Precious metals news

Last May, the head of the world's largest mining company said we've found all of the gold. Goldcorp CEO Ian Telfer told the Financial Times, "we're right at peak gold here."
Peak gold is the point where the amount of gold mined out of the earth will begin to shrink every year, rather than increase, as it has done pretty consistently since the 1970s.
You could blow off Telfer's comments off as hyperbole or the musings of a contrarian except that he's not the only person in the gold mining industry worried about decreasing gold production. As a recent Business Insider article reported, many of the top people responsible for supplying the world's gold say we're running out of the yellow metal.

Because when you're young, broke, and shouldering six-figure college debt you can't repay, the first thing you're looking to do (in a job market with totally stagnant wage growth) is tack on a jumbo mortgage and buy into a housing bubble now at valuations higher than just prior to the sub-prime collapse.

"Self-organizing economies don’t work in a convenient linear pattern–in other words, in a way that makes it possible to make valid straight-line predictions from the past. Instead, they work in ways that don’t match up well with standard projection techniques."

The combination of centralized governmental economics, unchecked power, and entrenched corruption are the fertile fields in which monetary hyperinflation is sowed. Turkey is the next Venezuela.

What to do as a bank in a super-late-cycle credit environment, when you've already loaned money to nearly everyone with any ability to pay you back? From payday lenders to Wall St., the answer is increasingly the same: loan to those with an established track record of default. Loan to those with the worst credit of all.

The US Treasury 10Y-2Y slope continues flattening, now down to 26.4 basis points. Meanwhile, net shorts in 10-year Treasury futures positions hit record levels. If growth is so robust and the economy doing so well, why does nearly every forward-looking indicator we monitor say "Iceberg, dead ahead!"

The dissonance between what Americans think is happening in the labor market and what is actually happening is jarring. While the government touts a 4% unemployment rate that is closer to 20% if you could able-bodied adult workers who have given up looking altogether, real wage growth over the past two years is nonexistent.

Harvey says there's been a huge raid on gold and silver. Here's the details...

In last Friday's podcast, Peter Schiff talked about the potential impact of the trade war, arguing it could prick the US bubble economy. As a follow-up, in his latest podcast, Peter talked more about why a trade war could be worse for the US economy than most pundits seem to think, and he dug down to the root cause of the trade deficit.
The bottom line is slapping tariffs on Chinese imports isn't going to solve the problem.

Have you ever thought about owning gold?
That may seem like a strange question. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why everybody has at least thought about investing in gold." But that's apparently not true - at least not in Australia.  According to a poll conducted by Australia's leading gold bullion company, 45% of Australians have never even thought about investing in physical gold.
The fact that so many people have never even thought about investing in gold explains why 85% of Australians don't own any of the yellow metal.

France, England, or Croatia will emerge as champions and experience one of the ultimate thrills in professional sports — raising aloft the 18-karat gold FIFA World Cup Trophy.

Russia has ratcheted up their efforts to reduce their exposure to American fiat currency while simultaneously continuing their relentless accumulation of gold. Jeff Clark explores what that one-two punch looks like, and what it could portend.

There's been talk about a massive gold deposit that's ready to be released to the public, but is that true or just a bunch of hot air? Here's the details...

"By linking the dollar price of gold directly to the yuan, the PBOC has eliminated for now a level of foreign exchange risk to..."

Your daily dose of inflationary perspective. On a day when US PPI checked in at 3.4%, a number described in the media as "blazing hot", Venezuela's trailing-three-month annualized rate is now 482,153% as the military takes over the public water supply.

China continued to makes progress rolling out the yuan as a multinational reserve currency, strengthening native-currency trade ties with members of its 2012-formed '16+1 bloc', which includes many former Soviet-controlled sovereigns.

Marshall says we've never seen anything like this as the commercials work to position themselves for their flip to long just ahead of the crash. Here's more...

US Producer Prices soared to +3.4% YoY in June - far above the expectation of +3.1% - and to the highest level since November 2011. The sort of number that makes it impossible for the Fed to stop raising rates, even into a weak economy and trade war.

In each of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there was at least one 50+ million-ounce gold discovery. And there were at least ten 30+ million-ounce discoveries. Per decade. Over the past 15 years, there have been exactly zero discoveries larger than 30-million ounces.

According to the IIF's latest Global Debt Monitor, the amount of debt held in the world rose by the biggest amount in two years during the first quarter of 2018, when it grew by $8 trillion.