Gold And The Inflationary Firestorm

Hardly a day goes by now without more good news for gold investors appearing, and the pace of this news flow is accelerating. Please click here now. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan was interviewed by the World Gold Council in the February edition of their influential ‘Gold Investor’ magazine. That’s a snapshot of some of the interview. The former head of the Fed gives a magnificent report card to gold as the ultimate asset and currency. Please click here now. In India, the restrictions on cash withdrawals from banks are set to end on March 13. That’s just two days ahead of the ultra-important US debt ceiling deadline on March 15. March 15 is also the date of the next interest rate decision from the Fed. The bottom line: Gold-obsessed Indians will soon have the ability to purchase significant amounts of gold to bet on ongoing problems for the US government. America is the world’s largest debtor nation, and as Alan Greenspan notes, the country desperately needs enormous infrastructure spending, but it can’t afford it. President Trump is almost certainly going to press congress to put even more debt on the backs of ageing American citizens to get that infrastructure spending done. That’s going to create significant inflationary pressure, and the US central bank’s rate hikes are going to exacerbate the problem. That’s because the bank is in ‘uncharted waters’; the enormous QE money ball sitting at the Fed has been a huge cause of deflation. It’s put a drag on money velocity by incentivizing banks to hold reserves at the Fed. Trump is killing the Dodd-Frank bank reserve requirement rules at roughly the same time as the Fed hikes rates again. That creates a powerful incentive for the banks to move money out of the Fed and put it into the fractional reserve banking system.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 21 February 2017.