-- Published: Friday, 20 June 2014 | Print  | Disqus 

Gold and silver staged a spectacular advance yesterday, with prices up three and five per cent respectively, after Fed hints that higher levels of inflation ‘noise’ may be tolerated as the US economy recovers. But it is the deteriorating geopolitics of Iraq and Ukraine that are really going to shift precious metal prices higher from here.

The new government in the Ukraine simply does not get it. They want to sign an EU association agreement on June 27th. Their foreign minister will present a peace plan to EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg next Monday. Do they think the EU can save them from the Russian invasion of their eastern states? Did it lift a finger over the Crimea?

Ukraine’s misjudgment

Yesterday Nato warned that Russia is again massing troops on the border with Ukraine. They are not there for a summer vacation. Far from Russian-led insurgents laying down their weapons for peace the fighting in the eastern states has intensified in recent days. Is this going to be like the Prague Spring of 1968? That also came as a big shock in the West.

Then look at the misreading of Iraq. President Obama said several times yesterday in no uncertain terms that US troops would not be returning. The hawks cling onto the 300 advisers being sent to Iraq. But you don’t need to be the brain of Baghdad to see that these are just the specialists needed to safely evacuate American citizens, diplomats and contractors.

Is this going to be like the fall of Saigon, the last time an American military adventure turned into a disaster? Iraq is like Vietnam maybe worse, not a US invasion and reconstruction success story like Germany and Japan.

Energy price inflation

In this seismic shift of geopolitics several things are going to happen on the economic front. The cost of energy will go up as supplies from Russia and Iraq will be in jeopardy and may indeed be jeopardized for an unknown period of time. That will be enough to tip over the over-valued and highly complacent stock markets of the world. Central banks have few levers left to pull to prevent another major recession.

Where will you want to stash your money? Bonds are the usual safe haven but how safe will they prove after such a long period of deliberate suppression of interest rates by the central banks? The bond market has become the biggest bubble in the history of money.

No, there is only one true money without counterparty risk or a central bank screwing it up and that’s the monetary metals, gold and silver. Investors will increasingly get it and buy them. Precious metal prices are heading very much higher from here. Oil, gas and related interests will not be so far behind. The US dollar is in serious trouble.

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 -- Published: Friday, 20 June 2014 | E-Mail  | Print  | Source: GoldSeek.com

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About Peter Cooper:
Oxford University educated financial journalist Peter Cooper found himself made redundant by Emap plc in London in the mid-1990s and decided to rebuild his career in Dubai as launch editor of the pioneering magazine Gulf Business. He returned briefly to London in 1999 to complete his first book, a history of the Bovis construction group.

Then in 2000 he went back to Dubai to become an Internet entrepreneur, just as the dot-com market crashed. But he stumbled across the opportunity to become a partner in www.ameinfo.com, which later became the Middle East's leading English language business news website.

Over the course of the next seven years he had a ringside seat as editor-in-chief writing about the remarkable transformation of Dubai into a global business and financial hub city. At the same time www.ameinfo.com prospered and was sold in 2006 to Emap plc for $27 million, completing the career circle back to where it began a decade earlier.

He remains a lively commentator and columnist as a freelance journalist based in Dubai and travels extensively each summer with his wife Svetlana. His financial blog www.arabianmoney.net is attracting increasing attention with its focus on investment in gold and silver as a means of prospering during a time of great consumer price inflation and asset price deflation.

Order my book online from this link

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