is an excellent guide to buying gold and is a recommended read for anyone considering buying gold. It's available online for purchase and download.

How Do I Find the Value of Gold Coins?

With the price of gold remaining strong, you may have reached a decision to sell those old gold coins you have stashed away. Or you may be thinking of purchasing gold coins, and want to know the true value of gold coins before you go along to a dealer.
Whatever your reason for wishing to know the values of gold coins, this information should help.
First, you should understand there are basically two kinds of gold coins on the market.
There are historical gold coins which were issued for circulation in many countries, including the USA, up until the 1920s and 1930s. (Yes, gold dollar coins were once issued too.) These circulation coins include famous ones like the American half eagles, eagles and double eagles, Indian heads and Saint Gaudens, and British sovereigns. These coins are not pure gold, but have some copper or silver added, to make them more durable. However, because of their collector value, these coins are usually worth much more than the value of the gold they contain.
The other main type of gold coin is the modern bullion coin issued by many countries since the 1960s. These coins are not meant to be used as 'money' but for investment or for collectors. Popular bullion coins include the American Gold Eagle, the Canadian Maple Leaf, the Krugerrand, the Austrian Philharmonic and the Chinese Panda. The value of these coins is the value of the gold they contain (usually one ounce, or the fraction of one ounce as stated on the coin) plus a premium which can be as much as 10% or more.
To find the value of a gold coin whether it is an old gold coin or a modern bullion coin, you need to know the spot price of gold. This is published in most newspapers and online news sites. If you know the weight of the coin a simple calculation will give you a baseline value of the coin (though you may not get as much as the actual gold value of the coin from some dealers). Next, you need to consult online or printed guides for the price of the particular coin you are interested in.
There are many good online services which will show you the actual prices currently being paid for gold coins on auction sites like eBay. You can also browse auction sites like eBay yourself, to see what people want you to pay for particular gold coins. Remember that the rarity, and the condition or grade of gold coins, particularly historical ones, make a huge difference to their value. If you own a gold coin and have trouble identifying what it is, there are excellent books and catalogs you can consult which are still better and more comprehensive than anything online.
For historical coins you will need to know the actual gold weight of the coin (the percentage of the weight which is real gold) to assess its value against the spot price of gold, and many online services also make this easy. For bullion coins, the actual weight is stated on the coin itself.



I have assembled all the resources mentioned above to help you find the current prices you can expect for your gold coins - see the value of gold coins page at my site bullion-gold-coins.com.
Robert G Smith writes about the price of gold and about the many types of gold coins you can collect.

Now is the Time to Invest in Gold and Silver

Is now a good time to make a gold investment or a silver investment? The gold price and the silver price have both risen steadily, and rather dramatically, from 2005 to the present.
Has this rise run its course or is it merely a beginning? These important questions deserves honest consideration. The following information shows why great upward pressure remains on gold and silver prices, making possible even more dramatic increases.
Some History of Gold and Silver Prices
From 1792 to 1933, the gold price was $20.67 per ounce in the United States - all money could be exchanged for gold. In 1933, the US went off this gold standard, devalued the dollar to $35 per ounce of Gold, and forbade any US citizen from holding or owning any gold. Foreign citizens and banks could, however, convert their US notes into gold. After World War II, the gold-backed US dollar became the world's key currency for several reasons:

The European countries involved in WWII were heavily in debt to the US.
The US economy was very strong and the value of dollar had appreciated.
Of all the major world currencies, only the US dollar was backed by gold.
The US agreed to link the dollar to the gold price of $35 per ounce and exchange gold bullion for dollars.

In 1971, the dollar became fiat money; the dollar became merely a paper note having neither value in itself nor backing in real assets. This happened when President Nixon ended the ability of foreign banks to convert their US dollars into gold. Nixon's action eliminated the official $35 per ounce price of gold - the value of gold and the value of the dollar were no longer linked.
The private market, which in 1968 was allowed to set a separate price for gold, then determined the world's only gold price. At the time of Nixon's order, the gold price had recently risen to about $40 per ounce and the silver price was about $1.40 per ounce. (The market quoted gold and silver prices in US dollars per ounce.)
Since 1971, the value of the fiat dollar lay in the US government's declaration that the dollar is legal money to exchange for goods and services. The US Treasury could then pay its bills and its debts in fiat dollars. Standing behind the national debt has been the increasingly shaky assurance that the US government, or rather the US taxpayer, is good for every dollar that is owed. Still, for almost 40 years, the dollar has remained the world's currency standard largely because of the past strength and continuing importance of the US economy.
After the dollar had become fiat money, gold and silver prices increased modestly at first. But by the end of 1974, when the right of US citizens to own gold was finally restored, the price of gold had risen above $180 per ounce and the price of silver above $4.00 per ounce.
As precious metals and former currency standards, gold and silver prices almost always rise and fall together. What factors affect their price? Is now the time to make a profitable gold or a silver investment?
Yes, now is a great time for a gold or silver investment. The US and the world are on the brink of changes that could heighten economic uncertainty, and even produce fear. Of course, no one can predict any future price, but such uncertainty increases the demand for gold and silver and drives their prices up.
Spikes in Gold and Silver Prices Since 1971
Unusual or extreme conditions existed during three times when the price of gold and silver rose abnormally high. These factors often accompany economic uncertainty and higher gold prices.
1973-1975: Troubling the nation and world were the Watergate scandal, President Nixon's resignation, and Arab members taking control of OPEC and cutting oil production. Inflation was high and spiked to over 12%. The rise in the gold coincided with consumer confidence plummeting to an historic low. Additionally, gold climbed and fell nearly in tandem with both inflation and the unemployment rate, which reached 9%. Interest rates also surged to a post-war high of 12% just months before gold peaked at nearly $200 an ounce.
All of 1980: This was the year of the Iran hostage crisis. Gold and interest rates were both extremely high and extremely volatile. The price of gold skyrocketed to $850 per ounce, dropped to $485, and surged again to $710 before dropping again. Interest rates followed gold by a few months in rising to 20%, falling to 11%, and climbing back to 21% by year's end. Consumer confidence plunged briefly and the inflation rate grew to over 14%; it was higher than 11% for nearly two years.
1982,83: Consumer confidence was very low for a prolonged period, likely caused by the highest unemployment rates since the great depression and a very high interest rates, still over 16% when gold began its rise from $296 per ounce. Inflation, however, had dropped below 7% and continued to drop as the gold price stayed between $395 and $510 per ounce.
Other Factors Affecting the Price of Gold
Deficit Spending:
Long term budget deficits decrease a country's economic stability.
Debasing the Currency:
When a nation borrows money or increases its (fiat) money supply by printing, the value of its currency decreases. Gold, however, maintains its value. Thus, when the dollar loses value, the price of gold generally increases and vice versa.
Uncertain Conditions Today:
From 1988 through the end of 2001, through the market crash of 2000 and even 9/11, the price of gradually gold fell while the dollar's value was erratic until 1995 when it increased dramatically. Unemployment, inflation, and interest rates were all low and produced the feeling of economic stability.
In January 2002, the price of gold began its rise from $280 per ounce to over $900 per ounce in 2008. During that time, the inflation rate, the interest rate, and the unemployment rate all remained low, while deficit spending and borrowing increased. Uncertainty began to build because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gold prices seemed to rise and fall with the conditions in the Middle East, rising with the deterioration in 2006 & 2007 and falling in 2008 with the improvement in Iraq.
Dire economic conditions built up across the globe throughout 2008 and gold began a steep rise to its current price near $1200 per ounce. There are many reasons for that. Unemployment rose and stayed high. Deficit spending, debt, and money supply increases hurt currencies and economies. While gold prices are most affected by the stability of the US economy, deep weaknesses in the Euro and in many European economies have contributed to the current uncertainty.
Unfortunately, the economic uncertainty is likely to increase and put even more upward pressure on gold and silver prices. A gold investment or a silver investment could now be highly profitable for several reasons.

Inflation remains low. Its rise will lower purchasing power and trouble businesses and consumers.
Interest rates remain low. Its rise will produce many new economic problems.
Debt and deficit spending are projected to remain very high. Paper fiat money will be worth less and less.
The dollar has strengthened along with the recent rise in the gold price as Euros are being converted into both dollars and gold. Is this temporary or artificial? Will the dollar fall in value?
Disruptive terror attacks loom. God forbid that a serious attack is successful.
Nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Korea are troubling.
The Middle East seems closer to war than to peace.

Of course, none of these events are desired. Yet, with eyes open, the wise person will be prepared and the wise investor will seriously consider purchasing gold and silver.



Thomas Herold is a successful entrepreneur and the founder of Wealth Building Course. A powerful financial education training that teaches the basic steps to become financial free and create lasting wealth. Get your free ebook 'Building Wealth' now.

Rising Gold Prices - An Overview

It is important to grasp the big picture of why gold is going up and the factors that are fueling its rise.
An Overview Since 1974
In 1971 President Richard Nixon ended US dollar convertibility to gold, bringing to an end the central role of gold in world currency systems. Three years later Congress legalized the ownership of gold by US citizens. Freed from the government-mandated price of $35 per ounce, the dollar and gold floated. In 1979 and 1980, investors' lack of confidence in the government's ability to restrict the expansion of the money supply resulted in panic buying of precious metals as a hedge against inflation. Gold prices soared, and in January 1980 the gold price hit a record of $850 per ounce. During the four-year period from 1976 to 1980, the price of gold had risen by more than 750%.
In the early 1980s the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates to restrict money supply growth. This policy achieved its purpose and by 1982 interest rates were declining and the fear of inflation had subsided. Investment capital responded by moving into financial assets from commodities including gold, and the market soared. After the historic highs of January 1980, the price of gold meandered in the $300-$400 range until hitting a low of $256 in February 2001. Then the bull market for gold returned, and by November 2009 the price had pushed up to $1,140 - a rise of 445%. To some investors, this suggests that history is repeating itself and gold is heading beyond $2,000 per ounce. To return to the 1980 high, when adjusted for inflation, the price would need to be over $2,000 now.
Today's Gold Market
The price of gold is set by the Gold Fixing, which is also known as the Gold Fix or London Gold Fixing. Twice a day by telephone, at 10:30 GMT and 15:00 GMT, five members of the London Gold Pool meet to settle contracts between members of the London bullion market. These settlements brokered by the Gold Fixing are widely recognized as the benchmark used to price gold and gold products throughout the world.
Let's examine some of the factors that influence the price of gold.
Gold Supply
There is an agency that tracks of all the gold in the world. Gold Fields Mineral Services Ltd (GFMS) is an independent, London-based consultancy and research company, dedicated to the study of the international gold and silver markets. GFMS publishes the annual Gold Survey, which features comprehensive analysis and statistics on gold supply and demand for over sixty countries. GFMS estimates that above-ground gold stocks represent a total volume of approximately 160,000 tonnes, of which over 60% has been mined since 1950. GFMS estimates that all the gold ever mined would form a cube measuring 20 yards (19 meters) on each side.
The production of new gold does not generally keep pace with inflation. The aboveground gold stock increases at a fairly constant rate of around 1.7% per year. During the last 50 years the largest annual increase was 2.1% and the smallest increase was 1.4%. This is less than the long-term historic rate of inflation, which is 4%.
The single largest holder of gold in the world is the United States government, with 8,133.5 tonnes. As of November 2009 this gold supply was worth approximately $330 billion. Other top holders of gold include Germany, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Italy, France, SPDR Gold Shares, China, Switzerland, Japan, and the Netherlands.
The US Dollar
The price of gold is widely understood to inversely track the dollar. When the dollar falls the price of gold tends to rise. But there have been many cases when the price of gold did not keep up with changes in the value of the dollar, or even ran counter to it.
For example, when gold peaked in 1980, it reflected a prevalent fear of inflation in the wake of the 1979 oil shock and a U.S. monetary policy that lacked credibility. The case for gold as a hedge against inflation was persuasive. But today, the price of oil is up significantly in currencies other than the dollar. Even measured in euros, it has returned to the February save-haven peak. The weakness of the US dollar alone cannot explain the rise in price.
In early November, with the goal to support the United States' recovery from recession, the US Federal Reserve decided to maintain the massive stimulus measures and hold down US interest rates for "an extended period." With the Federal Reserve keeping rates low, a record US budget deficit continuing to rise, and central banks all over the world diversifying away from the dollar, gold may continue to be a very attractive choice. After all, the cost of borrowing money to invest in gold is next to nothing.
On the global markets there is a persistent lack of confidence in paper-based currencies. The weakening of the U.S. dollar has had a broad effect that reduces confidence in other currencies. And with central banks and government policymakers still entangled in their unprecedented fiscal and monetary interventions, this could continue for much longer.
The current strength of gold may be a reflection not of a specific response to the value of the US dollar, but rather the expression of the same underlying malaise with the lingering effects of the global financial crisis.
Supply and Demand
In recent years the decline in mine supply has been supplemented by several factors including sustained central bank gold sales. In the 1990s, central bankers were acting as a group to reduce their gold holdings, confident that the fiat currencies were a better store of value. Central bank reserve sales, which during the past decade have played a key role in keeping gold prices in check, have slowed recently. Now gold's attractions are re-emerging and bankers look set to be net buyers, which should help tighten the market.
In addition, scrap sales offset mining declines. In the first quarter, scrap sales rose sharply as gold re-visited its all-time high.
Industrial demand for gold is influenced by fabrication needs, which have dropped sharply since 1997. The global economic downturn, coupled with higher prices, further reduced the demand for jewelry, and supply-demand changes add little in terms of explaining bullion's rise.
Government Bonds
Ten-year U.S. treasury yields have rebounded from their end-of-2008 lows between 2% and 3.3%, but this does not necessarily represent widespread fear of inflation. There is little evidence that gold buying is the result of inflation concerns.
Speculation and ETFs
The 2008 surge in crude oil prices to US$147 per barrel suggests that a similar speculative bubble is forming in gold. However, one obvious difference between then and now is that when oil peaked, the forward market was anticipating a decline in prices. The gold market anticipates a rise, and forecasts a value of US$1,250 per ounce for June 2014. While ETFs were cited as a culprit for the rise in oil and are also playing a role in the gold market, their impact may be limited in the gold market.
Early in 2009 ETFs may have been active buyers, but their activity has leveled off since. There has been a sharp increase in long forward positions in gold at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and net longs have reached a record.
Despite all the attention being paid to sales of gold by central banks and the fact that world gold holdings have experienced a broad decline, holdings in industrialized economies are on the rise as a share of total foreign reserves. And this trend was renewed in the first quarter.
China and Foreign Markets
China is emerging as an international economic force and its reported gold holdings are not necessarily reliable. This is particularly significant now that Chinese authorities can make their purchases on the domestic market. The People's Bank of China (BOC) holds about 1,054 metric tons of gold, which is about two percent of its $2.3 trillion in foreign currency reserves.
Retailers and jewelers are increasingly reluctant to buy at higher levels. In recent years India has been the world's biggest importer of gold, and in February 2008 imports stood at 23 tonnes. The figure fell to 1.8 tonnes in January 2009 and in February there was no gold imported. But in October 2009 on the back of rising demand India's gold imports surged by over 45% at 48 tonnes. India had imported 33 tonnes in the corresponding period during the previous year.
In September 2009 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would sell 403.3 metric tons of gold to strengthen its finances and increase its ability to make loans to developing countries. In November IMF revealed that from Oct. 19 to Oct. 30 it sold 200 metric tons of gold to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI paid $6.7 billion for the equivalent of about 8% of the world's annual mine production. As a percentage of foreign reserves, India's gold holdings are now higher than even China's. Many analysts believe India's purchase will spur other countries and investors to ramp up their gold purchases. Indeed, with 203.3 metric tons still on sale at the IMF, China may become the next big purchaser.



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