Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Gold Price Crash Forecast to $250 an Ounce

Commodities / Gold and Silver 2010 Feb 11, 2010 - 05:17 AM GMT

By: Mac_Slavo

Commodities

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleThe contrarian recommendation for gold since 2001 through today has been to buy. As capital was pumped into the economy via easy credit, the price of gold, stocks, real estate and most other assets rose significantly. The rise in prices is a causal effect of increased money supply and pulling forward spending via lax credit lending standards.


The inflationists argue, and rightly so, that this continued monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve will ultimately lead to the demise of the US dollar.

But there is another contrarian theory that has been proposed by thinkers like Mike Shedlock, Karl Denninger and economic forecaster Harry Dent - a deflationary collapse resulting from massive credit deleveraging.

Mish (Shedlock) argues that deflation is not actually the threat, because it is already here and there is a good reason it has not taken hold just yet:

October 5, 2009:

Deflation is not a threat because deflation is here by any practical measurement.

We are already in uncharted territory, and the risk is what the Fed, Congress, the Treasury department, the Administration, and central bankers globally do to prevent something that needs to happen: the liquidation of malinvestments and debt.

Thus the “real threat” (and risk) is not deflation, but rather the foolish attempts by Keynesian clowns to circumvent what needs happen.

But what exactly would a cleansing of the system mean for asset prices? If forecaster Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead, is projecting the deleveraging cycle accurately, then prices may very well fall off a cliff for all asset classes:

Via Dan Dorfman: Love Affair With Gold Turns Rocky

Clearly the most bearish outlook I’ve come across–one that the gold bugs would surely be quick to characterize as off the wall–is what I heard from an investment newsletter writer, Harry Dent, Jr., editor of the HS Dent Forecast in Tampa, Fla.

Taking note of $42 trillion in private debt, Dent expects half of that to disappear in a de-leveraging process within the next few years. That means, he says, the onset of deflation (falling prices), which will cause the dollar to go up and gold to go down.

Under such a projected scenario, Dent looks for gold to drop to $250 an ounce, a giant-sized slide that he expects will begin to kick off this year. “The fact of investment life,” he says, “is that the dollar is now going up and gold is now going down, meaning it’s time to sell gold.”

There are trillions of dollars in debt that need to be deleveraged within the system. Gloom Boom & Doom Report publisher Dr. Marc Faber argues that while deflation is possible in the near-term, the powers that be will do whatever it takes to avoid it, and in the end, will be successful:

If deflationists are right (and they could be right in the near term, in my opinion), then the US government bonds and the dollar will rally, while stocks, commodities, real estate, and lower-quality corporate bonds will tank. But if I am very confident about making one predicition, it is that, if we have further deflation in the immediate future, there will be not one more, but many more stimulus packages and further massive monetisation. So, government debt-to-GDP could easily double within five years. Now, does anyone seriously think that the dollar and government bond prices wouldn’t at some point begin to reflect concerns about the financial condition of the US under these conditions?

Marc Faber, Gloom Boom & Doom Report, August 2009

Whether or not The Federal Reserve can create enough money to offset the contraction within the system is the real question, and according to Harry Dent, there is a historical precedence to draw on:

“…history tells us clearly that once a massive deleveraging process starts, it continues and is impossible to stop—although it can be stalled, as has occurred here. Unemployment is a lagging indicator and is expected to continue rising in the early stages of the recovery. Thus, unemployment is the biggest threat to the developing recovery given the unique fragility of the banking system.”

Harry Dent, Economic Forecast, August 2009

An additional consideration to be made in regards to gold, separate from other assets, is gold’s standing as a monetary unit. During the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s, as monetary supply increased and prices in energy, food, and other sectors rose, the price of gold actually declined. Thus, gold does not always rise in response to inflationary pressure. Gold, argues Martin Armstrong, “is not the hedge against inflation but against the collapse in the confidence of government.” In this sense, gold can be described as the currency of last resort for individuals and governments.

Many economists compare today’s depression to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and the name of the game then was deflation. In the 30’s we saw asset price deflation across the board, except, of course, in gold. Though it was a forced price increase through President Roosevelt’s confiscation and revaluation, it seems the government knew that the price of gold needed to be higher in order to offset all the leverage in the system. The free market certainly understood the value of gold, as capital shifted into the only legal way to own the metal en masse - stocks like Homestake Mining.

One discrepancy in comparing today’s economic conditions to that of the Great Depression is that we had a different monetary exchange system in the 1930’s with gold pegged directly to the dollar, as compared to today’s floating exchange currency system, so it is difficult to apply past depressionary models to today’s environment.

Another consideration to be made is that gold, being money and being de-pegged from the US Dollar, may lead it to retain more purchasing power vs. the dollar than other assets. And in essence, that is the ultimate goal of any gold investor. In the event of a deflationary collapse in US dollar prices of the value of a car, a house, a company stock, or another currency, gold may also decline, but the decline may not be as significant as other assets.

We would also like to suggest an alternate scenario called biflation and originally proposed by Dr. F. Osborne Brown in 2003:

Biflation is a state of the economy where the processes of inflation and deflation occur simultaneously.

During Biflation, there’s a rise in the price of commodity/earnings-based assets (inflation) and a simultaneous fall in the price of debt-based assets (deflation).

The price of all assets are based on the demand for them versus the volume of money in circulation to buy them.

With Biflation on the one hand, the economy is fueled by an over-abundance of money injected into the economy by central banks. Since most essential commodity-based assets (food, energy, clothing, precious metals) remain in high demand, the price for them rises due to the increased volume of money chasing them. The increasing costs to purchase these essential assets is the price-inflationary arm of Biflation.

[emphasis added]

With our debt based system, biflation is sounding more and more like a plausible outcome in the future. Thus, the price of essential goods  will be valued, in real terms (and nominal terms), at a higher price than non-essentials that are often purchased  by pulling sales forward through the use of credit (i.e. - house, car, boat, furniture, high-end electronics, etc.)

With so much uncertainty in today’s economic environment, it is impossible to project exactly what will happen to the US dollar, gold or other asset prices, so positioning oneself for a variety of scenarios may be the most practical approach. In a depression, be it deflationary or inflationary, the most important goal in terms of investing is to preserve as much wealth as possible.

If gold does hold true to its historical role as a monetary unit of last resort during times of economic, political and social instability, then regardless of deflation or inflation, it may remain a powerful wealth preservation mechanism.

By Mac Slavo

http://www.shtfplan.com/

Mac Slavo is a small business owner and independent investor focusing on global strategies to protect, preserve and increase wealth during times of economic distress and uncertainty. To read our commentary, news reports and strategies, please visit www.SHTFplan.com

© 2010 Copyright Mac Slavo - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Comments

Richard Wicks
29 Mar 10, 10:55
This is ludicrous

This paragraph:

"But what exactly would a cleansing of the system mean for asset prices? If forecaster Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead, is projecting the deleveraging cycle accurately, then prices may very well fall off a cliff for all asset classes:"

ignores the fact that a dollar bill, or any fiat currency is also an asset class.

The author is unable to understand what deflation is, or at least, doesn't bother to define deflation.


R. C. Christian
19 Jul 11, 06:29
Gold Price Crash

Boy was this article wrong!


Paul_B
20 Jul 11, 03:52
Gold Price Forecasts

Yes, this article's predictions of a gold price crash were hopelessly wrong as so many similar predictions have proved to be too. But Nevertheless, I welcome the way Nadeem publishes a broad spread of opinion on these matters. It allows us to make our own minds up about future price directions. If *all* the articles here were bullish about gold, then notwithstanding I myself remain bullish on gold, I would no longer regularly check this site for fear it had become biased.

People, you need to read the whole spectrum of views on the subject and DECIDE FOR YOURSELF which commentators are making sense.


PJ
27 Aug 11, 09:57
Another example...

Another example of people who didn't see it coming but now forecast gold crash. It's laughable and insulting.


peter
28 Aug 11, 10:59
deflation and gold

Japan has had delfation for 20 years and the price of gold has steadily risen against the Yen...now the Yen is rising against all currencies and still gold is going up against the Yen. Richard (above) makes a the most important point in that currencies are also asset classes and although the US dollar "may" rally strongly in the coming months, gold will continue to rise because of the continual debasesment and parabolic increase in the Money supply. Take a look at the M2 for the US dollar and you can clearly see gold tracking it and breaking out to the upside with it. Gold is going up and the dollar is being debased regardless of the relative value of the different paper currencies. And yes debt is being unwound at the same time. Seems all like a perfect scenario for Gold. Anything that requires debt (like a home) is delfating in price which means your gold buys more, and anything that requires cash (like food and gas) is inflating in price which gold will hold its value against. And the debaters keep debating about who is right, are we having inflation or deflation (who cares), buy gold and protect yourself and your families before it's too late.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in