Good Read For Another Perspective On Future Of Gold Prices

I honestly chalk most of the differences between the Eastern hemisphere view (India, Asia ect) and the western view to cultural. I see people using their desire for it to reach conclusions they want while ignoring that this interest is nothing new.

India has a long history of desiring gold for jewelery, weddings, to store their money ect as does Asia. The reason for this is both practical and historical. Jewelry and weddings ect are obviously part cultural and part tradition. But the store of wealth has little to do with them thinking thats the only real money.

In a lot of those countries corruption is rampant so people dont trust banks. Its not practical to have your life savings in bills laying around the house so you turn to gold where you can store a lot more easier. India for example a lot of places dont even have access to banks and their banking system is very weak and suspect compared to ours. In Asia China is allowing their citizens to accumulate more private wealth as theyve taken steps towards a more capitalist system which automatically increases the demand just because they now have more money to spend.

As far as the west goes, we dont have the worry that if we put something in the bank well never see it again and banks are everywhere so the vast majority of people dont have to keep their money all at home. We also dont have dowrys or much or a long rich history of ceremonial gold. Our uses are jewelry because we like it and investment/wealth storage. With the majority of people being content with banks except during PM price runs the demand will never equal that of the east as long as they dont have a strong banking system and do have distrust of it.

India is actually trying its best to discourage gold imports and improve the banking system to get people off of gold because the import taxes are killing them. Its unlikely that India or any of those countries will be able to have much of an impact undoing thousands of years of how things have been done any time soon, but a lot of their desire for it is motivated by a need to protect themselves from corruption that fortunately we havent had to worry about.

For the stock contracts I dont believe it has anything to do with being a bank or not being a bank, just how many shares you have. The threshold is real high though and unless you have Romney or Kerry money its unlikely anyone but the wealthiest could individually do so.

They never really were designed for physical delivery though in my opinion unless youre talking about futures contracts. Theyre more of a way to just profit (or take losses) on the metals without paying the physical premiums and having to worry about selling when the time comes.

Since they often trade slightly below spot and have no premium for mint costs and sellers getting their share some people tried to get physical out of them as an end around to cheaper premium free metals. This may be the one place where being a bank comes into play since they trade them at spot value without premiums.

A lot of people bring up how these stocks are bringing the price down and they have, but theyre also the reason why it keeps getting support on the way down when theres no shortage of physical. Its also largely ignored that these also played a role in the prices reaching the points that they did and staying there for so long. Theres other factors in play but the 80s spike was basically over at this point and thats our only comparison in the last 80-100 years.

Basically they dont concern me especially since the big money is doing far better in the stock market which has a far greater upside for them except in times of uncertainty. If you start at a conclusion though you can use the pm stock actions to justify it, but the big money should stay away from them until the next market crash or the next time they get a bulls-eye painted on their back and then well go through the cycle all over again. We seem to like to repeat this every couple decades.

Obviously anything can happen that will change this but at the time being while things arent great they seem to be stable and stable seems to be the key to keeping the big money out of PMs.




Dont worry about offending me. I personally enjoy being challenged because it makes me revisit my opinions and see if I come to the same conclusions.

Basebal, your dead on about how Asians keep their assets. I've worked there for many years and most families have their gold and silver coins in house. Very rarely do they keep more than a minimal amount in the bank. My experience is China and the Philippines and they have continued to hoard as much as they have financial means to do so. My wife's family has a VERY surprising amount of gold based on their economic status, I calculated over 20 ounces total and the average annual income is between $2,400 to $3,000. Their coins cover about 4 decades from what they showed to me. I wonder just how much is stashed away in homes all over China, it must be staggering.
There is massive mistrust in their own government there which leads to the passed down thinking that they need to keep as much as they can. Our business there deals almost exclusively in cash, few trusts credit cards. It reminds me of my grandfather having coffee containers of coins hidden in many different locations around his warehouse.
I too have been trying to buy more as of late with the declining prices but it has not seemed to translate to my LCS at all.
Very educational post here, thank you.

Your first post, basebal, was completely out of this world. We don't use enough natural gas? Wow. You do know this is a finite resource? Do you know that burning natural gas contributes to climate change, or how much methane is released in the production process?

I'm a PhD student with a BA in Economics, and I'm nothing but stunned by your so called knowledge. Just saying. I'd really like to know what academic journals and books you read.

@Drsandman - suggestion - go over, in depth, the first and second group of emal on the media-laughed-at "climate gate." The main proponents of this scheme were caught with their pants down. And the initial statemnt they made was that, yes, it was a farce. They then retracted this as the media came to their side and said that the emails were being taken out of context.

The problem with all the "out of context" argument is that the hackers also got/released onto the web the program being used in simulations. You can read where the programmer left notes to himself (typical of programmers) to exclude certain data or it would not make the AGW results what they wanted it to. Other things like the famous Hockey Stick graph were falsified and the professor at Penn State who made up the data refused to share his initial data he used with anyone. What kind of "scientist" does this (after he had already published and was made famous for his graph)? Anyone with true science in mind will gladly share and put their data out on the table for verification.

And a year after the initial release of the emails etc., the same group released more hacked info onto the web. But the second time was hush hushed by the mainstream. Why? B/c one of the emails this time caught the perpetrators saying saying they needed to destroy the false evidence b/c they were being petitioned for it under the FOIA!

Research it. The mainstream media ridicules it. But the data is there to be had/read. The problem is that so much data was taken, that this gives those who would continue this falsehood an out b/c most people are not willing to look at it. So look for honest summaries of the emails etc. and read them for yourself. I pointed my own family physician to this information and he was shocked to find out he had just been going with the flow like a lot of other people.

Centuries ago when Greenland was first discovered, the Vikiings were using a large portion of it for farmland (hence the name). It was much warmer back then than it is now. The drastic transition Greenland made from arable land to being ice covered - when there was no industrialization to supposedly make the change - if yet more that shows major climate shifting has occurred throughout history without mankind. It is a natural thing. Do we really think that as random as weather is that these dramatic shifts would not be a naturally occurring thing? What miracle would possibly preside over everything to keep everything at a steady state for century upon century? History proves otherwise.

In the late 80s when the theory was first perpetrated is was called a "theory" in the media. It was named global warming. The claims in the media were that by the year 2000, the Great Lakes area would be able to grow palm trees. When this did not happen close to 15 years later, and their predicted change failed to show itself (including record low temp winters in that time period) , they decided to save face and renamed it to "climate change." And instead of things getting warmer, they now claimed everything was going to get cooler b/c global warming causes global cooling. What a crock! They knew they had the media behind them, so when their initial predictions failed, they changed the tune entirely and the media still supported them!

It must be nice to make a prediction, and when it turns out totally unjustified by actual life, to be able to claim your prediction actually meant the opposite of what you originally said... AND be believed! The media gave them a "we are never wrong" ticket.

There is just so very much science - instead of media-backed pseudo science - showing this is one of the biggest shams ever perpetrated on the world.


And, BTW, an actual warming of the globe would be a good thing. Agriculture and food production would go up. Carbon Dioxide is what plants thrive on, and longer growing seasons would not be a bad thing. But we are never reminded of this in the media. Carbon dioxide is the evil monster/culprit.

I will stop here. I could go on and on and show you undeniable, factual science like the US Navy ocean/water temp records - started before we ever had record of day to day temperatures on land - show no change overall. Water cannot keep itself in the same temp range if the environment it is in is warming up.

On and on...

Dr youve yet to do anything but a personal attack which doesn't bother me at all, its what people do when the facts are against them. You havent done anything to disprove anything which shows your speaking from your ideology yourself. You admit you didnt read anything but already have your mind made up that its wrong.

You bring up the earth being 4.5 billion years and glacial changes yet completely ignore the fact that those have changed throughout the earths history long before man came to be. Or do you want to argue the cavemen caused the ice age discovering fire?

Nasa has already proved in the link I provided that GHGs get released from the atmosphere at a much greater rate than previously thought. 99 percent of scientists dont agree theres been climate change and not even 99 percent of the ones that believe there has been think its been man made but its obvious you dont care.

Yes I do post a lot, I enjoy coins and had a knee surgery go wrong that gave me a massive blood clot and its a good way to keep my mind off of that. I cant say the board will be any worse without you and for your sake hope this isn't your idea of presenting an argument or that dissertation will never get approved.

Hopefully this doesn't cause the thread to be locked by the mods since this was a good thread before this nonsense.

Love the turn this thread is going...