Central-Bank Bashing Has Gold Only Asset Safe From Meddling

Baring Asset Management’s Christopher Mahon has one major conviction about 2017: it will be the year in which central-bank bashing by politicians becomes the new normal, so he’s seeking shelter in gold.
‘This year is the turning point,’ Mahon said in an interview on Monday. ‘For seven years or so, central banks have largely escaped critique even though one could argue that their policies have been pretty inadequate in many senses. It’s very plausible now that politicians stand up and throw stones at central bankers.’
Mahon is betting that gold will rise if political intervention causes central banks to miss inflation and growth targets. In the past few months he’s built up a 4 percent allocation to bullion in his 1.7 billion ($2.1 billion) Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund, which outperformed 80 percent of peers last year. Jim Rickards, author of New York Times best seller Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, is even more bullish: he recommends putting 10 percent into gold.

This post was published at bloomberg