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Monday, October 28, 2013

...from Dr. John


The Grand Superstition 
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

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"In 1948, the behaviorist B.F. Skinner reported an experiment in which pigeons were presented with food at fixed intervals, with no relationship to any given pigeon’s behavior. Despite that lack of relationship, most of the pigeons developed distinct superstitious rituals and maneuvers, apparently believing that these actions resulted in food. As Skinner reported, “Their appearance as the result of accidental correlations with the presentation of the stimulus is unmistakable.”

Superstition is a by-product of the search for patterns between events – usually occurring in close proximity. This kind of search for patterns is essential for the continuation of a species, but it also lends itself to false beliefs. As Foster and Kokko (2009) put it, “The inability of individuals – human or otherwise – to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them… will often force them to make many incorrect causal associations, in order to establish those that are essential for survival.”

The ability to infer cause and effect, based on the frequency with which one event co-occurs with some other event, is called “adaptive” or “Bayesian” learning. Humans, pigeons, and many animals have this ability to learn relationships in their world. Still, one thing that separates humans from animals is the ability to evaluate whether there is really any actual mechanistic link between cause and effect. When we stop looking for those links, and believe that one thing causes another because “it just does” – we give up the benefits of human intelligence and exchange them for the reflexive impulses of lemmings, sheep, and pigeons.

To paraphrase Beck & Forstmeier (2007, italics mine):

The occurrence of superstitious beliefs is an inevitable consequence of an organism’s ability to learn from observation of coincidence. Comparison with previous experiences improves the chances of making the right decision. While this approach is found in most learning organisms, humans have evolved a unique ability to judge from experiences whether a cause has the power to mechanistically produce the observed effect. Such strong causal thinking evolved because it allowed humans to understand and manipulate their environment. Strong causal thinking, however, involves the generation of hypotheses about underlying mechanisms.

When we fail to think about the mechanisms that link cause and effect, we lose much of the benefit of having a human intelligence."

http://www.hussman.net/wmc/wmc131028.htm

que Stevie Wonder ...

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Euro exit fever reaches heart of French establishment


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Monday, October 21, 2013
Calls for EMU breakup are spreading into the upper echelons of the French foreign policy establishment, and the pro-European core.
An astonishing new book by Franois Heisbourg -- "La Fin du Reve Europeen" ("The End of the European Dream") -- argues that the "euro cancer" must be cut out to save the rest of the EU project before it is too late.
"The dream has given way to nightmare. We must face the reality that the EU itself is now threatened by the euro. The current efforts to save it are endangering the Union yet further," he writes, adding:
"There is nothing worse than having to confront the sunless mornings (matins blemes) of an endless crisis, but we are not going to avoid it by denying the reality, and God knows denial has been for a long time, by default, the operating mode of those in charge of EU institutions."
At some time in the future, he insists, Europe's leaders should relaunch the euro, but only after they have established the necessary federalist foundations, and only among a vanguard willing to accept the full implications of a federal currency.

The call to "put the euro to sleep" for Europe's own good is a new twist. We heard a little of this from Germany's AfD anti-euro party, but they had other baggage. The Heisbourg book is a head-on challenge to the Merkel Doctrine (largely rhetorical, contradicted by Germany's actions) that a collapse of EMU would stir up all the old demons of the 20th century.

Yes, a disintegration of the euro might indeed lead to such a calamitous outcome if events are allowed spin out of control after years of festering crisis -- the current course -- but what kind of an argument is that? It happens only if they let it happen. It is high time somebody from within the EU elites exposed this sentimental Quatsch and misuse of history for what it is.

Prof Heisbourg is certainly an insider, a different kettle of fish from the Front National's Marine Le Pen, now leading French opinion polls with vows to kill off EMU and restore the French franc.

A product of the Quai d'Orsay, he is an ardent European federalist and long-time champion of EMU, and currently chairman of the very blue-chip International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

He says Europe's leaders have lost sight of priorities, seeming to think that the European system must be convulsed and refashioned for the needs of the euro, as if -- pre-Copernican -- the sun rotates around earth. "You cannot create a federation to save a currency. Money has to be at the service of the political structure, not the other way around," he says.
While he would dearly love to see the great leap forward to an EU federal superstate -- which he deems necessary to render monetary union workable over time -- this dream is now "pure fantasy."

Attempts to create a "European demos" have obviously failed. The nations are drifting further apart. A referendum on any such concentration of power in the EU institutions would fail almost everywhere. "Integration has reached the limits of legitimacy," he writes. The EU intrusions once tolerated as "disagreeable" have now become "insupportable."

Reading between the lines, he seems to have been shocked into writing this book by Germany's role in the Libyan crisis, its refusal to provide transport planes (a routine courtesy for NATO allies) to help France "stop another Srebrenica massacre" in Benghazi, even after intervention had been approved by the UN Security Council and the Arab League.

The splendid Joschka Fischer called Germany's decision to line up with Russia and China "a scandalous mistake," warning that Germany risked waking up one day to find itself in "a very precarious position" if it continued to play this game.
You can perhaps read too much into the Libya episode, but the Franco-German body language has not improved much over Syria. Or as my esteemed Telegraph colleague Con Coughlin puts it: that Germany's default position is now pro-Moscow.
You might conclude -- though Prof Heisbourg does not go so far -- that Germany is no longer an ally of France in any meaningful sense in defence and foreign policy (or indeed trade), and if so that has shattering implications. You might even conclude that the EU is already dead, an empty shell.

Needless to say, Prof Heisbourg does not accept the latest claim by the EMU Gang of Five that Euroland has turned the corner, or that crisis policies are "beginning to deliver results."

The quintet is revealing: Rehn, Dijsselbloem, Asmussen, Regling, and Hoyer -- a Finn, a Dutchman, three Germans; the voices of creditor enforcement. Could they not find a single Latin, if only for show?

He calls it a "cancer in remission." The attempt to cut debt by fiscal austerity -- rather letting growth erode the burden over time, a l'Americaine -- and to do so without monetary stimulus, has been the "fatal choice." The debt ratios are punching higher, toward the point of "non-linear rupture."

Depression and mass unemployment in southern Europe are not a stable equilibrium. The citizens may have shown the "patience of angels" so far, resisting 1930s reflexes. There have not yet have been any coup d'etats, he writes, or a return to Italy's terrorist "years of lead," or even to the student mayhem of 1968.
But none of this can be taken for granted. Starkly different narratives of the crisis are emerging among creditor and deficit states, which he compares to the split in attitudes after World War One when twisted views fed an ideological backlash. Treachery and skulduggery are suspected. The worst motives are imputed, and black legends take hold. He likens it the emergence of the Dolchstoss theory (stab-in-the-back) in Germany.

The current course will lead to "serial crises ending in a nervous breakdown and an uncontrolled disintegration of the euro with all its consequences" -- he writes -- invoking a direct parallel with the sudden unraveling of the Soviet Union, a denouement with which he was closely associated and which caught almost everybody by surprise.

Europe's leaders face the same choice as a general overwhelmed in combat. Do you stand and fight to the point of annihilation, or do you break out of encirclement, saving the rump of your army for another day, the battle lost but not the war? He explicitly cites France's orderly retreat under Joffre before the Marne in 1914, a feat of moral recuperation that the kaiser's high command thought impossible.

His plan is a complete breakup of the euro and a return to national currencies. "Either the euro exists in its entirety, or it does not exist at all." He rejects the halfway house of a North-South split, the idea proposed by Germany's ex-BDI chief Hans-Olaf Henkel for a Germanic Thaler in the creditor core and a residual euro for the Latin bloc (plus France) that allows the weaker states to both devalue and uphold their euro debt contracts.

The rupture must be prepared in total secrecy by a handful of officials in Berlin and Paris, with everybody else kept in the dark. It would be carried out with lightning speed over a long weekend, modeled on the Brazilian abolition of the cruzerio in 1994, a task performed with military efficiency.

The final chop to the neck has to be a Franco-German joint act in order to "avoid the catastrophe of a situation where Germany is seen as responsible." Only on this basis can the EU project then be held together. The others would all have to accept the fait accompli.

Capital controls would be imposed. The national central banks would have to carry out QE to cushion the shock. Currencies would float for a while before being linked again in a revival of the managed "snake."

Personally I prefer a different version put forward by a group of French souverainistes at L'Observatoire de l'Europe. This involves fixing new exchange rates until the dust settles, using a formula that takes into account the accumulated inflation differential and trade balances since the launch of EMU.

Under the souverainiste plan, the devaluations/revaluations are set against a new ECU unit of account reflecting the average weighting of the old euro (not anchored on the new D-mark). The public debt of each state would be reconverted overnight into local currency (like Argentina's peso law), whoever the creditors might be. But private external debt would be settled against the ECU, a compromise that shares the losses between weak and strong states.
Prof Heisbourg's plea for second shot at EMU and a push to federal union 10 years hence strikes me as residual romanticism, or perhaps just a way of showing that he has not yet joined reprobates like me in the Eurosceptic mob.

Why the historic nation states should be any more willing to abolish themselves in 10 years than they are now is not explained. As he so eloquently describes, the 60-year effort to bind them together has fundamentally failed, and those like Mitterrand and Kohl shaped by World War II have long since vanished from the scene.

He acknowledges that the French and Dutch "no" to the European Constitution was a turning point, the moment when it became clear that citizens would not accept the EU superstate structure needed to make EMU work. I agree entirely. The 2005 referendums changed everything. But if that is so, then it is also clear that the antifederalist feelings of the nation states go deeper than anguish about the euro, since in 2005 the EMU project seemed to be going swimmingly. It was not until Greek crisis in 2010 that people started to understand that there was something wrong with the euro itself, and even after that it was a slow epiphany.

Nor do I think that Prof Heisbourg will be able so separate himself from the Eurosceptics by clinging to ideological purity. The machine will fire a cannonade of epithets, as those on the receiving end know from hard experience. In any case, his arguments are more or less the same as ours. A great many Eurosceptics were once "pro-Europeans," to use an irritating expression. I was one myself. It was why I learned all the major languages of Europe (badly, to be sure, but not for lack of enthusiasm) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and why I studied in Germany, France, and Italy, a sucker for the dream. Then I went to live in Texas.

Bernard Connolly was the official in charge of currency policy at the European Commission in the Delors era when the plot was hatched, and himself resisted pressure to cook the arguments to promote the agenda. He could see even then that such an incoherent venture would end in debt spirals, depression, and economic apartheid, as indeed it has. That is why he became a Eurosceptic in the first place.

Be that as it may, his conversion (the EMU priesthood will call it betrayal) is revealing. It tells us a great deal about the currents at work in French policy circles, and exposes the cracks beneath facade of Project hegemony. Once the Quai d'Orsay set starts to break the taboo, we must be nearing a political inflection point.
Bet on Europe's recovery if you want, but remember one thing. The North-South gap at the root of EMU's troubles will be not closed by a return to tolerable growth -- far from assured -- because it will also bring forward the day when Germany demands interest rate rises. The crisis changes shape. It does not go away. Monetary union remains dysfunctional with growth or without growth.

Belief that a fresh cycle of economic expansion will put this endless saga behind us is just the latest of so many illusions. Prof Heisbourg is right. Delay no longer serves any useful purpose for Europe. 'Twere better the deed were done quickly.
My next EMU book is the "The Fall of the Euro" by Nomura's Jens Nordvig. Looks like a cracker.

Monday, October 21, 2013

China aiming for 'de-Americanized world with renminbi replacing dollar



By Andrew Critchlow
The Telegraph, London
Sunday, October 20, 2013


Given the scale of China's consumption of fossil fuels and raw materials, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary currency for trading commodities and resources.
China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest oil importer and goods-trading nation. Over the next five years, it will surpass the rest of the world combined in its consumption of base metals.
Given the scale of the country's consumption of fossil fuels and raw materials, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary currency for trading commodities and resources such as crude oil and iron ore.
The debt ceiling farce in Washington and China's growing reluctance to continue underwriting the US economy by buying up its bonds and adding to America's near $17 trillion (L10.5 trillion) debt mountain suggests that this tectonic shift in the global trade system could be just around the corner.
Chinese state media are already calling for a "de-Americanised world." Some experts say that China is plotting to usurp the greenback's place in global commodities trade. Beijing's strategy hinges on quietly encouraging traders to bypass New York through the creation of a network of interlinked commodity markets based in the global financial hubs of Hong Kong and London.

"There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing herself for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world's reserve currency," writes Alastair Macleod, head of research at GoldMoney. A further signal that policymakers are beginning to warm to the renminbi playing a greater role in the global economy came last week when Chancellor George Osborne unveiled a historic deal to allow British investors direct access to China's markets and allow Chinese banks to expand operations in the UK.

The historic pact will also place the City, already the centre for global metals and foreign exchange trading, at the forefront of the race to capture more business denominated in the yuan.

In the world's major mining hubs such as Australia, resource companies are already taking advantage of new legislation that allows invoicing and trade settlement directly in renminbi, a process which completely cuts the US dollar out of the equation.

HSBC predicts that the Chinese currency will be the third-largest unit used for trade by 2015 and fully convertible within the next five years as the Peoples Bank of China gradually liberalises policy.

"The flow of transactions conducted in RMB [renminbi] will only continue to grow," said Frederic Vilsboe, head of commodity and structures trade finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa at HSBC in London.

Among the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls a third of the world's supply of crude, members such as Iran -- constrained by sanctions -- are already agitating for a shift away from pricing in US dollars. China's oil imports set a record last month, with official figures showing that 6.47 million barrels a day of crude flowed into the country.

The scale of China's existing and forecast demand for resources almost makes any attempt by the US to maintain the dollar's status as the world's primary trading currency for resources entirely nugatory. Wood Mackenzie estimates that China will account for 52 percent of base metals demand by 2017, compared with 46 percent of the 96-million-tonne global market this year.

The Edinburgh-based company forecasts that the world's second-largest economy, will be consuming more base metals than the rest of the world combined by 2017 as the process of urbanisation that started at the beginning of the last decade continues. Of course, there are risks, not least China's ability to sustain the rapid rates of growth achieved since the country opened its economy after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Politically too Beijing faces suspicion on the world stage but, if authorities in Beijing can continue to grow the economy, it is almost inevitable that traders will soon be quoting commodity prices in yuan, not dollars.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

LBMA meeting in Rome


Price action isn't the big players' big concern in gold and silver right now... 
"FAITH and RELIGION," said Edel Tully of UBS, the Swiss investment and bullion bank. 
"Those were key themes," she said, summing up this year's LBMA conference last Tuesday evening. 
We could hardly ignore those topics, meeting in the hills just west of Rome with 700 other delegates for the London Bullion Market Association's annual jolly. From Monday night's dinner on top of Monte Mario, the dome of St. Peter's dominated the view. And any asset which doesn't pay an income, and which has fallen in price for more than two years, must look like a "hold-n-hope" investment based more on prayer than cold logic.
Instead of "faith and religion" however, we had already scribbled down "trust and independence" as the LBMA conference's key themes. Because where Dr. Tully heard whispers of eternal beliefs – here in God (or gods), there in gold – we nearly had to cover our ears from all-too worldly shouting over safety and sovereignty, confidence and freedom.
Gold forms a triangle with these ideas throughout history. Trust and independence met gold again last week in Rome. Because today's oh-so-modern mob of taxpayers, government officials, lenders, traders, high priests and the rest still need to trust each other but also demand independence as they skip through the forum. And as the oh-so-sociable LBMA conference showed, the way that gold and silver are treated speaks to people's trust in each other, and their freedom to act as they choose.
Take central bankers. They tend to sell gold when it's cheap, and buy or hold when it's not. "This," as Blackrock's Terence Keeley rightly noted to the LBMA conference, "is no way to diversify your portfolio."
But for central banks, gold investment is about much more than smoothing returns or improving your efficient frontier. It's about independence, even if that independence puts the central bank's trust in other institutions in doubt. Institutions such as, say, the monetary union you're publicly working to deepen and develop. 
Not that any of the six current or former central bankers addressing the LBMA conference last week dared say any such thing. Nothing too blatant was given away. But you didn't need rolling translation to hear what was said.
"Trust is a central bank's most valuable asset," announced keynote speaker Salvatore Rossi of the Banca d'Italia. Only just behind that, he seemed to suggest, gold came a close second. And given Italy's recent history with gold, it certainly seems to support the central bank's trust amongst the general public. Because as Rossi said, gold so plainly supports the bank's independence from government. 
"I don't need to remind you of gold's unique role in central bank reserves," said Rossi, nevertheless reminding the 700-odd delegates to the LBMA's two-day meeting in Rome that gold is "unique amongst risk assets" because it is not "issued" by anyone. So it carries no liability and needs no counterparty for its inherent value. 
Just as importantly, the central bank of Italy's director general also pointed to "psychological reasons" for gold's key role. So did Clemens Werner of the Bundesbank, the world's second-heaviest gold owner behind the United States. More than 40 years after the final gasp of the Gold Standard and eight decades after that monetary system really hit the skids, he named "confidence" and "precaution" as the big reasons for continuing to hold gold. 
Because as Italy's Rossi went on in his speech, gold "enhances resilience" in the central bank's reserves overall, typically rising when other risk assets plunge. More notably, gold "underpins the independence of the central bank" from government. Quite how, Rossi didn't say. But with Silvio Berlusconi trying to destroy Italy's government just a few minutes cab-ride away, the point was plain enough if you knew the history.
Il Cavaliere came after the Banca d'Italia's gold in 2009. He was told where to go. The central bank's big friends at the European Central Bank then told Berlusconi where to go, too. Trying to tax the central bank's unrealized profits on gold was illegal under the Euro treaty, breaching line after line of the critical "independence" from government which national central banks must retain. Italian central-bank governor Mario Draghi has since moved into the job of ECB chief. So his stand against Berlusconi's failed gold bullion tax grab looks a good template for how the ECB, and the biggest gold-owning central banks of the Eurosystem, might view their gold reserves today. 
Most definitely, none of Germany or Italy's gold is up for sale this year. Alexandre Gautier said the same of France's hoard. But then again, the Banque de France said that in the late 1990s, only to break ranks and take advantage of rising prices in the early Noughties. Gautier also spoke last week about trading and lending (this was a business conference, after all), but only to say the former is now very limited, while the latter is off the table. Not until gold borrowers come up with collateral. Which is unlikely but necessary now that – compared with 10 or 15 years ago, when lending European central-bank gold was all the rage (as was selling it, at least outside Rome and Frankfurt) – "the environment is totally different. I'm not sure it could be acceptable for a 1-year loan without collateral."
Which brings us back to trust...to be continued in Part II...
Adrian Ash

Monday, October 7, 2013

Gold Befuddles Bernanke as Central Banks’ Losses at $545 Billion

By Nicholas Larkin & Debarati Roy - Oct 7, 2013 3:03 AM CT

Ben S. Bernanke, the world’s most-powerful central banker, says he doesn’t understand gold prices. If his peers had paid attention, they might have stopped expanding reserves that lost $545 billion in value since bullion peaked in 2011.
Bernanke, who holds economics degrees from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Federal Reserve through the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression, told the Senate Banking Committee in July that “nobody really understands gold prices and I don’t pretend to really understand them either.”
Central banks, which own 18 percent of all the gold ever mined, will add as much as 350 tons valued at about $15 billion this year, the London-based World Gold Council estimates. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg
July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Gold prices have fallen this year because investors see a reduced need for "disaster insurance," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said. Bernanke spoke in response to questions from Senator Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican, during his testimony before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. (This is an excerpt. Source: Bloomberg)
Central banks, which own 18 percent of all the gold ever mined, will add as much as 350 tons valued at about $15 billion this year, the London-based World Gold Council estimates. They purchased 535 tons in 2012, the most since 1964. Russia is the biggest buyer, expanding reserves by 20 percent since prices reached a record $1,921.15 an ounce in September 2011. Gold slumped 31 percent since then.
As policy makers were buying, investors were losing faith in the metal as a store of value. The value of exchange-traded products dropped by $60.4 billion, or 43 percent, this year, saddling hedge fund manager John Paulson with losses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Billionaire investorGeorge Soros sold his holdings in the biggest gold-backed ETP this year and mining companies wrote down the values of their assets by at least $26 billion.

Worst Drop

Gold, which entered a bear market in April, slid 21 percent to $1,316.28 in London this year on Oct. 4, set for the biggest drop since 1981. It rose sixfold as it rallied for 12 successive years through 2012, beating a 17 percent gain in the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities as the Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of commodities more than doubled. It’s this year’s third-worst performing raw material, after corn and silver. Gold today fell to $1,310.33 an ounce.
Policy makers, who are responsible for shielding their economies from inflation, often mistime gold investment decisions, buying high and selling low. They were reducing holdings when bullion reached a 20-year low in 1999 and as prices as much as quadrupled in the next nine years. Central bankers became net buyers just before the peak in 2011.
“Central bankers have typically bought when you probably should be selling and selling when you probably should be buying,” said Michael Strauss, who helps oversee about $25 billion of assets as chief investment strategist and chief economist at Commonfund Group in Wilton, Connecticut. “It’s going to be a difficult market and sometimes the price of gold is driven by emotions rather than fundamental factors. Central banks have been bad traders of gold.”

Policy Makers

Holdings were little changed from the start of 2008 through early 2009. Then, policy makers increased gold reserves as prices doubled and they have purchased a net 884 tons since the 2011 peak, International Monetary Fund data show. Russia was the biggest buyer, adding about 171 tons. Kazakhstan bought 67.2 tons and South Korea purchased 65 tons. Turkey’s reserves swelled about 371 tons in the past two years as it accepted bullion in reserve requirements from commercial banks.
In addition to buying when prices rose, central banks sold into slumping markets, disposing of about 5,899 tons in the two decades from 1988, equal to about two years of current mine supply.
The U.K. auctioned about 395 tons from July 1999, a month before prices reached a two-decade low, through March 2002. Gold averaged about $277 as the country was selling. The Bank of England’s hoard of ingots and coins, including a bar smelted in New York in 1916, now totals 310.3 tons, or 13 percent of the nation’s total reserves.

Gold Standard

Warren Buffett, the fourth-richest person in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the world’s most successful investor, has said the metal has no utility because it moves to vaults once mined. While countries from the U.S. to the U.K. adopted a gold standard by the 19th century to limit inflation, no central bank or government institution links currencies directly to the metal anymore. The Fed, created a century ago, cut the dollar’s ties to gold four decades ago.
Bernanke, when asked to explain gold’s volatility and the long-term impact of reducing economic stimulus, told the Senate Banking Committee July 18 that investors see a reduced need for “disaster insurance.” In a Congressional hearing two years ago, he described the commodity as an asset rather than money and said central banks own bullion as a “long-term tradition.”
Following that tradition has proved a poor investment decision. Kazakhstan almost doubled reserves the past two years and South Korea expanded them sevenfold since mid-2011.
“Bernanke was suggesting in his own way that too much importance is given to gold, it’s too hyped,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at New York University. “Gold is not a currency.”

Inflation Hedge

Bullion rose 70 percent from December 2008 to June 2011 as the Fed debased the dollar by pumping more than $2 trillion into the financial system, spurring demand for a hedge against inflation. That protection hasn’t been needed, because U.S. consumer prices have risen at an average annual pace of 1.7 percent in the past five years, compared with a four-decade average of 4.3 percent, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.
After taking inflation into account, gold is worth almost half of what it was in 1980. It reached a then-record $850 that year after U.S. political and financial turmoil in the late 1970s caused a surge in consumer prices. The metal is valued at $464 in 1980 dollars, according to a calculator on the website of the Fed Bank of Minneapolis.

Price Forecasts

The most accurate analysts say the bear market will deepen. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. andSociete Generale SA correctly forecast this year’s rout. New York-based Goldman says prices will drop to $1,110 in 12 months and Societe Generale, in Paris, sees an average of $1,125 in 2014. Prices will average $1,300 in the fourth quarter, the lowest in three years, according to the median of 12 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Central banks bought metal as the Fed’s balance sheet swelled fourfold since 2008 and policy makers around the world lowered interest rates to record low levels. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus needed bailouts since the European debt crisis erupted four years ago, sparking concern that nations would be forced out of the euro.
“There was a widely-circulated belief that the euro as a currency will cease existing,” said Michael Aronstein, the president of Marketfield Asset Management LLC in New York, whose MainStay Marketfield Fund beat 97 percent of its peers in the past five years. “A lot of foreign central banks thought they cannot keep the euro and did not want to increase dollars. It was desperation and fear that drove the surge in demand.”

Purchasing Power

While gold is trading below the 1980 high on an inflation-adjusted basis, it has still been better than the dollar in preserving its purchasing power. A dollar bought about three quarters of a gallon of milk in 1970, a year before the peg to gold ended, and an ounce of gold 28 gallons. By the end of 2011, a dollar got you about a quarter of a gallon and an ounce of bullion 420 gallons.
Holding gold is a reasonable, prudent strategy and central bankers probably build reserves with a one- to two-decade view rather than one to two years, Nathan Sheets, the former head of the Fed’s international-finance division and now the global head of international economics at Citigroup Inc., said in an interview in August. The U.S., Germany and Italy, which together own 44 percent of all central-bank holdings, changed gold reserves by less than 3 percent since the start of 1999.

Fort Knox

U.S. holdings of 8,133.5 tons, valued at $344.2 billion and accounting for 72 percent of total reserves, are the world’s largest. Most is stored at the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox in Kentucky and has been held at a book value of $42.22 an ounce since 1973, the U.S. Mint’s and Fed’s websites show. The hoard contracted by about 450 tons, or 5 percent, since then.
Former Texas Representative Ron Paul, the Republican who pushed for an independent count of U.S. gold holdings to prove they exist, also urged that a commission consider “a metallic basis for U.S. currency.” Utah recognizes precious metals as currency and lawmakers in at least six other states have or are considering bills to accept bullion coins as legal tender.
“The gold standard era, at least from an academic view and I think from people that were contemporaries in the 19th century, were that it didn’t work very well,” St. Louis Fed PresidentJames Bullard said Aug. 23 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “It seems like it would be very problematic to tie the dollar to gold in an environment where gold is fluctuating like crazy.”

Fixed Amounts

Returning to a gold standard, a monetary system in which currencies are converted into fixed amounts of metal, wouldn’t be feasible because there’s not enough available and it would prevent governments loosening monetary policy, Bernanke said at George Washington University in March 2012.
Central banks’ gold holdings are valued at $1.35 trillion now and totaled $1.9 trillion in September 2011 at prices then. Nations will buy more than another 500 tons by 2018, Morgan Stanley says. Their appetite contrasts with investors who cut the value of holdings in ETPs by 43 percent this year to $81.4 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The most recent central-bank buying began less than a year before Soros called bullion the “ultimate asset bubble” in January 2010. The 83-year-old sold his entire stake in the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), the biggest gold-backed ETP, in the second quarter. Paulson cut his company’s stake by 53 percent in the period.

Emerging Markets

Venezuela holds 67 percent of its reserves in gold, the most among emerging-market countries, compared with less than 9 percent for Russia. While Russia’s central bank will continue buying, the pace may vary, former First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said in January. Bullion’s fluctuations failed to change the bank’s view on the role of gold in reserves, former Bank Rossii Chairman Sergey Ignatiev said in June.
“There’s been a perception that they are a contrary indicator when they buy and sell, but they’re not traders,” said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist for Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Financial Inc., which oversees more than $1 trillion of assets. “Some central bankers have come to see gold as an alternative currency, certainly as a defense against potential inflationary pressures from the historical deployment of quantitative easing and low rates by global central banks.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Larkin in London at nlarkin1@bloomberg.net; Debarati Roy in New York at droy5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter atccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-06/gold-befuddles-bernanke-as-central-banks-losses-at-545-billion.html