Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
So buy more now to cushion the shock later, should disaster strike.
Gold to $10K/oz under Harris admin.
Update (9/22). Spot is now $2621/oz as of 12:10 NY time. Kamala or no Kamala it will most likely trend upwards.
"When we have gold we are in fear; when we have none we are in danger." An English proverb the pertinence of which is proven by recent developments.
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Schiff is a “perma-bear”. Don’t bet your house on his advice…
Gold will “surge” even if Trump wins. The reasons have to do with the weaknesses in all fiat currencies. Schiff gets to that later in the interview.
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We talk about the “price of gold” and say things like, “it’s going to surge,” and that’s okay as long as it’s understood that what’s happening is that the value of the underlying currency, and not the value of gold, is changing.
If the “price of gold” marches north to $2700/oz from its near $2600/oz today, that would mean that one U.S. dollar would be worth 1/2700 of an ounce of gold rather than 1/2600 of an ounce. It would take more dollars to buy a fixed quantity of gold. (This is one of several definitions of “inflation.”)
Gold is not a commodity among other commodities. It is their measure.
Think of gold as a Polaris around which various currencies revolve like planets. It’s stationary and defines everything else. It would be wrong to think of the U.S. dollar as the standard around which “the price of gold” revolves.
>>Gold is not a commodity among other commodities. It is their measure.<<
Do you mean that gold is not a commodity like other commodities, or do you mean that it is not a commodity at all?
Depend on df. of 'commodity.'
"What Are Commodities?
Commodities are raw materials used to manufacture consumer products. They are inputs in the production of other goods and services, rather than finished goods sold to consumers." https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/commodity.asp
On this definition, gold is a commodity.
“Gold to average $2,800/oz by 2025, now represents 100% of commodity allocation – SocGen”
The sentence can be changed to:
“Gold is not merely a commodity among other commodities. It is their measure.”
I would not say the investopedia definition of commodity describes gold. Is gold really a raw material “used to manufacture consumer products” or an input “in the production of other goods and services.”
Before anything else, gold has a monetary function, or at least it had one until governments in our lifetime decided it had none. Save for silver, no other commodity has that function. (There are four precious metals, of which two are monetary metals, but silver lost its monetary role in the late 19th century.)
Certainly gold plays a role in ornamental artifacts and in some specialized industrialized uses, but it is not used up as a raw material in manufacturing processes.
It would be fair to say that all the gold ever mined is still in existence. Some of it lies at the bottom of Davy Jones’ locker and a small amount has been shot into space, but virtually every ounce ever mined still exists. That cannot be said of copper, oil, cotton or any other commodity input in a production process. There is evidence in many societies showing that gold moves from bullion into jewelry and from jewelry back into bullion depending on economic conditions.
In search of a definition, gold is of the genus “commodity”, but it is a species unlike the others.
As for the Goldman Sachs commodity allocation, I take the statement as a reference to an overall portfolio allocation divided between stocks, bonds, perhaps real estate, and commodities, and that gold is Goldman’s only holding in its commodity allocation. That’s my interpretation. Goldman could have satisfied its commodity allocation by holding oil companies or oil futures or agribusinesses, but apparently it has voted to hold gold.
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