Gold Investor

Indian government policies are giving us a first hand view of what happens when the powers that be try to force the hand of a population that doesn't really trust them. Higher taxes, duties, tariffs and regulations cannot stem the demand for gold in a country where the purchasing power of the local currency keeps declining - leading people to rather wear their wealth than put it in a bank. The demand is now being met by an burgeoning underground economy where gold is being smuggled in, is commanding very high premiums to spot and some people are looking to silver as an alternative. We've had air hostesses charged with smuggling gold from overseas and now a Jet airways cleaning crew made a glittering discovery of 24 gold bars worth $1.1 million stashed in one of the washrooms.

Jim Rogers is if anything a very astute investor who called the emerging market and commodity boom a long time ago. He has been so confident of this trend to have moved (himself and his family) East to Asia. Jim has been pretty bullish on gold as well though he has often come across as a broad commodity bull. In this interview with Rachel Mills of the Birch Gold Group, Rogers talks about a possible consequence of central bank easing - a massive collapse of the financial markets. For this type of scenario, he recommends a gold based insurance policy.

The common wisdom amongst gold bugs and many concerned investors has been that inflation would increase with the financial mess that we find ourselves in - to the point where Weimar Republic type hyperinflation may wage havoc over us. I don't argue that there is inflation in the things people need and this is shown in the way that Shawdowstats tracks the CPI. But the $1 trillion in annual US Federal Reserve printing and the quadrupling of its balance sheet, plus easing across other parts of the world have not lead to hyperinflation. Jim Puplava of the Financial Sense Newshour looks at this very topic in his Big Picture review and instead looks at the broader disinflationary cycle that may be in play.

2013 is already turning out to be a very significant year for silver coin demand. It has already matched the previous 2011 levels and bypass that year's record 40 million ounces that were purchased by investors. This has proven to be great news for the US Mint and other well known producers, like the Royal Canadian Mint since the one ounce Silver Eagle and Silver Maple Leaf are considered the most popular and preferred silver bullion coins. Both these coins tend to be more liquid and recognized world wide for their silver fineness/purity versus silver bullion bars.

The price of silver has seen great gains over the last decade. With prices now ranging in the mid-$20s, may people are suggesting and with this demand, many companies are providing "copper bullion" products. Looking through some of these offerings, I can't but wonder if this is a sound investment for the future. Copper has many industrial uses which gives it some intrinsic value but the still relative low cost of copper means that it has a "low density of value". Roughly speaking, the value in one ounce of gold can be matched with approximately 155 pounds (2,500 ounces) of copper or 55 ounces of silver. As one can see, copper is just not very practical.

Humans are always looking for correlation between things and it is no different with investors trying to figure out how to track and predict the price of gold. Here we have Edmund Moy, the former directory of the US Mint answering a young man's question at the Whitman Coin and Collectibles Expo in Baltimore, MD.

It is time to start a new chapter in the life of Gold-Investor.com. The original site came online in the summer of 2002 and as technology has evolved, the site was having serious problems and needed to have its backend updated. Unfortunately we could not upgrade the site and instead had to do a new install - so the content could not be transitioned over. We will start putting new content online and will work to selectively bring back some of the old articles.