The Perfect Storm For Gold

(December 27th, 2021 - Nick Barisheff)

In December 1997, The Financial Times ran an article entitled “The Death of Gold.” Since then, the gold price in US dollars has increased 519I% from $288 to $1,780. Today, after many political events and crises we have evidence of the continuous and in many ways spectacular growth of the gold price. This confluence of many current events is creating a perfect storm for gold to increase dramatically more than we imagined.

Currency Devaluation

Typically, currency devaluation is always at the heart of a rising gold price. This has been taking place in all of the major fiat currencies, resulting in an average annual price increase in gold of over 10% since 2000.

For the naïve there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandise a man would like to get. How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government’s Treasury Department.”

Ludwig von Mises

Since 1900, all major fiat currencies have been devalued by over 90%

To understand currency devaluation, it is necessary to understand that all currency is created by governments issuing debt and then the central bank monetizing that debt by printing the currency. In 1960, the U.S. federal debt to GDP stood at 52.2%, whereas today it has grown to 125.9%. The Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by a historically unprecedented amount of over $7.5 trillion since 2008.

Because of this central bank policy, all western currencies are being devalued and this in turn leads to inflation.

Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through excessive quantity.”

Nicholas Copernicus – 1525

Fed Chairman Powell has pumped trillions of newly printed dollars into the system in order to prop up the financial markets, but in the process has unleashed a tsunami of inflation that is unlike anything we have seen since the 1970s.”

Michael Snyder

As Currencies Are Devalued, Price Inflation Will Inevitably Follow

Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in North America, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today use the term ‘inflation’ to refer to the phenomenon that is an inevitable consequence of inflation, and that is the tendency of all prices and wages to rise.

In October 2021, consumer inflation jumped to a four-decade high, the highest since the days of runaway inflation in the early 1980s. Headline year-to-year GDP inflation hit a 38-year-plus high of 4.53%.