News Articles

Over the weekend, an announcement was made that the University of Texas endowment fund had decided buy and take delivery of $1 billion worth of gold. This was an absolutely huge development on multiple fronts.

First, the UT endowment fund’s gold purchase was a radical deviation from the standard institutional portfolio, the possibility of which we have considered for some time. Since UT has about $20 billion in assets, a $1 billion gold allocation would indicate 5% of its assets in gold. The standard institutional allocation to gold is 1%; a 5% allocation is a huge increase. If (or in our opinion, when) other institutions adopt a similar stance, the price of gold will skyrocket...

Edification is not the word that comes to mind when observing an interview with Larry Fink of Blackstone this morning on network financial news. It was inspirational if not humorous, and somewhat pathetic. Of course the interviewer treated him like royalty, when just a syndicate captain, a Made Man. As a cog within the US financial hierarchy, he was asked why Gold is approaching record price levels near $1500 per ounce. He gave his best 10-second answer, showing no depth of comprehension but an excellent grip of propaganda laced with simplistic distortion. He said...

The elimination of the dollar and the move to a gold backed reserve currency was the key focus at the BRIC conference that was held on April 14th in China.

The key to understanding the summit may be found in the joint statement, which refers to "the inadequacies and deficiencies of the existing international monetary and financial system...." Without question, this statement is about eliminating the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Therefore, the BRIC countries are asking for "the reform and improvement of the international monetary system, with a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty." ...

One by one, the countries of the emerging world are loosening the shackles with which they tried to prevent their currencies from appreciating. It is not that they care less about export competitiveness than they did even a few weeks ago. It’s that they now care more, much more, about inflation. And with rising prices of commodities, especially food and oil, stoking inflation, officials are deciding that allowing a currency to appreciate is a good way to relieve the pressure...

The US lacks a “credible strategy” to stabilize its mounting public debt posing a small but significant risk of a new global economic crisis, says the International Monetary Fund.

In an unusually stern rebuke to its largest shareholder, the IMF said the US was the only advanced economy to be increasing its underlying budget deficit in 2011 at a time when its economy was growing fast enough to reduce borrowing....

China is the world’s biggest producer of gold, with Chinese mine output reaching a record 340 tons last year. Even with this record production, China’s imports through October 2010 rose to 209 tons and, just in the first two months of 2011, China’s imports climbed to 200 tons. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China started opening physical-gold linked savings accounts in December 2010. More than 1 million such accounts have already been opened with more than 12 tons of gold stored on behalf of investors...

Silver Price Rises 78 Percent Intra-Year
Industrial Demand for Silver Posts a 20.7 Percent Increase Over 2009

(NEW YORK – April 7, 2011) Booming silver investment was the primary source of the astounding
78 percent intra-year increase in silver prices in 2010. A sturdy rebound in total fabrication demand, led by the industrial sector, was also significant, according to World Silver Survey 2011, released today by the Silver Institute...

Utah has now become the first State on our list to actually enact a sound money bill into law.

On Friday, March 25th, Gov. Gary Herbert signed HB 317 the "Utah Legal Tender Act," into law.

The law recognizes gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal currency in the state. The coins do not replace the current paper currency, but may be used and accepted voluntarily as an alternative.

The law exempts the sale of gold and silver coins from the state capital gains tax, since you would simply be exchanging one form of legal tender currency for another. It also calls for a committee to study alternative currencies for the State and a means for Utahans to pay their taxes with gold and silver coins...

Mother nature, one could say, is the ultimate asset allocator over a long enough time span. Going by that notion, silver is very undervalued versus gold.

Silver is about 16 times as plentiful in the earth’s crust as gold, according to John Stephenson, author of the “The Little Book of Commodity Investing.”

According to the basic laws of supply and demand, especially given that the two metals are quite similar, the price gap between the two metals should be much smaller...