-- Published: Sunday, 27 July 2014 | Print | Disqus
By Peter Cooper
Arriving in Central London yesterday this correspondent spent an hour in a taxi to make what should have been a five minute trip because of a circuitous detour to avoid a huge demonstration about the invasion of Gaza.
Consider that $60 fare a contribution to this struggle though it may be yet more money wasted on one of the Middle East’s many seemingly insolvable geopolitical problems. The news from the self-proclaimed Islamic State growing inside Iraq and Syria also appeared none too promising with a Syrian military base falling to the rebels.
Wake-up call
Perhaps the demonstration when we arrived was something of a wake-up call. Global financial markets are ridiculously complacent about these matters which are obviously a threat to oil prices.
Then again what about the soon-to-be-declared open war between Russia and the Ukraine? With cross border shelling and the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane this is a war in all but name.
The sanctions that the West will now have to put on Russia risk destabilizing global financial markets at an extremely vulnerable time: i.e. when they have risen so high on money printing as to have lost all sense of reality.
Americans simply refuse to believe any set of statistics out recently that confirms that the 2.9 per cent slump in first quarter GDP this year was anything more than a temporary phenomenon. Housing starts have been bad. Part-time jobs are replacing full-time ones. Consumer confidence and retail are slipping.
We will see what the advanced reading for GDP in the second quarter shows on Wednesday. It could be that the slump in Q1 did not miraculously end in April.
With all this going on it should be a rough week for markets or a lot rougher than we have been having recently. Conversely what asset ought to shine?
Time to buy bullion?
Step forward gold and silver whose resilience under fire from the big brokers has been remarkable though perhaps not so surprising in current circumstances.
Their argument against gold as about to drop due to accelerating economic growth and higher interest rates will be shot to pieces by the mounting violence in the Middle East and Ukraine that herald a big rise in energy prices. The reverse will happen.
The US will have to revert to printing more money and promising lower rates forever. Gold and silver will therefore take off, and when there is a flight from US bonds then they will fly very much higher.
This day of reckoning is very close, not a US economic recovery.
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-- Published: Sunday, 27 July 2014 | E-Mail | Print | Source: GoldSeek.com
